She grimaced. “What’s the point? I won’t sleep for hours.”
“Can I come in then?”
She studied me, as if trying to discern why I was here.
“I need to apologize,” I said, hoping that would get me in the door.
Her brows shot up. Then she opened the door all the way, turned, and walked farther into her apartment. I stepped across the threshold, taking that to be as much of an invitation as I was going to get, and followed her deeper, past closed doors on either side.
Once past the doors, we went through another door as Magnolia explained the others were Dotty’s storage for the shop below. This door led to her studio apartment.
There was a bathroom immediately on the left. Once you got past it, the main room contained a kitchen area with a dining table for two, a double bed, a sitting area with a love seat and two easy chairs flanking a faux fireplace, and a compact desk. The furniture looked old, but she’d decorated the whole place with a colorful floral theme, from a blanket on the back of the sofa and her bedding, to a rug in the desk area and gauzy curtain panels on the two windows.
When I returned my attention to her, she’d pulled a Lily Pad sweatshirt over her tank.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said as she leaned against the kitchen counter.
“What am I thinking?”
“My apartment could fit in the laundry room of the house I grew up in.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been in the house you grew up in, but I was thinking this is cozy and you have good taste. Girly but good.”
She grinned. “Flowers don’t have to be girly.”
“Addie would love it,” I said.
“Your daughter, right?”
Nodding, I said, “The more colors something has, the more she likes it.”
She straightened and her grin disappeared. “What did you want to talk about, Luke?”
“Could we sit?”
She gestured to the sitting area, so I sat on one end of the love seat. Magnolia took the chair across from me.
I leaned forward and fumbled around for what I wanted to say. “Last week in your office… I’m sorry I hurried out. That was a lot to process.”
“Tell me about it,” she muttered.
“I can’t even imagine what you went through after your mom’s visit.”
“An entire shift in identity basically.”
I tried to fathom what it would be like to find out, in your mid-thirties, that one of your parents wasn’t actually your biological parent. “Did your mother tell you who your father is?” I’d been so caught up in other parts of what she’d told me that I hadn’t wondered before now.
“Jimmy,” she said flippantly. “Magical, unforgettable Jimmy, whose last name she didn’t get.”
I straightened. “Just…Jimmy? She doesn’t know more than that?”
“I imagine she knows a few very personal details about Jimmy, but nothing to help me track down the man whose DNA I share.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you plan to search for him?” I didn’t know if that was possible with genealogy sites or some other means.
Magnolia shook her head. “I don’t believe I will. It’s such a long shot. I’m sure any search service would be pricey anyway. I’m just overjoyed to know it’s not Felix. That’s enough for me.”
My thoughts got caught up in her situation for a bit before I remembered why I was there. I stood, paced a few steps until it registered that I was standing at the edge of her bed. I pivoted and went to the empty chair next to her and sat again.
