“You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Jorik. The girls are either yours or they’re not.”

Mat decided it was time to go on the offensive. “Maybe you’d better explain why this is such a mess. Sandy’s been dead for six weeks, so why did you just get around to letting me know about it?”

“Because I didn’t find out myself until a few days ago. I took some diplomas into the frame shop where she’d been working and heard what had happened. Although I’m her attorney, I hadn’t been informed.”

Mat considered it something of a miracle that Sandy’d had an attorney, let alone that she’d bothered to make out a will.

“I went to the house right away and spoke to the older girl. She said a neighbor had been watching them, but there was no neighbor in sight. I’ve been back twice and still haven’t seen any sign of adult supervision.” He tapped his yellow pad and seemed to be thinking aloud. “If you’re not going to take responsibility, I’ll have to call Child and Youth Services so the girls can be picked up and put into foster care.”

Old memories sifted over Mat like steeltown soot. He reminded himself that there were lots of wonderful foster parents, and the chances of Sandy’s kids ending up with a family like the Havlovs were slim. The Havlovs had lived next door when Mat was growing up. The father was chronically unemployed, and the family survived by taking in foster kids, then neglected them so badly that Mat’s grandmother and her friends had ended up feeding and bandaging them.

He realized he needed to concentrate on his own legal entanglement instead of past history. If he didn’t get this paternity issue straightened out right now, it could hang over his head for months, maybe longer. “Hold off on that phone call for a couple of hours until I check things out.”

The attorney looked relieved, but all Mat intended to do was grab both kids and take them to a lab before they got turned over to social services and he had to deal with red tape.

Only as he followed the directions the attorney gave him to Sandy’s house did he remember his ex-wife’s mother. She’d been relatively young, as he recalled, and a widow. He’d just met her once, but she’d been impressive—a college professor out in Missouri or someplace who seemed to have little in common with her wild daughter.