Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

"If I did, he would kill you."
    Philip nodded again.
    "I'm sorry,"" he repeated. "It won't happen again, I promise, and I will . . . try to find someone to talk to," he pledged.
    "Good."
    He gazed at me longingly for a moment and then turned and quickly left. The moment he was gone I released the breath I had trapped in my lungs. All I could do was hope what he said was true. I meant it when I said I wouldn't tell Jimmy. I knew he had always harbored some suspicions about Philip, and this would just confirm it all and send him into a rage.
    When the phone rang an hour or so after Philip's apology and I heard Jimmy's voice, I had the terrible feeling that he somehow sensed something had happened, even over all the distance between us. But he was calling for another reason, a reason that would blind him to anything else.
    "Dawn," he began, "I told you I might be calling you today with some good news. Well, I am!"
    "What is it, Jimmy? I've never heard you so excited," I said, growing excited myself.
    "Ready for this? I've been giving Daddy a little money to invest in a project of ours."
    "What project?"
    "Wait. Just listen. When Daddy was in prison he met a man who did some work from time to time investigating things. That's what got him into prison—he found out someone's deep, dark secret and tried to blackmail him.
    "Anyway, Daddy put this person on our case as soon as he was released from prison, and guess what he has done."
    "I can't imagine, Jimmy. What?"
    "He's located Fern," Jimmy said.
    For a moment I couldn't respond. My heart began to thump with excitement. Images of Fern as a baby flashed before my eyes. I recalled that first time I had looked at her in the maternity ward and the disappointment I felt when I saw she had no resemblance to me; but I also remembered the hours and hours I spent taking care of her, and how she used to cry for me to hold her and sing to her. Momma Longchamp had often apologized to me because I had to spend so much time taking care of Fern.
    "You ain't got time to be a little girl yourself," she would say, "rushin' home from school every day to help me take care of a baby."
    But I didn't mind. It was fascinating to watch Fern grow and discover things around her. For me, she was like a real-life doll, the ultimate little girl's plaything.
    "Are you sure, Jimmy, absolutely positive he's located our Fern?"
    "Absolutely," Jimmy replied.
    "Have you seen her?"
    "Of course not," Jimmy said. "She's not in Texas; she's in New York City. That's where her stepparents eventually moved. She lives in a townhouse in Manhattan, not very far from where you went to school and where you lived.
    "Just think, Dawn," Jimmy said, "all the time you were there, you were so close to her. Why, you might have passed her on the sidewalk and not even noticed," he said. The possibility stole my breath away.
    "Oh, Jimmy, what do you think we should do?" I asked, my heart pounding even harder.
    "First I'll come right home, and then the two of us will go to see her. I'm sure it's just as you suspect—she doesn't even know we exist.
    "But she will," Jimmy pledged. "She will very soon."

 
    13

SEEING FERN AGAIN
     
    JIMMY SAT ON THE SOFA IN MY OFFICE AND EXCITEDLY RATTLED off the details provided by the man he and Daddy Longchamp had hired. Right after Jimmy called me in the morning he had started out for home, and when he arrived he had come directly to my office. Christie hadn't even seen him yet, and very few people in the hotel knew he had returned.
    "The couple's name is Osborne, Clayton and Leslie. Clayton Osborne is an investment broker on Wall Street. His wife has recently begun to enjoy some success as an artist, placing some of her paintings in galleries around the city. She has her own studio in Greenwich Village."
    "How old are they?"
    "They're both in their mid-thirties."
    "Do they have any other children? Adopted or otherwise?" I asked.
    "No. They have a townhouse on First Avenue in Manhattan and have been living there for nearly nine years. Before that they lived in Richmond. Fern goes to a very expensive private school," Jimmy concluded, obviously proud of accomplishing what Mr. Updike and his high-priced private detective had been unable to do.
    However, listening to these details about people who had no idea we were snooping around them made me feel like an eavesdropper, a Peeping Tom. How would I like someone watching me, following me, taking notes? After all these years they probably had no