A possibility ran swiftly through his mind. An unlikely one, but… He’d just come across the name Fletcher. His new client. S. Fletcher. It couldn’t be. Could it?

“Hey,” Tina said, snapping her fingers an inch from his nose. “Where were you just now?”

“Remembering a few things,” he answered. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, and it was starting to worry him.

Tina’s face softened as she regarded Cord. “Like what?”

“Never mind,” Cord replied. “Did you ask Carly about the money and the laptop?”

“Of course I didn’t. I had no business snooping through her stuff. I said I’d do her laundry, not invade her privacy.”

“Her privacy,” Cord repeated. “But if we’re going to figure out what’s going on with her, if we’re going to help her, we need more information than she’s been willing to give us so far.” He paused, considering. “Suppose Carly wanted you to see what was in that backpack? Why else would she have let you near it?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Tina admitted. She looked so serious, and so funny in that crazy getup, Cord had to suppress a laugh.

“If I ask any questions, she’ll know I snooped. She’d never trust me after this. She might even run away.”

“Or she might be relieved that you took the cue, hoping you’d care enough to confront her.”

“I don’t know,” Tina fretted. “My girls would’ve been furious if I’d rummaged through their belongings the way I did Carly’s.”

“Your girls had a mother and a father and a solid, loving home. They were happy, confident kids. They probably never gave you any reason to check out their stuff.”

“My daughters weren’t angels,” Tina pointed out, most likely in the interests of modesty, but Cord could tell she thought they came close, and he would have agreed.

“Take some credit, will you?” Cord teased, with a grin. “You and Mitch were good parents. You paid attention. Set rules. Loved your kids without spoiling them.” He took a sip from his mug. “They were lucky to have you, and vice versa.”

Tina sighed. “It wasn’t easy, you know,” she said softly. “Girls—especially when puberty arrives—are never easy.”

“True,” Cord allowed, thinking, not for the first time, how much he liked and respected this woman and her decent, hardworking husband. “But if my grandparents were here, they might just point out that raising boys is no picnic, either.”

“I miss them,” Tina replied, standing, smoothing her bathrobe with both hands, suddenly self-conscious. “Mimi taught me how to cook and clean and raise children. I didn’t know beans about being a wife and mother when I married Mitch. And Bill was like a father to me—the father I never had.”