Chapter 28
CHAPTER
WITH MY MOUTH hanging open, I watched as Melanie—if that was even her real name—poured espresso into a cup, added milk, popped a lid on it, and called out a customer’s name. She set it down on the pickup counter at the other end of the bar and then looked up, and locked eyes with me.
She appeared to recognize me right away—from Savannah’s apartment, the day of her surprise visit.
As she stared at me, clearly in shock, I quickly snapped a picture of her with my phone. She flinched, then bolted for the back kitchen.
What should I do now? My mind raced, and my heart pounded in my chest. The line shifted forward. It was my turn. I ordered a latte and then shifted down the bar to the pickup counter.
There’s no way I’m leaving here without talking to her. I tapped my foot as my eyes burned a hole in the kitchen door. She had to come out eventually, right? But several minutes went by, and she didn’t reappear.
As another barista handed me my latte, I blurted out, “Excuse me—was that Melanie Daniels I saw? We went to high school together. I’d love to say hello. Is she still here?”
“Yeah, that was Melanie. I’ll go grab her.”
I watched the barista disappear into the kitchen. She reemerged a few minutes later and gave me a shifty look when I smiled at her expectantly.
“She’s … uh … doing something right now, but I’m sure she’ll be out soon.” The barista turned her attention to the next order.
Okay. Obviously, Melanie had told her she didn’t want to talk to me. But how long could she hide out in the kitchen? The line of customers was getting long again—surely they’d need her help soon.
Finally, after a few more minutes that felt like hours, Melanie Daniels walked out from the kitchen. She immediately spotted me, and her expression soured. Before she could run away again, one of the other baristas asked her to hop back on the espresso machine and start churning out drink orders.
I walked up and leaned over the counter. Under my breath, I said, “Hi, Melanie Daniels. Fancy meeting you here—did DCS give you the day off?” I smirked. She paled.
“What do you want?” she hissed through gritted teeth.
“I want to know what the hell is going on. If you’re working at Starbucks, I highly doubt you’re actually a DCS investigator. So what’s the story?” Despite my outrage, I tried hard to keep my voice low and my face neutral so no one would catch on that I was interrogating her while she worked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied. But the fear in her voice gave her away.
“Let’s not play games, Melanie. I don’t have time for it—and neither does my friend Savannah, who’s about to give birth next month, and doesn’t deserve this harassment.
” I felt tears burning my eyes, and I realized that somewhere along the way, I’d started to feel protective toward Savannah’s baby.
“Let me guess—Madison put you up to this?”
Her eyes flicked over to mine for just a second before she turned back to the espresso machine. “No.”
“No?” That wasn’t the answer I’d expected.
Then it clicked—we were one block away from Nora Clark’s office. This was probably her regular Starbucks. “No … it wasn’t Madison. It was Nora Clark, wasn’t it?”
Fear flashed in Melanie’s eyes. Bingo.
“Look—what do you want?” Melanie asked nervously. She glanced behind her to ensure none of her coworkers were listening.
I held my phone up and showed her the picture I’d snapped of her. “I want to know everything. Otherwise, I show this to Savannah—and maybe the police. I have a feeling that impersonating a DCS investigator is a crime, wouldn’t you think?”
Melanie’s face was strained. I could see her chest rising and falling with the weight of her panic.
“Tell them you need to take a break. Now.”
She glanced over at the line of customers, which had whittled down from the rush of a few minutes before. “Fine.”
She exchanged a few words with the barista in charge, then walked out from behind the counter and jerked her chin, telling me to follow her. Outside, we sat down at one of the black metal tables in the patio area. She crossed her arms and glared at me.
“Okay, Melanie—spill it.”
“What do you want to know?” she grumbled.
“Why are you harassing my friend, pretending to be a DCS investigator? Did Nora Clark put you up to it?”
Her eyes darted to the left and right as she clearly struggled with whether to answer me truthfully. Finally, she took a deep breath and sighed forcefully. “Yes.”
A jolt of energy shot through me. Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere! A part of me hadn’t believed I’d actually get the answer I’d been looking for. “Why?”
Melanie shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Why do you think? She wants to rattle Savannah. Drive her over the edge.”
“Why?”
