Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [85]
“It’s a possibility.” Sean nodded. “We don’t know anything about you—”
“And I didn’t know anything about you, either, mister, when I pulled into that little town down there in West Virginia to look for you, did I?” Greer’s temper was starting to flare. She turned to Ramona. “Tell him. Tell him what you told me. Show him the pictures.”
Ramona opened her bag and slid open the zipper on an inside pocket. She took out a battered plastic sandwich bag in which several photographs lay trapped. She opened it and laid the first one on the table.
“This was my mother.” She looked directly at Sean. “She look familiar to you?”
Sean studied the photo for a long time, then looked up at Greer questioningly.
“This is the same picture you showed me,” Sean said. “Did you give her a copy?”
“No. That’s hers. She brought it with her to show me, the first time we met.” Greer smiled at Ramona. “I brought the same picture to show her.”
“Couldn’t she have found them . . . ?” Sean asked, his protest sounding silly and weak, even to himself.
Ramona demanded, “To what end, Mr. Chief of Police? What reason could I possibly have to pretend to be this woman’s daughter?” She tapped an angry finger on the photo. “What would I have to gain? Speeding tickets fixed for life? There is nothing that you have that I want, okay? Nothing that you can do for me. Except maybe help me to understand who I am, and why she . . . why . . .”
“Why she gave you away?” Greer spoke the words Ramona wasn’t able to say.
“I was barely five. She gave me these”—Ramona picked up the bag of photos—“and dressed me up and took me to someplace. . . . I don’t remember much except that there was an elevator and it had mirrors in it. I remember thinking how pretty Mommy looked. She wore a new dress that day, and so did I. We got off the elevator and there were nice red carpets on the floor. We went into a room that had a long table in it. There was a man in there, he sat at the head of the table and he smiled when we came in.”
Ramona squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wanting to remember every detail so she could tell the others, but not wanting to remember because it hurt so much to look back.
She opened her eyes, determined to see it through.
“He told me what a pretty little girl I was. How pretty my red hair was. My mother made me sit and color while she signed some papers, and then he gave her something that she put into her pocketbook. She stood up and I did, too. I thought it was time to leave. But she told me I had to stay. Then she told me I had to be a very, very good girl, and if I was, that good things would happen for me. But if I was bad, something very bad would happen.”
“And she left you there,” Greer whispered, ashen, as if reliving the scene with Ramona.
“Yes.” Ramona nodded. “She left me there. And a few minutes later, a man and a woman came into the room. They were all smiling and made such a big fuss over me. . . .”
“Your new parents,” Greer said softly.
“Yes. My new parents. They were so excited.” Ramona swallowed hard. “The first thing they said to me was how they’d wanted a little girl just like me, one with red hair, for a long, long, time, and that they were so happy they’d waited for me.”
“Were they . . . ?” Greer struggled with the words.
“Oh, they were wonderful,” Ramona assured her. “I couldn’t have had a nicer family. They gave me everything. But there was always that . . .”
“That hole inside you,” Greer whispered. “That knowing that you weren’t good enough to keep. That somehow you just weren’t . . .”
“Yes.”
Ramona slid another photo across the table. Greer picked it up and stared at it before passing it to Sean.
“My mother gave me that before she took me to the office that day. She said that was my big sister and brother.” Ramona looked directly at Greer. “Only she called you Sasha, not Greer.”
“My adoptive parents named me Greer. Before that, my name was Susan. Everyone called me Sasha.”
“What do you think, Sean, should we do DNA testing?” Ramona’s jaw set stonily. “Would that prove