22. Totally Worth It

22

TOTALLY WORTH IT

“ T hanks for meeting with me so late,” Sloane Redding said. He took a seat on her couch.

Zander had gotten the call a week ago from Royce’s wife, Chloe. Her brother’s girlfriend, Sloane, needed him to look into her mother’s history. Zander wasn’t sure of everything going on, but since Chloe married his best friend, she was all but family to him.

“Not a problem,” Zander said. “I don’t know everything. Only a little of what Chloe said. She was in the building the other day with Royce to look at something and said you’d be calling.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you much,” Sloane said. “I’ll give you all the documents I’ve got, which isn’t a lot. I don’t want Shiloh to know about this and I don’t think she could answer any questions. I’ve asked and she doesn’t recall any guy in her life. Ever.”

Sloane hadn’t talked to her mother in years. Then out of the blue got a call that her mother passed away and now Sloane had custody of a five-year-old half sister, Shiloh.

Sloane needed him to find out what he could about who Shiloh’s father might be.

He didn’t have a lot to go on, but he’d had less in the past too.

“That makes it hard but not impossible,” Zander said.

Sloane handed over copies of everything she’d been given from Knox County in Tennessee. “This was released to me last week. It’s my mother’s work history, where she has lived, and her visits with the case managers. She’d been getting assistance for years. I’ve read it all, but nothing is standing out.”

“That’s for me to find out,” Zander said. “Is there anything you can tell me that isn’t in these files?”

He knew what to look for. He had resources to dive into Sloane’s mother’s past that most didn’t.

“My mother left home when she was fifteen. She joined a cult and became pregnant with me and then my sister, Sabrina, two years later. I don’t know where Sabrina is right now.”

This sounded like a crazy outrageous story that you normally only saw on TV, but all he did was take notes and listen.

Maybe there was more to his job like Regan’s than he thought.

“You’ve had no contact with anyone from that cult since you and your mother and sister left?” Zander asked. He jotted down a few more things and ideas of where to look as they popped into his head. He’d have his father and Betsy get started on this right away so that he could dive deeper.

“No,” Sloane said. “I’d like to think my mother didn’t either. But you should know, she stole money she needed to escape from the cult. I’m not sure how much. I never asked and it was probably for the best, but based on her life history, it couldn’t be a lot. It was enough to get us a place to stay and food and clothing while she found a job and was set up for public assistance.”

Jesus. He couldn’t imagine this happening.

“I’ll look into that too. My guess is no one was going to report the theft to the police when they’d have to answer questions about the underage pregnant women,” he said drily.

“That was my thought too,” she said. “For all of my mother’s faults, she got Sabrina and me out of there. Maybe I should have been there for her more.”

“It’s hard to do that when she cut off communication,” he said. “You said the number you had was disconnected?”

“Yes. I put that down in the papers. The last number and roughly when I talked to her last. I guess I could have tried to find her before now.”

“Families don’t talk for years all the time,” he said. “For reasons much less than what you went through.”

“I know,” Sloane said. “I told myself that too.”

The door to Sloane’s opened and Dane Grey, Chloe’s brother, came in. “Sorry I’m late,” Dane said. “I got called to the hospital.”

“Not a problem,” Sloane said.

Zander stood up and shook hands with Dane. “Good to see you again,” he said.

“You too,” Dane said. Zander had talked to Chloe’s brother at the rehearsal dinner and at her wedding. Dane seemed like a great guy. Loved kids and was a pediatrician. He obviously knew about Sloane’s past and wasn’t bothered by it. Not many men would feel that way.

It reminded him that when you found someone that you loved, nothing else really mattered.

Nothing came between it either.

“I was just filling Zander in on everything about my childhood,” Sloane said.

“I’ll let you both talk,” Dane said. “I’m just here for support.”

Sloane and Zander talked some more, then she added the last part about a locket of her mother’s. “It’s the only thing I’ve got of my mother’s. Shiloh said a friend gave it to her. It’s a picture of Sabrina and me from when we were in school. A friend could have been another woman. It could mean nothing.”

