61. Garrett
Chapter Sixty-One
GARRETT
H e may as well have punched the other man. Jesse staggered back, his face turning gray.
“Emma delivered Stella in Denver,” he continued in a softer voice, conscious that he was delivering one hell of a blow. “The labor pains may have helped rouse her from the coma. But when she woke up, she had no memory of being pregnant. She couldn’t even speak yet, let alone care for a baby. So Mariana took the infant.”
Jesse grunted, wiping his face. Garrett felt bad, but Jesse had to know the truth. It was better to rip off the Band-Aid. Trying to ease into it wasn’t going to make it any easier for the man.
“You never did track down the driver of the car,” he continued. “Once Mariana realized Emma was pregnant, she connected the baby with the accident. She thought the father might have run Emmy down. Little did she know I was having a literal pity party just a few miles away, drowning my sorrows in cheap beer and overpriced whiskey because of a stupid misunderstanding.”
“Huh.” Jesse processed that. “I guess that’s a good enough reason to keep the baby’s parentage a secret. But I still can’t believe Mari didn’t tell me.”
Garrett didn’t know what to say to that, so he decided nothing was better. Clearing his throat, he gestured down the incline, beginning a careful climb down to the area Jesse had indicated earlier.
“Was it around here?”
“Yeah. Just to your right.” The sheriff pointed a few feet from him. “We’re not sure where she hit her head but as best we could figure, her leg struck that tree, stopping her descent to the bottom. I know it sounds weird, but that might have been lucky. The bottom has some big stones that could have done a lot more damage.”
Garrett turned, scanning the bottom of the incline. Christ . Jesse was right. Those boulders were fucking huge.
Swearing under his breath, Garrett crab-walked across the uneven ground, one leg higher up on the slope to maintain his balance.
Seeing how much trouble he was having, Jesse wisely decided to stay where he was. His traction would have been shit in those cowboy boots.
“We scoured the ground around her thoroughly in the days following. Aside from her phone, there was nothing down there.”
“No auto glass on the road? Like from a headlight?”
Jesse shook his head. “Just the paint transfer on the tree.”
Garrett began to climb back up, glad he’d busted out his hiking boots for this. “How high was it?”
Jesse put his hand out, helping haul him up the last few feet. “What was that? I missed it.”
“The paint transfer on the tree.” Garrett brushed off the dirt on his knees. “Was it at sedan or truck height?”
“Sedan is my guess, although it looks to be about truck height now. But that’s only because the tree has grown. Come see.”
They examined a faint scar on the trunk, which was just above his waist.
“The paint was an extremely common shade of black,” Jesse said with a frown. “It was used by multiple car makers. It was the only clue. We didn’t find any clear fresh tire tracks. The ground was too hard-packed. The few impressions we had were confused. The clearest looked older and were likely made during the rain we had weeks earlier.”
Damn. No wonder the trail had gone cold.
Garrett scanned the road. It did bend sharply here. It was possible the driver hadn’t seen her. Especially if she’d been wearing something dark.
“I suppose it could have been an accident,” he muttered. “She might have jumped off the road to avoid getting run down, her injuries a result of hitting one of these trees.”
“The first doctor to examine her believed the arm break was a crushing injury, but if she hit one of those trees just right, then yeah,” Jesse agreed. “They could have been caused by the tree and not the car. But the fact that the driver never took their vehicle in for repair means they were aware of the accident or learned of it after the fact.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t dispute that.
But he wanted to go back and tell Emma once and for all that her accident was just that. For her peace of mind. And his.
“I just wanted to tie up loose ends before we close this chapter and move on,” he said, voicing his desire out loud. “I should have known we wouldn’t get this tied in a neat bow.”
Jesse squinted in one of the rare patches of sunlight. “Frustrating as shit, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He took a final look around and shook his head.
It probably was an accident. Part of him didn’t want to accept that because that meant he had no villain to fight. And he dearly wanted someone to blame—aside from himself.
Can you kick your own ass?
Shaking off that mental image, he turned back to the sheriff. “Did you remember to bring Emma’s phone?”
“I did.”
Jesse jerked his thumb at his SUV. “It’s a Motorola model commonly given away when you sign up for a phone plan. I had it dusted for prints and swabbed for DNA but got nothing that shouldn’t have been there. As for the data, I had it sent upstate to see if they could pull anything off it. But they weren’t able to get it to start, so fair warning your experts may not fare any better. ”
“I know it’s a long shot, but I have seen Toya Almari, the specialist at Auric Security, work miracles.”
Jesse looked skeptical. “I doubt it will shed any light on the accident, but like I said on the phone, you’re welcome to it. It belongs to Emma, broken or not.”
There was also the fact the statute of limitations for a hit-and-run had come and gone well before he and Emma reconnected.
“I know. At best, I’ll see a string of my texts to Emma. But I need to cross every T.”
Jesse nodded, sticking his thumbs in his jeans pockets. “Well, if you discover any deep dark secrets on it, you’ll let me know.”
“I will,” Garrett promised. “Although, I suspect I know Emma’s biggest secret now.”
The sheriff stared at him for a second before nodding in understanding. “Ah. Yeah, of course. Stella. Wow, I hadn’t even stopped to think about the implications of her being yours—you’re probably going to take her with you.”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
That wasn’t even a question in his mind. His wife and daughter belonged with him in San Diego. He was already researching the best kindergarten schools near his place.
