High-Calibre Christmas. B.J. Daniels

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СКАЧАТЬ new. He didn’t want to know what his mother might have kept from him, and the last thing he wanted was to have to bury both his mother and uncle.

      Bracing himself, he opened his door and got out. It was one of those clear, incredibly blue, sunny days that Montana was famous for in the fall. A blessing of a day, because it was November. Within hours it could be snowing and cold.

      Jace breathed in the smell of autumn and realized he’d forgotten this scent that was as unique as this part of Montana.

      At the dispatcher’s office, he was told that the sheriff was in her office. He found it down the hall.

      “I guess I have been gone a long time,” Jace said when he saw McCall Winchester behind the desk wearing a sheriff’s uniform. “A woman sheriff in Whitehorse?” Let alone a Winchester. Although he didn’t voice that sentiment, McCall picked up on it.

      “No one else wanted the job.” She smiled as she got to her feet and held out her hand. He and McCall had gone to high school together, though she was a few years behind him.

      “We’ve been looking for you,” she said after shaking his hand and offering him a seat. “I’m sorry about your mother’s passing and your uncle Audie’s.”

      “I know mother’s was cancer, but Audie?” he asked, getting right to the point.

      “Quite a bit has been going on,” McCall said and hesitated. “Your uncle took his own life.”

      Jace sat back, although this didn’t come as a complete surprise. “I knew that it would be hard on him without my mother, but …”

      “There was a little more to it than that.” The sheriff shifted in her seat.

      “Just hit me with it,” he said, afraid it had something to do with his mother’s letter—and her alleged secret.

      “Actually, it goes back thirty years,” McCall said. “Back to the night you were born. There was another baby born within minutes of you.”

      A chill snaked up his spine. “You aren’t going to tell me that the babies somehow got switched by mistake.”

      “No. Not by mistake.”

      He laughed, shaking his head. This was not happening. He’d tried to imagine what his mother could have possibly had to tell him. Never in all his imagination could he have conjured up this.

      “You’re telling me Marie wasn’t my mother?”

      The sheriff nodded.

      “Then who the hell—”

      “The other woman in labor that night was Virginia Winchester.”

      “Bull,” he said pushing to his feet.

      “I know this is hard to hear.”

      “You have no idea.”

      McCall smiled at that. “Oh, I think I might be the one person in town who really does understand. I went for twenty-seven years wondering who I was.”

      Jace knew what she was saying was true. She’d been like the true black sheep of the family, since no one in the Winchester branch of the family tree acknowledged that she even existed.

      “Virginia Winchester?” he said, trying to calm down.

      “My aunt. She was pregnant with Jordan McCormick’s son. Virginia’s been gone the past twenty-seven years and has only recently returned to town.”

      So he was the child of Virginia Winchester and Jordan McCormick. “They weren’t married?”

      She shook her head. “Jordan’s mother was against the relationship. There has always been bad blood between the Winchesters and McCormicks. I have no idea why. But Joanna McCormick was afraid that once the baby was born, her son Jordan would marry my aunt. That is apparently why she paid a woman posing as a nurse to switch the babies.”

      Jace shook his head in disbelief. “What happened to my mother’s … Marie’s baby?”

      “Marie had a difficult pregnancy, and an even more difficult labor, apparently,” McCall said. “At her advanced age, she knew the risks. From what I’ve found out, she was lucky that the pregnancy didn’t kill her. As it was, her baby died two days after it was born.”

      He closed his eyes, thinking of all the times his mother had told him about how badly she’d wanted a baby, how hard it had been and how lucky she was to get him. She’d known the babies had been switched. Maybe not at first, but later …

      “I’m sorry, Jace, but Joanna McCormick confessed. So did your uncle.”

      His eyes flew open. “My uncle?”

      “It’s complicated,” she said and waited for him to lower himself back into his chair. “I can only tell you what we’ve been able to piece together from the last people to see Audie alive. Thirty years ago, he’d been dating a woman posing as a nurse. He knew she was going to switch the babies and obviously must have known that Marie’s baby wasn’t doing well. We don’t believe he knew that Joanna McCormick had already paid the woman to make the switch. When she changed her mind and switched the babies back, he …”

      Jace felt his heart drop. “No.”

      “He killed her and switched the babies. I’m sure he did it because he knew it was his sister’s last chance to have a baby. Unfortunately the woman’s sister—”

      “He killed her, as well?”

      McCall nodded.

      Jace was on his feet again, pacing the floor. He raked a hand through this thick, dark hair and swore.

      “This isn’t possible.” Jace felt sick. He couldn’t quit thinking about all the times his mother had told him that he’d been a blessing from God. Well, not exactly a blessing from God, as it turned out. “You have any proof of this?”

      “Because it became a criminal investigation, the baby Virginia Winchester buried was exhumed. DNA tests confirmed that the child was Marie Dennison’s.”

      Jace looked away. “Did my mother know?”

      “It all came out after she died,” McCall said. “I don’t think she knew what her brother had done.”

      Or she’d known from that moment thirty years ago when a nurse had put the baby in her arms—and said nothing?

      Jace hated to think how long she had known he wasn’t the son she’d conceived. Long enough that she’d wanted to tell him before she died, of that he was certain.

      “This is really a hell of a thing to drop on someone,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with this information?”

      McCall shook her head. “Virginia Winchester is your mother. What you decide to do with the information is up to you.”

      He rubbed a hand over his face.

      “She’s staying out at СКАЧАТЬ