“Why don’t you hold onto that for now,” Zander said, taking a picture of it and the two photos inside. “I’ve got enough to get started. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’m not guaranteeing I can find out who Shiloh’s father is. We’ll see if we can figure out any man in your mother’s life around that time and just go from there. I don’t like to give false hope and should warn you that we could also come up with things you don’t want to know.”

He hoped for Sloane’s sake that wasn’t the case, but he didn’t want her going in blind either.

“I don’t think much could surprise me anymore,” Sloane said. “Not with the way I grew up and what is happening now.”

Zander shook both their hands and left, then drove home to his apartment.

He was too wired to do any work and had to let some of this just sit in his brain.

It was nice to close some cases, but then another one was right on his doorstep.

He looked around his apartment and decided to clean while he thought things through.

Regan wanted to see his place. It was nothing special and he’d warned her, but she said she didn’t care. She only wanted to be with him.

Dane didn’t seem to care about what he knew in regards to Sloane’s past.

Just like him. He wouldn’t pass judgment on anything that happened in Regan’s past. What she went through as a child or even why she chose her profession.

She barely talked about her family and he had to accept that. Or when she did, it wasn’t with the fondness he had with his.

Which brought up another thing. He’d have to tell his parents soon, and when he did, they’d want to meet her.

He’d save that for another day.

He was throwing all his dishes in the dishwasher and taking everything off the counter to wipe it down. The least he could do was start with Regan seeing his place.

When his phone rang twenty minutes later, he was thrilled to have the reprieve from trying to figure out what the sticky substance was behind his coffee pot that took a lot more scrubbing than it should have.

He grabbed his phone to see if it was Regan.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you home?”

“I am,” she said. “I have been for a while. How about you?”

“Home and cleaning.”

“Yay,” she said. “Guess I’ll get to see your place sooner rather than later.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said. He wrinkled his nose at the strong smell of lemon. “I’ll have to keep it clean.”

“You will,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t ask about Justin, but you told him what you found out, right? I mean I did sign that contract and all.”

He laughed. He liked that she brought up the contract rather than him doing it. It kept everything clean and he could ask her advice now if he wanted. Or if he got called out on a case when they were together as it’d already happened.

“I did,” he said.

Justin had been embarrassed that he didn’t trust his wife. That even the names of the men, not just the locations his wife was at were on her calendar that Justin could see. Zander hadn’t been informed of that and hated that he could only do so much without being given all the facts.

He’d asked again what Tricia’s job was. It was always that she worked from home days and had clients she’d meet at night. This time Justin admitted that she did web design and set up a few side hustles on social media sites. Those side hustles would have led him down a different path in a much shorter timeframe if he had the facts.

Again, if he’d known that, he would have been able to figure things out faster.

Justin finally admitted he didn’t know exactly what his wife did with her side jobs and whenever he asked and she started to talk about it, he shut her off because it didn’t make sense. And that when she came home the other night they’d gotten into a fight because he’d been texting her. Just as Regan had seen. And that Tricia said once again they were work dinners and she couldn’t take time away from her clients to deal with him and had explained that many times.

“Was he surprised?” Regan asked.

“No,” he said. “Because by the time I gave him my report he and his wife had it out and she explained it all to him. I think he felt like a fool, but that is on him, not me. Who knows? If they want to work on their marriage and communication, I can suggest this great doctor for couples therapy.”

Regan laughed. “We got some nice dinners out of it and had some fun. Totally worth it.”

“Sure,” he said. “It did get us our first date.”

“See, we could credit Justin and his lack of information with his wife’s life pushing us together rather than the Fierces if they decide they want to get involved.”

“There you go,” he said.

He’d told her more about the setups and how it all worked. She still found it funny and they agreed to let it play out for a short period of time.

“I’ll let you get back to cleaning,” she said. “Then maybe I’ll get to see your place this weekend.”

She was laughing. “Maybe,” he said.

“Just remember, you love me. I won’t judge.”

“Yes,” he said. “You will.”