His words eased her apprehension.
“Let’s go get our food,” he suggested.
“The Festival starts next week,” Dan said while they were eating. “We’d better enjoy this time together.”
The boys agreed around mouthfuls of pizza.
“I’m glad you’re going to let me help.” Cedra gave a little wave with her fork. “I know having an extra person around isn’t easy. You’ve all been so nice to me and I appreciate it because I really needed to be with Buzz. Working with you and helping out will make me feel like I’m doing my part.”
“You haven’t been any trouble,” Lorrie said and meant it. Cedra had run Thad to ball practice a couple of times and she’d started helping with meals and dishes and laundry. She’d even picked apples and learned to sort.
“What will I do?” she asked.
“We’ll show you and Buzz how to run the cash register out in the main room,” Dan said.
“And the coolers constantly need refilling with gallon jugs of cider,” Lorrie added. “You can watch the bagged apples and call for more of a variety when one runs out.”
“Heck, I can handle that stuff.” Cedra looked from one family member to another with an infectious grin.
Dan gave the kids quarters to play the video games.
“You didn’t eat much again,” Lorrie said to her father-in-law.
He shook his head. “Wasn’t hungry.”
Cedra chattered about someone back in Clarksville who could eat an entire large pizza without stopping for air.
Gil’s plastic glass with remaining cola and ice hit the corner of the table and fell to the floor with a clatter.
Lorrie and Dan were beside him in an instant.
“Gil?”
“Dad, are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t sound all right. His face had turned a disturbing ashen color.
“I think we’d better get you to a doctor.” Dan straightened.
“I agree.” Lorrie looked around to see where the kids were.
“I’ll take them home,” Cedra offered.
Lorrie glanced at Gil’s bloodless face and then at Dan.
“She can drive the Explorer home. We’ll take her car.” He dug in his jeans pocket for the keys.
Lorrie accepted Cedra’s key ring. She took a moment to tell Thad what was going on. “Keep the others calm and get them ready for bed.”
“I will, Mom. Don’t worry,” he told her.
It was such a grown-up thing for her son to say, it touched her. Proud of him, she smiled and gave him a hug. “We’ll call if we’re gone long."
She joined Dan in helping his father to the door and noticed Tom hung back. “Coming?” she asked.
“I don’t know where I’d do the most good.” A frown creased his brow.
“Do what you want to,” Lorrie said.
“I’ll come with you.” He stepped ahead and held the glass door open.
They situated Gil in the front passenger seat of Cedra’s car, fastened his safety belt and reclined the seat. Lorrie handed Dan the keys and climbed into the back seat with Tom and a pile of clothing, lotions and water bottles. The ride seemed to take forever, even though, gratefully, they’d been right in town where St. Mary’s hospital was only minutes away.
The emergency-room nurses didn’t seem overly concerned when Lorrie ran in and asked for assistance. A middle-aged nurse located a wheelchair and walked ahead of Lorrie, her white shoes squeaking.
She wheeled Gil inside and down a hall. The attendant at the window told them to have a seat and instructed them to fill out admittance papers.
“Not exactly Chicago Med, is it?” Lorrie mumbled to Dan, her hand resting at the small of his back.
“You and Tom go on back with him,” Dan suggested. “I’ll do this.”
She nodded and hurried away, knowing he knew more about insurance matters than she did.
By the time Dan finished answering all the questions, Lorraine returned and led him to a tiny waiting room where Tom sat. “They think he had a minor heart attack.” She took his hand without thinking. “They gave him nitroglycerin to get his blood pressure down. They have to do tests to see if there’s any damage to the heart muscles.”
Dan squeezed her hand.
“You go in with him for a little while,” she suggested.
Dan followed her directions and found his father lying on a gurney in a curtained-off antiseptic-smelling room. A long plastic oxygen tube ran from beneath his nose to a plate in the wall. Beside him, a young redheaded nurse took his blood pressure.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Bad timing, I know,” Gil said.
“What do you mean?”
“Festival’s next week.”
“Don’t worry about that. I can handle everything.”
Gil nodded. “I know you can, Son.”
Dan watched the nurse fasten sticky electrode pads to Gil’s chest.
“I’ve heard about men who had the big one right in front of the doctors and there’s no help for it,” Gil said.
“Dad, that’s not going to happen. You’re right here under their supervision.”
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you, Mr. Beckett,” the freckled nurse said.
Ignoring her, Gil met his son’s eyes. “I have to say something.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not very good at this.”
“You don’t have to say anything. All you have to do is rest and let these people take care of you.”
“Yeah, I do. I have to say this.”
Dan shrugged and waited.
“I didn’t give you credit, all those years ago. I thought... well, I thought you were too wrapped up in yourself and having a good time to give the orchards what they deserved.”
Dan’s heart pounded and he wondered if he’d be the next one with a nitroglycerin tablet shoved under his tongue. His father had never spoken to him like this, and considering the situation he’d created for himself, he’d been grateful.
