Their Secret Child Read online

  She said, "If someone had told me two weeks ago I'd be preparing food in your kitchen, I would've laughed in their face."

  He spread mustard on the bread. "Me, too. But..."

  She shot him a look. "What?"

  "I thought about it. A Lot." Among other things.

  "You thought of me in your kitchen." A statement edged in skepticism.

  "Is it so hard to imagine? We had a history, Addie." Since moving into this house, he'd pictured her in every room. And at night in his bedroom, on his king-size sleigh bed. Between the sheets. With him.

  She laughed softly. "History. That's one way of putting it. A man with your connections must have a lot of history over the years."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "That I don't believe you ever gave me a thought." With a chef's efficiency, the tomato slices fell like dominoes from her fingers. "Every time you were on TV you had different eye candy on your arm." She shook her head. "God, I can't believe I said that after what you just told me about your wife. Forgive me. I'm not thinking clearly at the moment."

  Her cell phone chimed a Beethoven serenade and Skip let out a slow breath. He'd been saved from explaining her incorrect interpretation about Becky's mother and his "wife."

  Addie pulled the phone from her belt, flipped it open, checked the caller. "Hey, Kat."

  Skip watched her walk across the kitchen to the patio doors facing the backyard, where night had rolled in, a black shroud.

  "Yeah," she said to her sister. "Wind blew a tree into the house. The pickup's ready for the junkyard... Hmm... Well, Mom's a worrywart." Long pause. "Uh-huh... Not going to happen... Because, it's not, that's why." Another pause. "Look, I'll talk to you tomorrow... I'd rather you didn't... Because—" she hissed, and Skip imagined Kat's topic of conversation. Him.

  "It's none of anyone's business," Addie went on. "Okay, stop right there... No... Goodbye. Kat. And tell Lee I'm fine. No need to call." She released a soft snort and snapped the phone shut.

  "Problems?" he asked, layering lettuce on the bread.

  "Nothing I can't deal with."

  Interpretation: he was nothing to worry about.

  "It's nice to have family concerned about you." He said it mildly, and thought of his mother living alone, a mother with whom he'd been semiestranged for thirteen years. If it hadn't been for Becky. Skip would've left things the way they were and not bought this property eight months ago.

  "Depends on the concern." Addie's dark eyes held a past not forgotten or forgiven: parental interference that cost them their child.

  "But now it's different." He scooped the sandwiches onto two plates. "Now we're adults."

  "Technically we were then, too." Taking a dish, she walked to his kitchen table. "Thank you for the sandwich. Want me to make some tea?"

  In other words, subject closed. "Eat," he said. "Would you like some wine instead?"

  "Tea is fine."

  "I'll put on the kettle."

  Beethoven's ringtone played again. Addie checked the caller. "Oh. for heaven's sake... Lee." she said into the phone. "I told Kat you didn't— Is that so? Well, just to put you at ease—" she glanced in Skip's direction "—he's being the perfect gentleman... Absolutely not. Look, I'll talk to you guys tomorrow, okay? And tell Mom to put a stopper in her mouth. She's driving me nuts with her worrying."

  Again the phone clicked shut.

  "Seems you have a cavalry ready to gallop to your rescue." he teased.

  "Sometimes being the youngest is truly a PITA."

  "A PITA?"

  "Pain in the ass."

  Skip chortled with an ease he hadn't felt in years. "Eat up, Ads. Then I'll show you your room."

  "The couch will do."

  "Probably, but this is a big house with several bedrooms. As a matter of fact, you can sleep in mine."

  She barked a laugh. "You're kidding, right?"

  "I meant alone. Though I'm flattered you'd assume I'd want us to share it together."

  "You know the definition of assume, right?"

  "All too well." He joined her at the table, lifted his sandwich in a toast. "Here's to you and me." With a wink, he took a bite.

  "Did you forget?" she asked around an ephemeral smile. "There is no you and me."

  Yes, she'd told him. Twice. Or was it three times?

  Truth was the secret he carried could seal the no us deal forever—or it could swing them in a positive direction, one that made them a family.

