“Mary Connor worked there,” Mitch continued, “and though she listed no children for the census, a check of vital records shows she had a daughter—Amelia Ellen.”

“Estranged, I suppose,” Stella said.

“Enough that the daughter considered her mother dead, and the mother didn’t acknowledge the daughter. There’s another interesting bit. There’s no record of Amelia having a child, just as there’s no record of her death.”

“Money can grease wheels or muddy them up,” Hayley added.

“What’s next?” Logan wondered.

“I’m going to go back over old newspapers, again, keep looking for any mention of her death—unidentified female, that sort of thing. And we’ll keep trying to find information through the descendants of servants. I’ll see if the people who own The Willows now will let me have a look at any documents or papers from that time.”

“I’ll smooth the way,” Roz offered. “Old family names grease wheels, too.”

SHE WAS OUT on a date for the first time in . . . it was really too sad to think about how long. And she looked pretty good, if she did say so herself. The little red top showed off her arms and shoulders, which were nicely toned between hauling Lily, yoga, and digging in the dirt.

There was a great-looking guy sitting across from her in a noisy, energetic Beale Street restaurant. And she couldn’t keep her mind on the moment.

“We’ll talk about it,” Harper said, then picked up the glass of wine she’d ignored and handed it to her. “You’ll feel better getting it out than working so hard not to say anything.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it. Her. I mean she had his baby, Harper, and he just took it. It’s not so hard to see why she’d have this hard-on about men.”

“Devil’s advocate? She sold herself.”

“But, Harper—”

“Hold on. She came from a working-class family. Instead of opting to work, she opted to be kept. Her choice, and I got no problem with it. But she traded sex for a house and servants.”

“Which gives him the right to take her child?”

“Not saying that, by a long shot. I’m saying it’s unlikely she was a rosy-cheeked innocent. She lived in that house, as his mistress, for what, more than a year before she got pregnant.”

She wasn’t ready to have it all taken down to its lowest level. “Maybe she loved him.”

“Maybe she loved the life.” He jerked a shoulder.

“I didn’t know you were so cynical.”

He only smiled. “I didn’t know you were so romantic. More than likely, the truth of it hits somewhere in the middle of cynicism and romance, so we’ll split the difference.”

“Seems fair. I don’t always like being fair though.”

“Either way it falls, we know this is one screwed-up individual, Hayley. It’s pretty likely she was screwed up before this happened. That doesn’t mean she deserved it, but I’m betting on a hard edge. It takes one, doesn’t it, to list your own mother as dead when she’s living a few miles away?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t paint a nice picture. I guess part of me wants to see her as a victim, like the heroine, when it’s just not that cut and dried.”

Deliberately she sipped her wine. “Okay, that’s enough. That’s all she gets for tonight.”

“Fine with me.”

“I just have to do one thing.”

Harper reached in his pocket. “Here, use my phone.”

Laughing, she took it. “I know she’s fine with Roz and Mitch. I just want to check.”

SHE ATE CATFISH and hush puppies and drank two glasses of wine. It was amazing how liberating it was to sit as long as she liked, to talk about whatever came to mind.

“I forgot what this was like.” Simply because she could, Hayley lounged back in her chair. “Eating a whole meal without interruptions. I’m glad you finally asked me out.”

“Finally?”

“You’ve had plenty of time,” she pointed out. “Then I wouldn’t have had to make the first move.”

“I liked your first move.” He reached over, took her hand.

“It was one of my better ones. Harper.” Relaxed, she eased forward, her eyes on his. “Were you really thinking about me that way all this time?”

“I put a lot of effort into not thinking about you that way. It worked some of the time.”

“Why did you? Put a lot of effort into it, I mean.”

“It seemed . . . rude,” was the best he could think of, “to imagine seducing a houseguest, especially a pregnant one. I helped you out of the car once—the day of your baby shower.”

“Oh God, I remember.” It made her laugh even as she covered her face with her free hand. “I was so awful to you. I felt so hot and fat and miserable.”

“You looked amazing. Vital. That was my first impression of you. Light and energy, and well, sex, but I tried to tramp that one out. But that day, when I helped you out, the baby moved. I felt it move. It was . . .”

