Always With You - Part Three(18)

My head is spinning. "So Isabella isn't even Sophie's?"

"Doesn't seem like it, no."

"But she looks just like her."

"She looks just like Rhonda, too."

Good point. Sophie and Rhonda look a whooole lot alike.

"So the mother is dead, the father is …  in prison?"

"For at least the next thirteen years, according to the arrest report I managed to dig up a little while ago. I found his name through the marriage certificate filed with the city."

"What about their parents?" I'm running through every possible scenario in which someone could show up on my doorstep in five years and put a legal claim in Isabella.

"Evidently the apple didn't fall far from the tree when it comes to the paternal side. Mom's on welfare here in the States. Dad got shot on a drug run down in Mexico in 2006."



       
         
       
        

"And Rhonda's?"

"Father served two years for child abuse. Mother's on disability from a car accident. Got hooked on painkillers, spent three turns in rehab. Not any kind of environment to raise a child in, if that's what you're thinking."

"That's part of it, but I was thinking more along the lines of who might decide they want her and then attempt to come after her."

"I don't think they even wanted their own kid, much less a grandchild. From what I can tell, there aren't many who even know she exists. Rhonda had little or even no contact with her family. I checked the phone record of the cell she had on her. Most of the calls were to her current dealer and the merc. Two other people checked out as co-workers. Not one call to either parent that I could find going through an eleven-month history."

"And him? Isabella's father?"

"She'll be of age by the time he gets out. His father's not a threat, obviously. If the mother knows about the little girl, it's unlikely that she'd have the funds to try and come after her. Besides, she'll probably never even know that Rhonda isn't in the picture anymore. I don't think her disappearance will be noticed by many people. And, with her history, they'd probably just think she's either high or that she ran off with another dealer. All in all, I think that little girl is an orphan in the truest sense of the word."

"Not for long," I mutter.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Jason admits. "She deserves better than what she's gotten so far."

"I sure as hell plan to give that to her."

There's a long pause before Jason speaks again. "I'm heading out before dawn."

"Okay. I, uh, I … Thanks, man. I appreciate you coming."

"No problem. Good luck."

"Thanks. See you around."

His laugh tells me that in all likelihood I will never see him again, but I really don't know what else to say to someone who has stepped into my life in such a critical way and now is leaving just as abruptly and mysteriously as he came. "Yeah, see you around."

When I hang up, Olivia leans up onto an elbow. Her eyes are wide yet shadowed, and very much awake now. "Tell me," she says.

And so, this time, I do.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN



Olivia

I'm left sitting on the bed, cross-legged, stunned and speechless by the time Cash finishes quietly relaying all that Jason King discovered about Sophie. I thought I'd never be able to go to sleep tonight after having seen what I saw, but I was so exhausted that as soon as Isabella went to sleep, I was out. 

But I'm awake now.

Very much awake.

"So what does this mean? I mean, Sophie is dead. The mother, Rhonda, is dead. Isabella has no one. Not really. But how can we legally … I mean, how do we go about … ?"

I don't even know how to properly verbalize what's going through my head. We are in possession of this little girl who isn't ours and we have no claim to, but who has no one in the world except us. No one that I'd ever want to get custody of her, that is.

"What are our options?" I finally ask after tripping over my own tongue for a couple of tries.

Cash's sigh is soft and quiet, in deference to one sleeping Isabella in the next room, but it carries so much weight I can almost feel it tugging at my soul.

"I only see one."

"And that is?"

"To keep Isabella."

I figured as much, but the logistics still evade me. "But Cash, how? How can we keep a child, school a child, make a life for a child who has no social security number, whose name we don't even know, whose identity we don't even really know?"

"Well, I haven't really had a lot of time to think about it, of course, since this part is all new to me, too, but I'm sure Gavin knows someone who can … who …  I'm sure he can get her some papers. We can tell her that we're adopting her. She won't know what all that entails. We can change her last name to Davenport and the rest of the world need not ever know the circumstances of her 'adoption' or her birth. Least of all Isabella."