Here's an excerpt from my new book, coming November 1st:
SOUND OF FEAR
By Marta Perry
Chapter One
Amanda Curtiss had hoped that going back to
work would distract her from the grief that threatened to drown her. It didn’t
work. Every person at the veterinary practice felt they had to commiserate on
her loss.
“So very, very sorry about your mother’s
death. So shocking, to have one of Boston’s most noted artists taken away by a
random street crime.” Alicia Farber’s prominent blue eyes, so like those of her
pampered Pekinese, welled with tears. “Pookie is sorry, too. Aren’t you,
Pookie?”
Pookie’s expression exhibited its usual
distain for lesser beings. The sight of Amanda’s white lab coat always brought
out the worst in him, and he bared his teeth.
“Let’s just see what’s going on with
Pookie, shall we?” Amanda lifted the small dog to the exam table with gentle
hands, careful to stay out of the way of his needle-sharp teeth.
“He’s been barely eating a bite of his
food.” Alicia hovered anxiously. “I just knew you’d want to see him. Tell me
the worst. I can take it.”
To do her justice, Alicia was genuinely
apprehensive. They all were—all the owners of pampered pets who came through
the doors of one of Boston’s most successful veterinary services. Amanda’s job,
as one of those at the lowest rung of the ladder, was to reassure the owners
while treating their pets. And to refrain from pointing out that both pets and
owners would benefit from more exercise and less rich food. No one took that
kind of advice well.
By the time Amanda was ushering Alicia and
her pet out of the exam room her head was throbbing and her throat was tight,
as it had been since the police officers had come to the door with their grim
news.
Gracie, the receptionist, caught her as she
passed. “Dr. Curtiss, there’s someone here to see you.” Lowering her voice, she
added, “He said it was personal business, so I put him in an empty exam room.
Number Four.”
“Thanks, Gracie.” Brushing any stray Peke
hairs from her lab coat, Amanda headed for the exam room, her stomach
clenching. Personal business had taken on an ominous sound lately, since it
invariably had to do with her mother’s death.
But when she opened the door, her face
relaxed into a smile. Robert McKinley was not only her mother’s attorney but a
long-time family friend as well…Uncle
Robert until she’d felt she was too old for the term.
“Robert. I didn’t expect you…” She stopped,
her brain catching up with her tongue. Robert wouldn’t come to her workplace on
anything routine. “What’s wrong?”
“Why should anything be wrong?” He kissed
her cheek, and she smelled the faint aroma of musk that always advertised his
presence. “Are you sure you should have come back to work so soon? It wasn’t
necessary.”
Maybe not financially, but it was for her
mental health. “I’d rather be busy. I need something to occupy my mind.”
“If
you’re sure.” He didn’t sound convinced, and Amanda read the uneasiness behind
his warmth.
“You wouldn’t come here unless something had
happened. Out with it.” Amanda fought to keep her voice steady. “Whatever it
is, it can’t be worse than what’s already happened.”
Nothing could be worse than losing her
mother is such a brutal way…never again to see her forehead wrinkle in
absorption over a new painting, never to feel the warm of her hug, never to
hear the laughter in her voice…
Robert frowned, taking a step away. “I
know.” His voice wasn’t entirely steady either. He’d adored Juliet in his own
staid way. “It may be nothing, but one of the detectives dropped by with the
coroner’s report. It had raised some questions in his mind.”
“Questions?” Her mind shied away from
imagining a coroner’s report.
“Perhaps I’m making too much of this. You
might already know.” He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. “The
autopsy confirmed something that seemed…odd.” He held up a hand to silence her
when she would have burst out with a demand to hear it, whatever it was. “It
seems that Juliet Curtiss, your mother, never had a child.”
Amanda froze, staring at him. The words
were in English, all right, but they didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean?
Of course she had a child. I’m standing right here.”
“Juliet never bore a child,” he repeated.
“There isn’t any doubt, Amanda. I read the report for myself, and then I called
the coroner for confirmation. Juliet had never had a child.”
Her sluggish wits started to work. “You
mean I’m adopted? But why on earth wouldn’t she have told me?”