  Both options quivered through his body.

  Addie stared at the sleigh bed, expansive as a field of clover with its medley of russets and greens and yellows. Bold colors that warmed the room at once and had her trembling where she stood.

  Skip's bed.

  He hadn't been joking with that you can sleep in mine.

  Leading her upstairs, he'd explained his lack of furniture on the second floor, the lack of beds for the guest rooms, something he needed to amend before too long because, once school began in a couple of weeks, Becky would want sleepovers with her new girlfriends.

  "Sheets are fresh." he said, leaning in the doorway. Watching her. "I put them on this morning."

  "Skip, this is silly. Really, I can take the couch. Just loan me a blanket."

  He pushed off the doorjamb and entered the room, his big body snatching away her air in the process. "No, here you'll be closer to Michaela if she needs you in the night."

  He had a point. The girls were sleeping together in Becky's queen at the end of the hall. Her daughter was beside herself with excitement. It would be a miracle if her eyes closed tonight.

  "All right." Arms tight around her middle, Addie surveyed the L-shaped room with its panorama of windows, the sitting area with its fireplace, wine-colored love seat and rocker.

  "Bathroom's in there." He nodded to a short hallway next to the closet. "Help yourself to the towels, shampoo—whatever you need."

  The thought of standing under a spray, washing her hair, her body, in the same shower stall he'd stood in this morning...

  "I need to check on Michaela." she said, walking quickly from the room. Down the hall, she quietly opened the door to Becky's room. Pegasus burned as a night-light in the corner opposite the bed, illuminating a path to where her child slept.

  "Hi, Ms. M.," Becky whispered when Addie stood gazing down at the two bumps under the covers. One was tiny and curled into a ball; the other—closest to her—claimed a pre-puberty leanness and was almost Addie's size.

  "Hey, Becky," Addie whispered in return, a smile on her lips. "Seems your roomie didn't last, huh?"

  "She tried, but as soon as I started reading her a story, she zonked. I think the excitement of the storm, then sleeping over, wore her out."

  "No doubt. Well, good night, then. If she causes any trouble in the night, don't hesitate to come for me."

  "I will. 'Night."

  Addie leaned across Becky and kissed Michaela's soft rosy cheek, then on an unexpected whim she touched her lips to the smooth forehead of Skip's child. "Sweet dreams," she whispered.

  Slipping from the room, she gently closed the door.

  Becky lay staring at the darkened wall across from her bed.

  When had her mom last kissed her good-night?

  She couldn't remember.

  Was it the night before...before.. .her mom and Jesse had fought so hard and loud? The night her mom screamed for him to stop?

  The night everything went wrong....

  Oh, God, would she never forget the horror of those moments? The shouts and curses? Those moments she'd snuck from her room and stood in the hallway to the trailer's narrow kitchen?

  Why, why, why had she crawled out of bed that night? Why hadn't she stayed where she was—like always—hiding under the covers, blocking the noise with her pillow?

  Think of something nice. That's what her counselor advised when the images got bad.

  Shivering, she reached a hand across the mattress and touched Michaela's arm, gently curling
her fingers around the child's wrist. Michaela was real, warm and real.

  Slowly, slowly. Becky's jitters faded.

  Think nice things. Put yourself in a nice place.

  Michaela was sweet and kind. She had a mother who loved her and worried about her, who kissed her good-night.

  One day Ms. Malloy would see her grow up into an adult and be somebody. Like a nurse or a doctor or a ballerina.

  Michaela could be Becky's lifeline of hope for a happy future.

  On that thought, she closed her eyes and let pictures of Barbies and bees and Ms. Malloy's good-night fill her mind.

  Back in Skip's bedroom—he was gone—Addie got ready for bed and pulled the drapes across the stormy night. After she removed the gym pants and sweatshirt Becky had loaned her, she folded the clothes and placed them on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed.

  A pair of flannel teddy-bear pjs rested on the pillow. Had Skip set them there or had Becky?

  What difference does it make? Just put them on.

  The difference was if Skip had set them on the pillow, he knew what she'd have against her skin all night, in his bed.

