Читать книгу The Prodigal Cousin - Anna Adams - Страница 10

ELIZA PUSHED ASIDE the orange-leafed branch of a maple.

“I need to talk to you.” She glanced at her husband’s friend, who’d also risen. “Alone, if you don’t mind, Homer.”

“Let’s get a coffee,” Patrick said.

He was still holding her too tightly, almost hurting her, but she said nothing. This might be the last time he would touch her. Grass whipped around their ankles like grasping fingers until they stepped onto the sidewalk. Dimly, she noted cars and people and the chirping of a few hardy birds that hadn’t fled with the approach of cool weather.

At the crosswalk she stepped in front of a slow-moving vehicle whose driver hit his horn and his brakes, shouting insults she couldn’t hear.

“Damn out-of-towner.” Patrick yanked her closer. “What’s wrong with you, Eliza?”

She memorized every beloved line on his face, the concern in his warm green eyes. “I’ll tell you when we sit.” Even God couldn’t begrudge her a few more moments of her husband’s love.

Patrick stared. “You’re worrying me. Are you ill?”

“No—nothing like that. I’m… Let me tell you inside.”

He waited for her to precede him through the doors of the Train Depot Café. Over the years, they’d divided the work at the B and B so that she did most of the morning shift and Patrick manned the evening desk. Patrick spent the cold mornings of winter at the café with Homer and sometimes with his father, Seth. Eliza often joined them for a late breakfast. The café’s owner waved at them now as a signal that she’d bring their usual orders.

“Just coffee,” Patrick said, and Becky Waters nodded.

Patrick pulled a vinyl-upholstered chair away from one of the Formica tables. Eliza sat, avoiding her husband’s gaze until Becky brought their coffee.

“Tell me,” Patrick said.

The truth trembled on the tip of her tongue, astounding her with the promise of unexpected relief. Sam had been a hard secret to keep for forty years. She looked at her husband, but his wary eyes made her hesitate. “You won’t like it.”

“After twenty-seven years of marriage, what are you afraid to tell me?”

“You’re an honest man, Patrick, a blunt man.” Another of his friends strolled past, clapping him on the shoulder and greeting Eliza. The second he saw her face, he cut his welcome short and sped to his own table. She leaned across the Formica, lowering her voice. If she didn’t get this out now, she’d never say it. “I haven’t been honest.”

As if Patrick sensed the dangerous secret she was about to disclose, he leaned back, adding several inches of distance between them. The morning grew cooler. Desperate to keep her old life even as she forced her way into a new one, Eliza peered around at the walls. She cataloged the familiar menus and feed store advertisements, calendars that featured Jesus praying in the garden and others with scantily clad women sprawled on tractors.

This town had become her home. She’d have to leave if Patrick couldn’t accept her and Sam. She took a deep breath. How could she doubt her husband? Gary Masters, Sam’s birth father, had abandoned her to deal with consequences alone, but Patrick had always stood at her side.

“I did something I’m not proud of. Before I met you, when I was sixteen, I gave birth to a child.” That wasn’t what she meant. She wasn’t ashamed of Sam—though she had been ashamed, the smart young girl who’d gotten in trouble with a boy who’d almost immediately left her.

Patrick’s mouth opened on a sigh that might have been a groan. Eliza couldn’t stop.

“A son,” she said, “whom I gave up for adoption. My parents refused to help me. I went to a home for unwed mothers, but it wasn’t like what your mother and Sophie do for the girls at the Mom’s Place. I can’t tell you how awful—”

“What are you saying?”

“You have to listen to me.” He’d heard, but a blank expression betrayed his shock. She tried again. “I have a son. I gave him up—”

“I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“You have to.”

He wiped sweat off his upper lip. “That’s why you always slip Mom money.”

“You knew?” Her donations were supposed to have been her secret.

“Molly noticed. She thinks you do it because she was one of those girls. She gives her grandmother what she can as well.”

Eliza covered her face. “What will Molly think of me? What will this do to her? Me, falling off my pedestal.”

Patrick eyed her with the neutral expression he offered defendants in unwieldy court cases. “I was going to ask if you’d told her.”

“Not before I told you.” How could he think that?

“You’re so close I thought you might have…. What made you speak up after all this time? Certainly not an obligation to come clean.”

His unexpected taunt nearly strangled her. She left it hanging, poisonous in the air between them until she managed to gasp a short breath. “I wanted to tell you many times, but I’ve been afraid.”