“Madison and Max want that baby. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
“What do you mean? Tell me more. Be specific.”
She sighed again. “Madison can’t have children of her own.
Some kind of genetic disorder. Apparently it’s on Nora’s side of the family, and Nora got really lucky, having Madison so soon after marrying Mr. Clark.
Doctors weren’t sure she’d be able to. But everyone knew she wanted to marry Mr. Clark bad, and he wasn’t interested in marrying someone who couldn’t give him a child. ”
“How do you know all this?”
“I grew up here. I went to school with Madison. People talk. I used to hear my mom and her friends talk about the Clarks all the time when I was younger. They’re like royalty in this area.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“After Madison married Max, they both really wanted children, but I heard that the doctors said Madison’s condition was much more advanced than Nora’s at her age.
So Max wanted to adopt, but the Clarks are really against adoption—you know, blood heirs for their fortunes, optics, all that.
” Melanie rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I heard Max and Madison fought about it a lot and supposedly they even split up for a while.
The Clarks tried to squash the rumors because they’re so careful about their reputation, but my best friend heard it from her dad, who supposedly overheard Mr. Clark blabbing about it a little at the country club bar one day when he’d had too many. ”
“Then what?” I pressed.
“Well, I don’t know how much of this to believe …
the rumors, I mean. But Max has an apartment in the city, and I heard he was dating around while they were split up.
This girl I know was at a party in the city and said she saw Max all up on some girl at a bar.
I heard that Max ended up getting some random woman pregnant.
Madison flipped out. Supposedly she went to the city to try and work things out with him.
They both came back to town a couple of weeks later and seemed perfectly happy together, like the split had never happened.
They were excited and telling everyone they’d found a surrogate and were having a child.
But some people think they just planned to try and get custody of that ‘oopsy-baby,’ and wanted people to think she was their surrogate, not that Max had slept with her on the side.
Like it was all planned. Madison and Nora were all excited that she was going to have a baby, finally.
But then, the girl lost the baby. They were devastated. ”
My vision blurred, and a muffled thrumming filled my ears, like I was underwater.
She was talking about me.
She continued. “I remember the day Mrs. Clark came in to the coffee shop. She was so upset for her ‘precious baby girl,’ losing her baby.”
Her baby?!
“She said Madison was inconsolable.”
She was sad about losing her baby? My hands were trembling. I tried to hide them under the table so Melanie wouldn’t see them shake.
“Apparently, after Madison healed from the whole tragedy, I heard they were researching other surrogates. I mean, the Clarks are so wealthy—why not, right? A couple of months later, Mrs. Clark came in all happy—she said they’d found a new surrogate, and the girl was already pregnant.”
“You think she meant Savannah?”
“Yeah, she definitely did. Because about a month after that, she came in looking super unhappy. I asked her what was wrong. All she said was, there were ‘problems’ with the surrogate. Maybe she was having second thoughts? I didn’t think that was legal.
If you sign a surrogacy agreement, then legally, it’s not your baby, right?
Even if you’re carrying it? That’s what I thought, anyway.
When I said that to Mrs. Clark, she just rolled her eyes and said the surrogate was causing trouble anyway. ”
So Max and the Clarks lied and told everyone Savannah was their surrogate? Not that Max slept with her, too? I chewed on the information for a moment. I could feel all the pieces starting to come together. “So … how did the DCS scam come about?”
Melanie looked away and breathed out, long and slow. Obviously, she didn’t want to go there; she didn’t want to incriminate herself.
“Melanie? Come on, you need to tell me.”
She gave me a defeated look. “Fine. Not long after that, Nora came into the coffee shop and asked to talk to me. She showed me a picture on her phone. It was me … doing something … something I never should have done.”
“Doing what?”
Melanie’s eyes flashed in anger. “Look, that’s none of your business. Let’s just say it was something bad—something that could really hurt my family. It would tear them apart if they knew.”
“Okay—then what?”
“She said if I did what she wanted, she’d delete the photo, and she’d pay me five thousand dollars. And I could really use that money to help pay off my student loans. I’ve been trying to find a good job and get out of Starbucks ever since my grad school graduation, and I’m having no luck.”
“So you posed as a DCS investigator to rattle Savannah?”