“What about Mariana?” Jesse asked. He cleared his throat with a slightly strangled sound. “She’ll be alone.”
“Oh, Mariana’s coming.” Garrett wasn’t about to split her and Stella up. “I’ve arranged for her to have one of the condos on the floor below our penthouse.”
Jesse’s lips parted. “You did?”
“Yeah, we all agreed that it’s best for Stella if we all stay together. Besides, I’m pretty sure Mariana is ready to put Colorado in her rearview.”
Jesse rocked back on his heels. “But what about her house and… and her relationship with that Bronson fellow.”
Well, shit. Garrett wasn’t going to get out of discussing his mother-in-law’s love life after all.
“Mariana hasn’t exactly said where she and Teddy stand, but she did say she’d like to be out of here before he gets back from the Bahamas,” he confided. “So my guess is it’s not good.”
Jesse scowled. “What about her house?”
The sheriff’s effort at casual needed a lot of work.
“I don’t know where people got the idea that the house belongs to Mariana. She rents it from Teddy. Yeah, it’s a bit cheaper than market rate but she does pay him.”
Garrett even knew the dollar amount. He’d found the check stubs in one of the kitchen drawers when he’d been looking for a spatula to make Stella pancakes.
He hadn’t intended to snoop, but the bill drawer had given him a pretty good idea of Mariana’s financial picture.
Garrett ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, after raising my daughter for the last five years, I decided Mariana deserved an early retirement. The condo will be in her name, all expenses paid. She still wants to babysit, of course, and now she can be there for Emma too, for any doctor’s appointments I can’t make.”
Jesse raised his brows, taking it all in with slow blinks of the long dark lashes that had made him very popular with the ladies. “Wow. That’s a lot. Lots of changes, I mean.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Can I ask you something?”
Jesse put his hands on his hips. “Shoot.”
“Keep in mind that this is coming from the jackass who didn’t know he had a kid because of one stupid fight,” Garrett began. “But I’m a little surprised you didn’t know about Stella. You were investigating the hit-and-run. Did you not go see Emma in the hospital?”
The pregnancy would have been obvious at some point.
Jesse’s face tightened. “It’s a fair question. I did see Em when she was at the local hospital, but I didn’t ever go up to Denver.”
The sheriff kicked the ground with the tip of his cowboy boot. “To tell you the truth, me and Mari weren’t talking a whole lot during that period.”
He adjusted his Stetson, scrubbing his reddening hairline. “I had started seeing Kelley Ames around then, long enough to fuel rumors that I might pop the question and marry her. Mari avoided me when she saw me in the street. I heard she started seeing Bronson again just after the accident. He kind of swooped in, riding to the rescue. I didn’t like it, but…”
He trailed off, his face dark. “Everyone thought Stella was his.”
“And you were still playing the field.”
Jesse scowled. “It’s not like Mari and I didn’t stay friends.”
Garrett nodded. But he couldn’t help but think that Mari no longer thought of Jesse in those warm terms. She would have told the sheriff the truth if she’d trusted him.
“And I did check in after Emma came back from the hospital!” Jesse's voice was getting louder. “Mariana could have said something then—at the very least to tell me her theory that Emma’s baby daddy ran her down. It would have given me a new lead.”
“As the baby daddy in question, I kind of wish she had too. But it was a crazy time, with Emma in the hospital. Even after she went home, she had to go for endless rounds of physical therapy.” Garrett sighed. “I’m just glad Mariana kept Stella. For that, I’ll be eternally grateful.”
His philosophical response didn’t rub off on Jesse. The man wasn’t done venting. “To my knowledge, Bronson denied being Stella’s dad once or twice to some of his cohorts, but it was pretty half-hearted.”
Garrett made a noncommittal noise, leaning against the car door.
He wasn’t about to tell Jesse that Teddy had gone to Denver, visiting Mariana several times during Emma’s pregnancy. It would have sounded too much like censure.
He tried again to bring the man back down, so he could grab that phone and get back to Emma, but Jesse wanted to keep complaining. He went on for a while about Teddy and his growing reputation as a slumlord.
Garrett, however, was already aware of what Teddy had been up to. He’d had his people keep track of the man’s business dealings, in case Teddy ever decided to pester his aunt again.
However, Jesse was really warming to the topic, as if Garrett’s questions had broken open some sort of dam.
He put up his hands to interrupt the rant. “Jesse, I know this thing about Mariana not being Stella’s mother is throwing you. You were close once and she didn’t share this very pertinent detail. I’m sure it also burns that Teddy knew and you didn’t.”
“But she let Bronson?—”
Okay, enough . Garrett slashed his hand through the air. “Do I have to say it aloud?”
Jesse crossed his arms. “Say what?”
There was no good way to do this, so he kept it as short as possible. “That I think my mother-in-law may have prostituted herself so she could keep a roof over my daughter’s head.”
Jesse dropped his arms, closing his mouth.
Garrett grimaced, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s just a theory, of course. Mariana hasn’t said anything remotely like this. But from the way she talks about Teddy and the speed at which she’s packing, it’s obvious she wants to blow town while he’s out of the country.”
Jesse stared at him for a minute. Then he stalked to his vehicle, climbing in and slamming the door. He drove away in an aggressive cloud of dust.
“Okay then,” Garrett told the trees with a sigh. Then he swore.
Jesse hadn’t given him the phone.
He finished dusting off his clothes and headed to his rental, wondering if there was any way he could beat the sheriff to Mariana’s house.