Читать книгу A Mom For His Daughter - Jean Gordon C. - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Lost in her thoughts, Fiona almost missed the turn into the Hazardtown Community Church parking lot. Meeting with Pastor Connor seemed like a good idea. Marc had contacted her all businesslike on Monday with a couple items his partners wanted to include in the contract between the research farm and the restaurant partnership. Then he’d tackled the elephant in the room with an invitation to talk with him and Pastor Connor tonight about her claim that Stella was her niece.

Stepping from her car, she kicked a muddy chunk of snow out of her path. She knew in her heart that the little girl was her niece. And she had no intention of contesting Stella’s adoption. After her failure with Mairi, she didn’t want the responsibility of Stella, only to be part of her extended family.

Fiona walked into the church, the door closing behind her with a soft thud. The pastor’s office was almost directly in front of her, as Marc had told her on the phone. Or she assumed it was the pastor’s office. The door was open, but she didn’t see anyone, only a desk with a computer and some bookshelves.

She stood in the doorway bumping her knee against her briefcase. It was nearly six thirty, the time they’d set. She knew she was in the right place. Marc had given her the choice of meeting at the pastor’s office here or at his home. When he’d mentioned that the pastor was his brother-in-law, she’d hesitated before deciding they’d be on more equal grounds at the church. Fiona smoothed the wrinkles from the skirt of her green linen dress.

Or maybe not. From what she’d seen, Marc and his family were active in the church. While Fiona considered herself a believer, she hadn’t attended any church regularly since she’d worked in Guam, and then it was more because most of her neighbors and the people she worked with attended services than any real compulsion to be part of a church community.

“Here’s the video of him and Natalie.”

A male voice sounded from behind an almost closed door at the back of the room. A door that at first glance had appeared to lead to a closet. But it had a sign: Pastor’s Office.

“I’ve got one of Stella on the rug in the church hallway this morning after preschool, showing me how she learned to do a somersault.”

Marc. Fiona crossed the outer office toward the men’s chuckles, hungry to see the video of Stella. She stopped herself from barging in and knocked on the door instead.

“Come in,” Pastor Connor said.

She pushed the door open.

“Hi. Take a seat. Marc and I were kid-video warring.”

He handed her his phone as she took the chair next to Marc, facing the desk.

“My son, Luc,” he said, “dancing to my wife’s piano playing.”

The toddler in the video stole her voice for a minute. He was a miniature Marc. “Cute.” She smiled and handed back the phone.

“Obviously, he takes after Natalie’s side of the family, but that’s certainly not a bad thing.”

Another Delacroix sister. Fiona glanced sideways at Marc. No, not a bad thing at all.

“For you, it’s a good thing.” Marc razzed his brother-in-law. “You should be grateful.”

Fiona repositioned herself in her chair, unsettled by the easy back-and-forth between the two men and uncertain that Marc and Connor’s apparent closeness was a good thing for her, if Connor was going to mediate. “So, what did you have in the competition?” she asked, turning to Marc in an effort to join the friendly banter.

He tilted his head, looking confused. “Oh.” He followed her gaze to his phone. “A video of Stella doing a somersault.” He made no move to share it.

She swallowed away the painful tightness in her throat and focused her attention on Pastor Connor.

“Let’s begin with prayer.” He reached his hands across the desk to her and Marc.

Marc took her hand as if it were the perfectly natural thing to do. Maybe it was for them. They were family. She tightened her jaw and curved her fingers around Marc’s hand. She was Stella’s family, too.

“Dear Lord, be with us this evening and, with Your infinite wisdom, give Marc and Fiona and myself the guidance we need to do Your will. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

“Amen,” she whispered, lifting her head when the men released her hands.

“I talked with the lawyer who handled Stella’s adoption,” Marc said, moving a folder from his left to front and center on the desk. “Copies of all of the documents are here.”

“Wait.” Pastor Connor laid his palm on top of the folder. “I have a good idea of what you want out of this meeting, Marc. I need to know what Fiona wants. Then we can get to details.”

“First and foremost, stability.” Fiona paused. “My mother moved us around a lot, looking for something better that she never found. She died when I was nineteen and Mairi was fifteen.” She faltered, not used to talking about her family. “I’m only asking for a part in Stella’s life as her aunt. I don’t want to contest the adoption. I have no doubt it’s valid or that Stella is where she’s supposed to be.”

Marc’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “You said you had proof Stella’s your niece.”

Connor frowned at the interruption.

