by Ev Bishop
Callum lifted his hand and she held her breath as his fingers traced her cheek. “You really . . . you really never got my letter?” His voice was a mixture of wounded disbelief and wonder.
She shook her head.
“Unbelievable.” He chuckled dryly, a bitter sound that hurt her. “Do you know how I felt?” he asked. “How angry? How hurt?”
His questions seemed hypothetical, but she answered anyway. “I imagine,” she whispered, “you felt much the same as I did.”
He dropped his hand, looked furious. “So much wasted time!”
“No.” Jo touched his jaw, bringing his eyes to hers once more. “Look at the mistakes you and I made—writing a letter instead of saying what you needed to say face-to-face, my taking off instead of staying to confront what the truth actually was—then later in our personal lives, too. If we were capable of such poor choices, we weren’t ready for each other. It’s better this way.”
“You actually believe that?”
She half-grinned, half-winced. “Well, I have to, don’t I? And what choice do we have, really, but to go on from here? Like I always say, we can’t undo the past.”
Callum laced his fingers through hers. Her stomach tightened at even that small touch, and he smiled just a little. “You do always say that—yes. But I’m so sorry. You must’ve felt so, so . . .”
“Absolutely devastated for years? Yep.”
With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, Callum gently pushed a curl off of Jo’s face and tucked it behind her ear. “I meant every single word and promise I said to you back then. I never should’ve written that damn letter. I should’ve come, made sure I found you in person, not let my dad—”
Jo pressed her finger to Callum’s mouth. “Shh, no. I should’ve trusted you, trusted us—should’ve known that what we had was real and stayed around to fight for it, or at least to find out what had happened—but I was too insecure, too full of wounded pride, too sure no one could ever really love me.”
“Oh, Jo,” Callum whispered against her hair, pulling her close. “Jo.”
They were quiet for a long moment, and Jo’s heart hammered in her chest. Where would they go from here? Just a few more things to share, then time would tell.
“There’s more, Callum,” she said quietly.
“More?”
“Yes . . .” Speaking quickly, and trying not to smear Dave more than his actions and words did themselves, Jo told Callum about all the misunderstandings she’d had about Callum, about who he was, what he wanted, and what he didn’t want, fuelled by Dave. At one point, Callum dropped her hand and raked his fingers through his hair.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “But it’s true. He—”
“No, no—I believe you. I just can’t believe I didn’t see it.” Callum went on to share the ways Dave had meddled in Callum’s opinion of Jo, and how he’d set him up to be an ass. “Not that I need much help in that department,” he finished.
“I should have trusted my gut about you, seen through him. . . .” Her heartbeat was still going crazy. She wondered if Callum could hear it.
Callum nodded. “Me too.” His thumb rubbed slow circles in the heel of her palm.
“So,” she said a little breathlessly.
“So,” he echoed. “This is unexpected. And a little mind-blowing.”
She nodded and laughed a little. “I’ll say.”
“And that’s it now, right? Everything’s out in the open. No secrets.”
“Everything,” Jo confirmed. “Not one hidden. So where does this leave us?”
“A very good question indeed—and one I want to explore, but I need to do something first.”
“What?”
Callum shifted on the couch, pulled Jo onto his lap, then nudged her to straddle him. He stared up into her face, smiling.
“Is this what you wanted?” she asked, leaning in.
“Absolutely,” he whispered against her mouth. “For forever.”
His tongue met hers and heat surged through her. Callum moaned lightly and kissed her deeper.
She was so distracted that at first the knocking sound didn’t register—
And then it did. She pulled back, every nerve conscious of his grip on her hips and the warmth pooling within her. . . .
“Don’t answer it,” he said, voice rough. “They’ll leave.”
And the sound suddenly made sense to her ears. Someone was at her door.
“I . . . I should see who it is. Maybe it’s a neighbor with a problem. No one can get up here unless I buzz them in. And in any case, they’re not going away.” As if to prove the truth of her statement, three more raps issued forth.
