Chapter Twenty-Nine
LILY
“Hey, do you care what happens to Trey's desk?”
Knox asked the question with innocent expectation, but there was a spark in his eye that hinted at destruction.
Did I care what happened to Trey's desk?
Not the tiniest bit.
“Do what you have to do,” I said.
Knox nodded and disappeared. He'd spent the day before pulling apart the crawlspace under the stairs where Griffen thought Trey might have had a hiding spot. It had been nothing more than conduit and pipes. Now it was a great big mess.
I didn't care about the mess. I cared about not finding what we were looking for. I cared about being trapped in this house. In this town. I cared about Adam's safety.
Knox could tear this place to the ground, and if he found that birth certificate in the process, I'd rejoice.
After a long debate, we'd taken Adam to preschool the day before. He'd had enough upheaval. He needed normalcy, but neither of us felt comfortable dropping him off and driving away.
Instead, I grabbed us coffees and joined Knox in the car to stake out the church. On a Monday morning, the church was not the center of excitement. No excitement was good but boring. Very, very boring.
We picked up Adam, hit the grocery store for more supplies, and headed home, Knox to tear apart the crawlspace and me to start packing.
Packing for what? I wasn’t exactly sure.
One way or another, Knox had promised we'd solve the problem of Adam's birth certificate. I'd chosen to believe him, to push away the doubt gnawing in my gut and believe in Knox.
Once I had the legal paperwork proving that I was Adam's mom, we were not staying here. I didn't know where we were going. It didn't matter yet. We were going somewhere, so I might as well prepare.
I packed in two stages. First, I set aside enough to hold us for a few weeks if we had to leave quickly.
I was still reeling from the sudden attack of Tsepov's men, from finding out what Trey had been into and how much danger he'd landed on our doorstep. Andrei Tsepov was in FBI custody, but no one seemed convinced he'd stay there.
If he got out, we wouldn't be safe in Black Rock. I wanted to be ready for anything. Just in case.
It was past lunchtime when my stomach growled, and I looked at the clock. I'd left Adam in his bedroom, occupied with the agonizing decision of which five toys he wanted to take with us.
If we had to leave in a rush, I wanted Adam to be prepared. I stuck my head into his room to find him frowning down at three stuffed animals, a garbage truck that made sounds when it rolled, and his favorite book.
“The book doesn't count as part of the five, baby doll. Set aside the books you want, and if it's too many, we'll figure it out later. Are you hungry for lunch?”
As if his stomach woke at the sound of the word lunch, Adam popped to his feet, wrapping his arms around his waist and doubling over. “I'm so hungry, Mom.”
I raised an eyebrow. Leaning down, I pressed my ear to his stomach, pretending to listen. “Uh-huh. Maybe… Okay, absolutely.”
“What did it say?” Adam asked, mostly sure his stomach hadn't said anything, but not entirely convinced.
Deadly serious, I responded, “It said that you want broccoli with hot sauce. That's fine, I bought broccoli at the store yesterday, and we have plenty of hot sauce.”
“No way! I only eat broccoli if you put cheese on it, and I don't like spicy. Tell my stomach I want something else.”
“What do you want?” I asked, taking his hand and walking down the stairs.
“I don't know, what do we have?”
“Broccoli and hot sauce,” I answered.
“Moooom.” Adam pulled his hand from mine and ran down the hall to Trey's office. “Mr. Knox! Mom's trying to make me eat broccoli and hot sauce for lunch. Make her let me have something else!”
He skidded to a halt in the doorway and stopped, bracing his hand on the frame. “What did you do?” he asked in awe.
I hurried my steps to catch up, clearing the doorframe to find Knox sitting in front of Trey's desk, surrounded by scraps of wood. It looked like he'd taken a hammer to the inside of the thing.
Walking around to the other side I crouched and looked underneath. The frame of the desk remained, but the internal structure had been pulled apart.
On the floor beside Knox sat a strongbox, about a foot and a half long, maybe twelve inches wide, and at least 4 inches tall. Trey could have hidden a lot in a box that size. I couldn't imagine how he'd stashed it in the desk.
My heart sped up, my chest tightening, leaving me breathless. Knox caught my gaze and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. His eyes landed on Adam, then back on the box, and I understood.