“I do.” Fiona lifted her case onto the desktop. “I’ve made copies of everything I have. But I think this is the proof you want.” She lifted the papers from the case and placed them in front of Marc with a photo of Mairi at three and her at seven on top.

He sucked in a breath.

Fiona had felt the same sucker punch when she’d gotten out the battered family photo album Friday after her appointment with Autumn. There was no way anyone could deny the family resemblance.

She’d claimed the album as a child. It had come with her when, after her stepfather had left, her mother had dragged Fiona, Mairi and their baby sister, Elsbeth, all over northern Vermont and New Hampshire from each promised new start to the next. She’d brought it with her when she and Mairi had moved to Ithaca after their mother’s fatal accident, so Fiona could attend college. And the album had made the trip to Guam and back.

She cleared her throat. “Certified copies of my, Mairi’s and Stella’s birth certificates and the Ticonderoga Birthing Center’s record of Stella’s birth,” she said for Pastor Connor’s benefit.

“Where did you get the birth certificate for Stella?” Marc asked. “My understanding is that her original one is in the sealed records at the adoption agency.”

“I don’t know about that. The certificate I have was in an envelope addressed to me with a letter my sister never sent.” Fiona stopped so her voice wouldn’t crack. “I had no idea until I received a package from the lawyer I hired to settle Mairi’s estate. It came the day after we met at the farm.”

The masculine planes of Marc’s face softened. He tapped Stella’s certificate with his finger. “Stella was only eight weeks old when she was placed with us. Your sister couldn’t have kept her long.”

“About a month, according to the information Autumn Hanlon gave me.” Fiona bit her lip. She had no idea where her sister had been for that month. Mairi had checked into the cabin where she died only the evening before. “I think Mairi may have intended to give her baby up for adoption all along, just wanted a little time with her first.”

“You think?”

“She didn’t confide in me.” Fiona’s stomach tightened. Mairi had probably been afraid she’d be disappointed in her, as her letter seemed to say. Fiona had been so strident about neither one of them ending up like their mother. “I didn’t know about Stella.”

Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Over nine months’ time, I think I would have noticed if any of my sisters were pregnant.”

“Marc,” Pastor Connor cautioned.

“During Mairi’s pregnancy, I was in Guam managing the USDA farm there.” She pinned Marc with a gaze. “You know that from my professional profile I gave you. Mairi and I talked and emailed, but after she drove me to the airport for my flight to Tamuning...” She closed her eyes. This time, she couldn’t swallow the emotion that clogged her throat. “I never saw her alive again.”

A warm male hand covered hers, and her eyes flew open to Pastor Connor pushing away from the desk. It was Marc’s hand, giving her hope that despite his antagonism, they could work something out.

“I’ll get you some water,” Pastor Connor said. He left the office.

Marc’s hand tightened on hers. “I’m sorry I was so rude. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Fiona allowed herself to take comfort from his strength and wonder what it would be like to have a man like Marc care for her.

He removed his hand from hers. “I can’t imagine how I’d handle it if it had been one of my siblings. That’s when you came back to the US?”

“I came back for a couple weeks when the authorities contacted me, and then finished my contract in Guam.” She didn’t need to tell him now that her sister had used a false name to rent the cabin, nor how long Mairi had lain in the morgue as a Jane Doe until she could be identified from her fingerprints on record for her nursing license, and while Fiona was located.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked.

“We get together again to work out details.” He sounded as drained as she was.

“I’m willing to work with your lawyer, to put together something official.”

“No, I was thinking along the lines of telling the rest of the family, introducing you to them and Stella. You haven’t really met her, except the other day at the doctor’s office. We’re going to have to handle Stella’s getting to know you carefully.” He dropped his gaze to his hands on the desk. “Since Cate, my wife, died, Stella has verged on being hostile toward women with light-colored hair, who remind her of her mother.”

Had Marc emphasized mother, or had that been her nerves triggering her imagination? On Friday, Stella had clung to Marc and hidden behind his leg, but she hadn’t been hostile. Or was that Fiona’s longing coloring her perception?

Pastor Connor placed a cup of water in front of her. “You two can work out meeting the family and whatever other details you think are necessary. But I have a recommendation to help Stella adjust.”

Hope rose in Fiona.

Pastor Connor met her gaze, then Marc’s. “It’s what I’d do if she were mine.”

* * *

Marc folded the last of the clothes from the dryer and walked into the living room to wake Stella from her nap. He and Stella and Fiona were all going to go to the introductory meeting of his sister Renee’s new toddlers Bridges group tomorrow morning. As far as he could tell from his sister’s enthusiastic description and the literature she’d given him, Bridges was a program for broken families.