“Scary?”

“Powerful, and yeah, a little scary. I watched you give birth.”

She went still, and flushed to the tips of her ears. “Oh, oh God, I forgot about that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh no.”

He grabbed her hands, pulled them toward him to kiss. “It was impossible to describe. After I got over the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here stage, it was just staggering. I saw her born. I’ve been in love with her ever since.”

“I know.” Embarrassment faded as her heart swam up into her eyes. “That I know. You never ask about her father.”

“It’s not my business.”

“If we take this any further, it should be. You should at least know. Could we maybe take a walk?”

“Sure.”

THEY TURNED AWAY from the lights and action of Beale Street and wandered toward the river. Tourists flocked there as well, to stroll through the park or stand and watch the water, but the relative quiet made it easier for her to go back in her mind, and take him with her.

“I didn’t love him. I want to say that right off because some people still like to think poor girl, some guy got her in trouble then didn’t stand by her. And they think your heart’s been broken by some asshole. It wasn’t like that.”

“Good. It’d be a shame if Lily’s father was an asshole.”

The laugh bubbled up, made her shake her head. “You’re going to make this easier. You’ve got a way of doing that. He was a nice guy, a grad student I met when I was working at the bookstore back home. We’d flirt with each other, and we hit it off, went out a couple of times. Then my father died.”

They crossed the little bridge over the replica of the river, wandered past the couples sitting at stone tables. “I was so lost, so sad.”

He slid his arm around her shoulder. “I think if anything happened to my mother, it would be like being blinded. I’ve got my brothers to hold on to, but I can’t imagine the world without her.”

“It’s like that, like you just can’t see. What to do next, what to say next. No matter how kind people are—and they were, Harper, a lot of kind people—you’re in the dark. People loved my father, you just had to. So there were neighbors and family and friends, the people I worked with, that he worked with. But still, he was so much the center of my life, I felt alone, just isolated in this void of grief.”

“I was a lot younger when my father died, and I guess in some ways it’s easier. But I know there’s a stage you have to go through, the one where you can’t believe anything’s ever going to be right again, or solid again.”

“Yes, exactly. And when you get through it, start to feel again, it hurts. This guy, he was there for me. He was very sweet, very comforting, and that’s how one thing led to another.”

She tilted her head to meet his eyes. “Still, we were never more than friends. But it wasn’t a fling, it was—”

“Healing.”

Her heart warmed. “Yes. He went back to school, and I got on. I didn’t realize I was pregnant at first. The signs didn’t filter through my head. And when I did . . .”

“You were scared.”

She shook her head. “I was pissed. I was so mad. Why the hell had this happened to me? Didn’t I have enough to deal with? It wasn’t like I’d slept around, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been responsible, so what the hell was this? A joke? God, Harper, I wasn’t all soft and shivery. I was enraged. I got around to panic at some point, but I bounced back pretty quick to mad.”

“It was a tough spot, Hayley. You were alone.”

“Don’t pretty it up. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want a baby. I had to work, I had to grieve, and it was about damn time somebody up there gave me a freaking break.”

They moved toward the river, and she kept her voice down as she looked out toward the water. “Now I was going to have to get an abortion, and that meant I’d have to figure out how to get some time off work, and pay for it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I got the literature, and I found a clinic, and then I started thinking maybe it’d be better if I had it then gave it up for adoption. Signed up with one of those agencies. You read so much about these infertile couples pining for a baby. I thought maybe that would be something positive I could do.”

He brushed a hand down her hair, spoke softly. “But you didn’t do that either.”

“I got literature on that kind of thing, started researching. And all the time I was going back and forth, cursing God and so on, I was wondering why this guy wasn’t coming back in the store, or calling me. Part of my thinking when I was a little calmer was that I had to tell him, he had to know. I didn’t get pregnant by myself, and he’d better take some responsibility, too. Somewhere in all that thinking, it got real. I was going to have a baby. If I had a baby, I wouldn’t be alone. That was selfish thinking, and the first time I realized I was leaning toward keeping it. For me.”

She breathed deep and faced him. “I decided to keep the baby because I was lonely. That, then, was the heaviest weight on the scale.”