  Oh, for heaven's sake! Don't be so much of an idiot to think that you're on his mind. The man's probably dead to the world on his couch.

  By the time she brushed her teeth with the new toothbrush she found in a clean glass on the sink's counter, crawled under the downy quilt and flicked the light, the alarm clock indicated 11:07 p.m.

  The house was quiet, except for the rain drumming against the roof and windowpanes, and the wind whining around the rear porch. She tried not to think of whose bed she slept in, or that her head lay on his pillow.

  She tried not to picture his big body, quite likely naked, in the very spot she occupied. She had seen him naked once.

  The last time...

  Home for Christmas after his first college semester, he'd wanted to see her the moment he unpacked his suitcase, and called her from his parents' house. The ferry lineups had been jam-packed with vehicles that Friday before the holiday and she had waited all afternoon in her room.

  And then his voice came through the line. "Addie," he said. "I'm here. I can't wait to see you. Can we go somewhere?"

  She heard the eagerness in his voice. He hadn't forgotten her, back here on Firewood Island finishing twelfth grade, while he was at the University of Washington.

  Surrounded by college women.

  In the end, there had been no place private that first week. But then came a day after the New Year when her sisters had returned to the mainland with friends, and Addie's parents had gone to Seattle to visit Charmaine's aging grandmother in a nursing home.

  Sitting on her bicycle in a soft rain, Addie watched her parents drive onto the ferry, watched the ship sail away. Then, she raced back to the house. Within minutes, Skip entered the back door.

  They kissed and touched and stripped from the kitchen right to her bedroom. And when they were both free of clothes, she stood in the center of her room, looking up at him with a shy smile. "Do you know this is the first time we've seen each other completely naked?"

  "Mmm." He nuzzled her neck, nibbled at her lips. "You're so beautiful you hurt my eyes, Addie."

  "Backatcha," she whispered, glorying in his admiration, his touch.

  They'd made love all afternoon, using the three condoms he brought, but when time ran out, when the gloom of his departure in two days crowded into the room, they had clung to each other again—free and natural, relishing the tine texture of their bodies.

  In that fourth time, that final time, she'd conceived.

  Eyes stinging, Addie turned onto her side in his enormous bed.

  Her lost little baby, the one she'd carried under her heart so long ago, the one she'd worried about day and night, yearned for....

  Oh, God. Never a day went by that she didn't think of that abandoned little daughter. Where is she? Where is she? Where? Is? She?

  As always remorse and guilt and regret threatened to press her into a swirling abyss from which she could not climb free.

  Gasping, she sat up. In the next instant, she tossed back the quilt and stumbled to the bathroom, where she heaved the sandwich Skip had made into the toilet.

  She had barely rinsed her mouth when he appeared in the doorway, clad in a white T-shirt and a pair of loose gray sweats.

  "Addie?" He was at her side immediately, arm around her waist. "What happened?"

  "Nothing. Just...just a bad dream."

  He peered into her face and she was glad the light was off. "You don't look well," he said.

  So much for the darkness. "I'm fine."

  Without releasing her waist, he helped her back to bed. There he tucked her in like a child before turning on the night lamp, and sitting next to her hip on the mattress.

  "Addie." He kept her bandaged hand between his warm palms. "I'm going to help you with your house. Don't worry, okay?"

  If the situation wasn't so bizarre, she might have laughed. He believed she'd worried herself into nausea about her house, when it was their child that had her stomach whirling like a wind eddy.

  "It's not the...house." Her voice cracked.

  Pressing her cold fingers to the soft, warm cloth on his thigh, he asked, "What then?"

  "The baby."

  "Baby?"

  Shadows caught his cheek and mouth, and for a moment she saw Skip as he'd been that last afternoon standing in her bedroom with the rain whispering against the windows.

  "Our baby," she said.

  He went very still.

  "Do you," she began, and in her ears her voice squeaked. "Do you ever think of our baby?"

  "Addie."

  "Do you. Skip?"