“After lying to me all these years, you should fear the truth.” He sipped his coffee as they stopped being a couple and turned into two separate people.

“Sam is my son.” Best to tear the Band-Aid off in one quick motion. Screaming inside, she allowed herself no outward reaction to her husband’s hand falling limply from the table or to his eyes dulling in shock. “Nina and Tamsin are my granddaughters. Sam brought them because he was afraid they’d have no one else if something happened to him. I want to know them, Patrick.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sam?”

“Sam is my son.”

“Sam at the Dogwood, with the two little girls?”

“Patrick, are you all right?” Had she caused him to have a stroke or something?

“I’m lost. You had a baby, and the baby grew up to be Sam?”

“I need him. He thinks he wants something from me, but I’m getting a second chance I can’t turn down.”

“Even if it costs you Molly and me?”

“Patrick, Tamsin knows—and she needs us. Sam and his girls could have all of us.”

“I’m sorry about Tamsin, but I don’t see us as one big happy family.” As he straightened, he looked like a stranger. Patrick had never been a man who could withhold love for the sake of revenge, but his anger felt like hatred.

Her world splintered. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment, but she had no time for fear. She’d been afraid and given up Sam. Look where that had brought them.

“I can’t stand to lose you, but I can’t turn my back on my son again,” she stated. “Think of Tamsin. She troubled you, too. She needs a family’s love.”

“My family’s? How can I accept them? How can I even accept that you’ve hidden Sam’s existence?”

“Try to understand. I’ve missed Sam every day of his life, but I could never tell anyone.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You admired me because I came up here to the middle of nowhere to teach. You thought I was someone better than I’ve ever felt. How could I tell you?”

Her fear brought life back to Patrick’s eyes, but not forgiveness.

“I won’t speak for Molly.” Standing abruptly, he threw money on the table. “But I can’t fall in with this little change you’re making in our lives. You’re not the woman I married.”

“Where are you going?”

“You have no right to ask.” His cold gaze pronounced her guilty. “You never trusted me.”

Patrick rushed to the door of the café, stumbling against a table edge, bumping a rack of property rental magazines. Her heart broke. She pressed both hands to her chest as if she could catch the pieces.

Cast off again.

It hadn’t happened in such a long time, she didn’t know what to do. Cry or run after Patrick? Go to her son?

She couldn’t do either. She had to talk to Molly. The world spun crazily. How could she face disillusionment in her daughter’s eyes?

THE BALLOONS LAY in pieces on the floor. Molly swept them up, spreading a cloud of dust that smelled of wet children and dirty shoes and musty books.

A big splash of green balloon reminded her of Nina. The children in her class had written the letters they knew on their balloons. Earlier that morning Nina had written her name, and Sam’s and Tamsin’s with only a little help. She’d added Molly’s name, remembering it well enough to write it again after Molly had spelled it for her only once.

Moments like that reminded Molly why she loved to teach. Children who were eager to learn made the mind-dulling business sessions and the fight for funding, even in such a small school, worthwhile.

Her thoughts returned to Sam’s girls. Nina’s curiosity charmed the daylights out of her, but Tamsin’s Goth clothing and makeup alarmed her. In Nina’s big sister, Molly sensed the quiet desperation that had once been her constant companion.

Molly often wondered if her colleagues worried about their students’ home lives, but she never asked. Asking would expose one of those traits she wasn’t sure every woman shared. Where “normal” people assumed their friends, their families, even the children they taught lived in safety, Molly prepared herself for…not the worst, but not the best, either.

Eliza and Patrick had taken her into foster care after Eliza discovered that the dirty-haired, unkempt girl who’d once inhabited a corner of her classroom was “living” in an empty house on the edge of town. Molly had been alone for seven months by the time Eliza realized her so-called parents had abandoned her to live their separate lives in Knoxville.

After several inconvenient visits from Child Protective Services, Bonnie, Molly’s birth mother, and Mitch, her father, had been more than willing to give up their daughter. Eliza had made Molly feel special when the girl had wanted to hide in humiliation.

Molly had assumed no one could love her. Patrick and Eliza Calvert’s home had been paradise—a most unreliable situation so far in Molly’s short life. She’d tested her foster parents with behavior that horrified her in retrospect. But they’d kept loving her.

