Читать книгу The Prodigal Cousin - Anna Adams - Страница 9

THAT NIGHT NINA WAS SO exhausted, she slumped against the bathroom cabinet as Sam washed her hands and face and then helped her brush her teeth. She was asleep before he tucked her and Judy into the little bed. He turned off the light and closed her door except for a thin wedge of space. Bad dreams woke her most nights, and he wanted to make sure he heard if she called.

It was still early. Barely nine o’clock, according to the art deco clock on the mantel. Glancing at Tamsin’s closed door, he crossed to his open window and looked out on the verdant garden Eliza and Molly had discussed during dinner. According to her proud daughter, Eliza had a green thumb. Apparently, she could nurture anything except a son.

He shook his head, ashamed of being unfair. There was more to her story than his investigator had uncovered. Sam had the facts, but Eliza’s motivation remained a mystery. Not that it mattered anymore. Finding out why she’d given him up had once been a priority, but now he just needed her to be a loving grandmother to his daughters.

Movement near a lamp below drew his gaze. It was Molly, sitting on a stone wall. As if she felt him staring, she glanced up. He nearly backed out of sight, but he was tired of hiding. Tomorrow, when the B and B was quiet, he’d tell Eliza the truth. She could decide what came next, but he looked forward to being honest.

Not that his act had succeeded. Molly’s silences had grown more speculative as trout and vegetables progressed to fruit and cheese for the adults and Tamsin, and a dish of homemade chocolate ice cream for Nina. More streetwise than her parents, Molly had recognized his interest in Eliza—and in her.

She’d decided to stay here tonight because of him, and he didn’t blame her. He’d gone to dramatic lengths to find protection for his family.

Sam turned his back on her and the compelling view of moon and darkness over the courthouse square, and knocked on Tamsin’s door.

“Yeah?”

Close enough to “Come in.” With her knees up beneath the fluffy comforter, she was reading. Her face devoid of makeup, her dark hair in a ponytail, she looked so much like his little girl that she filled an ache in his heart.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Tired.” She set down her book and reached for the nightstand lamp.

“Wait. I’m serious.” He’d almost said “concerned.” That would have been a mistake. “You didn’t say much at dinner.”

“Who can get in a word with Nina babbling?” A soft tone betrayed love for her sister, despite her harsh question.

“I know you’re unsure about being here.”

“Because you’re about to spring us on a woman who didn’t want you?”

He refused to back down. He should have come alone, but since the accident, he’d feared losing his girls every time they left his sight. Besides, once Tamsin had snooped through his papers, she’d known the worst.

“Honey, I have no other family. If something happened to me—” He broke off, and Tamsin swallowed hard. They’d both learned death arrived in an unsuspecting second. “If something happened to me, you and Nina would be put in state care. If Eliza regrets a decision she made at sixteen, you’ll gain more family than either of us could imagine.”

“We have friends in Savannah, Dad.”

Wrong. He’d cultivated colleagues. Fiona had made friends. He’d been so intent on perfecting procedures to keep a sick heart alive, he’d managed to forget that humans needed less tangible sustenance, too.

“I don’t know anyone well enough to trust them with your future.”

She twisted her sweet young face into a scowl of contempt. “But you figure we’ll be able to trust strangers who suddenly find out we exist?”

“I trust blood,” he said, unable to explain that his adoptive mother had loved him but had held back, still longing for a child of her own. He’d only known such ties with Tamsin and Nina, and nothing short of death could ever part him from them. “You’re predisposed to love the people who share your blood.”

“No, you are. Other adopted kids get along just fine without launching a sneak attack on the people who didn’t want them.”

“You’re talking out of pride, which I can’t afford. I need to give you and Nina someone else to depend on.”

“These people treat strangers like family. They deserve better.”

“I’m not too proud of myself right now, but nothing changes our situation.” His smile hurt. “If Eliza doesn’t want us, we’ll go home, and I’ll pray we stumble across friends who’d make good substitute parents.”

“Only you would look at it that way. We might as well take out personal ads.”

“What do you know about personal ads?” He kissed her head. Stubbornly, she slid away. She wanted her mom. No one else would do.

“I’m no kid, you know.”

Since her mother’s death she’d tried to separate herself, as if she could lose him or Nina with less grief if she stopped caring about them. Sam figured that if he kept proving he’d love her no matter what, she’d eventually realize that loving was still safe. He started toward his room, and she turned off the light before he reached their adjoining door.