Robert shrugged, seeming relieved that the
worst of his news-breaking was over. “I believe specialists do recommend that
the child be told, but it could be that Juliet couldn’t bear the idea that your
feelings about her would change if you knew she wasn’t your biological mother.”
At some level she wanted to laugh at that,
because it was so ridiculous to think of Juliet in those terms. But if she
started to laugh, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to control her emotions.
“Be
serious, Robert. Juliet wasn’t a clinging mama. That wasn’t the sort of
relationship we had.”
Amanda paused to consider what she’d just
said. She and her mother had certainly been close, but Juliet didn’t dote. It
hadn’t been in her nature. True, Amanda had lived at home since her practice
and her life had fallen apart in Pennnsylvania, but they’d lived very
independent lives. Juliet had her work, and Amanda had hers.
“You never thought…” Robert began, stepping
delicately in what no doubt seemed like a minefield to him.
“Never,” she said flatly.
“You see the problem,” he said, frowning
again. She thought he held back impatience when she looked at him blankly.
“Legally,” he amplified. “Your mother…Juliet…must have adopted you prior to the
time I met her. You’d have been about eight, I think, when she bought the
brownstone. That was the first bit of business I did for her.”
Obviously Robert expected her to
concentrate on the problem. She tried to rein in her wandering thoughts. Focus, she ordered herself. “Yes, I’d
have been eight when we moved uptown. She’d had her first really successful
show, and our lives changed.”
Not that she’d minded the life they’d had
before that. The tiny apartment in one of Boston’s many ethnic neighborhoods
had been home. But Juliet had wanted more…for herself, but certainly for her
daughter.
“If you don’t remember any other life,
Juliet must have adopted you when you were quite small.” Robert wore his worried
look. “There surely are papers to that effect somewhere.”
“Aren’t all her legal documents at your
office? She always said she didn’t have the talent or the energy to deal with
things like that. Her work…”
“She was
an artist, of course. But that’s no excuse for not having your affairs in
order.” That was as close as Amanda had ever heard him come to sounding
critical of Juliet. “You can see the quandary that leaves us in now. We must
establish your legal position in regard to your mother’s estate.”
“But she had a will. You showed it to me,
remember?”
“At my insistence, she did.” He sounded
grim. “It leaves everything of which she died possessed to her daughter, Amanda
Elizabeth Curtiss.”
“Well, then…”
“Come, Amanda. Concentrate. You’ve always
been the practical one. If you’re not her biological daughter, the language
becomes ambiguous.”
“You mean our home might not be mine?” That
possibility did penetrate the fog in which she groped. The brownstone was home.
It might be lonely without Juliet, but every inch of it was filled with
memories.
“If someone contested the will on the
grounds that you are not Juliet’s daughter, that might well happen.” Robert
clasped her hands in a firm grip. “There must be someone who knew Juliet longer
than I did. They might know the circumstances of your…your adoption. Who were
her oldest friends?”
Amanda released her hands to rub her
temples. “But I don’t know of anyone. All of the people in our lives dated from
the time we moved uptown.” Then it struck her. “But what about her brother,
George? They’d been estranged for a long time, but he did come to the funeral.
Surely he’d know…” Know where I came from.
She finished the sentence in her mind.
This was crazy. It was like spinning around
on the ice in an out-of-control car. Every anchor she reached for slid from her
grasp.
“George Curtiss is the last person I’d
confide in at this point. Don’t you see, Amanda? He can’t know there’s any
question, or you can be sure he’d have brought it up.” Robert’s frown deepened.
“There were good reasons for the breach between him and your mother. If half
what she said about him is true, he’d be contesting the will in an instant if
he even suspected.”
“Then what should I do? How can we find
out?” If her uncle didn’t know…but he wasn’t her uncle, it seemed, any more
than Juliet had been her mother.
“First of all, it’s essential that we find
any documents relating to you. You’d better have a good search throughout the
house for papers. You must have a birth certificate, at least. We may want to
hire a firm of private investigators to look into it. And whatever you do,
don’t talk about this to anyone but me.”
She blinked at that. “But my closest
friends…”
“Not your friends, not anyone. Not until we
have a better handle on your identity than we do now.”
Her identity. Amanda had always known who
she was and where she belonged. Now it seemed she didn’t know at all. Who was
she?
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