The Marriage Agenda. Allison Leigh

matching pair of chaise lounges with nice, thick, floral-patterned cushions. For the wedding party, Joleen had put them near the fence, under the sweet gum in the corner of the yard. A low patio table sat between the lounges, just perfect for setting their glasses on.

      “You think it’s too dark out here?” Joleen asked. They’d unplugged the lanterns a little while before.

      “I like the dark.”

      So they went over and stretched out on the lounges and stared up through the leaves of the sweet gum at the stars. They hadn’t had a single frost yet, so cicadas serenaded them from the trees, making it seem as though it was still summer. Now and then, from the wires overhead, night birds trilled out their high, lonesome songs. The moon had gone down some time before, but as her eyes adjusted, Joleen found she could see well enough, after all. There were no clouds, and the stars were like diamonds sewn into the midnight fabric of the sky.

      Joleen set her glass down and leaned back, aware of a jittery feeling in her stomach. Anticipation. She just knew that her friend had come up with a way out of this tight spot she had got herself into.

      He had said as much, hadn’t he?

      Everything will be all right, Jo. Dekker was not the kind to give her empty words. If he said things would be all right, it was because he honestly thought they would be.

      She waited, her jitters increasing, wishing she could see inside his mind, that she could know what he was thinking, what kind of plan he had thought up—and at the same time reticent, not wanting to push him, feeling it was only right he should say what he had to say in his own time. And in his own way.

      He sipped his ice water, set it down next to hers. And then, finally, he spoke. “I want to tell you about Los Angeles first.”

      Oh, not now, she thought. She did want to hear about whatever had gone on out there, but right now, as far as she was concerned, everything took a backseat to the problem of Robert Atwood and the threat he posed to Sam.

      Be patient, she silently reminded herself as she sucked in a slow breath and let it out with care. “All right. Tell me about Los Angeles.”

      It was a moment before he said anything. Cicada songs swelled, then faded off when he spoke.

      “Do you remember, about a week and a half ago, that couple who showed up at your mama’s front door—Jonas Bravo and his wife, Emma?”

      Joleen remembered. Jonas Bravo and his wife had told a strange story about a baby, a baby that had been Jonas Bravo’s younger brother. They’d claimed that the baby had been kidnapped thirty years ago. And that they were looking for a Lorraine Smith, who was supposed to know something about the kidnapping. Joleen had told them that the Lorraine Smith who used to live next door wasn’t going to be able to help them, since she was no longer alive. Then Camilla had mentioned that Lorraine had a son. As soon as they heard that, they’d asked to speak with Dekker. Camilla had suggested they try him at work.

      Joleen sought her friend’s eyes through the darkness. “I thought you said it was nothing. That they were mistaken—that it must have been some other Lorraine Smith they were looking for.”

      “I lied.”

      She considered that admission for a moment, then asked, “Well, and why did you go and do that?”

      “Because I didn’t want to deal with what they’d told me. I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to talk about it, either.”

      “You mean you were lyin’ to yourself?”

      “That’s right.”

      The little hairs on the back of Joleen’s neck were standing at attention. “You’re saying that your mama did know something about a kidnapped baby?”

      He made a low noise, a noise that meant yes.

      “So when Jonas Bravo and his wife showed up at your office…”

      “They told me about the baby, Jonas’s younger brother. And I told them I didn’t know anything about any baby, and neither had my mother. I asked them to leave. And they did.”

      “Okay. But I don’t see what—”

      “I left out a few details, when I told you about it—like the fact that Jonas said he believed I was the baby.”

      Joleen’s mouth felt dry. She picked up her ice water and knocked back a big gulp. “Wait a minute. Jonas Bravo said that you were the kidnapped baby?”

      “Right.”

      “The kidnapped baby who was Jonas’s brother?”

      Dekker was nodding at her. “Jonas said he believed that I had been kidnapped by ‘our’ uncle, Blake Bravo, for revenge against Blake’s own brother, Jonas’s father.”

      “Revenge? Why?”

      “That’s a whole other story. Evidently, Blake was a real shady character, had been disinherited. He blamed his brother for it. So he came up with this scheme to kidnap his younger nephew and hold the baby for ransom. He had an accomplice, according to Jonas.”

      “Not…Lorraine?”

      “Yes. Lorraine.”

      Joleen had that feeling again, the one she’d had in her father’s study when Robert Atwood had told her he would take her child from her: that feeling of stark unreality—the absolute certainty this couldn’t be real. “This is crazy. Lorraine was your mother. We all know that.”

      “Not according to Jonas Bravo. He told me that the woman I’d always believed to be my mother had helped Blake Bravo kidnap me. That Blake had demanded—and got—two million dollars worth of diamonds as a ransom.”

      “Two million? Whoa. The Bravos must have had plenty of money.”

      “They did. And they still do. Jonas manages the Bravo holdings. He’s an excellent businessman. They call him the Bravo Billionaire.”

      Joleen took another swallow of ice water. “They?”

      “The newspapers, the scandal sheets. Bravo is an important name in Los Angeles.” Dekker was watching her. He waited till she set her glass down again before he said, “So Blake got the diamonds—but he never returned the baby he had kidnapped. He and Lorraine disappeared, along with that baby, never to be seen or heard from again.”

      “The baby that was…you?” It all seemed so incredible.

      “Right. That’s what Jonas claimed.”

      “And you denied it.”

      “Yes. I said it wasn’t true and I asked him and Emma to leave. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the things that he’d said. I remembered my mother’s diary.”

      This was more news to Joleen. “Lorraine left a diary?”

      “Yes. She asked me not to read it until she was gone. I put it away. And I never read it. I guess I just didn’t want to deal with what I would find in there. But after Jonas and his wife paid me that visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I dug it out of her things.”

      “And?”

      “It contained her confession. She verified everything Jonas had told me. That she helped kidnap me as a baby and that she—well, she decided she wanted to keep me. She couldn’t have kids of her own. She wrote that, from the moment she lifted me out of my crib, the night that they took me from the Bravo mansion, she knew she would never give me up. In the end, after several months of moving around, living under various aliases, Blake set her up with a new identity. And a house.”

      “The house…next door?”

      “You got it.”

      “So that means Jonas Bravo…”

      “Is my brother.”

      “And you took off for L.A. on Wednesday because—”