A Mother's Claim

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Dana’s mouth twisted. “No. Of course I am. To lose him again would be...terrible. Never as bad as it was, because I’d know he’s safe and loved. But it would mean he doesn’t love me. If that makes me sound selfish...”

  “No, blast it.” Scowling, Nolan startled her by reaching across the table and covering her hand with his.

  Startled, she looked down at that big hand, so much darker than hers. It was the first time they’d touched, at least voluntarily. She was absurdly conscious of his warmth, the dip of his palm, even the calluses on his fingers.

  After a second, she realized he was still talking.

  “I have the same fears. He’s all I have.” His expression clouded and the frown deepened even as he took his hand back. He hadn’t liked admitting that.

  Dana would have sympathized, except she was glad he suffered the same terror as she did. It gave them something close to equal weight on this emotional seesaw. Thinking that, she felt how chilled her hand suddenly was. She tucked it beneath the table on her lap.

  “That’s...partly why I’m here, you know,” she admitted haltingly. “Because I do understand.”

  His gaze pinned hers. “How badly have I screwed up?”

  “Are you asking if I called an attorney this morning?” She saw on his face that was exactly what he’d feared. “No. I didn’t call to give Craig an earful, either. I was mad, but I expected us to have ups and downs. We have too much at stake to behave well all the time.”

  Suddenly he was laughing again. “I think I could like you if—”

  Abruptly, he shuttered his laugh. Dana couldn’t look away from him. The air she drew in was too thin.

  “—I wasn’t your worst nightmare.” Her voice came out thin, too.

  He was the one to look away. “We have each other by the short hairs.”

  “How nicely put.”

  Nolan picked up his mug, only to cradle it in his big hands. “Guess we have to trust each other, to a point.”

  “I thought we’d already agreed on that.” So she was being a bitch; he deserved it.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Did I say how sorry I am?”

  Her mouth curved. “Yes, Nolan, quite adequately, thank you.”

  They smiled at each other until she felt her cheeks warming.

  “You want to hang out at Wind & Waves part of the day Saturday?” he asked. “Christian usually works with me. He can handle the cash register, give advice, set people up with equipment. I suspect they all think he’s a young-looking fifteen or so. He’d enjoy showing off for you.”

  She might have to kill Craig if he ever disparaged Nolan’s business in Christian’s hearing. “That sounds like fun. Why don’t I bring a lunch? Unless you have something you usually do.”

  “Skip lunch? Order something in?” His mouth quirked. “Drop some coins in the snack machine?”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “I can do better than that.”

  Voice low, husky, he said, “I’m sure you can.”

  * * *

  THINKING IT WAS sort of weird having her here and sort of not, Christian kept a close eye on Dana Saturday. She was superenthusiastic, which made him wonder if she was faking it.

  The store was quiet when he came back in from setting up a customer with a windsurfing rental package. Nolan waved him over to where he was rearranging wet suits by size. They had to do that all the time. People pulled stuff off the shelf, then dumped it back wherever.

  Nolan nodded toward Dana, chatting with a woman who was holding up T-shirts to herself. Wind & Waves sold shirts with the shop’s own logo, of course, but also a few popular ones that had to do with windsurfing. Christian’s friends practically fell down laughing every time they saw the one that said Got Wind?.

  “So, what do you think?” Nolan asked.

  “You mean about her?”

  Nolan shrugged. “And her being here. Do you mind that I suggested it?”

  Christian hadn’t liked it at first, but... “She’s okay. I mean, lunch was good.”

  At first he wasn’t sure he wanted to eat what she brought. Instead of sandwiches, she’d made something she called pita pockets. She warmed them in the break room microwave. They were full of rice and beans and veggies and were spicy. She’d made pumpkin bread, too, and brought a tub of cream cheese to spread on it.

  Even with Amir working today, it had been too busy for them all to eat together. Dana sat with Christian for a while, asking questions about the business while he ate. Then he saw her and Uncle Nolan eating together later.

  “Did you tell her you liked her food?”

  Christian shuffled his feet. “Not really.”

  Nolan clapped him on the back. “You should.”

  For a minute, neither of them said anything, although Christian could tell that Uncle Nolan was watching, too, as she threw back her head and laughed at something the other woman said.

  “Mom never liked it here. I mean, at the store.”

  Nolan looked at him with an expression Christian didn’t totally understand. “No. She didn’t.”

  “How come?” It just burst out. Christian had never asked. It felt like something Uncle Nolan didn’t want him to know.

  “Huh.” Uncle Nolan got broody looking. “She was never interested in windsurfing.”

  Or any other water sport. Christian nodded.

  “But I think it had more to do with me.”

  He stared at his uncle in astonishment. “But...she loved you!”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Nolan moved his shoulders in that way he did when he was feeling tight. “She didn’t love that I took you from her.”

  Christian had known that, of course. Nolan wouldn’t bad-mouth her, but she had yelled about him sometimes.

  “I was kind of living with Grandma and Grandpa, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but she could tell herself they were just taking care of you when she was gone. I put a heavy boot on that little illusion.”

