Max had dark good looks, and his no-nonsense attitude matched her own. She liked that he was willing to work with her even though he knew she thought it was very possible Lydia had something to do with Molly’s kidnapping.
She liked him. Period. And for the first time in a long time, she wanted to see if she would still like him the more she got to know about him.
But for now, Lydia was her priority. Erica couldn’t afford to have romantic feelings, not when there was a new lead in Molly’s case.
“The short version,” Max said, “is that Lydia and I grew up in the neighborhood you found yourself in last night.”
Erica hadn’t expected that one. “Oh wow.”
“Yes. It was a bad situation. Our parents were also products of that neighborhood. I’m eight years older than Lydia so by the time she came along, I was already a seasoned pro at staying out of the way of the fights and the drug dealers.” He shrugged. “I felt like I had to protect her, but for an eight-year-old that was a lot.”
“No eight-year-old should face a responsibility like that,” she whispered, appalled and yet amazed he’d survived to become the man he was today. “Why are you different? How did you get out?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Foster homes. One of them anyway. I learned that the world was not just pain and drugs and abuse. I learned about love and God, and that if I wanted to climb out of the hole that was my life, I could do it as long as I wasn’t afraid of hard work.” He rubbed his chin. “You want to hear something silly?”
“Sure.” Her fingers curled into her palms as she fought the urge to offer comfort.
“I watched a lot of movies growing up, and I saw these families portrayed as loving, kind to one another. Not perfect, but definitely not like my family.” He gripped his knife and looked at it, then laughed—a sad, derisive sound. “I used to picture my family sitting around me at Thanksgiving or Christmas while I carved the turkey.”
“And you wanted a family like that?”
“Yeah.” He flushed and shook his head. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly. This time she didn’t fight her feelings. Erica reached over and squeezed his hand. “I know exactly what you mean.”
He shook his head. “So anyway, I guess you see that we didn’t have a great childhood.”
“But you rose above it. So many people don’t. What happened with Lydia?”
Pain flashed in his eyes. “I lost touch with her for a while. When I turned eighteen, she was ten and a ward of the state. I didn’t find her again until she was sixteen. She’s the reason I quit the force and turned to private investigating. I could spend more hours on tracking her down as a P.I. than I could as a cop. When I finally found her, I asked her to come live with me, but she was pretty happy with her foster mother, a woman named Bea Harrison. So I didn’t push the issue. The next time I went to visit her, though, she was gone.” His mouth tightened at the memory and his eyes flashed.
“Did you find her again?” She knew Lydia was alive as of last night, but she still tensed as she waited for his answer.
He took a bite of his bagel and nodded. “Yes. Turns out our mother had gone through some kind of program and completed it successfully. And the court gave Lydia back to her.”
Erica gaped. “What?”
“I couldn’t believe it, either. I was furious. I went to the house and found Lydia high and my mother passed out on the couch. Alcohol and drugs were everywhere.” He swallowed hard. “I called DSS and the cops and waited for them to get there. They took her back into the system, and Lydia has been mad at me ever since.”
Erica swallowed hard. This was the girl Molly had possibly been with? What had her child experienced while with her? Erica shut off that line of thought. She just couldn’t go there.
Max was saying, “I finally got custody of her about two months before she turned eighteen, but she refused to stay with me. The court sent her back to Bea, and Lydia agreed to that arrangement as long as I wouldn’t come around. The only time she talks to me now is to beg money for a hit.” He paused. “I had hoped things were turning around when she agreed to let me take her out on her eighteenth birthday. Things were definitely looking better between us, but about a month later, she was back to her distant, I-hate-Max self.”
Her heart ached for him. “I’m so sorry.”
Max ran a hand down his face. “She was stabbed around that time and ended up in the hospital. I never found out what the circumstances were, but she almost died. I sat with her day and night, hoping to show her how much I loved her, but once she was released, she disappeared again. Over the last three years, we’ve had minimal contact.” He grimaced at Erica. “There—you have the whole ugly story. You sure you don’t want to run screaming in the other direction?”
“No, your story doesn’t scare me. It makes me hurt for you and Lydia, but it doesn’t scare me.”
She thought she saw relief in his eyes before he glanced out the window.
“I hate to point this out, Max, but Lydia’s lifestyle makes it more likely that she would be involved in something like Molly’s kidnapping than not.”
His jaw hardened and she could tell he didn’t like her statement. “You don’t know her. I do.”
“Do you really? You said yourself you two have been estranged, and she will hardly even talk to you. How can you claim to know her?”
Max’s nostrils flared. “You’ll just have to trust me on this.”
Erica bit her lip. “I’m not deliberately pushing you, but surely you can understand where I’m coming from. Her fingerprint was found on the bow.”
He nodded. “I get that. But I’m sure there’s an explanation for it. Which is why I want to find her. To help her. Because the police aren’t going to care about helping her.” He brought his intense gaze back to Erica. “I’d really like to find her first.”
I’m sure you do, Max. And I plan to be there when it happens.
“You said you’d gotten custody of Lydia before she turned eighteen. Does she still have a room at your house?”
He lifted a brow. “Yes.”
“Do you mind if I take a look at it?”
“She doesn’t stay there.” He looked away. “I keep it for her, hoping one day she’ll show up and want to work things out.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe not, but maybe I could have handled it differently. Instead of calling DSS, I could have just taken her out of there and...” He shrugged.
“And maybe not. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past three years, it’s that we can’t avoid making mistakes, and when we do, we should learn from them. Unfortunately, you can’t rewrite the past.”
“I know.” He offered her a sad smile.
“So what happened to your parents?”
“My dad was killed in a car accident about seven years ago. After I called the cops on her, my mom went back to jail for possession. When she got out, she went right back to drugs and died from an overdose.”
Erica gasped. “How awful, Max. I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t seem to find any other words. No child should have to live the way he and Lydia had, scrambling and scraping to survive.
He sighed. “I couldn’t help her, but I’m going to do my best to help Lydia.”
“I understand. That’s how I feel about Peter.”