Now Ricky knows I'm not into
women. He's living proof of that. But when I told him about Ms Engel I swear he
turned a pale shade of green and it wasn't a good color on him. Okay, just
figuratively speaking of course, but still…
To backtrack a bit, Ricky
Hayes is my boyfriend/lover/partner. All three describe him. We've been
together for six years and counting and I finally decided it was safe for us to
live together. Not that I didn't always want us to, but I'm a private investigator
and sometimes I run into problems of the physical kind. Like with the last case
I had. I got beat up and shot while trying to find out who was behind the theft
of a rare and valuable item. The only reason that's relevant is because I worry
that someone coming after me might use him to get to me. That made sense to me, but not to him. As he often pointed
out—it's not like we kept our relationship a secret.
Anyway, the day after I
closed the theft case, and not more than an hour after I'd finally asked Ricky
to move in with me, I got a new client. Her name was Coleen Engel, and she said,
as I escorted her into my office, "I have a big problem, Mr Murphy. I hope
you can help me. I need to find my son."
After she sat down in the
client's chair by my desk I asked her to explain.
"To begin with you
should know I'm forty-two and unmarried. Always have been. Well unmarried that
is." She smiled slightly before continuing. "That doesn't mean I
never got involved with men. I happen to like men, Walt. A lot." She
paused, just looking at me, and I suddenly got that she was speculating about
me at that moment. "May I call you Walt?"
"Yep." I gave a
sharp nod. Then I said, wanting to get her back on track, "I take it that
somewhere along the line you got pregnant."
"Got it in one,"
she replied. "I was nineteen and had just started school at Chathington College. I'll admit it, I was far from
innocent even then, but I thought getting pregnant could never happen to me
because I was careful. Even back then I made sure the guys used condoms. Then"—she
grimaced—"I fell in love. Or I thought I was and I thought he loved me.
I'm sure you're experienced enough to know how that goes. Meet a man, or in
your case a woman, who rings the right bells and you'd do anything for
them."
I let that stand as she'd
said it, and just nodded so she continued.
"Anyway, long story
short, he said I should get on the pill so he didn't have to use rubbers."
She shook her head. "Timing is everything and we were young and horny. I
think you can figure it out from there."
"You got pregnant
before the pill took hold."
"Yes, and before you
ask, I thought it was great. Him, me, baby, marriage, family. Talk about
starry-eyed innocence. I might not have been a virgin when I met him, but I was
more than willing make him the only man in my life from then on. For a while
things were good. He was shocked, but once he got past that he acted as if he'd
step up to the plate and do the right thing."
"But?" I said,
knowing there had to be one if she wanted me to find her son.
"His family had other
ideas. They refused to pay his tuition unless he walked away and transferred to
a different school. I was six months along at that point, it was the end of our
freshman semester, and… he left." She sighed deeply, looking at me with
large, teary blue eyes. "I had the baby and two days later put him up for
adoption."
"That has to have been
hard."
"Very. But what choice
did I have? I had no intention of dropping out of school to raise a kid and for
damned sure I wasn't going to put that burden on my parents."
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