she’ll do. She signed papers allowing Ray Quinn to begin adoption proceedings, but he died before they were finalized. If she comes back and wants her son . . .” Anna shook her head. “The Quinns would have a fight on their hands.”
“You sound as though you’d be in their corner.”
“I’m in Seth’s,” Anna said firmly. “And I’m going to stay there. I spoke with his teachers.” She pulled out a file as she spoke. “I have my report on that. I’m going back today to speak with some of the neighbors, and hopefully to meet with all three of the Quinns. It may be possible to stop the temporary guardianship until I complete the initial study, but I’m inclined against it. That boy needs stability. He needs to feel wanted. And even if the Quinns only want him because of a promise, it’s more than he’s had before, I believe.”
Marilou took the file, set it aside. “I assigned this case to you because you don’t look just at the surface. And I sent you in cold because I wanted your take. Now I’ll tell you what I know about the Quinns.”
“You know them?”
“Anna, I was born and raised on the Shore.” She smiled, beautifully. It was a simple fact, but one she had great pride in. “Ray Quinn was one of my professors at college. I admired him tremendously. When I had my twoboys, Stella Quinn was their pediatrician until we moved to Princess Anne. We adored her.”
“When I was driving out there yesterday I kept wishing I’d had the chance to meet them.”
“They were exceptional people,” Marilou said simply. “Ordinary, even simple in some ways. And exceptional. Here’s a case in point,” she added, leaning back in her chair. “I graduated from college sixteen years ago. The three Quinns were teenagers. You heard stories now and again. Maybe they were a little wild, and people wondered why Ray and Stella had taken on half-grown men with bad tendencies. I was pregnant with Johnny, my first, working my butt off to get my degree, and help my husband, Ben, pay the rent. He was working two jobs. We wanted a better life for ourselves, and we sure as hell wanted one for the baby I was carrying.”
She paused, turned the double picture frame on her desk to a closer angle so that she could see her two young men smile out at her. “I wondered too. Figured they were crazy, or just playing at being Samaritans. Professor Quinn called me into his office one day. I’d missed a couple of classes. Had the worst case of morning sickness known to woman.”
It still made her grimace. “I swear I don’t understand how some women reminisce over that kind of thing. In any case, I thought he was going to recommend me dropping his class, which meant losing the credits toward my degree. With me an inch away—an inch away and I would be the first in my family with a college degree. I was ready to fight. Instead, he wanted to know what he could do to help. I was speechless.”
She smiled, remembering, then beamed over at Anna. “You know how impersonal college can be—the huge lectures where a student is just one more face in the crowd. But he’d noticed me. And he’d taken the time to find out something about my situation. I burst into tears. Hormones,” she said with a wry grin. “Well, he patted my hand, gave me some tissues, and let me cry it out. I wason a scholarship, and if my grades dropped or I blew a class, I could lose it. I only had one more semester. He said for me not to worry, we’d work it all out, and I was going to get my degree. He started talking, about this and that, to calm me down. He was telling me some story about teaching his son to drive. Made me laugh. It wasn’t until later, I realized he hadn’t been talking about one of the boys he’d taken in. Because that’s not what they were to him. They were his.”
A sucker for a happy ending, Anna sighed. “And you got your degree.”
“He made sure I did. I owe him for that. Which is why I didn’t tell you about
Under the Cover of the Moon (Cobblestone)