“’Night, Tamsin. I love you.”

“Uh-huh.”

He left her door open about an inch, too, and she didn’t shut it.

The next morning he woke the girls in time for a late breakfast. Tamsin claimed she wasn’t hungry. To her disgust, he checked her for a temperature, but let her go back to sleep.

After a quick bath, he wrestled Nina’s long blond hair into a sad-looking braid. Fortunately, she was still too young to care that his surgeon’s hands were useless for styling hair. Unless she was too grown-up at five to hurt his feelings. He kissed her cheek.

“Hungry?”

She nodded, head-butting him, and he stood, eyes watering as he rubbed his nose.

“Tamsin, we’ll bring ya something.” Nina tore out of the room and down the hall ahead of him. He caught her before she reached the stairs.

“The dining room, today,” he said. “We have to be invited to use the kitchen.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

At the bottom, they found Eliza carrying a heavy tray from the kitchen. Sam took it.

“Thanks.” She inspected them, clearly looking for his older daughter. “Where’s Tamsin?”

“She chose sleep over breakfast.”

“Molly was the same at her age. Trout or the breakfast platter for you two?” She beamed at Nina. “We have plenty.”

“Two slices of bacon and a scrambled egg for Nina,” Sam said, “and I’d like the trout again.”

“Great.” She pointed at a couple just inside the room. A baby lay in a stroller next to the blond woman. “The tray goes to them. Sophie, Ian, this is Sam Lockwood and his daughter Nina.”

The man stood, reaching for the tray as he nodded a greeting. Sophie shook Sam’s hand and then patted Nina’s shoulder.

“Good morning,” she said. “Aunt Eliza mentioned you’d checked in yesterday evening. First time in the Smokies?”

“Yeah, so we’re going for a long walk if my sister wakes up.” Nina had a future as a society page columnist. “Can I look at your baby?”

“Sure. Her name is Chloe.” Sophie pulled back the blankets so Nina could examine the infant.

“What brings you here?” Ian asked. “We’re out of the way.”

“A brochure.” A lie this late seemed pointless, but Eliza might need the cover if she sent them home. “One of my patients had it, and I thought my daughters might enjoy the mountains.”

“You’re a doctor?” Ian glanced at Sophie, who was completely absorbed in Nina and the pink-swathed baby. “So is my wife. An OB-GYN.”

“I’m a cardiologist,” Sam said.

Sophie looked up with interest. “You wouldn’t be looking for a change of pace?”

He smiled blandly, not understanding.

“She’s always thinking of work.” Ian grimaced. “Sophie and a few other physicians from the surrounding area are opening a clinic in town and they’re still scouting for staff.”

His wife looked regretful. “I don’t suppose we’d have the facilities you’re used to.”

Sam didn’t suppose Tamsin would survive even talk of a permanent move. She’d made him promise not to think of it, and Nina, coming in on the tail end of that battle, had chimed in, though she’d really had no clue what they were arguing about. “I’m settled in Savannah.”

“I love Savannah.” Eliza stopped herself before she said more, but Sam pressed his advantage.

“You’ve been there often?”

Her blush was as good as a confession. “I grew up there, but when I graduated from college in Knoxville, I answered an ad for a teacher’s position here. In fact, I used to teach kindergarten and first grade in our little school, just like Molly. Then I met Patrick, and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Sam tried to laugh with the others, but her lighthearted recovery hurt a little. He hadn’t tempted her to keep him. His children might not tempt her to want them, either.

“What’s the big girl doing out there?” Nina pointed at Molly, who was out in the garden with her back to the window, leaning over a tall, gray tank.

“Blowing up balloons.” Eliza smoothed Nina’s braid with her palm, unconsciously trying to tidy it. “She needs them for school today.”

Nina latched on to Sam’s hand. “I want to go to school, Daddy.” She turned to Sophie. “I can write my name, and I can make numbers up to ten.”

Sam let her swing from his arms. “She’s been badgering me to let her go to ‘big kid’ school for the past year. You can’t go today, Nina. We’re hiking, remember?”

“I wanna do balloons with the big girl!”

Heading off her tantrum, Sam smiled an apology at Sophie, Ian and Eliza, and guided his suddenly weeping daughter toward a back table. As he settled her in a chair, Eliza appeared at his elbow, offering a small square whiteboard and a couple of markers.

