Page 114 of The High Tide Club
“I can’t just drop everything. I’ve got a job, you know. And a child,” Brooke said.
“Have your calls forwarded to your cell phone and get the babysitter to take care of the kid,” Lizzie said. “Come on, Brooke. You know people in Savannah, and we don’t. This is important. To all of us.”
“It’s just one day,” Felicia said.
Brooke sighed. “Okay. This is crazy, but I’ll do it.”
“High fives!” Lizzie declared, and the three slapped palms and bumped fists. “Now group hugs!” she added.
“Let’s not get carried away,” Felicia drawled.
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Brooke was standing beside the Volvo, waiting, as Felicia and Lizzie walked toward the marina parking lot.
“Shotgun,” Felicia said, climbing into the front seat.
Lizzie rolled her eyes and opened the rear door. “Um, Brooke?”
Henry was belted into his car seat, quietly munching on a toaster waffle. His face and hair and hands were smeared with peanut butter.
“Ladies, this is my son, Henry. Henry, that’s Lizzie. And this is Felicia, up front with me.”
“Hi, Henry,” Felicia said, turning around to wave.
“Heyya, Henry,” Lizzie added.
“He was running a little temperature this morning, which meant I couldn’t take him to day care, and Farrah, my babysitter, has graduation practice today and she couldn’t keep him,” Brooke explained. “So we’re going to drop him off at my mom’s house in Savannah before we go do our thing. And Henry’s going to be a really good boy today. Aren’t you, Henry?”
“No,” Henry said, throwing his sippy cup onto the floor.
“He’ll fall asleep any minute now, I promise,” Brooke said.
“He’d better,” Lizzie muttered. “So what’s our game plan?”
“I thought we’d start where C. D. says he got his initial information, at the archdiocesan office in Savannah. It’s just a few blocks from my mom’s house in Ardsley Park. Depending on what we find out, we’ll hopefully also make it out to Good Shepherd too.”
“Remind me exactly what that place is?” Felicia said.
“Itwasthe oldest continuously operating home for boys in the country. But their mission has changed over the years, and now it’s morphed into a privately operated all-boys prep school,” Brooke said. “C. D. says he lived there from the time this Catholic orphanage placed him there at six until he ran away at sixteen.”
“Louette says she almost hopes we can prove C. D. is Josephine’s son,” Felicia said. “He’s definitely a strange one, but she says he’s way better than those awful cousins.”
“I think we have to try to go into this with an open mind,” Lizzie said. “Ask the right questions and just follow the bread crumbs until we reach the truth.”
“Agreed,” Brooke said. “But realistically, I don’t have high hopes that the archdiocese will share much information with us, especially where it relates to those old adoption records. I’m sure they’ll cite privacy concerns.”
Lizzie leaned forward in her seat. “Listen, I dig up dirt for a living. It’s my job to outrun or outsmart every version of the answerno. When we get there, how about I ask the questions?”
“Works for me,” Felicia said.
“So whatever kind of pretext I come up with, you guys just go with it. Okay?”
Brooke felt uneasy. “You’re not going to tell any outright lies or try to make me do anything unethical, right?”
“We’ll see,” Lizzie said.
***
