Lindsey glanced at the frames. There were only two, one of her parents and one of her brother.

“Brother, actually,” she said. “Jack.”

“So, you’re single?” Kitty asked. “I figured, but it’s good to have it confirmed.”

Lindsey glanced down at her desk. She and Sully hadn’t been going together long enough to make the framed photo shelf. The thought depressed her.

She sat down and Kitty took the seat opposite her desk.

Kitty examined her water bottle as if trying to determine whether or not it had been tampered with.

“I would not poison you,” Lindsey said. “I promise.”

Kitty met her gaze and seemed to make up her mind. She uncapped the bottle and took a long sip.

“So, why did you send the little cutie pie over to my house instead of coming yourself?” Kitty asked.

“Beth,” Lindsey emphasized her name, “wanted to go. She made the argument that you might talk more freely with her than with me.”

“Why would I talk to her or you?” Kitty asked. “Robbie’s past is no one’s business. It needs to stay in the past.”

“So you knew he had a son?” Lindsey asked.

“He had a child,” Kitty said. “It was the result of a crazy love affair in his youth.”

“Robbie was almost twenty,” Lindsey said. “The child would be eighteen in a matter of weeks.”

“How do you know that?” Kitty was clutching the water bottle in her hands so tight that her knuckles were turning white.

“The sun tattoo on his arm has the child’s birth date in it,” Lindsey said. “Sun meaning a son.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kitty scoffed. It sounded forced. “The child was given up for adoption as soon as it was born. He never even laid eyes on it. He doesn’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

“But there was a child born on that day,” Lindsey pressed.

“No. I don’t know,” Kitty said. “You’d have to contact the mother. Oh, that’s right: you can’t, because no one knows who she is.”

“Susan Dalton,” Lindsey said.

Kitty’s jaw dropped open.

“Really not that hard to figure out if you do some research,” Lindsey said. “She was an American soap opera star and Robbie’s girlfriend for six months. The child was born about five months after their breakup.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s the mother,” Kitty protested. “It could be that she found out he’d fathered a child with someone else and dumped him.”

“Yeah, but I looked up the story line of her soap opera and her character in particular. Funny how her character was written as being pregnant at the same time the mother of Robbie’s child would have been, don’t you think?”

“I think librarians have too much time on their hands,” Kitty snapped.