Callum groaned.
By the time Jo got to the door and opened it, a curly-haired blonde had just turned away and started down the hall.
“Hello,” Jo called. “Are you looking for someone?”
The girl turned back, and all warm heat and happiness dancing through Jo limped away. What on earth? It was like looking in a mirror at a younger version of herself. Jo’s gaze fell to the girl’s considerable midriff—okay, make that a pregnant mirror.
Behind her, still in the entranceway of her apartment, Callum cleared his throat—then stepped into the hall to join her. She heard his sharp inhale, recognized it as shock. So it wasn’t just her. He saw the resemblance as well.
“Can I help you?” Jo asked.
The girl’s voice was clear and well modulated—and also familiar. “Are you Jo Kendall?
Later Jo would wonder, what if she hadn’t answered the door? Or what if she hadn’t called out and caught the girl’s attention? How would things have been different? But she had answered. And she had called out. What ifs were pointless.
Chapter 31
Callum’s lungs constricted the instant he laid eyes on the girl. He leaned against one of the hallway’s stucco walls, a heartburn cocktail of curiosity and dread hammering in his chest. He knew what was coming. He knew it—after all, you’d have to be deaf and blind—and intentionally dumb—to not see the undeniable similarity of Jo and this . . . other, younger Jo. It was hard to breath, but somehow he managed. Until the stranger spoke again.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mother.”
“What?” Jo asked, then did a 360-degree turn without addressing the girl’s comment further. “Are you all right, Callum?”
“Callum, like Callum Archer, as in my biological father?” The girl sounded as shocked as Callum felt—like a spear of white-sharp electricity had just cut through him.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Jo blurted. “You’ve got it wrong.”
It wasn’t what he thought? How could she know what he thought? Callum didn’t even know. That he’d not only lost the only woman he’d ever loved, he’d lost the child he always wanted to have—and had never even known existed? A wave of questions crashed over him but he was powerless to breath, let alone attempt to articulate one. He let out a scraping bark of a sound.
The girl answered like Jo had been talking to her, not to Callum. “What do I have wrong—and what on earth’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing’s wrong with him. Nothing at all. Callum?”
Jo’s voice poured over him, calming, refreshing—awakening.
Okay, man, pull it together. You can do this. Breathe. It’s not a big deal if you don’t though. You’ll just pass out. Jo will take you to the hospital. You’ll live. The tiniest breath of air ever taken moved through his pain-wracked throat. He stood straighter. A little more oxygen wheezed through.
“Callum?”
He held up a hand. “I’m fine, Jo . . . Just, just deal with . . . whatever this is.”
“Pardon me?” said the young stranger. “Whatever this is?”
Oh, no . . . he’d worded that badly. He opened his eyes. The similarity between the young woman and Jo was still unbelievable. “That’s not what, I didn’t mean—oh, crap.”
“Excellent,” said the girl. “Just what I ex
pected.” Her voice had lost its confidence though and her face turned a mottled pink. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. I have a real dad already. I didn’t even know you’d be here. So what, are you two, like, still together?”
Callum shot a look at Jo who had staggered back against the wall, too—apparently battling her own anxiety. Yep, they really were a fantastic pair. But were they a couple now, “still together” as the kid said? They’d left off talking at the where-does-this-leave-us part of the conversation. He raised his eyebrows at Jo. She shook her head and some conflicted emotion he couldn’t interpret darkened her eyes. For the first time since they’d reunited, he saw her thirty-three years in her face—and maybe more. The comfort in her voice that he’d clung to just minutes ago drained away. So they weren’t a couple again? What was that back in her apartment then?
It felt like his brain was bleeding. She’d had his baby without even bothering to tell him they’d conceived a child, then come back, made overtures toward getting back together—and now, what? She was breaking up with him because her kid—their kid, apparently—was back in the picture? She wasn’t even going to give him a chance to hear her side?
