Page 52 of Played by Him

Twenty-Seven

I probably shouldn’t have eatenthat second donut, but it’d been either a chocolate donut with sprinkles or a shot of tequila, and I didn’t think alcohol before work was the best idea. So, I’d gone with sugar, and now I was having a serious sugar crash.

I stared at the computer screen, reading the same email for the third or fourth time, but not processing it any better than I had the first time. It wasn’t even an email that I would’ve read thoroughly before. A privacy policy change that I normally would’ve skimmed. Except today, I couldn’t seem to get past it. I’d move on to the next one, but then I’d start getting anxious, worried that I’d miss something important, and that would send me back to the email. It wasn’t rational, but the brain wasn’t always rational.

I needed to pull myself together. I’d done it before, multiple times, and under much more difficult circumstances. After what happened with my parents, I’d made a new life with Anton. After he died, I made another new life, this one alone. When I’d lost my place at the academy, I hadn’t known what I’d do. Then I’d come here and decided that this was where I wanted to start again. Again.

Except I didn’t want to uproot my life again. This was my new life, and I wasn’t going to let what happened with Jalen scare me away from a city I loved, a job that made a difference, and friends like Jenna, Rylan, and Clay.

Which meant I needed to get through this damned email before my one o’clock appointment with a potential receptionist.

Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard someone come in. A client was an excuse that my brain understood.

“Hey, are you busy?” Jenna came back into the office with a smile. “If you are, that’s fine, but if not, I’d like to talk about my cases.”

“Anything specific you want to talk about?” I asked, speaking way too fast. “Help yourself to coffee and donuts too. I’ve had way too many of both.”

“I talked to Stacey again yesterday,” she said as she poured herself something to drink. “Her parents grounded her for a month for taking off instead of talking to them, but I have a feeling they’re going to cave and let her out early. They’re having some serious guilt about hiding the truth from her.”

“I couldn’t imagine what I’d do in their position,” I admitted. “Deciding whether or not to tell a kid they were adopted. When to do it. How.”

“She’s actually more frustrated with them for keeping me from her than she is about the adoption thing.” Jenna sat across from me and reached into the box to pull out one of the jelly-filled donuts. “But they’ve made it very clear that I’m not supposed to tell Stacey any of the…bad. I completely get it. They want to protect her. But it does make it harder for me to be honest about my past, which makes it harder for her to get to know me.”

“What do you tell her?” I asked.

“What I can,” Jenna said and licked some sugar from her finger. “If it’s something her parents don’t want me to talk about, I keep it vague and say that maybe I’ll tell her more when she’s older. I’m pretty sure she tried googling me, so she knows there’s some bad stuff in my past.”

Bad stuff. That was an understatement.

“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about not wanting to find the rest of your siblings?” I’d wondered how resolved she would continue to be about that or if it’d been more of a heat of the moment sort of decision.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Searching for Stacey did put her into danger.”

“Danger of her own making,” I put in. “Hers and her parents. If they’d been honest with her, she might not have reacted the way she did.”

“True, but we can’t know what any of my other siblings know about who they are or where they come from. Or how they’ll react when we find them.” She took a thoughtful bite of her donut.

“I can gather the information and then let you decide if you want to reach out,” I said. “Just because I find them doesn’t mean they need to know.”

Jenna sighed, her expression sober. “What do you think, Rona? Do you think I’m being selfish, wanting to find them, wanting them to be in my life?”

I leaned toward her, resting my elbows on the desk. “You’re far from selfish, Jenna. If I was in your position, if I had a chance to have family that wasn’t my psychotic father, I’d take it.”

She finished the last of her coffee and got up to pour herself another cup. When she sat back down, she looked at me. “Okay. Keep looking, but don’t approach them or their families. I’ll decide if I want to do that once you have another name or two for me.”

I nodded and finished my own coffee. I didn’t get up for more. I had way too much caffeine in my system as it was. “I’m glad you came by. I needed to talk to you about those census records you had me get.”

“I’ve got an algorithm running on the files I have and the pictures you sent me. I should know more about any discrepancies soon.”

“That’s great, but it’s not about that.” I thought for a moment, then amended, “Well, it sort of is. When I got home from the courthouse yesterday, Clay was waiting for me.” I ignored the stab of pain that came with the memory of the things that followed. “He told me that I was ruffling feathers.”

Jenna straightened, her eyes narrowing. “What?”

I recounted my conversation with Clay as close to word-for-word as I could manage it but didn’t add in any of my personal thoughts on the matter. As I spoke, I watched Jenna’s eyes darken and her mouth twist into a scowl. When I finished, I leaned back and waited for her reaction.

“Fuck me,” she breathed, shaking her head. “Someone’s up to no good.”

“So, it’s not just me then?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s suspicious?”

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