“You did the right thing, after all,” his father went on. “I worked my whole life, planting trees and waiting and planning for the place to really be something. If you hadn’t taken over, I’d have had to sell years ago.” Dan didn’t know what to say. He loved the land and the trees more than his father knew, more than he should have as Thomas Beckett.
“Sometimes I’ve felt so bad,” Gil went on, “about pressuring you into this life. But you always looked like you were happy.”
“I have been happy,” Dan replied honestly. “There’s nowhere I’d rather have been than here.”
Gil looked a bit more relaxed. “I never understood why Dan just up and ran off the way he did. I acted mad, but it hurt me, him leavin’. Why do you think he left?”
“Why do you think he left?” Dan countered.
“I wondered if he had feelings for Lorrie, and he couldn’t stand seeing the two of you together.”
The idea was more perceptive than Dan would have given him credit for. Dan couldn’t respond. The old man was lying in the emergency room being treated for a heart attack. This was hardly the time and place for Dan to point out that he’d been on the short end of the favoritism stick for nineteen years. How ironic that the son Gil now heaped praise on for holding the family business together hadn’t made any kind of a sacrifice at all. He’d done exactly what he’d wanted to do, even at the expense of hurting Lorrie and their children.
Awareness of his father’s mortality struck him with a vengeance. Gil would die eventually, whether now or later, and for the first time, Dan realized how much it would hurt him for his father not to know it had been him all this time. He, not Tom, had worked the orchards and seen to it they became prosperous.
Dan tried to swallow the old jealousy that rose up. What was in a name, after all? His father was praising him for his hard work, not Tom.
And leave it to his father not to take any of the responsibility for his son’s leaving.
Of course, in his mind, it was less understandable that Dan would leave, rather than Tom.
“A lot of people asked me why he left,” Dan admitted. “I told them I didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t even know. Maybe it was just one of those rash decisions we all make and he’s had to live with it ever since.”
“I love him,” Gil said. “As much as I love you. I don’t know why I expected more of you.”
Dan lowered his head, frustration consuming him. In all the years he’d lived as Dan, he couldn’t remember his father telling him he loved him. Why now? And why to the son he thought was Tom? He closed his eyes and remembered how many times he’d told his children he loved them. Every day.
“I worried about him all this time,” Gil said.
Dan couldn’t look up.
“I’ve worried if he was safe. If he was happy. If he’d given me any more grandchildren. I wondered if I’d see him again before I died.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about him any more.” Dan tried to get him off the confusing subject. “He’s obviously done all right for himself. Pretty soon he’ll get his memory back and everything will be fine.”
“Maybe he’ll remember why he didn’t want to be here and leave again,” Gil said.
“Maybe.” Dan watched the nurse hook a small plastic bottle to the oxygen connection at the wall. “What’s that for?”
“Moisture, so his nose and sinuses don’t dry out.”
“Oh.” The water bubbled energetically when the oxygen hit it.
“I’d like for him to remember some of the good things we did together,” Gil went on, not seeming to notice any of the procedures. “Before your Ma got bad.”
“I’m sure he will.” Dan didn’t want to be reminded of his mother’s decline and death right now, not while he waited for the report on his father’s heart damage.
“I was hard on him,” Gil said. “I was hard on you both, and I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“None of that matters now, Dad. Please, just rest.” He stood to leave.
“Send Lorrie back in.”
“Okay.”
“She’s a good girl. I knew she was a good girl from the first time her daddy brought her to the Legion post. Funny how he got all girls and I got two boys, isn’t it?”
Dan had never heard his father ramble on so.
“Only seemed right we should match ’em up.” Gil raised a hand. “Have you ever been sorry... about marrying Lorrie?”
Dan turned back. “Not for a minute. Ever.”
Gil slanted a weak smile. “Good.”
The doctor assured them that the damage to Gil’s heart was minimal, but they wanted to keep him for more tests, and to get his edema and blood pressure down.
They saw him situated in a post-intensive-care room, and Tom drove home. Lorrie sat in the back, among Cedra’s clutter, and listened to the brothers’ quiet conversation.
“I think we should give him my office downstairs,” Dan said. “That way he wouldn’t have to climb the steps.”
“We should ask the doctor first,” Tom said. “Maybe the exercise is good for him.”
Dan shrugged. “We’ll ask.”
Cedra waited in the kitchen, Jimmy Fallon blaring from the television on top of the refrigerator. Tom found the remote and turned it down.
“The kids are all asleep,” she said.
Lorrie started a pot of decaffeinated coffee. “Thanks.”
Dan didn’t say much while they sat at the table. He sipped from his mug and listened to the others.
“I’m going out to smoke.” Cedra grabbed her purse from the counter.
“I’ll go with you.” Tom refilled his cup and followed.
Lorrie placed her and Dan’s cups in the dishwasher. Dan flipped off all but the light over the stove, and climbed the stairs after her.
Lorrie came out of their bathroom to find him gone. She glanced out at the empty deck, then padded down the hall. It had grown far too late for him to go to his office to work.
