“Lori?” Melinda took a few tentative steps toward her.
“Mel. Oh, my God, Melinda. You really are alive.” Lorna walked toward her, both hands reaching out. “You really are here.”
“I’m sorry,” Melinda whispered as she took Lorna’s hands. “I’m so sorry for what I must have put you through all these years.”
“I’m just glad you’re safe. You’re alive.” Lorna squeezed Melinda’s hands. Both women began to tear up.
Melinda smiled. “You grew up to be so pretty.”
“So did you.”
“I heard about everything that happened here. About Jason.” Her eyes reflected her sorrow. “I wasn’t surprised to hear what happened to him. I was only surprised that she hadn’t done it.”
“Mellie, how did you do it?” Lorna asked. “How did you manage to disappear without a trace for all those years?”
“Easier than you’d think. Once I found out about my father…”
“What about your father? I thought he left when you were a year old?”
“Buddy Eagan was not my father.”
Lorna’s jaw dropped.
“Hey, no one was more surprised than I was. I had no idea. I simply thought he didn’t care about us and left, like my mother told us. When Danielle approached me at school at the end of third grade and started saying things like how she was my cousin and I didn’t know who my real daddy was, I thought it was just an older girl doing something to tease one of the little kids. When she asked me if I wanted to go to her house to meet him, I got real curious, and I went, thinking it was basically her being goofy.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“It wasn’t a hoax. It seems my mother had had an affair with Claude Fleming and I was the result. She told him, but he wasn’t about to go up against Buddy over it, so he left town, moved to Lancaster. I guess it began to bother him, though, knowing he had a child in Callen that he didn’t even know. Years later, after he’d married and started a family, he told his wife about me. She thought he ought to know his child, so she encouraged him to find me. When he found out that Danielle and I went to the same school, he asked her to get to know me a little. Then she told me she’d heard her mother and her uncle talking about me being his daughter. The next thing I knew, I was seeing him on weekends at Danielle’s house. He wanted me to meet his wife and kids, so I figured, why not. I started spending weekends in Lancaster -oh, my mother thought I was at Danielle’s, but she didn’t really care where I was, as long as I wasn’t in her hair. Anyway, that’s how I met my dad, and my stepmother.”
“And your mother never knew?”
“Never had a clue. I’m sure it never occurred to her that my father would want me, or that anyone except her and Dad knew that he was my real father. She had no idea that my new friend, Danielle, was his niece. There’d been no reason for Billie to tell anyone about him, and sometimes even now I wonder if she remembered that I was his daughter. I don’t know what she’s like these days, but back then, she was either working or drinking. That was pretty much it.”
She brightened slightly. “In contrast, my father’s house was always calm and quiet and clean, and they made me feel very welcome. I had a little sister and baby brother, and there was none of the chaos I’d been living in. When my dad found out he was going to have to move to Michigan for work, he couldn’t leave me behind. He and his wife talked it over, and they wanted me to go with them. They knew what had been happening at home. He wasn’t about to move out of state and leave me with Billie.”
“And you wanted to go?’
“Are you kidding?” Melinda laughed. “I felt like I was living two totally different lives. I couldn’t wait to get away from her. I felt bad about leaving Jason behind, but I figured he was fourteen already, he’d be out of the house soon enough. Mom had made it pretty plain she wished she’d never had either of us. I didn’t see where it would make much difference to her.”
“And your father didn’t think he should tell her he was taking you?”
“He said she didn’t deserve me. That she’d never given me much of a proper home, and if she missed me at all, it was just too bad for her.”
“He could have tried to get custody of you legally.”
“I don’t think it occurred to him to do that, things were happening too fast. He didn’t have a lot of time before he had to leave for the new job, and some years later, he said that back then it was a hassle for a father to get custody. So he had simply asked me if I wanted to go, and I said yes.”
“How did you do it?” Lorna asked, fascinated. “How did you pull it off without anyone knowing?”
“It was simple, really. It was my birthday, remember?”
Lorna nodded. She’d never forgotten.
“I wanted to tell you, I wanted to say good-bye. I thought about you so often, when I was in Michigan, but I knew I could never get in touch with you.”
“I don’t know how I could have kept that secret, Mel,” Lorna admitted. “Especially from my mother.”
“My stepmother figured as much, and she said I couldn’t put you in that position. She was right,” Melinda nodded, “but it was still hard. Anyway, about that night. I knew my brother wasn’t going to walk me all the way back home, he never did. My dad was going to meet me a half mile down the road from our house, so when Jason stopped at Matt’s, I just kept going. That’s why it was so important to me to wear my birthday dress. It was the only thing I wanted to take with me.”
A cloud passed over Melinda’s face.
“Unfortunately, while I was running across the field, I bumped into Mike Keeler. Literally.” She shivered. “He dropped what he was carrying and took off after me. I managed to get away. I ran and hid in our secret place.”
“The wine cellar.”
Melinda nodded. “It started getting cold, so I wrapped myself in one of the blankets we left there, and I waited until I thought he was gone. I folded the blanket real small and took it, and I crept back through the field. I was scared to death. All my brother’s friends were out there, calling me, and I was afraid they were going to do something bad to me, so I went back to the place where I’d dropped the bag that had my dress in it, then ran for my life. My dad picked me up down the road-he thought I’d changed my mind ’cause I was so late, was just about to give up on me-and we left for Michigan at dawn the next day.”
“And it never occurred to you to tell someone that you saw Mike carrying a dead body? Didn’t that bother you?”
“I didn’t know what he was carrying. It just looked like a big sack to me. It was so dark, and the weeds were so tall, I honestly never saw it. I couldn’t figure out why he was mad, or why he was trying to grab me. All I knew was that he was really angry and I had to run as fast as I could and not let him catch me. It’s only been since the bodies were found here on the farm that I understood what it was he’d been carrying that night.”
“You never knew about Jason?”