“Lunch?” I asked, doing my best to sound normal. Knox got to his feet with a fluid grace.
“I'm not that crazy about broccoli with hot sauce,” he said, “I thought we got deli meat yesterday. I was thinking a turkey sandwich with cheddar and some chips.”
I hummed in the back of my throat, pretending to think it over. “You sure? A turkey sandwich is better than broccoli with hot sauce?”
Knox's laugh rumbled behind me. His arm shot out to wrap around my waist, pulling me into him. Lips dropping to my ear, he murmured, “I'll eat anything you make me, Lily. Even broccoli with hot sauce.”
Adam raced ahead of us, seating himself at the table and starting a serious discussion with Knox about which books to bring on our trip.
I leaned into the refrigerator to pull out lunch meat and cheese, avoiding Knox's curious glance at the mention of a trip.
I wasn't ready to admit I was okay with leaving. One step at a time.
Knox helping, I assembled sandwiches by rote, shaking a pile of chips on each plate and finishing the meal with sliced strawberries, the entire time my mind fixed on that black strongbox in Trey's office.
I don't remember what we talked about over lunch. I barely tasted my sandwich. All I could think about was the box.
Finally, plates cleaned, Adam took off, his mind made up on three of the books he planned to pack. The second he was out of earshot, I said, “When did you find that box?”
“About two minutes before Adam walked into the room. I need a little time with the lock. I don't want to force it until I know what's inside. Any chance you have a key?”
I pushed back from the table and went to the junk drawer in the kitchen, the central repository for all sorts of stuff we had no idea what else to do with.
Including keys. There were extra keys to the house, keys to the cottage, both new and the original keys that no longer worked.
Keys to the outlet covers down on the dock. Nothing the right size for a strongbox.
Knox sifted through the bin of keys himself before agreeing that the key to that strongbox wasn't in my junk drawer.
I followed him back to Trey's office and watched, fascinated, as he pulled out a small, black, zippered case and opened it to reveal a set of shiny silver sticks. What was he going to do with those?
Clearly, I watched too many old movies and not enough detective shows.
It was apparent as soon as Knox pulled two of the silver sticks from the case and slid them into the lock of the strongbox.
Concentrating, making tiny shifts in the position of the lock picks, he said under his breath, “Slide the light closer, Lil.”
I did, watching as his fingers flexed and turned. He traded out one of the silver sticks for another and went back to probing and turning. The lock popped open.
I'd expected to feel a surge of triumph. Excitement. Instead, my stomach sank, heavy with dread. What if it wasn't there? What if we didn't find it?
Knox lifted the lid, and despair was shoved out by a surge of hope. Legal size envelopes. Documents. Knox shuffled through them, holding up a hand when I reached out.
“I know you want to see what's here, but give me a sec.”
I let my hand fall to my side with a low grunt of frustration, ignoring the quirk of Knox's lip at the sound. He wouldn't think it was so funny if our positions were switched and I was hogging all the newly discovered…whatever it was.
Trey had hidden a strongbox in his desk, hidden it so thoroughly Knox needed to tear the thing apart to get to it. What had he put in there? And why?
Knox held up an unsealed, white, rectangular envelope and shook out the contents. A piece of paper with handwritten notes and two documents, 8.5 x 11, identical in almost every way, from the watermarked red and white paper to the state seal on the bottom corner.
Issued by the state of Alabama, both of them showed Adam Michael Spencer, Adam's birthdate and Trey Carlisle Spencer as the father. One birth certificate had the mother's name scratched out, the ink completely scraped off the heavy paper. The other certificate listed me.
I stared at the two documents, completely nonplussed. Two? My voice sounded thin and weak to my own ears as I asked, “Is one of those a fake? They can't both be legal.”
Knox held them up to the desk lamp, studying the weight of the paper and the impressions left by the seal. After a few minutes, he lay them on top of the desk, side-by-side.
“My lawyer in Atlanta has some experience with family law. What he doesn't know he can refer out. I'll ask him to look into this. These both look legitimate. I think when you adopt a second certificate is issued. The good news is that you have a birth certificate—”
“—the bad news is, it might not be the one on file with the state,” I finished.
Knox slipped both birth certificates back into the envelope and examined the other piece of paper, the handwritten notes in a kind of shorthand that didn't make any sense to me. L.G. Who was L.G., and what did they have to do with Adam's birth mother?
