“One day,” she repeated aloud.

  With a sigh, she settled onto the chaise lounge and enjoyed her fruity drink. After she figured out a late lunch she would take a drive to the exclusive neighborhood where her first whole-house reno would be taking place. A few more shots of the home wouldn’t hurt. Maybe a walk around the block.

  Another grin tugged at her lips. Taking on the project would be like buying a major ad campaign. This couple was very involved in the community. The wife was a social media influencer, so she would certainly use the renovation as fodder for her numerous posts and reels. The couple socialized in real life a lot as well. Their big parties were widely known—and promoted on her media pages. Anne couldn’t be more delighted at the idea of how much publicity this one job would provide. To top it off, she was being paid particularly well for the work. A truly win-win situation.

  For the next few moments, she considered the steps she needed to take moving forward. She would make a call to each of her go-to contractors and see how this job would fit into their schedules. There was at least one floor tile she would need to get ordered as soon as possible. Thankfully the scheduling of contractors wouldn’t be much of a problem. The clients were busy people who traveled a good deal of the time, particularly in the summer. So getting the work done wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as it was when clients were home, trying to live and/or work around construction. That part was always tricky.

  The doorbell drew Anne’s attention back to the present. It was a miracle she’d heard it. As she got to her feet she noted that she’d left the French doors ajar, which was likely the only reason she had. Knowing her new client, it could very well be a congratulatory flower delivery.

  She walked inside, finished off her drink and put the glass in the sink before making her way to the front door. One of the things she loved about this town home was that the entire downstairs was one large open space. There was a short hallway that led to a powder room and drop zone for coats and shoes, but all else was wide open. The floating staircase to the left of the front door led up to an exposed second-floor hallway and the bedrooms—one of which she had turned into an office.

  It was everything she needed while staying in budget.

  Budgets were particularly important when deciding to go into business for oneself.

  Before opening the door, she checked through the security viewfinder to get a look at the visitor.

  Male. Tall. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Navy trousers with a matching lightweight business jacket, pale blue button-down shirt, open at the throat. No flowers anywhere to be seen.

  Salesman, maybe.

  Then she spotted the box in his right hand. Perhaps a deliveryman? If so, he was a bit overdressed for the occasion. It wasn’t her birthday, so it wouldn’t be a surprise gift from one of her colleagues.

  “May I help you?” she asked through the door.

  “Afternoon, Ms. Griffin.” He smiled.

  Deep voice. Pleasant smile. Handsome. A little flutter in her belly reminded her that while pinching pennies for this independent business launch, she’d also neglected all forms of social life.

  “I’m Jackson Brenner. I work with the Colby Agency.” He removed his wallet from a hip pocket and held his credentials up to the viewfinder. She stared at the photo that was indeed him. “I’d like to speak with you, if you have a few minutes.”

  The Colby Agency. A frown furrowed her brow. She had no idea what sort of business he represented. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Brenner. I don’t know what your agency is or does.”

  Certainly, she had no clue why someone from said agency would be at her door. Unless he was selling insurance or something else she did not need.

  “The Colby Agency is a private investigations firm, ma’am. I’m here about your mother, Mary Morton.”

  Anne drew back as if the words had been stones flung at her. A barrage of confusing emotions twisted inside her. Mary Morton was dead. Why would anyone be contacting Anne now? Surely there was some mistake.

  “I was informed that she passed away.” Anne eased closer to the viewfinder once more.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s why I’m here. Your mother left some personal items intended for you.”

  Anne’s gaze shifted to the box once more. She bit her lip. From time to time since she was a teenager she had been approached by reporters, even a private detective once. All had wanted to question her about her mother and the murder. None had wanted to help Mary Morton in any way. It was all for documentaries or books that served only the person pursuing the research. The best stories were always about cold-hearted monsters, and the hope had been that Anne would reiterate that idea about her biological mother.

  In reality, Anne knew nothing about the murder or her biological mother. She had never met Mary Morton. Obviously when she was born in that prison infirmary she had been with her mother for a brief time. Not for even a moment since then. They had never met and they had never spoken. Anne had nothing to add to the woman’s painfully sad story.

  “I’m afraid I’m not clear on what it is you’re delivering.” She still wasn’t ready to open the door and deal with whatever this unexpected visit actually involved.

  “I understand your hesitancy, ma’am.” His voice was soft, his face kind. “But I assure you this is something you will want to see and hear.” He shrugged. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be knocking on your door. The agency doesn’t do this sort of thing unless there is a very good reason.”

  Anne drew back once more. What could it hurt? She would hear what he had to say, accept the box and then send him on his way. Ten minutes at most. She still had to call her assistant, Lisa, and tell her the good news about the contract. There was much she had to do. A stroll into a past she didn’t recall or understand was not part of her agenda for the day.

  Determined not to allow this strange development to dampen her spirits, Anne opened the door. Just get it over with and move on. Once he was on his way, she could go back to celebrating.

  “Come in.” She opened the door wider.

  He entered, glanced around, then set his gaze on hers. “Thank you.”