“I thought she might like these.”

“Thanks.” He took them, searching her gaze. A thoughtful woman planned ahead for young customers—a kind woman gave them markers that could destroy her furniture. He handed the board and markers to Nina. “Thank Mrs. Calvert.”

“Thank you,” Nina said through a haze of tears. She grabbed her napkin and wiped her nose, and Sam stared, appalled. Fiona had instilled a deeper respect for linen in her daughters.

Eliza misunderstood his dismay. “Don’t worry. I’ll get her a clean one. And then bacon and eggs. Do you like cheese with your eggs, Nina?”

Up and down went her head. A wisp of hair fell out of her braid and poked her eye. Sam hooked it away with his little finger. With a fortifying smile at both of them, Eliza hugged Nina and hurried back to the kitchen.

“No more crying, Nina, okay?” He sat across from her, and she nodded, sniffing back the last of her tears.

“But I wanna go to school. I like balloons.”

“You don’t have to go to school to play with balloons. We’ll find one in town.”

“The big girl has better ones.”

“Her name is Miss Calvert.”

“I thought that was her mommy’s name.”

He gave up. “Just try calling her Miss Calvert when you see her.”

As they waited for their breakfast, Nina taught him to write her name and then speedily learned how to write his. Every so often, he followed his daughter’s glance to the garden, where Molly was stuffing filled balloons into large white plastic bags.

Strands of dark red curls slipped over Molly’s shoulder, lifting with the same breeze that wrapped her long, feminine skirt around her legs. Sam returned his attention to his child.

Eliza brought their breakfast about the time Sophie went out to the garden and distracted Molly from the balloons. Ian took their baby out to join them, and Nina finally lost interest enough to eat. At least until Sophie and Ian left and Molly returned to her work.

“Can I go out, Daddy?”

“I’ll come with you.” She might try to climb into one of the bags. Holding her hand, he led her through the garden door.

Outside, Molly looked up, flustered, her skin pink from battling the slippery balloons.

He liked her happy smile for Nina. He couldn’t look away from the faint sheen of moisture on her cheekbones and throat. Sixteen months alone, and his mother’s daughter had to be the one woman who reminded him he was a man.

“Hi, Nina.” Finally, Molly looked at Sam, who wished he could backpedal to the house. “Children can’t resist these things.” She tied a knot in a bright yellow one. “The machine broke two balloons ago, and I still have to blow up a few more.”

“I’ll help.”

“I’ll manage.” She peered through the window at his full plate. He hadn’t finished a meal since the day he’d become a single parent. “Eat,” Molly said. “If Nina blows one of these up, she can keep it.”

Nina clapped her hands. “Daddy?”

He stared, speechless with guilt. If Molly looked after Nina, he’d be free to explain everything to Eliza. The plan might stink for Molly, but it helped him.

“She’s fine.” Molly’s too-neutral tone betrayed her wish that he leave. He didn’t have time to diagnose her motives. She’d offered him a better opportunity to talk to Eliza than he could have hoped for. No one else ever had to know anything if Eliza rejected him.

“Thanks.” He knelt beside Nina on the damp grass. “Don’t get in Miss Calvert’s way, and if she leaves, come back inside.” With a lick of his finger, he rubbed a smudge of cheese off his daughter’s nose while she wrestled for freedom.

“I’m all right, Daddy.”

He hoped she would be—that Eliza and her family would accept Nina and Tamsin even if they resented him. His own parents had loved him, but they hadn’t been good at the expansive, arms-wide affection the Calverts offered even to guests.

Standing, he brushed grass off his knees. “Thanks again, Molly.” Emotion unexpectedly deepened his voice, making her curious and him uncomfortable.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He found Eliza alone in the dining room, standing beside his plate. “You’re not hungry?”

“I am.” He couldn’t choke down even a swallow of coffee, but he sat, hoping to make her stay. She eased around the table to watch the woman and girl outside.

“Nina’s a lovely child. You’re obviously doing a good job with her.”

Neither of them mentioned Tamsin, his greater worry.

He filled up his coffee cup from the carafe on his table. “She’s latched on to Molly. She might be a nuisance.”

Eliza shook her head. “Molly’s wonderful with children.” How could she remain blind to his rising tension? “She’s a patient teacher, creative, eager to get involved. Her students feel how much she cares for them.” Eliza broke off with a nervous laugh. “I’m proud of her.”

