His Secret Daughter

HIS SECRET DAUGHTER A TOTALLY HEARTBREAKING AND GRIPPING PAGE-TURNER MELISSA WIESNER BOOKS BY MELISSA WIESNER His Secret Daughter Our Stolen Child The Girl in the Picture Her Family Secret CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Epilogue Our Stolen Child Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Hear More from Melissa Books by Melissa Wiesner A Letter from Melissa The Girl in the Picture Her Family Secret Acknowledgments For my sister, Pam, who loves both show tunes and mysteries 1 Emma Havern’s hands were coated in slick amber clay when the phone rang. She leaned across her pottery wheel to peek at the name lit up on the screen. Alicia, her best friend. Emma’s gaze shifted to the half-formed flower vase still spinning on the stand in front of her and then back to the phone. Maybe she’d let it go to voicemail. About thirty seconds after the phone stopped ringing, it lit up again. Emma sighed and switched off the wheel, reaching for a rag to wipe her hands. Except for her daughter, Maya, or the high school, she wouldn’t stop in the middle of work to answer the phone for anyone other than her best friend of over ten years. Still, their decade of shared history didn’t keep the exasperation from creeping into her tone. “Alicia, I’m working.” “I know you are, honey,” came a clipped voice through the phone’s speaker. “Which is why I’m calling. Have you showered today? Have you stopped to have a bite to eat?” “Well…” Emma didn’t want to lie. Besides, Alicia would see right through her. “Not exactly…” Alicia sighed. “Most of us drown our sorrows in a nice glass of Cabernet. You drown yours in clay and ceramic glaze.” “I’m not drowning my sorrows,” Emma protested. “I have a show coming up.” “You still have to eat.” Emma sighed and swiped her hands on the terracotta-streaked rag in her lap. “Okay. I’ll go make a sandwich. Will that make you feel better?” “Temporarily.” “What would make you feel better permanently, so I can get back to work?” “Talk to me, honey,” Alicia urged in a softer tone. “I know you’re hurting.” Emma pushed her stool away from her pottery wheel and crossed the room to the utility sink against the opposite wall. Tapping the phone to speaker, she left it on an overhead shelf while she plunged her hands under the warm water. “There’s nothing to talk about. I told Noah if he left for that work trip last month, he shouldn’t bother coming back.” She stared at the rainbow of splattered paint on the wall behind the sink, as if it might contain the answers to how she and her husband had ended up here. “He left anyway.” Emma could still picture the strain on Noah’s face, his brow furrowed, the lines deepening around his eyes. Still hear the apprehension in his voice when he told her he had to go, he didn’t have a choice. You always have a choice. “He loves you. I know he does.” “I think he’s having an affair.” Alicia went silent for a moment. “Did you find proof of that? Why didn’t you tell me?” “No, there’s no proof. Only…” Emma’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not naïve. What else could it be? If it were any man besides Noah who’d suddenly started acting distant and traveling constantly… what would you think he was up to?” “I’d think…” Alicia sighed. “Okay, you’re right. But it isn’t any man. It’s Noah.” Alicia had been Emma’s best friend since she’d moved to Grand Rapids over a decade ago. Neither of them had family in the area, and it had been so long now that they thought of each other like sisters. Alicia had known Noah for ten years, too. “What about counseling?” Alicia asked. “With his travel schedule? I don’t think so.” “Do you think you’ll divorce?” Only Alicia could ask a question like that so directly. Emma’s heart constricted. She hadn’t let her mind wander in the direction of divorce. It hurt too much, so she’d been burying her head in the sand—or the clay, in this instance. She dried her hands and then slipped out the door of her pottery studio into the backyard. “I don’t know,” Emma finally said, sinking into a chair under the shade of her favorite maple tree. Across the lawn, a burst of spring perennials bloomed in an improvised display of shapes and colors. Emma had planted them years ago when they’d first bought the house. She and Maya had wandered the garden center to pick out the brightest, boldest hues they could find, without any thought to a formal layout or design. It had turned out better that it would have if they’d carefully planned it all out. It was easy, unfussy, so unlike the house where she’d grown up with its manicured lawns, boxwood topiaries, and rose gardens that required a full-time gardener to maintain. Emma loved this garden, loved the yard that Maya had spent hours in when she was young, making up games with the neighborhood kids instead of shuttling off to tennis lessons like Emma had in her own childhood. And then there was her favorite part of the yard: the art studio tucked under an oak tree on the back edge of the property. She’d been surprised when Noah had found a job in Grand Rapids, Michigan and proposed moving their family away from Boston to a place where they didn’t know a single soul. But it had been a good job, with plenty of room for advancement and a lot less travel than his previous job. At least until the last few years.