In the darkness, his tall silhouette came from Bram and Jori’s room. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he whispered, and led her back to their bedroom. He slid out of his boots and shirt.
“Are they awake?”
“No.” He placed his watch on his dresser.
Lorrie folded the coverlet down and climbed into bed.
“I just wanted to look at all of them.” He sat on the edge of the bed and turned toward her. “Do you think they know how much I love them?”
“Of course they do,” she said with surprise.
“Do I tell them enough? Do I show them every day?”
The tenderness and all-consuming passion she harbored for this man had not changed. The emotions rose in her chest with a quick sting of tears behind her eyes. The events of the evening had pushed everything else aside. In her concern, she’d forgotten her own distress and anger. She and Dan had behaved like two people who cared for Gil. And for each other. After all the turmoil of recent days, their former relationship had come through.
“You’re a wonderful father.” She worked to keep her voice from trembling. “Each one of your children is secure in your love. You’ve spoiled Autumn rotten, treating her like a little princess. You show Bram and Jori equal attention and affection. Have you realized how non-competitive they are with each other? Their silly bantering is just normal behavior for kids.”
He seemed to consider her words.
“And Thad,” she said with a sigh. “Even though you believed he wasn’t yours for all that time, you were patient and understanding. What more could a son want than a father who loves him and supports him, even if he chooses to do something other than what the father had hoped?”
“Is it obvious?” Dan asked quickly. “That I’d like to see him stay here?”
“It’s only normal,” she replied. “You want to see your land and trees stay in the family. But you care more that Thad is fulfilled in whatever he does.”
Dan nodded.
Lorrie studied his fatigued expression. “Sometimes I think you feel more of Tom’s feelings than he does himself.”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“The pressure you’re so careful not to place on Thad is what your father did to Tom to drive him away.”
“Yes.”
“And you feel Tom’s pain.”
“I felt it then.”
“More than your own?”
“No. That’s why I’m careful to treat the twins equally. I don’t want one of them to ever feel the way I did. Any of them, for that matter.”
They were silent for a few minutes.
“Come to bed,” she said. “It’s late."
Dan slid off his jeans and doused the light. The bed shifted with his weight.
Lorrie blinked into the darkness overhead.
“He said he loves Dan,” he said. “Said it hurt him when he left.” She heard him swallow. “Why couldn’t he have told me fifteen or twenty years ago that he loved me, Lorraine?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m just blaming him for my stupid choices, aren’t I?”
“Maybe.”
“Like if I’d been more confident about who I was, I wouldn’t have denied my own identity.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have.”
“But it’s not his fault.”
“Not entirely.”
“Not at all.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty about being angry with your father,” she said.
“I’m not mad at him,” he denied.
“Well, you should be.”
“Why?”
“Because he hurt you. Because he showed favoritism and you can’t understand that. You don’t know what was wrong with you that he didn’t choose you as his favorite.”
“I was the one who loved the orchards,” he admitted.
“You were the one who stayed in school to please him.”
“I was the one w
ho took his orders and learned how to do things.”
“You were also the one close enough to see what Tom’s rebellion was doing to Gil, how much it hurt him.”
Long minutes of ponderous silence passed.
“He told me what a good job I’ve done.”
“You have.”
“But he’s really thanking Tom.”
“No, he’s really thanking you. You’re the one who stayed and worked and made something of Beckett Orchards.”
“He could die not knowing that,” he said hoarsely.
“Do you want to tell him?”
“No. I don’t want to tell him.”
He seemed certain.
“I want him to know himself.” His voice held a hurtful quality he’d never before revealed. “I want him to have known from the beginning that I’m Dan. I want him to have loved me enough and paid attention enough to know without me telling him.”
Lorrie ached for Dan’s unhappiness. She scooted closer and reached for him. Her fingers found his cheek wet with tears. “Oh,” she said softly and pulled him against her.
He pressed his face to her chest and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. Lorrie didn’t know what to do, what to say to comfort him. He was so big in her arms, so solid and male, and yet he seemed different this way, vulnerable and genuine. She kissed his hair and his temple and rubbed his bare shoulder soothingly.
Was this how he felt about her, too, wishing she’d known who he was without being told? Had her ignorance hurt him as much as his father’s?
She held him, glad to be here for him, glad to have him turn to her with his doubts and disappointments.
Strangely, with everything that had come to light, they’d never been as close as at that moment. Nothing stood between them. No lies. No hidden secrets. They shared a family, a bed.
Dan’s hand moved to cover her breast through her cotton nightshirt. Against her hip, she felt his body respond. He hooked his fingers behind her neck and inched himself upward to kiss her. Drawing comfort from each other came as the most natural thing in the world.
Lorrie met his passion with her own, as she always had. She knew the texture of his lips and skin better than her own. Their enthusiastic joining was familiar and reassuring. Only one thing was different from all the times before: She knew he was not her husband. By the time they laid entwined, breathless and satisfied, the tears were Lorrie’s.
A Husband By Any Other Name Page 12
