Free Father to Be by Marilyn Pappano

all.”
    “I
am
the best psychiatrist in town.”
    “The
only
one.”
    “I was the best psychiatrist in Chicago.” He said itmildly, without arrogance. He didn’t need arrogance when it was true.
    “Then why did you come here?”
    For an instant the air in the room grew heavier, damn near impossible to breathe, and faraway screams—his own—echoed in his ears. But his hands didn’t knot into fists, his expression didn’t change at all, and his voice sounded normal when he gave the lie he’d put together before he’d ever left the city. “I like small-town living. I wanted a slower pace, to know my neighbors, to have time for the things that are important. I wanted less crime, smaller crowds, and less traffic. Do you know that at the height of rush hour, you can get anywhere in Bethlehem in less than six minutes?”
    “I didn’t know that.” She was good at that dry, sarcasm-laced delivery. It both annoyed and amused him. “But back to the problem at hand, Dr. Grayson.”
    “The only problem seems to be you, Ms. Malone.”
    Kelsey wanted to grind her teeth, to throw something, to let out one great, frustrated scream. She felt stupid even trying to explain, but try she did. “I cannot leave those children with you. You’ve had no background investigation. There’s been no interview. Your house is too small. You have a full-time job. You can’t be available for the children whenever they need you. You’re not married. We know nothing—”
    The rest of the words fled her brain as she opened a single manila folder. It contained all the initial documentation a caseworker could expect to find on a prospective foster parent.
    And the name on the tab was J. D. Grayson.
    How was that possible? She had thumbed through these files in Mary Therese’s office and there’d been no file on Dr. Grayson. But here it was, in black and white—financial records, job history, confirmation of no criminal recordfrom the sheriff’s department. He’d been born in Philadelphia, raised in Boston, and graduated from Harvard, and no one had a negative thing to say about him. Not the hospital administrator, the chief of staff, various hospital and school staff members, the school superintendent, his pastor, or his neighbors.
    “What is it?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he pulled the folder from her hands and flipped through the pages. “It’s a background check. You heard the deputy say Noelle asked for a criminal history. It’s logical to assume she was also looking at everything else.”
    “If she was a social worker.”
    His gesture was impatient. “The fact that you don’t know her doesn’t mean she isn’t. You said yourself you were new. You just got into town—when?”
    “Yesterday.”
    “And you were in the office yesterday afternoon? Jeez, don’t you have a life?” Without giving her a chance to respond, he went on. “Maybe she used to work for Mary Therese and filled in this weekend as a favor. Maybe she works in some other social services office and was in Bethlehem on a visit. Maybe—”
    He ran out of
maybes
because one of his two suggestions was most likely correct, Kelsey acknowledged with a sinking feeling. After all, what was the alternative? That someone was impersonating a social worker? That someone playing a convoluted game of let’s pretend knew exactly what was needed to get those children placed in a home? Noelle had done everything Kelsey would have done—except start with the preapproved parents before moving on to someone else. She’d conducted all the right interviews, asked all the right questions, gotten all the right background information.
    And she hadn’t benefitted personally. It wasn’t as ifshe’d tried to take the kids herself. She’d simply seen to it that they were placed in a proper home as quickly as possible, which would have been Kelsey’s own goal. And, judging by all the personal endorsements in Dr. Grayson’s file, she’d made a good