Really, you still want her, even after this? You are a fucking numbskull, Duncan Archer’s voice boomed through Callum’s psyche like a blow to the kidneys. The impact almost made him crumple.
She took everything from you, everything—if you had anything remotely worthwhile in you to begin with. And your child! You always wanted a child, Callum, because you are a child. This new assault bulleted through his brain in Nina’s shrill nails-on-a-chalkboard soprano.
But then some inner core of steel formed within him. He’d wimped out once with Jo and regretted it all of his life. He was going to see this through. Yes, it hurt like hell that she’d trusted him so little, that she’d believed he just didn’t show, and left, never looking back, carrying his child—but it also explained, that much more, maybe, why she’d fled in the first place. She hadn’t gotten his letter. She’d only known his dad was dead set against their match and that Callum had stood her up. It wasn’t like he’d ever been good at defending her. Of course she took his silence and failure to arrive as him bailing on her. And really, even if she’d gotten the letter. . . . It had still been him ducking out, just in a different way, hadn’t it?
“Jo,” he said softly. She’d been saying something to the girl sotto voce, but now she looked over at him. “What do you want me to do?”
She bit her lip, looking as if she might cry. “Aisha here”—she motioned at the girl who had, consciously or unconsciously, rested her hands on her swollen paunch as if to cradle her unborn baby—“is going to come in and stay the night and we’re going to chat, but you, well, maybe it would be best for now, if you just go?”
Callum wished he could be hit with the biggest anxiety attack ever known to man just to have the pain of this conversation mitigated—but, Murphy’s law, though an ocean of confusion, hurt, and thwarted desire and hope was raging through him, physically he was fine now, his breathing even, his stomach calm, his muscles relaxed. “Is that . . . that’s what you want, then?”
Jo’s nose scrunched. “‘Want’ isn’t the right word, but I think it’s for the best.”
Callum tried to force speech. The girl was staring at him with piercing eyes so like his own, just green instead of blue. He failed to find words. He nodded lamely and turned to leave.
“I’ll call soon, I promise. Trust me,” Jo said from behind him.
“I do,” he said, but he didn’t know if Jo even heard him. She was already through her door, clicking it locked behind her and Aisha.
Chapter 32
Jo settled the girl—settled Aisha—on the couch. Hoover wandered out of the bedroom to say hello, a politeness he hadn’t extended to Callum earlier, and hopped up to join her.
“I’m sorry,” Jo said. “Do you mind?” But Aisha was already scratching his ears and crooning to him, so obviously it was fine.
Jo made a fresh pot of tea while Aisha called her dad to let him know she’d arrived and all was fine. Then they got down to the nitty-gritty. Aisha took the news pretty well, though she was skeptical at first.
“But I look just like you.”
Jo studied her. It really was uncanny—except for the eye color, of course. “I know. But when you meet Sam, I mean Samantha, your . . . birth mom . . . you’ll see you look a lot like her too, though she straightens her hair. You have her green eyes.”
“I don’t understand. Why would she put your name down as the birth mother? How’d she get away with it?”
“I can only imagine. She always has reasons for the things she does though.”
“Yeah, but will they be reasons a normal person gets?”
Jo nearly spit out her mouthful of tea as a surprised laugh burst out of her. Genes were strong things, apparently—and not just for physical traits.
“Isn’t it some kind of crime to fake someone else’s identity and pretend your kid is theirs on, like, legal documents and everything?”
“No idea, sorry.”
“Well, it should be.”
The direction the conversation was heading was so far over Jo’s head she didn’t even try to go there. She offered her guest cheese and crackers instead, and while she was adding apple slices to the plate, a question of her own hit her.
“How on earth did you come up with Callum’s name as the biological father? Samantha didn’t even know him then—or not enough that’d she’d have thought to link his name to mine as a parent.”
Aisha took the plate Jo handed her and wolfed down a piece of cheddar immediately. “Mm, thanks—and no, the records said ‘Father unknown,’ but that cousin of yours I tracked down, the one who said she’d heard you were in back in Greenridge—she mentioned him, said he was the only guy you’d went with in high school.”