  Anne closed the door and walked to the center of the room where the sofa and two chairs surrounded a coffee table and fronted a fireplace.

  “Have a seat.” She settled into her favorite chair and mentally braced for whatever he had to say.

  He placed the box on the coffee table and lowered onto the sofa.

  “What’s in the box?” No need to wait for him to begin. The sooner the conversation was started the sooner it would be done.

  “Your mother’s personal items.”

  Her gaze shifted from him to the box. It was a relatively small box. Apparently her biological mother’s life had been reduced to this. She swallowed, annoyed at the tightness in her throat. “I received a letter from Logan Correctional Center informing me of her death. Why didn’t they send this box at that time?” Wasn’t that the typical way it was done? Personal effects were mailed to the next of kin.

  “Your mother—”

  “Wait.” She held up a hand. “It’s true that Mary Morton was my biological mother.” Anne took a moment, drew in a steadying breath. “But that’s all she was to me. We never met. Never spoke. She never wrote to me. Twenty-nine years ago, all she left me was alone. I went from the prison infirmary to a hospital and then to a foster family. From there I bounced from one family to the next. No one wanted to adopt the child of a murderer. So, honestly, I genuinely have no desire to receive anything from her now.”

  Now that she thought about it, why had she even opened the door? All those emotions from her earliest childhood memories flooded her: Disappointment. Sadness. Fear. Hatred. More fear.

  He nodded. “I understand how you might feel that way. But my dilemma is that the Colby Agency received a request from Ms. Morton, and we have an obligation to honor it.”

  Somehow Anne couldn’t see her mother’s name in the same sentence with the word honor, but there it was.

  “In that case,” she relented, “just get it over with. What’s in the box, and why did you feel compelled to hand deliver it?”

  The man—Jackson Brenner—reached out and opened the flaps of the box. “Inside you’ll find a detailed journal, newspaper clippings and a few items I imagine were precious to your—to Ms. Morton.”

  Anne stood, crossed the four feet to the table and picked up the box. She took it back to her chair and sat it in her lap. Inside, the item on top was the journal. She picked it up and flipped through the pages. She wanted to remain unaffected, but the handwriting—her mother’s handwriting—shifted something deep inside her even when she wanted desperately not to feel anything at all.

  She was not your mother. The words echoed through her soul. Somehow holding that journal… She couldn’t chase away the idea so easily.

  “Five months before you were born,” Jackson explained, “your mother was charged with the murder of Neil Reed. All who knew the two, who were engaged at the time, considered them the perfect couple. There hadn’t been any trouble between Neil and Mary, and both had good reputations at their places of employment and in the community.”

  “Until the murder,” Anne spoke up, setting the journal aside. Her skin seemed to tingle from touching it. A glutton for punishment, she reached for the next item in the box—newspaper clippings.

  “Yes,” Jackson agreed. “In her letter to my employer, Ms. Morton urged us to find the truth. She insisted that no one had even tried in all these years. At the time she wrote the letter she was aware that her time was limited. She’d just learned she had cancer. Her request was a final attempt to prod someone into finding the truth. Though it wouldn’t help her, she hoped it would be of some comfort to you to learn that your mother was not a murderer.”

  The impact of his words hit her hard. Anne rode out the unsettling emotions, then grabbed back her protective shield. “Well, I’m afraid she will be very disappointed. You see, when I was nineteen I suddenly felt I needed to know the whole story. So I did a little digging myself. I have to say that I found nothing to indicate she was innocent. In fact, everything I discovered suggested the opposite. I can’t imagine that you will find anything different.”

  “Perhaps I won’t.” He shrugged. “But I will look. I won’t stop until I have irrefutable evidence one way or the other. She deserves that confirmation.”

  Deserves. Anne considered the idea for a moment. How was it that this stranger could believe a woman he didn’t know deserved anything?

  “What does this have to do with me?” Anne didn’t want to sound uncaring, but frankly, she was. She had no reason to feel anything for this woman. In fact, she remembered well the moment when she had stopped feeling anything. It had been her twelfth birthday. All those years—at every birthday—she had told herself that would be the day her mother would come for her. She would be released from prison, and she would finally come to reclaim the child taken from her.

  Except that never happened.

  She never even sent a letter offering happy birthday to her only child.

  And on her twelfth birthday, after running away from her newest foster home, Anne had understood that her mother was never coming. The fairy tale she had told herself as a child was nothing more than a self-comforting technique designed to keep the overwhelming sadness at bay.

  No one was coming—least of all her mother.

  “I won’t pursue your mother’s last request if you ask me not to.” Jackson startled her from the painful thoughts. “If you tell me to let it go, I will. Those are my instructions from the top. This investigation won’t move forward without your approval. I do, however, believe that if that is your decision, you will one day come to regret it.”

  Oh, she saw the endgame now. “Am I supposed to pay for this endeavor?” She almost laughed. Please. Absolutely no way. Was this Colby Agency nothing more than some shameful version of ambulance chasers?