He sighed. He guessed that’s what he and Stella were, and he was feeling it more since Fiona had dropped her bombshell.

Marc ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t had any other choice but to agree to have Stella participate in the group, not after the way Fiona’s face had lit up when Connor had couched his recommendation for Stella in such a personal way. And he’d given into Connor’s other suggestion that he and Fiona try the Bridges groups for parents that Renee’s supervisor at the Christian Action Coalition was starting. For Fiona. He’d been there, done that already with grief counseling.

Agreeing had given him some breathing room, time to investigate Fiona as much as he could. Before they’d left Connor’s office, he and Fiona had agreed to put off getting together until after the Bridges meeting. Tonight he was taking his mom and dad out for a Friday fish fry to update them.

Looking down at his daughter’s sleeping face, her long red-brown lashes resting on her plump baby cheeks, he hated to disturb her. Were Fiona’s lashes red-brown, too? He couldn’t recall.

“Stella, sweetpea.” Marc touched her shoulder and she blinked her eyes open. Eyes that were the same golden hazel as Fiona’s. “Time to wake and go to Aunt Natalie and Uncle Connor’s house to play with Luc.”

Stella sat up. “Luc? Luc at school. Stella go to school?”

He took her wanting to go back to preschool after spending the morning there as a positive sign. While Stella hadn’t resisted going, she hadn’t talked much about school, either, even when he’d prompted her. So he didn’t know whether she liked playing with the other kids or how she’d react to going to Renee’s group.

“No, not school. Aunt Natalie and Uncle Connor’s to play with Luc,” Marc repeated. “Remember? I told you when I picked you up at school? Daddy has a meeting.”

Stella nodded and climbed off the couch. “Burgers and ice cream.”

He laughed. “Yes, you guys are going out for hamburgers. I didn’t know about the ice cream.”

His daughter nodded emphatically. “Ice cream. Stella’s ready.”

Looking at her bedhead mop of curls, Marc laughed with love and wonder that God had given him such a treasure, a treasure he wanted to feel secure enough about that he could share her with Fiona.

“Let me brush your hair first.”

“’Rette?” Stella asked.

“Sure. I can put a barrette in it.”

He got her ready and over to the parsonage with plenty of time to spare to drive to the restaurant in Schroon Lake where he was meeting his parents.

“Give Daddy kisses.”

Stella bussed his cheek, and he rubbed noses with her before he placed her down in the parsonage kitchen.

“You be a good girl for Aunt Natalie.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. Stella had never stayed with Nat before, but she obviously liked her cousin Luc, and the restaurant where he was meeting his parents wasn’t far from the parsonage or the Paradox Lake General Store, where Natalie and Connor were taking the kids.

“Stella good girl. Big girl.” She stood tall as if trying to match the height of her slightly younger, but taller cousin.

“All right, then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Daddy come back.”

Was that a quaver in her voice? No, she seemed okay.

“We’ll be fine,” Natalie said.

His sister probably knew better than him. He grimaced. Even as Stella’s only parent for a good part of her life, with his long work hours in New York, he was sure he’d spent less physical time with Stella than Natalie had with Luc.

“Let us know how it goes,” Connor added.

Marc gave him a noncommittal nod and left.

His parents’ car was already parked in front of the restaurant when he drove up. The dashboard clock said he was ten minutes early, right on time for his scheduled plan to be there first, get a booth and have the upper hand from the start. But he hadn’t accounted for Dad’s philosophy that being on time was being fifteen minutes early. He pulled into a space a ways down the street and walked to the restaurant.

“Good evening,” said a waitress who looked familiar, but he couldn’t place. “Find a seat and I’ll be right with you.”

“Marc,” his mother called from the booth where he’d already spotted them.

The waitress smiled and handed him a menu.

“Thanks,” he said, finally recognizing her as someone who’d been a few years behind him in high school. Marc walked to the booth and slid into the seat across from his parents.

“So,” his mother said, “what’s the big news that merits you treating us to a meal you’re not cooking? Did you get the revitalization grant for La Table Frais?”

“Terry,” his dad cautioned. “Let the man catch a breath and look at the menu.”

“All right. You know, you could have brought Stella.” His mother glanced around the restaurant at the numerous families with children.

“I know, but I thought it would be nice to have an adult dinner with you.”

His father tapped the menu on the table in front of him. “I’m going to have the fish fry special.”

“Me, too,” Marc said.

“Guys, did you even look at the other specials?” his mother asked.