“Naturally.” He left the table to stand beside her at the window. “You have no other children?”

“No.” Her lack of hesitation slashed like a knife.

A nice, clean wound. It would heal.

“I’m afraid I have to disagree with you, Mrs. Calvert.”

She didn’t answer. Her silence lasted so long Sam finally checked to see if she’d fainted. She was rooted at his side on the patterned rug of her cozy dining room.

He would remember this moment for the rest of his life—the smell of fried bacon and rich coffee, the tick of a grandfather clock that guarded the far corner, the slight tang of a fire that had burned to ashes the night before.

And Eliza Calvert, trapped in stillness like a photo of herself. His wound might take a little longer to heal than he’d estimated.

“Who are you?” She closed her eyes for the briefest moment. “Don’t answer. I know. Since last night, I’ve tried to remember who you remind me of, but now I know. I’ve wondered about you for so long—wondered if you’d show up, if you hated me, if you were happy.” She jerked her head toward the window, and he followed her gaze, watching Molly hand Nina a fat green balloon. “I wondered if you had children of your own.”

“I don’t know what to say.” He couldn’t tell from her delicate, frozen features what she felt. “I couldn’t locate my birth father.”

She took a deep breath. “Neither could I. He told me he wanted to help, that he wanted you even if he couldn’t marry me. He came along to my first doctor’s appointment—the day before he and his family left town in the middle of the night. He wanted to be a lawyer—kind of ironic when you consider I eventually married a judge. His mother wanted a good career for him and his father refused to let him pay for my sins. I guess they didn’t think I was the proper appendage for him…. But I shouldn’t tell you this.” She looked horrified. “You don’t want to know about—”

“I want the truth.” He pivoted toward the window, ashamed that his birth father had discarded her. Nina and Molly were drawing on the green balloon with a dark blue marker. “I came because of the girls.” He took a deep breath, hiding grief that still squeezed his heart. “When my wife and parents died, I realized Tamsin and Nina would have no one else if I…weren’t around.”

“So you want me to…”

She stopped, and Sam turned his head to look at her, tempted to take the trembling hand she’d raised to her mouth the way he would comfort a patient to whom he’d given bad news. But she wasn’t a patient.

He dropped his hands. He was a stranger. He couldn’t comfort her. She felt no attachment to him.

“I won’t ask for anything. I’m offering you the chance to know Nina and Tamsin.”

“And you.” Joy flashed in her eyes, giving him a second’s astounding relief. In the time it took him to feel disloyal to his adoptive parents, Eliza’s joy changed to panic. “Do the girls know?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Does it matter?” At her openmouthed groan, he relented. “Tamsin knows. She found the file.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.” She pressed her hand to her throat, staring over his shoulder. “Or my husband. Molly…”

He empathized, though sudden anger shook him. Even at his age he wanted Tamsin and Nina and him to matter most. But he was no child. Eliza’s concern for her present family meant she was a loving woman. She had the right to turn him away. She’d arranged for him to have a healthy, happy life. She’d done all a sixteen-year-old girl could do.

“Were you happy?” she asked.

Meeting her tumultuous gaze, he considered lying. He couldn’t. He’d lied enough to last a lifetime. “Happy, yes, but my parents had tried to have their own child for years. My mother told me once that she’d heard a lot of people had babies after they adopted. She expected to get pregnant as soon as they took me. Naturally, she was disappointed when she didn’t, but I think they were afraid to give everything to me. They wanted something left over for their real child.”

Eliza frowned. “Adoption is a strange fertility treatment.”

He wasn’t capable of saying anything else against his adoptive mother. “Being infertile wasn’t just a medical condition for her.” Her restraint had colored his father’s feelings for him. Sam couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t been as grateful as most adoptive parents to have a baby.

He nodded toward the garden. “You must have wanted a child, too.”

“You know we adopted her?”

“I hired a detective.”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

Not the wholehearted effort to help that he’d hoped for. If he was going to stay in touch with this family for the sake of his daughters, he had to know they could love Tamsin and Nina with a generosity his adoptive parents had never achieved.

Eliza’s mouth quivered, apprehension obviously chipping away at any joy. “I can’t explain about Molly until I talk to her.” She backed away from him. “And to my husband. I never told Patrick….”