  “No,” he assured her. “There is no fee involved with this investigation. But I do need your approval to move forward. Victoria made that point very clear.”

  “Victoria?” His boss, she presumed.

  “The head of the Colby Agency.”

  Anne’s first inclination was to say no. She did not agree with this ridiculous idea. She did not want the stuff in the box. She surely did not feel an obligation to the woman who gave birth to her.

  But then she saw the photo. An old Polaroid-style photograph of a woman holding a tiny baby.

  Her, she realized.

  This was probably the only photo of her and her mother together that existed. Something pink grabbed her attention then. She touched it. A baby blanket.

  The rip in her chest was abrupt, painful. Anne willed the sharp sensation away. The ache…the lost hope and childish desperation refused to go.

  “Really,” she insisted even as her throat tightened further. “I don’t care. Do what she asked. It makes no difference to me.” She tossed the photo back into the box and struggled to tamp down the emotions shearing through her. This woman—this murderer—would not cause her more pain. Not now. Not ever again.

  He nodded. “There’s just one catch, you see. In order to proceed we need your cooperation.”

  Her gaze narrowed on the man who had intruded on her day. “What does that mean? My cooperation?”

  “Victoria feels strongly that I shouldn’t move forward with my investigation unless you agree to be a part of the investigation.”

  No way. Anne would not go digging around in a past she knew nothing about for a woman who was a stranger to her.

  Absolutely no way.

  Chapter Three

  3:00 p.m.

  Anne watched from the front window as Jackson Brenner drove away.

  Despite her misgivings, she had assured him that she would have an answer in the morning.

  On some level she wanted to simply say no. Mary Morton didn’t deserve the time of day from Anne, much less a day or more of her life. The very idea was ludicrous. But in her current emotional state, Anne didn’t trust herself to make the right decision. As he so cleverly pointed out, she didn’t want to have future regrets.

  As soon as the man from the Colby Agency had walked out the door she had called the one person she trusted—her friend and personal assistant, Lisa Gilbert. Lisa was on her way over.

  Anne crossed to the chair she had vacated and picked up the box.

  The box.

  It sounded so ominous…as if her mother’s ashes or some dark secret were ensconced inside.

  Her mother. Anne moved her head side to side. She had no mother. This woman—the biological mother—had never been a mother to her. None of the foster moms had been anything more than a supervisor. Anne felt confident there were good foster parents out there. Probably plenty of them. Sadly she had never been placed with a good one. She closed her eyes and pushed away the memories that tried to surface. Maybe her long run of bad luck had been in part due to the attitude she developed by age three, but mostly, she was certain, it was about her being the child of a murderer—born in prison.

  No one had wanted her.

  Anne forced her eyes open and kicked aside all those painful feelings. She had survived. And eventually she had thrived. All on her own, damn it.

  Lips tight with frustration, she picked up the box and carried it to the dining area. Unlike many who kept some sort of decor on the table, Anne left hers clean for the purpose of spreading out her work. The one she’d chosen was larger than her sofa, its size necessary since she used it as a multipurpose piece. Although her office was upstairs, she often worked here with the French doors open so she could enjoy the fresh air. Not this time of year, obviously, because it was too hot. Open doors or not, she regularly used this as a conference table for meetings with clients. With Lisa on her way to confer, Anne removed the items from the box and spread them out over the tabletop as if they were samples related to a potential customer.

  Flooring, paint, cabinetry… All sorts of sample pieces ended up on her table during a brainstorming session with Lisa or a meeting with clients. Generally, there were photographs of the space in need of a redo. Sometimes there were blueprints. Always there were options, photos from previous projects or magazines or Pinterest, for consideration.

  For this unexpected session there were only the things from the box. The journal. A fist formed in Anne’s chest. The photographs she’d never seen. Knots tightened in her belly. A dozen or more newspaper clippings. A key. Curiosity joined the mix of emotions. She picked up the key and turned it over. No markings, but there was a number stamped into the metal: 168. Could be an apartment key. Maybe a lockbox key. Anne had no idea.

  Then there was the necklace. Delicate silver chain with a locket. There were two tiny photos inside. One was of a woman she believed to be Mary Morton with a young man. The other was even harder to distinguish other than the fact that there appeared to be three women huddled together.

  Maybe there was something in the journal about the locket.

  The pink blanket… Anne pulled it from the box and smoothed her hand over it. Was this the blanket she’d been wrapped in after she was born? Tiny white flowers dotted the soft pink fabric. She set it aside.

  These items represented the life of Mary Morton. A murderer who had died in prison at the age of fifty-two after nearly twenty-nine years served.

  The doorbell sounded, and Anne jumped. She pressed her hand to her chest and forced a breath. This whole thing had her far too jumpy. Of all the surprises she had hoped might come into her life, this was not one of them.

  She hurried to the door, checked the viewfinder. Lisa. When Anne had called her, she’d told her friend first about the business news. Like her, Lisa had been ecstatic. She wanted to celebrate. Then Anne had spilled about the unexpected visitor. Lisa couldn’t believe it. On some level, Anne still didn’t.