Knox ran his finger down the neat lines of notes, stopping on one to murmur, “LeAnne Gates. Son of a bitch.”
He moved his finger back to the top and started again, clearly seeing something in the numbers and notes that I didn't. When he was done, he said, “Payments. L.G. LeAnne Gates. The dates on these—he was still paying her when he died.”
I had no idea what to make of that. My head spun, new information swirling in a whirlwind. I tried to reach out and grab bits and pieces, to assemble them into some kind of pattern that made sense.
If even one of those birth certificates was accurate then Trey was, in fact, Adam's biological father.
Ongoing payments to LeAnne Gates filed with the birth certificate meant they went together.
The birth certificate was missing the mother, but the payments…
LeAnne Gates had to be Adam's mother. Why else was he paying her?
What if she hadn't wanted to give him up? The idea that Trey might have taken Adam from her was a stab to my heart. I felt it as a physical pain, stealing my breath. I leaned over, clutching my fist to my chest, struggling for air.
I couldn't give up my son. But what if he wasn't mine? What if she missed him? Mourned for him?
“Hey, hey, Lily, talk to me. Talk to me, baby.”
Knox pulled me into his lap, wiping tears from my wet cheeks with the side of his thumb.
“Lil, Adam's upstairs. You don't want him to see you crying.
What's wrong? Are you upset about this stuff?
The birth certificates and the payments?
We have a certificate with your name on it and a place to start looking for the rest. Now I know what we're dealing with. This is good news. This is progress.”
“What if—” My throat locked on a sob of anguish. “But what if—” I swallowed hard. “What if she didn't want to give him up? What if she wants him back? She's his biological mom and if she wants him back—”
“No, no, baby. First of all, LeAnne Gates isn't Adam's mother. She's over sixty. But she should be able to tell us what happened. And even if her name is the one scratched out, I guarantee you, there is no way LeAnne fucking Gates wants Adam.”
I barely registered his arm squeezing me to his chest as his words penetrated the panic in my heart.
Knox knew her.
He'd recognized her name. That's what he meant when he said, 'Now I know what we're dealing with.’
Afraid to hope, afraid to let go of fear, I whispered, “How do you know? Maybe she loved Trey. I know he was having affairs. Maybe she thought he was going to leave me, that Adam would bring them together. Maybe—”
“No, Lil. I promise you. I know who LeAnne Gates is. She doesn't want Adam. Likely she sold him to Trey.”
Sold him? My jaw dropped and I stared at Knox, speechless. Sold him?
Knox sat back, wiping my cheeks again. “You know my father and Trey were involved in adoptions involving large amounts of money, right?” I nodded. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but he'd mentioned it.
Knox continued, “We haven't untangled the whole thing yet, but we know there were women they paid to act as surrogates. We've dealt with LeAnne before, and that woman doesn't have a maternal bone in her body. Believe me, the only thing she sees in any child is a paycheck.”
“I can't—”
Knox lifted a hand to cup my cheek, pulling me in for a soft kiss. Against my lips, he murmured, “No, you can't, Lily. You will never understand a woman like LeAnne Gates. You don't have it in you.”
He leaned back, sliding his hand across my shoulder, down my arm, to thread his fingers with mine.
“This is good news, Lily. I doubt LeAnne Gates has any rights to Adam, but she can tell us who might. She will. All we have to do is wave enough money in front of her and she'll give you anything you want.”
I let out a long breath. Only one good thing had come from my disastrous marriage to Trey.
Adam.
Once I'd learned what Trey had been up to, I'd seen the money he'd left me as a curse. I'd need some of it to get started in a new life. I wasn't sure I wanted the rest. But for this? To secure Adam's safety?
I'd spend every penny if I had to.
I'd never imagined my problem could be solved with something as simple as money. But then, money is only a simple answer when you have it.
“So, we go see this LeAnne Gates?” I asked.
“I'd like to talk to our lawyer first. But then, yeah, I think we go see LeAnne Gates.”
I nodded, my eyes falling on the still mostly full strong box. “So, if we have the birth certificate, and we have evidence of payments to LeAnne, what's the rest of this stuff?”
“I don't know, let's find out.”