  Christian would never forget what Uncle Nolan had said. You’ll be living with me from now on. He had felt a flood of relief so powerful, he’d almost cried.

  “Dana sort of looks like she’s having fun,” he heard himself say.

  One corner of Nolan’s mouth quirked. “She does.”

  “I get confused about her.”

  His uncle laid his arm across Christian’s shoulders. Not like a hug. Christian really liked when he did that. “I understand,” Nolan said. “I’m of two minds about her myself.”

  “I wanted to hate her,” Christian confessed. He’d told himself he was glad when she just went away after that first meeting. Really glad.

  “Yeah.” Something dark in his voice made Christian wonder if Uncle Nolan did hate her. Only...his expression when he watched her didn’t look like hate, although Christian couldn’t figure out what he was thinking.

  “But...it felt sort of good when she said she was moving here.”

  Uncle Nolan nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Having your real mother shrug and decide she couldn’t be bothered to change her life for you wouldn’t feel so good.”

  Christian agreed, even though he thought it might be more than that. Like, she made him feel stuff. He didn’t even know what to call any of it yet.

  The customer Dana had been helping carried what looked like two T-shirts and a sweatshirt to the checkout counter. Nolan dropped his arm from Christian’s shoulders and took a step, but Dana smiled and waved to let him know she’d take care of it.

  Earlier they’d discovered she knew how to operate a cash register. As long as the items were clearly labeled, she could ring them up. She’d helped Christian get a kayak into the water, too, plus the woman renting it couldn’t figure out how to buckle into her life vest. If Dana didn’t know how, she figured it out
really quick and kept the customer from feeling stupid. That was one of Uncle Nolan’s Rules for Business: help customers feel smart and competent. The rules were all like that. He phrased them positively. That’s what he said. He didn’t use the words no or never, except for in a couple rules that had to do with safety.

  By the end of the day, when Uncle Nolan ordered Christian to turn the sign to Closed, Dana looked really different than she had when she arrived at noon. She’d gone back out to the beach with him a bunch of times to help renters with Hobie Cats or windsurfing boards. Since they had to go into the water, she ended up rolling her khaki pants to her knees. Her pants had gotten wet anyway, and he could tell they were stiff now.

  Her hair had started loose and shiny. He’d seen her pull it into a ponytail to keep it out of her way, and now hairs were straggling out. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the sun and her lips looked chapped. Uncle Nolan noticed at the same time and handed her a tube of lip stuff.

  He was grinning. He held up his hand and Christian smacked it. When he turned to Dana, she did, too, but awkwardly, as if she’d never done it before.

  “Hot damn,” Uncle Nolan said. “We did some good business today.” His smile for Dana was teasing. “And had free help, too.” He turned it on Christian. “Lots of free help.”

  “Yeah!” They joked about this practically every weekend. “When are you going to start paying me?”

  “When you’re legal.” He wrapped his hand around the back of Christian’s neck and gave it a squeeze. “Right now I’d get arrested for violating child-labor laws if the authorities knew I was paying you under the table.”

  “Are you really?” Dana’s eyes widened.

  “Yep.” Uncle Nolan knew to have a little pause before the punch line. “It’s called an allowance.”

  She giggled. “Well, he deserves to be paid.” She smiled at Christian. “He’s a good worker.”

  All loose now, she didn’t seem as fake as she had when she arrived. She didn’t look all that much older than Molly, the high school girl who stayed with Christian when Uncle Nolan had to be out at night. Like when he went to see that woman. The one he thought Christian didn’t know about.

  Jason said Christian should watch out, that Uncle Nolan would probably marry her and she might not like having someone else’s kid living with them. But Christian knew his uncle would never marry anyone who didn’t want him, too. If he even thought about marrying her, he’d bring her home first, or take Christian with them sometimes when they went out, but he never did.

  Except...now Christian had all this other stuff to think about. Like, what if they made him go live with Dana or the father he’d talked to on the phone? Would Uncle Nolan get married then? Something else that gave Christian a stomachache. He didn’t want anything else to change.

  If he could stay with Uncle Nolan, he didn’t mind Dana being around. She wasn’t awful—in fact, today she’d been kind of cool. She was like a friend of Nolan’s hanging around. But thinking of her as his mother? Even the idea made him feel like he’d swallowed a baseball.

  * * *

  NOLAN INSISTED ON taking them out for pizza. Determined to soak up every minute she had with Christian, Dana accepted even though she’d been disturbingly aware of Nolan all day and really needed a time-out to talk some sense into herself.

  “Are we celebrating something?” she asked as they walked out to their vehicles. Did she dare ask Christian if he’d like to ride with her? No, she decided; he was being too careful to keep Nolan’s bulk between them.

  “Today’s take beat any day we had in May last year, and we’re still in the first week of the month.” His voice was rich with satisfaction. “Windsurfing is big business here in the Columbia River Gorge. Every town along this stretch of the river has a place that sells the same kind of equipment I do and offers rentals, too, but either the sport is gaining even more in popularity, or enthusiasts are choosing Wind & Waves. After the winter slowdown, I worried. Looks like I didn’t have to.”