With a muffled cry, she turned and left the room. Sam didn’t try to stop her. He just listened to her low heels thudding up the stairs.

As they faded, Tamsin appeared in the doorway.

“Well?” she said. “Are you happy now?”

“Where were you?”

“I bumped into her. I guess she wants us.”

He wasn’t so sure. “Are you angry?”

As she shook her head, tears filled her eyes, terrifying him. She’d cried for weeks after Fiona’s death, but her silence ever since had been harder to take. He steeled himself to tackle whatever Tamsin needed him to handle.

“Honey, we don’t have to stay.” He reached for her, and she didn’t fight for once. “If you want to leave, we’ll go.”

“I want my mom. I want my grandpa and grandma and my mom.”

She fell on him, and her sobs broke his heart. No fifteen-year-old girl should ever have to learn the true meaning of forever. His own loss lodged in his throat. No one should have to feel this way.

He stroked Tamsin’s head and held her, praying Nina wouldn’t walk in. Tamsin’s grief unsettled her sister almost more than their mother’s death. To Nina, Fiona’s absence was as confusing as it was painful, but her longing came in nightmares that worsened when she was afraid for her sister.

“Tamsin, I’ve been trying to make things better for you.”

“You think these people can take Mom’s place?”

“No one will ever replace your mom. Not for you and Nina. Not for me. I just wanted to give you family, but if you don’t want that, we’ll go. You and Nina matter most.”

“Then why did you drag us here?”

“If I’d realized you thought I was trying to replace your mother and grandparents, I wouldn’t have.”

“Daddy.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders the way she had when she was Nina’s age. “Sometimes I think I’m falling apart.”

Sometimes he feared he was, too. “You’re fine, Tamsin. You’ve had to face too much for a girl your age, and I’ve made you remember it again.”

IN HER ROOM, Eliza ran to the window on thick carpet that dragged at her feet. She bumped her head against a pane of wavy glass that distorted her view of Molly and Nina. Finally, another figure joined them. Sam.

He leaned down to speak to his daughter. His parents had taught him to be a good father. Forty years of living without her son filled Eliza’s eyes with hot tears of resentment toward that couple who hadn’t loved him the way they’d promised to.

She should have been the one to teach him everything. She should have changed his diapers and walked the floor with him when he was sick at night, and listened to his stories of school days and sports and whatever else boys shared with their mothers.

A sob threatened to escape. She’d never know those things—unless she found a way to include her son now. How many times had she daydreamed about contacting his adoptive parents, begging for news of him?

But she’d chained herself into a corner. Her parents had ousted her from their home when she’d asked for help with her pregnancy. She’d finished her GED while she was in a home for unwed mothers, waiting for Sam’s birth. From there, she’d worked her way through the University of Tennessee.

After she’d started teaching in Bardill’s Ridge, she’d met Patrick, an ambitious attorney on his way to being a judge, like his father. She’d believed he couldn’t love a woman like her, so she’d never told him about her past.

How could she tell Patrick the truth now? He valued his position, the respect people here held him in, the mornings he spent “jawing” with his friends about how to improve county government. She couldn’t admit she’d come here to pay penance in a needy school.

How could she explain to Molly, who’d worshipped her as though she were a saint?

Eliza pressed her fists to the chilled glass. She could not abandon her son—even grown—a second time.

She’d made the right decision for Sam. But what would her husband say when she told him she’d regretted letting someone else care for her baby? What she’d done had been right for Sam but wrong for her. She’d wanted him back every day since she’d placed him in a sweet-smelling nurse’s starchy-stiff arms.

She needed him far more than he needed her. She wanted to be his mother, to try to ease the pain that drove a young man to believe he needed backup in case his daughters lost him.

She had to tell Patrick first, and then Molly. Sam needed her, too, and she wasn’t capable of putting him out of her heart again.

For the first time since they’d opened the bed and breakfast, Eliza left dishes in the sink and snuck out the kitchen door.

She found her husband in his usual late-morning spot on the bench across the square from the courthouse. From there, he and Homer Tinsdale got a clear view of every miscreant—both the members of the legal profession and their clients—who set foot inside the building.

Patrick stood, alarmed the second he saw her. She’d never been good at hiding her emotions. He grabbed her by both arms, his fingers biting into her skin. “What’s wrong?”

She wanted to blurt “My son found me,” but she loved her husband and couldn’t bludgeon him with the truth in front of his friend.