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Chapter Fourteen
Emma pulled up to the perfectly suburban house on the east side of San Antonio. It wasn’t where Fran and Matt lived with Missy, because Emma refused to take any chances with anyone following her.
She’d left the ranch on Friday night—late—instead of Saturday morning. That one deviation from what she normally did might throw off someone watching her. She’d always been a little paranoid when she came to see Missy, but nothing like this trip.
She’d driven to a bus station an hour away and parked. She sat in her car for twenty minutes just to see if any cars were trolling the lot, looking for her. Satisfied, she’d gone inside and slipped into the bathroom. After pulling up her hair and covering it with a cap, she’d changed her clothes and taken out the folded reusable shopping bag from her purse. She put all her stuff in that next, making herself someone different who’d gone in. She wanted anyone looking to think she’d just gotten off the midnight bus and was headed home after a long week of work.
She’d left the bus station a half an hour later and joined the cab line, where she’d taken a taxi to a faceless motel. She hadn’t seen a single person besides the man who’d given her the key, and in the morning, she’d walked the mile to pick up her rental car.
Then she’d made the drive north, where she’d exchanged the car for a different one after complaining that the engine had been making a funny noise. It hadn’t been, but she wanted a different car.
Now, she sat in that car—after driving around the city for a good two hours and checking her rear-view and side mirrors every few seconds—three houses down from where her daughter lived.
Fran and Matt were expecting her in ten minutes, and Emma kept her hyper-vigilance up. She would not put any of them in danger, and her string of changes, hops, skips, and wild goose chases had to have thrown anyone off her trail.
No one came down this street. No blue trucks, no slow moving cars. Emma felt like she’d succeeded in making sure no one knew where she’d gone or how she’d gotten there, and with that assurance in her mind, she eased down the curb to the right house.
Almost before she’d put the car in park, the front door to Fran and Matt’s house opened, and her daughter came spilling outside.
Joy filled Emma, and she couldn’t get her seatbelt unbuckled fast enough. She fumbled the latch, her emotion catching her in the chest, the back of her throat, and behind her eyes. By the time she got out of the car, her daughter waited on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.
“Momma,” the little girl said, and Emma swept the dark-haired beauty into her arms. She quieted the sob, but it shook through her whole body.
“Oh, my baby,” she whispered, holding her tight and never wanting to let her go. She almost had an out-of-body experience, standing there on the side of the road, holding her daughter.
She couldn’t believe this was the life she had with Missy, and everything felt so heavy in her life. So, so heavy.
She saw no way out of it either. She didn’t own a home. Ginger paid her well enough, but she didn’t want to leave the ranch. She never wanted Rob to know about Missy, and she knew it was getting to be time for her to tell the girl why she lived with Fran and Matt and had her mother come visit every other weekend.
Emma finally released her daughter and stepped back. She wiped her eyes as she asked, “How was Florida, baby?”
“So much fun,” Missy said, looking at her with smiling eyes. They were the color of gray tea, and Emma saw herself in them. “Matt booked the sea ponies, Momma. Can you believe it?”
“Horses on the beach,” Emma said, glancing toward the front door. Fran and Matt stood there, watching. Fran leaned against the pillar on the porch, and Matt has his arm around his wife. “That sounds like a dream come true for you.”
“It was,” Missy said, putting her hand in Emma’s as they crossed the lawn. “They had a stool to help me get on, because they were big horses, Momma. They weren’t ponies.” She looked up at her. “And I still want to come to your ranch to ride.”
“Hmm,” Emma said, because she’d never told Missy more than she worked on a ranch. She wouldn’t tell her the name of it or anything. She looked up at Fran, who wore a beautiful smile on her face.
“Hello, Em,” she said, coming down the steps.
Emma embraced her and held her tight. “Hey, Fran.” She had not known Fran before she’d shown up on the woman’s front porch, a pink bundle of joy in her arms. They’d connected randomly through a community chat board about adoption. The thread had actually been about temporary stewardship, and Emma had been very interested in it.
Fran had said she would take a child even if she could never adopt it, and Emma had messaged her off the board. Things had gone from there, and Fran had been raising Missy for almost eleven years. Never once had she asked if she and Matt could adopt Missy. Never once had she or Matt ever done anything against the agreement they’d signed with Emma.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Fran.
“Nothing to be sorry about. Come inside and have some sweet tea.” She stepped back, that smile still in place. Emma reached for Missy’s hand, and they went up the wide staircase together. Emma hugged Matt too, because he had to be the most patient man on Earth.
Her emotions quivered so close to the surface, but Emma managed to bite them back. They went inside, and with the front door closed and locked behind her, Emma finally started to relax.
* * *
Her tears had driedup about halfway back to the ranch, and as Emma pulled across the bridge, her face felt dry and cracked. It had been a great weekend with her daughter, and while they didn’t get out and do as much as they otherwise might have, she’d still enjoyed the basement movie afternoons, and the roller skating in the backyard.
Matt had put in a huge cement pad, and Missy had started to choreograph a routine to her favorite pop song—all while wearing roller skates. Emma smiled just thinking about it, and she had a video on her phone she’d have to erase before she went into the West Wing.
No one looked at her phone but her, but it was part of the pact Emma made with herself to keep Missy safe. She couldn’t be caught watching a video of a girl who looked a lot like her. There would be too many questions, and all of her secrets would come out.
