“Afraid not. They were both arrested on drug charges a while back. Hook pled guilty and served a year in prison, but the charges against Dani were dropped,” he explained.
“What does this have to do with anything that’s going on now?” I asked. It was an interesting coincidence, but I really didn’t care about Dani’s troubles.
“Rumor has it Dani got pregnant so she’d be able to serve her time in a special facility for pregnant inmates.”
“Say what now?”
“But then the charges against her were dropped, and Hook was released early,” he continued and slid a piece of paper across his desk to me.
I picked it up and could not believe what I was seeing. It was a printout of Kalen’s birth records. With Daniella Summers listed as the birth mother of Kalen Summers.
“He’s my niece’s son?” I blurted.
“It looks that way.”
“This doesn’t make any sense. Why would she abandon him with Ben?”
“If you do the math, she got pregnant after Hook was sentenced, so there’s no way Kalen is his son,” Copper said.
And suddenly, it all made sense. “She used Ben to get pregnant, then had to get rid of the baby before Hook found out what she did.”
Copper nodded. “It’s all speculation, but that’d be my guess.”
“My mother called me a few weeks ago and asked me to help her find Dani. She said no one had seen or heard from her in over a month. Two detectives came by the gym asking about Dani after she filed a missing persons report,” I told him. “But that can’t be right if Dani is Kalen’s mother. Ben said she dropped Kalen off a few days before he passed him off to Blakely. And that happened after Dani supposedly went missing.”
“Did your mother know about Ben or the baby?” he asked.
“I really don’t know, but I suppose I could ask her.”
“I don’t see why you need to. Whether she did or didn’t won’t change anything as far as we’re concerned,” he said.
“True. So, what now?” I asked.
“Now, you go explain all this to Blakely while I wait to hear back from Boar. He’s setting up a meeting with whoever is taking Hook’s place. Once that’s set, we’ll go have a word. There’s nothing to do until then,” he said.
“Thanks, Prez,” I said and headed back to my room.
Blakely took one look at my face and knew something wasn’t right. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I assured her and took a seat beside her on the bed. “Copper wanted Spazz to do some more research on Hook before we meet with RFG just to make sure there aren’t any surprises we don’t know about. And it was a good thing he did, because Spazz found quite the surprise.”
“What did he find?” she asked anxiously.
I didn’t know how to break it to her gently, partially because I was still in shock myself. So, I just blurted it out. “My niece is Kalen’s mother.”
“What?!” she shouted. “Your niece? The one that’s missing?”
“That’d be the one,” I nodded. “Apparently, she intentionally got pregnant when she thought she was going to have to serve time in prison so she could be placed in a facility for pregnant inmates.”
“Is that even a thing?” she asked.
“Yeah, it is. Some places will even let the mother keep the baby with her for up to a year, sometimes longer,” I explained.
“So, how did I end up with Kalen? And where the hell is she now?”
“Since Hook couldn’t be Kalen’s father, we’re assuming she gave Kalen to Ben when Hook was released from prison to keep him from finding out she had a baby with someone else. And for her whereabouts, as far as I know, she’s still a missing person.”
“This is…I don’t even know what word to use to describe what this is,” she said.