After the miscarriage, Patrick and Eliza had adopted her. In return for their kindness—and as penance for her own unforgivable mistakes— Molly had finally learned to consider every possible consequence before she made a move.

“Molly?”

She straightened, immediately alarmed. Tears had marked her mother’s cheeks. “Mom.” Aware only of an urge to fix whatever was bothering her mom, she crossed the room, taking her hands. “You’re crying.”

Eliza touched a lace hanky to one eye, smearing mascara. “A little. May I come in?”

“Why would you ask?” She forced a smile, but the floor seemed to tilt. She hated anything that hurt her mother.

Eliza floated into the classroom. She was still wearing the soft green dress she’d worn at breakfast, but a grease stain formed a circle just above her belted waist. Molly frowned. Her mom believed in the Southern tradition of chiffon and pearls for outside the house. She never wore grease.

“What’s wrong?”

Eliza sniffed the air, showing a sweet profile that only became more lovable to Molly with each passing day. “No more chalk dust. I miss it.”

Molly pointed at the long, shiny surface that had taken the chalkboard’s place. “Whiteboard. Smell the markers?”

“Not the same,” she declared, avoiding the real subject she’d come to talk about. She was starting to shake.

Molly negotiated a path through the wooden desks and helped her to a chair. “I’ll get you some water. What have you been doing?”

“I hardly know. I’ve walked and thought, and now I need to talk. I don’t want water.” With a sudden return of strength, Eliza pushed her into the closest seat. “Let me tell you about myself.”

“What?” Adrenaline lifted Molly’s voice several decibels. Something bad was coming. She gripped her mom’s hands again, reminding herself not to crush the delicate bones. “You’re scaring me.”

“Your father’s furious.”

“Daddy?” She was eight years old again. In the way. Totally expendable. “What’s happened?” For some reason, she thought of Sophie’s mother. Aunt Nita’s affair had nearly destroyed Sophie and Uncle Ethan, but Molly’s mother would never have an affair. Not this mother, anyway. The one who’d cut all ties with her would have considered an affair small potatoes.

“It’s Sam,” her mom said. “And me—and something I did when I was a young girl.”

“Sam?” Molly’s mind went blank. “What does Sam have to do with you?

“I’ve kept the truth from you and your father.” She licked her dry lips. Molly wanted to get her that water, but she couldn’t make her feet move.

“What did you ever do that you’d have to hide?” Suddenly, Sam’s eyes, dark, watchful and worried looking, swam in Molly’s mind. He’d reminded her of her mom. That fast, Molly knew. She’d also been pregnant too young. If any woman on earth had lived a life that prepared her to accept her mother’s confession, Molly had.

But her image of Eliza left no room for such a mistake, and shock blunted her good intentions. “I can’t…I can’t believe you, of all people—”

“He’s my son.” Despair filled her mother’s voice instead of joy.

To Molly, Eliza had been the fairy godmother who’d spirited her out of life’s wreckage. Eliza Calvert had abandoned a child? Never.

A hint of distaste must have shown on Molly’s face, but she’d been an abandoned child herself. She couldn’t contain her feelings or stop herself from showing them.

Even as her mother pushed back from her, Molly found restraint. Whatever Eliza had done, Molly owed her for the only happiness she’d ever known. She had to let her mother explain.

Eliza’s cold hands felt devoid of life. Molly chafed them, dropping to her knees. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“You looked as if you hated me.”

Molly swallowed tears. “I’m scared.” Who knew what came next?

“I didn’t want to give him up. He’s my child—just as you are. But I didn’t know how to give him a life. Please understand.”

“I do.” She couldn’t imagine being able to make the same decision, but this was her turn to give back a little of the support she counted on from her mom. “But why are you sad? I’d give anything to have a second chance with the child I lost.”

Hope entered her mother’s eyes as Molly fought the innate dread of what Sam’s prodigal homecoming meant for her. He was her mom’s real son, born of her body. Her natural child, as Molly never could be. And he’d brought her Tamsin and Nina. Molly would never give her parents grandchildren.

“Can you forgive me this easily?” With a quiver in her voice, Eliza sounded as frightened as Molly had ever been. “Or are you turning yourself into the family protector again?”

“Do you know what I owe you?” Molly continued rubbing her mom’s hands. “I carry my past like a lead weight. I’ll never have anything to forgive you for.”

