So they were sitting at the table, having a good-bye snack.
“Don’t feel so bad, Ben. You’re not the first man who’s had to deal with the two of us in our stubborn mode.” She looked at Mikey and winked. “Judge Bracket didn’t have any better luck.”
Mikey chuckled as he set his cup of coffee on the table. “That man didn’t know what to do with either one of us, did he?”
As she’d intended, the mention of a judge turned Ben’s attention from his sulking. “Who’s Judge Bracket?”
“He’s the judge who awarded me custody of Mikey.”
Ben gave her a curious look. “Did you have much trouble getting it? You couldn’t have been twenty or twenty-one at the time, and you were single.”
“I didn’t apply for custody until Mikey was nearly eight and I was twenty-three. After Kelly left, nothing much was said about his living with me. Everyone in town, including me, thought she would be coming back soon.”
“I was already going to school before Mom left,” Mikey added. “So Nem didn’t have to deal with enrolling me.”
“So Mike was living with you for three years without the state knowing it?”
Emma reached across the table and touched his hand. “You have to understand, Ben. People around here usually saw Mikey with me,not Kelly. When a year went by and she didn’t return, no one was willing to call the authorities. They didn’t want to see Mikey taken away from me.”
“So when did Judge Bracket become involved?” he asked.
“When Michael broke his leg and had to be taken to Bangor to have it set. The Greenville hospital thought he needed special attention, because it was a bad break. I signed the guardian papers, but I made the mistake of mentioning I was his aunt to someone in Bangor.”
“All hell broke loose then,” Mikey added, grinning in memory.
“Mikey called them the ‘kid police.’”
“I was eight,” Mike defended. “They wanted to take me away from you and put me in a foster home until custody could be legally awarded.”
“Jesus.” Ben looked appalled. “They wanted to uproot a child from his home after he’d had the trauma of an operation?”
“Don’t worry, Dad. Nem didn’t let them.”
“Darn right I didn’t. I stole him out of the hospital once he was safe to travel, and flew him to Medicine Gore. I hid him at Greta and Sable’s.”
“But they must have come after you,” Ben said, still looking horrified.
“When they arrived at my door, I gave them hell for losing my nephew.” She laughed out loud. “You should have seen their faces when they couldn’t find Mikey, and I kept raging at them that they had lost the kid.”
Ben didn’t laugh with her. “What about Judge Bracket?”
“I hired a lawyer and petitioned the state for custody. The courtroom was a zoo that day.”
“I hobbled in on my crutches with Nem on one side of me, our lawyer on the other, and the whole town of Medicine Gore behind us,” Mikey explained, grinning from ear to ear. “About ten social workers and state lawyers descended on me like vultures, asking me questions and calling for Nem’s arrest.”
Emma expected the coffee mug Ben was gripping to shatter.
“Judge Bracket just kept pounding his gavel and shouting for order,” Mikey said.
“Were you arrested?” Ben asked, looking at her.
“On what charge? No one could prove I did anything wrong.”
“That’s not the best part,” Mikey interjected. “Judge Bracket tried for over two hours to make sense of the whole mess. He wanted to know where my mother was, and we told him we didn’t know. So then he wanted to know where my father was. Again, we told him we didn’t know.”
“Then Mikey told Bracket that if he couldn’t stay with me, he would run away and disappear, just like his parents. By the time he was done with his little speech to the judge, there wasn’t a dry eye in the courtroom.”
Ben sat up straighter. “But the state would have looked for me before they awarded you custody.”
Emma shook her head. “On the birth certificate, Kelly put that the father was unknown.”
“ Youknew who the father was.”
“Yes,” she admitted. She turned her teacup in her hands as she looked him square in the face. “But I wasn’t about to tell them. I would have lost Mikey.”
Ben looked at his son, his face softening as he blew out a frustrated breath. “I see. And you weren’t quite ready to find me yet, either.”
“I was scared,” the boy admitted. “Nem was all I had. I didn’t want to go live with a stranger.”
Ben looked back at Emma. “Most of the town knew about me; you said Mike’s parentage wasn’t a secret. No one said anything?”
“You weren’t exactly well thought of. They didn’t want to give a little boy over to a man they thought was a murderer.”
Which reminded her— somebodyhad wanted to get Ben back here recently. “Hang on a second,” she said, getting up from the table. “I have some stationery I want you to look at.” She ran into her bedroom.
“Here it is,” she said as she returned to the kitchen, setting the stationery she had stolen from Wayne on the table.
“What is it?” Ben asked, picking up the paper.
“Was the letter you received written on this stationery.”
“It’s nothing like the stationery I received. This is more like typing paper. My letter was written on ivory linen card stock. Where did you get this?” he asked, setting it back on the table.
Emma picked up her tea. “I stole that from Wayne’s desk yesterday. I thought he might be bitter enough to write you, hoping to stir up trouble.”
“You broke into his house?”
“He boards at Greta’s, and she asked me to take his laundry up to his room. So while I was there, I … just …” She threw up her hands. “I thought Wayne might have sent the letter!”
Ben’s face was unreadable. “I don’t like this,” he finally said.
“I didn’t get caught. And it’s only a piece of paper.”
“No. I don’t like that we don’t know who sent me the note. Nor do I like the fact that someone out there has suddenly decided to meddle in our lives.”
Emma looked over at Mikey. “Any ideas?”
“No. Everyone’s known for years who my father is, so I don’t know why anyone would suddenly decide to contact him now.”
Emma shrugged. “It’s probably just some busybody in town.” She stood and gathered the teacups. “We’ll find out who sent it eventually. Where is the letter anyway? It might help if we saw it.”
“It’s in New York. I left it with a detective agency, but I’ll bring it back when I return. Emma, what are these numbers on Poulin’s stationery?”
She turned from the sink and found Ben studying the paper. “Oh. Those are some coordinates I found hidden under his desk blotter. I can’t say why I copied them, other than that they made me curious.”
Ben’s face darkened. “You snooped through his whole room?”
“I was looking for the letters he claimed Kelly had written him.”
“This is northwest of here, Nem,” Mikey said, studying the paper he had taken from Ben. “What did he have these written on? A map?”
“No,” she said, moving to look over his shoulder. “They were on a scrap of paper that was old and yellowed. Like I said, I just wondered why he had kept them.”
Ben grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. Then he hauled Mikey up from his chair and gave him a hug that would have felled a lesser man. “I’ll be back Tuesday morning. I expect to find you both here, with no broken bones or near misses. Be good and I’ll bring you back something from New York.” Those dictates given, he opened the door and left. Emma and Mikey looked at each other, then started laughing.
“Did you see that, Nem? There really wasmoss sticking to his jacket.” Mikey ambled out behind his father. “I doubt even a good scrubbing could get it off.”