  “You bought an existing business, you said.” After hearing her brother’s stories about his guide business, Dana really was curious about Wind & Waves.

  Nolan nodded. “It gave me some stock to begin with and ensured I didn’t have a competitor right here in town. I’d have put them out of business anyway—they didn’t have enough square footage, which meant limited stock, and the location downtown had problems, starting with a lack of adequate parking. Moving the business to the shore gives us a big boost. I got the idea of teaming up with the inn from a store that did the same in Hood River. They have a deal with a Best Western that gives them a private beach like we have.”

  She unlocked her door. “Stealing ideas. Tut-tut.”

  The humor in his eyes made her pulse bounce. “In the military, if you can’t learn from your enemy, you’re toast. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to call my competitors along the Gorge enemies, but...”

  Dana was laughing when she backed out of her parking spot to follow the big SUV to Nolan’s and Christian’s favorite pizza parlor.

  She parked to find man and boy already out of the SUV and waiting for her. Christian stayed quiet as they walked in, however, and once they put in an order, begged Nolan for money to play video games.

  Dana watched him go to the small arcade room, some of her pleasure evaporating. “Has he had enough of me today?”

  “He’s not much for talking.”

  She believed it was more than that, except it was true he hadn’t had much to say even as they worked side by side. Maybe the day hadn’t been as successful as she’d believed.

  Seeing she’d made Nolan uncomfortable, she decided not to challenge him. “You were right. He could just about run the place.”

  His subtle relaxation told her she’d made the right choice. “He’s a smart kid.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  Sprawled on his side of the booth, his knees occasionally brushing hers, he smiled. “Could be.”

  “Will you tell me about your sister?”

  That wiped out the smile. “To give you some more ammunition?”

  “No!” Of course that was what he’d think. “Never mind. I just thought...” Dana trailed off, turning her head as if she was interested in a family walking in. The boy, about four or five, had a shock of blond hair. Even now, the sight of him gave her a sharp pain. She’d missed so much. She would never know Gabriel at that age.

  “Then why?” Nolan asked.

  She turned back to see his gaze had followed hers and settled briefly on the little boy before returning to her. There was understanding in his eyes that made her feel a little angry to be so easily read.

  Nonetheless, she answered honestly. “She was part of his life. In his eyes, I’m trying to replace her.”

  A struggle showed on his face. “I don’t want to disparage her to you,” he said finally.

  “I didn’t ask that.”

  “You know she died a month after I discovered from Christian’s blood test that he couldn’t be her son.”

  “Yes.” She hadn’t asked how. It was horrible to admit, but she’d been glad. She had no idea what she’d have said or done if she’d had to come face-to-face with that woman.

  “I killed her,” Nolan said with such bleakness she sucked in a breath.

  After gaping, she had to reshape her lips to form a word. “What?”

  “It’s more accurate to say she killed herself. I drove her to it.”

  “How?”

  “I wanted answers and was determined that, by God, she’d give them.”

  Unsettled by his self-loathing, Dana tried to think of what to say. “You were shocked.”

  The dislike on his face made her want to shrivel. Instead, she lifted her chin and held his gaze.

  “All she did was scream, ‘He�
�s mine! It’s not true. He’s mine!’ over and over. How could I accuse her of something like that? It was lies. She remembered every minute of her pregnancy, from puking to labor. Why wouldn’t I believe her? I suggested her baby could have been switched in the hospital with another little boy.”

  “You gave her an out,” Dana said flatly.

  “It seemed a possibility. But she insisted that couldn’t have happened. She said he was born with more hair than any of the babies, that everybody commented on it. And it was so blond.”

  Her heart cramped at the memory of the pale fuzz Gabriel had actually been born with. “She didn’t see him until he was eight months old. By then, his hair had grown.”

  He was watching the door to the arcade room, not her.

  “What if her baby died?” Why she felt any pity for the woman who had stolen her Gabriel, she couldn’t imagine, but she of all people knew what losing your baby could do to you. “And...she convinced herself he hadn’t, that Gabriel was hers.”

  He grunted. “Now who’s offering an out?”

  “I’m not—”

  “She was never pregnant.”

  “What?” Dana whispered again.

  “Because she committed suicide, they did an autopsy.” His eyes met hers, and she wished they hadn’t. “I asked the pathologist whether she had ever been pregnant. I was told she’d never carried a baby to term or even close. She lied.”

  “I—”

  “Enough,” he said, his voice so cold it could raise goose bumps. “Here comes Christian.”

  Christian. Not Gabriel. Jarred, Dana resented the reminder.

  He stopped at the table, looking curiously at them. “Didn’t you hear our number?”

  “No.” Nolan slid out. “You get the plates and a knife—I’ll grab the pizza.”

  Left alone, Dana stared, dry-eyed, toward the back of the restaurant, where there was a glassed-in room, probably for private parties. She wondered how many times Christian had celebrated with his friends in that room. The end of soccer season, baseball, other activities. Not just friends—family.

  What had Marlee been like at those parties? A mom, like any other? Or had her craziness been obvious to everyone? Had she embarrassed Christian?