Her mother’s astonishment surprised Molly. “I don’t want you to forgive me because of some imaginary debt,” Eliza said. “And I thought we didn’t worry about your past anymore.”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t talk about it because you want me to forget, but some of my decisions don’t seem forgivable.”

“Is that how you see me?”

She shook her head, loyalty adding emphasis to her denial. The somewhat terrifying news that Sam belonged to her mom didn’t make Eliza any less of a good and loving mother. “What happened?” Molly asked.

“I wish your father had waited for an explanation.” She pulled one hand free to cover her mouth. Over her fingers and her wedding ring, her eyes looked blacker than ever.

“Last night Sam’s eyes reminded me of yours.” Molly patted her mother’s other hand and let her go. “Don’t worry, Mom. Dad’s probably stunned.”

“I have to tell you—he walked out on me.”

The room began a slow whirl. It was the one possibility she couldn’t bear. “No.” She searched in frightening darkness for comforting words. “You know Dad. He has to deliberate, but he loves you. He’ll walk right back in, ready to listen.”

Tears glittered in her mother’s eyes, brighter than the burnished gold of her wedding band. “A woman who can hold such harmful grudges against herself shouldn’t be able to believe the best of someone else.”

“I haven’t lived with you and Dad for seventeen years without getting to know you.”

“You can’t say that about me now.”

“I am surprised.” She pictured Sam, tall and lean and dark. The widowed father of two children. No one’s idea of a brand-new son. “What does he want? Why did he come?” Then she remembered what he’d said about his wife and parents. “He’s worried about Tamsin and Nina,” she said. “He wants us to be their family.”

Her mother scooted the small chair back and stood. “How did you guess?”

Molly returned to gathering balloon detritus. “I’d feel the same.” She shuddered, thinking of Tamsin and Nina being alone as she had been until Eliza Calvert had discovered the truth about her. “Was he adopted at birth?”

“Yes. I agreed not to get in touch with his family and I never learned their names.” Her mother plucked a ragged blue strip of balloon off the floor and passed it to Molly with an absent smile. “Can you be his sister? I think he needs us, Molly. He needs our normality.”

His sister? The idea repelled her. “I’m twenty-five—too old for a brother.” She’d never think of Sam as a brother.

“I don’t see why.”

Then Eliza hadn’t taken a good look at Sam last night. Molly gnawed the inside of her lower lip. She hadn’t noticed Sam for his fraternal qualities, and she couldn’t look at him that way now. Not even for her mom. “I’ll do my part.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.” Her mother knelt to pull a tangle of balloon bits from under a group of four desks pushed together. “You want to hold back, but our new family won’t work unless you accept him and the girls.”

“I don’t even have to think about accepting them.” She’d welcome Jack the Ripper if her mother asked her to. “But one big happy family? Sam, as a brother, seems odd to me.”

Eliza curved her hands around Molly’s wrists. “I need you to try. You are his sister now.”

Desperation in her mother’s tone and fingers made Molly smile without responding to her demands. “What about Dad?”

“I don’t know.” Eliza sank onto one of the desks. “He said he doesn’t know me, and I got the feeling he might not want to.”

“After he understands, he’ll bend over backward.” Molly dropped the balloon bits into the garbage can. “He already learned to love me because of you. He knows how this works.”

“Are you crazy?” Eliza snorted, the only unladylike sound she’d ever made, and Molly couldn’t help laughing. Her mom took Molly’s shoulders in her hands. “No one learned to love you. Your father and I couldn’t love you more if we’d brought you home from the hospital the day you were born, as I wish I could have done with both my children.”

Staring into her mother’s eyes, Molly longed to believe, without doubt, just once in her life. Words were so easy to say. Bonnie, who’d abandoned her in every way a human being could abandon her child, had said words like that. But now, as then, words weren’t enough.

Molly’s inability to trust gave her sympathy for her adoptive father. A firm defender of justice, he might not know how to stop feeling betrayed.

But she hugged her mom. “Why don’t we ask the girls and Sam to come apple-picking this weekend?” Honestly, it was the last thing she wanted. Apple-picking at Gran’s was her favorite family gathering, and she was childishly unwilling to share.

Her dad and Zach always fired up the deep fryer for apple fritters. Her mom and Aunt Beth and Grandpa led the smaller children in a pagan march of gratitude among the fruit-laden trees. Best of all, everyone shouted gossip and news between the heavy branches and then ate potluck lunch until they slumped to the ground, overfull of good food and family feeling.

