A LITTLE OVER a week later, Quinn was in line for her usual before-work latte when she felt the weight of someone’s gaze on her. Turning, she found a guy around her age with tousled black hair and black-rimmed glasses who looked a lot like a grown-up Harry Potter.
He was staring at her with an intensity that caused her to blink and then crane her neck to peek behind her. No one was there, which meant he was staring at her. She shifted away and did her best to ignore him, instead tuning in to the two women in front of her who were chatting.
“Orgasms after the age of fifty suck,” one was saying. “No one tells you that, but they totally do.”
Her friend agreed with an emphatic head bob. “I know. It’s like sandpaper down there in Lady Town. Takes an entire tube of lube and a bottle of gin.”
The first woman snorted. “Don’t get me started. Alan will spend thirty minutes looking for a golf ball, but he can’t give me ten minutes to find the G-spot.”
Quinn must have made some sound, because they both turned to her with apologetic laughs. “Sorry,” Dry Vagina said. “It’s just one of the many, many things you’ve got to look forward to, along with hot flashes.”
“Don’t forget the murderous urges,” the other woman said. “And we’re talking premeditated too.”
Yay. Sounded great.
“Excuse me,” the man behind Quinn said, tapping her on the shoulder. Harry Potter, her stalker. “I need to speak to you.”
“Sorry. I’m not interested.”
“Wait, honey. There’s no need to make a hasty decision,” one of her new friends said. “What if he’s suitably employed, with no baggage?”
“Impossible,” Dry Vagina said. “That’d be like finding a unicorn.”
“Are you a unicorn?” the first woman asked him.
Harry Potter looked at Quinn with more than a little desperation. “Can I please talk to you . . . alone?”
“Not alone,” the first woman said. “That sounds like stranger danger. You can do your pickup-line magic right here, or better yet, do it online like the rest of the world.”
The guy never took his gaze off Quinn. “You’re Quinn Weller, right?”
Wait a minute. How did he know her name? “Okay,” she said. “You’re going to need to go first.”
“I’m Cliff Porter,” he said. “I’m an attorney and I really need a word with you. Privately.”
She stared at him, trying to come up with a reason why an attorney would be looking for her.
“Porter or Potter?” Dry Vagina asked. “Because Potter would make more sense.”
He looked pained. “I get that a lot, but it’s Porter.”
“How do you know my name?” Quinn asked.
“Look, can we just . . .” He gestured to a small table off to the side of the line.
Torn between curiosity and a healthy sense of survival, Quinn hesitated. “I’ll be late for work.”
“This will only take a minute.”
Reluctantly, she stepped out of line and moved to the table. “You’ve got one minute.”
He took a deep breath. “As I said, I’m an attorney. I located you through a mutual acquaintance.”
“Who’s that?”
“I’ll get to her in a minute. She let me know I could find you here in the mornings rather than scare you by tracking you down at your place of residence. I’m from Wildstone, a small town about two hundred miles north. I’m here to give you news of an inheritance. It’s important we talk about it because—”
“I’ve never even heard of Wildstone,” Quinn said. “I certainly don’t know anyone from there.”
He nodded like he knew this. “We’re a small coastal ranching town that sits in a bowl between the Pacific Coast and wine country. Maybe you should sit,” he said quietly, and also very kindly she had to admit. “Because the rest of this is going to be a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises,” she said, “and you have thirty seconds left.”
It was clear from his expression that he wasn’t happy about having to go into the details in public, but as he was a stranger and maybe also a crackpot, too damn bad. He drew in a deep breath. “The person who left you this inheritance was your birth mother.”
She stared at him and then slowly sank into the before-offered chair without looking, grateful it was right behind her. “You’re mistaken,” she finally managed, shaking her head. “I wasn’t adopted.”
He gave her a wan smile. “I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but you were.”
“I have parents,” she said. “Lucinda and James Weller.”
“They adopted you when you were two days old.”
The shock of that reverberated through her body. “No,” she whispered. Heart suddenly racing, palms clammy, she shook her head. “They would’ve told me. There’s absolutely no way . . .”
“Again, I’m very sorry,” Cliff said quietly. “But it’s true. They adopted you from Carolyn Adams.” He pulled a picture from his briefcase and pushed it across the table toward her.
And Quinn’s heart stopped. Because Carolyn was the woman she’d met here in this very coffee shop.
Chapter 2
My mom always said that right before she died she wanted to swallow a bunch of popcorn kernels to make her cremation more interesting. She totally would’ve done it too, if she’d gotten the heads-up that her number had been picked.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Quinn found herself sitting on the curb outside the coffee shop, staring blindly at her Lexus, the car her parents had given her last year even though she’d wanted something less expensive.
Her parents. Who might not really be her parents . . .
“Here,” Cliff said, pushing a cup of cold water into her hands as he sat next to her. “Drink this.”
She took the cup in two shaking hands and gulped down the water, wishing a little bit that it was vodka. “You’re mistaken,” she said again. “Carolyn was just a woman I met here. We spoke only a few times.”
“Three.” Cliff gazed at her sympathetically. “She told me about the visits. She always came here instead of your condo or work because it was a social setting and she felt she could approach you here. She’d come to get a peek at you whenever she could, born from the desperate curiosity of a woman who had haunting regrets.”
Quinn shook her head, unable to descramble her brain. “I don’t understand.”
“She knew she was terminal,” he said. “She had every intention of telling you all of this herself, but she ran out of time. And what she left behind is important because—”
“Wait.” Quinn closed her eyes, just now realizing what he was telling her.
Carolyn was dead.
Cliff took the cup of water from her before she could drop it. “The funeral was a few days ago,” he said quietly. “We really need to talk, Quinn. In Wildstone. There are things you don’t know that you need to.”
Quinn let out a sound that might have been a mirthless laugh or a half sob, she wasn’t sure. She shook her head for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few minutes, but the cobwebby feeling didn’t clear.