Throughout the evening, Jo tried calling Sam repeatedly, but got no answer each time. She left a couple messages asking her to call back, but giving no other details. “Hey, Sam, you had a baby, it’s a girl—who’s a woman with her own kid on the way. Surprise!” didn’t seem like a voicemail appropriate subject.
Jo didn’t ask about Aisha’s pregnancy and the girl didn’t volunteer any information. When she finished eating, she started yawning and the evening wound up quickly from there. Jo made up the couch for her to sleep on and that was that. She was an aunt—well, an aunt who was now on her way to actually knowing her niece. Bizarre!
She said a quick prayer in her head for Sam—and for Aisha, and for herself—having less than no idea how her big sister would take the news that the child she’d put up for adoption had tracked her down and had questions.
It hit Jo sometime in the wee hours of the morning, pulling her from restless sleep, making her bolt upright in bed. She hadn’t specifically told Callum he wasn’t Aisha’s father and she wasn’t her mother. The last thing he’d heard about the parentage of Aisha Baily-Brown was Jo being called “Mom” and his name being given as her biological father’s. What a shit show. She’d been so shocked to see Aisha, knowing immediately who she must be—and so concerned for the girl with her huge to the point of painful-looking belly that she’d just wanted to get Callum calmed down and the girl inside so that everything could get sorted out. . . .
It hadn’t even occurred to her that she hadn’t corrected Aisha’s mistaken declaration in front of Callum. So . . . now, what? He thought, correctly, that she’d flaked off at the first sign everything might not be easy and left town—and now he probably thought she’d done so bearing his baby, lacking the decency to let him know about it.
She wracked her brain, trying to recall how he’d seemed as he left but not a lot of details came to her. She’d been so distracted by their visitor—but maybe resigned, calm? Yes, those things. But those things, good or bad? Peaceful because he was confident in their relationship now, knew they’d work things out again? Or resigned because it was the straw that broke the camel’s ba
ck and he’d decided it was time to say good-bye forever?
She couldn’t bear for their new fledgling relationship to be derailed so soon—but if he didn’t give her a chance to explain, if he jumped to the worst conclusions about her and was angry? She didn’t know if she’d be able to bear that either.
She tried multiple times to call him on his cell phone, but kept getting the same message: “The mobile customer you are calling is unavailable at this time.”
She wanted to pull on clothes and drive over to his house, but the girl sleeping on the couch stopped her. She couldn’t just leave a pregnant teenager alone her first day in a new town. And what if Sam didn’t call, just showed up at the apartment without warning? Apparently everyone and their dog ignored the buzzer rule and let anybody into the building who showed up. Jo couldn’t spring a surprise visit on Aisha or Sam.
Heart heavy with fears that she’d wrecked everything again, Jo said yet another quick prayer, for Callum this time, for them, and got out of bed. She retrieved her favorite jeans from the floor where she’d pulled them off the other day—they were still clean—and put her nervous energy to work. She made a hearty breakfast, so hearty—eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit salad, plus toast and three kind of jam—that Aisha was a little overwhelmed when she woke up. She was up to the challenge though.
“This is awesome,” she said enthusiastically. “Mmm, have you ever tried being pregnant? I don’t necessarily recommend it, but it does make food a.maze.ing.”
Jo laughed. Aisha really did remind her of Sam, almost eerily in fact. “No, I haven’t ‘tried’ pregnancy yet, but if I ever do, I’ll let you know my thoughts.”
“Sounds good.” Aisha crunched down a piece of bacon and tossed one to Hoover. It seemed to be their game, one for her, one for him. Hoover had never been happier. “Also, what should I call you?”
“Er . . . Jo? Or maybe Auntie Jo? Whatever you’re comfortable with. Not aunt.”
“I don’t know.” Aisha lifted her chin and spoke with a crusty, snooty accent. “Aunt Jo has a certain ring to it.”