Three more pickers would lose themselves among the teeming Calverts. Sam and Tamsin and Nina couldn’t ask for a less stressful introduction to their new family.

Eliza’s grateful tears made Molly both proud and guilty. Her mom hugged her again—a quick squeeze that reminded Molly that Sam might have a place in her mother’s heart, but she owned a corner already.

“Thanks, honey. I knew I could count on you.”

Smiling hurt, but for her mom’s sake Molly had to welcome Sam into her territory.

“DAD, I think Mr. Calvert’s leaving.”

As Tamsin opened the door, Sam looked up, and the ball he and Nina had been tossing hit him in the knees. Nina collapsed in giggles.

“Why do you say that?”

“I was reading on a bench in the square, and I saw him pack his car and drive off.”

Sam stared at her. First, she hadn’t asked if she could leave the Dogwood. Second, she should have told him about Patrick before he’d driven away. Last, Sam had managed to ruin Eliza’s marriage, the last thing he’d meant to do. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. He’s really gone?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.”

“Have you seen Eliza?”

“No. I was surprised she wasn’t with him.”

“Where’s Mr. Patrick going?” Nina asked.

“I don’t know, sweetie. Tamsin, why didn’t you tell me when you saw him packing?”

“I’m not his keeper.” Tamsin looked blank.

Annoying, but she was right. Keeping up with Patrick Calvert after her own father had ruined the man’s life wasn’t her responsibility. “Will you look after Nina?”

“If I don’t have to drink fake tea with that lizard and Judy.”

“Ooh, tea.” Nina danced toward her sister. “Let’s play tea party. I’ll go get everyone.”

“Yeah,” Tamsin said, meaning the opposite. She scooped the ball off the ground and tossed it at her sister. “Let’s play with this.”

“Nina, play catch with Tamsin, or maybe try out the swings over in the side yard.” Sam withstood a wave of guilt. He couldn’t take back the truth now, but he hadn’t meant to hurt Eliza or her family. A vision of Molly flashed in his mind. His guilt doubled. “I won’t be gone long, Tamsin. I just want to find Eliza.”

“All right, but she may want to be alone.”

Naturally, his daughter considered him to be the most inept human being ever called upon to offer comfort. He’d done her little good over the past year and a half.

He punched a small, silver bell on the reception desk. No one came. He called Eliza’s name. Tapping the scarred, polished wood, he waited a minute or so.

Finally, he circled the desk and opened the door behind it. The dark hall was empty. He’d almost hoped Eliza would be hiding there, reluctant to talk.

“Eliza?” The hall emptied into the wide kitchen, which didn’t feel half as welcoming without his birth mother and his daughters there. And Molly, but he could hardly bear to think of what he’d done to her.

Molly might try to look hard, but she hadn’t been able to conceal her tenderness with Nina or her concern for Tamsin last night.

He turned toward the stairs. Somewhere up there lay his birth mother’s room, but he had no right to climb those stairs uninvited.

He’d caused the havoc in this home, and he should try to fix it if he could. Forcing himself up the stairs, he wondered what to say if he found Eliza.

He knocked on the first two doors. Silence met him.

At the third door, he knocked again and Eliza immediately opened it.

“He’s my son. I have nothing else to say, Pat—” She backed up, her eyes red from crying. She pushed her fingers beneath each eye and looked away. “Oh. I thought you were my husband.”

“He left you?”

“Wouldn’t you if you found out your wife had lied to you the whole time you’d known her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I never told him about you.”

He understood. Fiona had lied at first. She’d thought he wouldn’t want to date her if he knew about the condition that had prompted so many prospective parents to leave her at the orphanage. But he’d fallen in love with her.

He managed a hesitant smile. “I’d forgive her once she explained.”

Eliza turned, covering her eyes again. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem.”

“It is. I came hoping Tamsin and Nina might be part of a family, but if I’ve already ruined yours, I’ll leave.”

“You won’t.” Eliza turned. “Now that I know about you, you aren’t going anywhere and you aren’t taking my granddaughters.” He must have looked startled, because she laughed at his expression. “I don’t make the same mistake twice, Sam.”

“I have a conscience.”

“So do I.”

Her conscience made his decision harder. “I don’t want to stay because you feel you should make up for the past.” He straightened. “I had a good life.”