“In the den, honey! I heated up a plate for you. It’s in the kitchen.”
Her stomach grumbled. “Be right there!”
“Mom made meatloaf, buttercup. Your favorite,” her father shouted.
It was the one dish her mother made well. “She’s a goddess!” She hurried into the kitchen, pulled a warm plate from the oven. She peeled off the foil and grabbed a fork and a soda before making her way to the den.
Her father sat in his recliner, his legs elevated, a slipper on his left foot and a cast on his right. He wore a favorite pair of khaki work pants and a T-shirt smudged with paint colors from last summer’s renovation project. She kissed him on the forehead, and he patted her on the arm as he muted the news. Axel, their nine-year-old rescue pit bull mix, lay on his dog bed. He thumped his tail as he looked up at her.
Melina kissed her mother, who peered up over half glasses, smiling as she sat in another tufted chair. “How’s it going?”
“Just watching a game show, kiddo,” her mother said.
“You haven’t killed Dad yet, I see.”
“A few close calls but he still lives to tell the tale.”
She sat and cut into her meatloaf. “She’s dangerous, Dad.”
“I know,” he said. “Never a dull moment in this house, but Axel keeps me in line.”
The dog lumbered to his feet and sat in front of her. He had the pitiful look down pat when food was involved. She pinched off a piece of meatloaf, and he eagerly accepted it.
Her mother sighed. “The vet says he’s fat.”
“He’s husky,” her father said. “Big bones.”
Her parents argued often about the dog’s weight. He was their second child, the son they never had. “Speaking of bones, have you broken any lately, Dad?” she asked.
“Better to break bones than sit on my ass all day and watch the world go by,” her father countered.
Hank Shepard had been in law enforcement for over thirty-five years when he’d retired the year before. Since then, he had spent the better part of the last year rebuilding the house from the outside in. She had no doubt, once he had the all clear from the doctor, he would be back on a ladder like nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, he was doing a fantastic job of driving his wife insane. Lately, she had been talking about selling the house or taking a long vacation. All her plans had fallen on her father’s and Axel’s deaf ears.
“You’re going to owe her that vacation,” Melina said. “Give me enough notice and I’ll watch Axel.”
“Seriously?” her mother asked.
“I promise.”
“I might consider it.” Her father patted Axel on the head.
Her mother ignored her father’s vague promise and shifted narrowing eyes on Melina. “You don’t like to babysit Axel. What’s going on?”
Melina took a bite of the meatloaf and savored the mix of vegetables, spices, and ground beef. “This is why I moved back to Nashville. To be close and help.”
Her mother’s face stilled as if she were waiting for a second shoe to drop. “I thought you said it was the promotion.”
“And the meatloaf. And Axel.” She took several more bites, not realizing how hungry she had been. “This is amazing.”
“Glad you like it.” Her mother put her book down. “What brings you by in the middle of the day?”
“Do I need a reason?” Melina asked.
“No, but you have one,” her mother countered.
She stabbed one more bite, swirled it in the butter mashed potatoes. Her mother knew her too well. She ate the last bite and placed the plate on the floor for Axel to finish off. He began lapping up the scant remains immediately.
“We have a six-year-old child in the hospital. She was in a car accident.” She saw the worry darken her mother’s eyes. “The child is fine, but the driver abandoned the vehicle and the child.”
Her mother hissed in a breath and sat a little straighter. She said nothing, but both her mother’s and father’s attention was laser focused. “Social services has the case, and she’ll be moved to a foster home likely by tomorrow afternoon.”
“What do you know about the driver?” her father asked.
“This is confidential, guys,” Melina said.
Her father’s gaze warmed with interest. “You know we’re a vault.”
Melina had no doubt. “The driver’s name is Bonnie Guthrie. She did time in California but missed her last appointment with her parole officer. She’s not the child’s mother, according to the child.”
“And?” her father prompted.
She popped open her soda and took a long pull. She skipped over why Ramsey had originally come to Nashville. “FBI got involved when an officer found a pickle jar filled with severed fingers in the trunk of Guthrie’s car. All the fingers appear to be female. The medical examiner has pulled prints. We have identification on two of the victims.”
“It’s not like you to discuss your cases with us,” her mother said.
And here came the part that dug into uncomfortable feelings. “The kid kind of reminded me of myself. The way she was just left.”
“Aren’t the scenarios fairly different?” her father asked.
“You always gloss over how you found me. And I’ve never pressed for details. Now, I’m pressing.”
Her father glanced at her mother. And when she nodded, he sat a little taller. “A call came in that there was a child on the side of the road.”
“Who called it in?”
“We know the call came from a pay phone at Stella’s Diner. Back in the day, no cells.”
“I get it. Old school,” she said. “Did anyone ever talk to the folks at the diner?”
“I did, after I picked you up,” he said. “You were standing on the side of the road hiding behind a guardrail.”
“I remember that part of the story.”
“No way I would have found you if someone hadn’t told us to look near mile marker one twenty-five.” His voice grew quiet. “I drove past you twice and saw no sign of you. I decided the third time would be the charm. That’s when I saw your yellow jacket. You reminded me of a frightened animal.”
Her mother rubbed Axel’s head in a soft, loving way, as if she were calming that lost version of Melina.
“When I reached for you, you took off running,” her father said.
“You said I came straight to you.”
“No. I had to move quickly to snatch you up. You started kicking and screaming, and I held you tight until you calmed down. Must have taken a full five minutes. Finally, I think all the trauma just wore you out, and you collapsed against me.”
“That’s when he called me,” her mom said. “I met him at the station.”
“Foster care took me,” Melina said.
“For seven days,” her mother said. “Took that long for your daddy and me to pull every string we had to get custody.”
“When you went to the diner, could anyone tell you who called the police?” Melina asked.
“The call came in at 10:05 p.m. on a Thursday night,” her father said. “The restaurant manager didn’t have surveillance cameras, and it had been a busy night. There’d been an event at the local high school, and the place was packed full of kids and parents. But Brenda, the woman working that night, did remember a woman coming in with a boy. She remembered thinking the woman wasn’t a regular customer and the boy looked upset.”
“Did Brenda say what the woman looked like?”
“Blond. Dressed kind of showy. Drove a big car.”
A faint memory of a car flashed. The vehicle had a wide back seat and was stuffed full of suitcases and garbage bags filled with clothes. “Did the woman or boy call?”
“She’s not even sure if either one of them made the call. In her words, it was busy as hell and she didn’t know up from down.”
“Anything else about this woman?” Melina had pushed aside this story for so long she had almost convinced herself that it did not matter. Now, the scant details teased her with a past that suddenly felt as if it mattered very much.
“Any names? Credit card receipts?”
“None. Paid cash. Didn’t leave a tip. They each ate, used the restroom, and left. No one saw them before or since.”
“How do you know they haven’t seen them since?”
“For a few months, I checked in at least once a week. Social services searched for your birth family but stopped after a few months. I kept looking just in case there was someone who might make a claim on you.”
“Your father knew I wasn’t going to let you go without a fight,” her mother said.
“Whoever the woman was, she never came back to Nashville.” Her father studied his daughter with the keen eye of a veteran cop. Every so often she caught a glimmer of the badass cop he had been back in the day. “Has this case brought all this up?”
She sighed. “I suppose it has. I had a dream last night.”
“What kind of dream?” her mother asked.
“Being in the back of that oversize car and then getting yanked out and being left on the side of the road.”