Never Tease a Siamese by Edie Claire

Author:Edie Claire
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

***

Gray clouds muscled their way across the river, the ominous tone of the thunder that rumbled down from them being surpassed only by the grumbling of Leigh’s own stomach. She had been dishing a judiciously edited script of her adventures to Adith in the parking lot of the Koslow Animal Clinic for a full half hour, and both her watch and her blood sugar told her it was time to head home to Warren’s promised Mexican tamale bake.

She had to choose her words carefully; as much as she could use Adith’s local insight into the whole situation with Peggy’s family, she didn’t want Dean’s true parentage to get out that way. Little as she thought of the man, it hardly seemed fair for "the girls" to know before he did. So she had edited out the whole interlude with Becky; choosing to make what she had learned about the baby switch sound like pure conjecture.

"So anyway," she summarized, "If Lilah Murchison wasn’t actually on that plane, the whole inheritance issue is moot. But I do believe that Lilah gave birth to a stillborn in 1977, and that Peggy Linney helped her quickly locate an adoptable baby. I guess Lilah felt she needed a baby to keep her marriage intact, and that that pregnancy would be her last chance."

Adith’s prunelike face twisted into a coarse frown. "Well, that may be, but it doesn’t tell us if there's still a missing millionaire out there, does it? And it doesn’t tell you who’s threatening your daddy’s people, either."

Leigh’s stomach groaned, expressing her mind’s thoughts. "No, I guess it doesn’t."

Adith continued frowning. "I don’t buy it," she said finally.

"Buy what?"

"The stillborn thing."

Leigh stared at her. "Why not?"

"Too convenient."

Leigh exhaled. She was entirely too weak from hunger to draw inferences. "What do you mean exactly?"

Adith’s mouth screwed up tight as she thought. "Lilah claims to have another baby out there. But the girls don’t see how she could have had one any time after she came straggling back to town without her first husband. Some people get fatter as they age; Lilah got skinnier. I don’t know if she went anorexic after the car crash that killed him or what, but she lost weight. And ever since then she’s been too skinny to cover up a goose egg—much less a baby. So she either had the baby way, way back"—she leaned closer for effect—"or the baby she had twenty-five years ago wasn’t stillborn."

Leigh blinked. "Why switch them at all, then?" Adith tsk tsked and stretched a bony hand out to pat Leigh’s shoulder. "Honey, honey. I know you think women now are liberated and all that, but Albert was of the old school. I’ll bet you anything that old coot had his heart set on a son."

A weight settled in Leigh’s midsection. "Give up her own baby girl and raise a stranger’s child…just to make her husband happy?" Her hand moved reflexively to her waistline again, and this time she didn’t bother to pull it back.

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