An Accidental Woman by Barbara Delinsky Page A

mouth at the time had to do with that town.”
    That was because Griffin had come home enamored of Poppy Blake. Needing to tell someone about her, he hadn’t even stopped in Princeton but had driven straight on to D.C. Randy and he, being the two youngest of the five Hughes brothers, had shared girl talk since they had been twelve and ten, respectively, and not once had Randy breathed a word of it to anyone else. Griffin had expected the same discretion now. He felt betrayed.
    â€œYou don’t understand, Randy. These are good people. You can’t do this to good people.”
    â€œHey,” Randy cautioned, suddenly sounding very much the law enforcement officer that he had always wanted to be. “I don’t know what she’s like now, but the law’s the law. Fifteen years ago, that little lady took a walk. It’s about time the Bureau caught up.”
    â€œWith the wrong woman!” Griffin cried.
    â€œNo way, Red. Even if she’d had plastic surgery so we couldn’t see the facial similarity—even if she’d had that little scar removed—we have her on the handwriting sample. It worked so well, I still can’t believe it. I mean, I’m up there a couple weeks ago, and she’s working at the little local library. I ask for a book; she doesn’t have it; I ask if she’ll write down the name of the nearest bookstore, and bingo! Matched right up to the writing sample we took from her high school files. We have her,” he said with smoldering glee. “We have her cold.”
    â€œYou asshole.”
    There was a pause, than an indignant, “What’s wrong with you?”
    â€œI’d never have said anything to you if I’d known you’d do this.”
    Randy sounded wounded. “Griffin, she killed a man!”
    â€œAllegedly, and that’s assuming she is this other woman. But did you have to use me to do it?”
    â€œI didn’t use you. You said something; it touched off something else in my mind; I followed through, did my research, investigated, went up to that little town, and nailed her—and what’s it to you, anyway? You stopped going there. You lost interest.”
    It might have looked that way to Randy, but Griffin hadn’t lost interest in Poppy. Not by a long shot. He had been intrigued since the first time he’d called Lake Henry wanting to do a story on her sister Lily, and Poppy had been the one to answer the police chief’s phone. Spunk. That was the first thing he’d sensed in her. Right off the bat, she’d shown spunk.
    I’m a freelance writer putting together a story on privacy for Vanity Fair, he’d said that day last September. I’m focusing on what happens when privacy is violated—the side effects to the people involved. I thought that the Lily Blake situation would fit right in. Lake Henry is her hometown. It occurs to me that people there may have thoughts about what’s happened to her.
    Damn right we do, Poppy had answered with feeling, and, that simply, he had felt refreshed. He liked her honesty. He liked her loyalty. The more obstinate she was, the more interested he became—and it wasn’t just a game, the love of the chase that drove some freelance writers on. He had felt something melt inside when he had seen her for the first time in that wheelchair. The goddamned thing was lightweight, state of the art—and turquoise. Turquoise. That alone was as much of a statement of who she was as her short dark hair.
    He’d had to cajole her before she agreed to let him take her to dinner, but they’d had an incredible time—had talked a steady stream for three straight hours.
    At least, he thought they’d had an incredible time. But when he had wanted to arrange for a follow-up, she resisted. She let the machine answer when he called, and when he finally reached her, she said that he really needed someone else.
    He knew what she