  He looked away, sighed, turned back. His Adam's apple bobbed. "I'm so glad you asked," he said. "So glad." His gaze went to his thigh, where he turned her palm over and traced her heart line again and again. "There's something I need to tell you." He lifted his eyes and a chill skimmed her spine.

  She came away from the pillow. "Do you know something? Do you know where she is? Is she all right?" Maybe with his connections, his money, he'd heard something, investigated—

  "Addie...Oh, God, how to say this... Addie, she's here in—"

  "Here?" She tore her hand away, grabbed his arm. "What do you mean here? Where? In Burnt Bend? Where?" She clambered to her knees. Her fingers clutched his T-shirt. "Who—?"

  "It's Becky, Addie."

  She didn't understand. Becky? What was he talking about? Becky was his wife's—or former partner's—daughter.

  She shook her head. "No, I mean, our baby. The one I... we..."

  His eyes didn't waver. Those honey-gold eyes she had loved when she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

  Until he'd deserted her. Until he'd said. I can't do this.

  Slowly she released his shirt, her hands falling palms up in her lap. "Are you saying Becky isn't your wife's child?"

  "I've never married."

  Of course. Commitment wasn't his style. "But... How...?" Momentarily she stared at the door. Twenty feet down that hall slept two children.

  And Skip was saying both were of her body, her womb. Hers.

  It couldn't be. Couldn't. Fate could not be so sweet. So cruel.

  She became conscious of her heart hounding her rib cage, pushing panic into her throat. She attempted a painful swallow as her gaze threaded back to him.

  "I've wanted to tell you for over a year," he said. "But you were still married at the time. You had another child."

  She couldn't believe this news, his rationale. Scrambling from the bed. she paced to the center of the room, pushing a hand through her hair.

  "And you thought I wouldn't care? That I'd forgotten, given up?" Her lungs hurt, labored. As if she'd sprinted the Boston marathon. Uphill.

  "No." He pushed off the bed. "But I'd heard stories about your husband."

  "What stories?"

  "That the marriage wasn't.. .strong. I didn't want to interfere or
make things worse for you or your— For Michaela."

  A caustic laugh burst from her throat. "Worse? How could it be worse? If Becky's my child—my child—"

  God in heaven. The baby she'd mourned for half her life. The one she'd carried within her flesh. The little girl her arms had ached for, still ached for. Addie's gaze snapped to the bedroom door, to the obscure hallway. "Does she know who—?"

  I am? The words hung in the shadows like specters.

  "No," he said slowly. "I haven't told her."

  Yet. Addie hugged her waist, shaking against the past that had haunted her nights, her days and every moment between. "What does she know?"

  He drew his hands down his beard-stubbled cheeks. "That she was adopted from here. That I'm her biological dad. I'd heard something from my father a year and a half ago, just before he died. Something his lawyer mentioned. It prompted me to look for her." He sighed deeply. "I found her in foster care in Seattle. She'd been in the system for four years by then and was a ward of the state. The adopted father had relinquished her to the authorities and they were attempting to match her with another set of adopting parents."

  Addie let out a small cry.

  His fingers flexed, as though he wanted to reach for her. "Meantime," he went on. "Becky was in the process of trying to locate her real parents. Somehow, Dad got wind of it—I think through someone from the agency that took her when she was born. Anyway, he called me. I hired a lawyer, did the DNA tests and..." Driving his fingers into his hair, he held it off his forehead for several seconds. "As they say, the rest is history."

  A cold wash of fear spread over Addie's skin. The dead mother.

  "What happened to her...to the mother?"

  Skip took a step. "Honey, let's talk about this in the morning. It's after midnight."

  She backed away. "You drop this bomb in the middle of the night and then want to go to sleep? Uh-uh. Deal with it the way I have to. And don't treat me like some juvenile on your football team. I have a right to know. What happened to her parents?"

  He walked to the door, closed it quietly. Leaning against the wood like a man beaten in battle, he said. "The father stabbed the mother in a fit of rage. They rushed her to the hospital, but she was dead on arrival. Jesse was charged and convicted and sentenced to life. He's been in the pen at Walla Walla for the past four years."