“Why would I, when I came in knowing what I want?” his father answered.

Marc laughed. This was an ongoing dialogue between his parents that went back as far as he could remember.

The waitress came and took their orders, and they had their food in front of them in no time.

Marc pressed the side of his fork through the tip of his battered fried fillet. It was time for his announcement. The prospect took him back to high school, the day he told his parents he wanted to study culinary arts in college and not farm management, that he didn’t want to be part of John Delacroix and Sons. Dad had mellowed a lot since then. But what he had to say tonight would hit Mom harder.

Marc cleared his throat. “I met a woman, a friend of Claire’s, one of her coworkers.”

“Oh.” His mother’s eyes brightened.

Bad start. “A business meeting. Fiona Bryce. She’s the new farm-to-table liaison.”

His father nodded. “I read about that program and her hiring in the Times of Ti. She’s a Cornell grad, like Claire.”

“Yes, a couple years behind Claire,” Marc said. One of the things he’d found in his online search about Fiona. “Claire suggested Fiona and I talk about how she can work with me, setting up connections with local food producers.”

“Do it,” his father encouraged. “The Cornell people know what they’re doing.”

His father’s words frustrated him. It wasn’t that Dad wasn’t proud of him graduating from the Culinary Institute or his youngest sister from the University at Albany, but he was inordinately proud of Claire and Marc’s younger brother, Paul, being Cornell graduates. His father had wanted to go to Cornell, but for financial and family reasons had settled for a two-year degree in dairy production and management from a state college.

“I already have a contract.” Fiona had wasted no time emailing it to him. “My partners are reviewing it. But there’s something else I want to tell you about Fiona.”

Both of his parents stopped eating and looked at him, his mother’s brow creased with concern.

Had it been something in his voice? “It’s nothing bad.” At least I hope it’s not. “I mean, it’s good. I wanted to tell you first because it affects the whole family.”

His mother made a show of wiping her hands on her napkin and placing it back on her lap. “You’re interested in this woman enough to want to tell us? You just met her.”

“No, not in the way you’re thinking.” Although his thoughts had gone in that direction, too—until Fiona’s claim to Stella had turned his world upside down. Marc gripped the table edge as if that would give him the extra boost of strength he needed. “Fiona is Stella’s biological aunt.”

The tension in his muscles went into overtime while he waited for their reaction.

“Is that what she told you?” his mother asked.

“Told and showed me. Stella’s birth mother, Fiona’s sister, is dead. Fiona had a copy of Stella’s original birth certificate and the Ticonderoga Birthing Center’s record of Stella’s birth, among other things. I talked with Autumn. She delivered Stella, and the birthing center released her to Precious in His Sight when Fiona’s sister returned with her a few weeks later to give her up for adoption.”

“You can’t let this woman take Stella from us.”

Red spots flashed in front of his eyes. “Fiona says she simply wants to be an aunt to Stella.”

“And you believe her? What do you know about the woman?”

“Terry.” His father placed his hand over his mother’s, the note of warning in his voice loud and clear.

Well, to Marc, at least. He wasn’t so sure about his mother.

“It was a sealed adoption,” Marc said. “I talked with the lawyer who handled it. Fiona has no legal grounds to contest it.”

“I see,” his father said.

“But what do you know about her?” his mother repeated.

Marc bit his tongue. Should he have prepared a dossier? “She’s Claire’s friend, and I haven’t found anything in my searching that shows she’s anything other than what she says. And now we can know more about Stella’s medical history if we ever need to, and answer her questions when she’s older and starts asking.” He faced his father. “You know I’d protect Stella with my life.”

His father nodded, understanding showing in his eyes.

“You can’t mean to just bring her into your...our family,” his mother said.

Marc sensed a tone of almost fear in her voice. Mom was always so open and giving. When he was growing up, their house had been a haven to any of their friends needing one.

“Stella isn’t ready to be told who Fiona is,” he said. “We’ll be working on that in the Bridges program.”

“This Fiona is going to be part of that?” his mother asked.

“Yes, we talked with Connor about it Wednesday evening.”

“You’ve known since Wednesday?” His mother pressed her lips together.

He wasn’t about to admit that he’d known in his gut for a week, since Fiona had told him on the phone. “All three of us are going to the Bridges meeting tomorrow, and I plan to invite Fiona to Sunday dinner at the house.”

He hadn’t actually planned to, not until this minute. But something inside him wanted to crack his mother’s uncharacteristically stony facade, to open her up to the family accepting Fiona.

Because, he realized suddenly, he wanted to accept her.