by Traci DePree
“Yeah. Normal is a good thing right now. I used to get so mad at her for being away from home constantly when she was a teenager.”
“I had that problem with my daughters too,” Kate said.
“You have daughters?”
Kate nodded. “Two. Melissa and Rebecca. And a son. Melissa is married with one child and lives in Atlanta, and Rebecca is single and lives in New York. She’s trying her best to become a Broadway star.”
“That’s ambition.”
“Scary is what it is. I worry about her all the time.”
“That’s part of motherhood, I think. Are your daughters close to each other?”
“Best friends. That’s one of the things I like the most about having daughters; they enjoy each other’s company so much. I’m glad they’ll have each other even after I’m gone.”
They sat silently for a moment. When the kettle finally whistled, Patricia turned off the burner and prepared their tea, then handed a cup to Kate across the counter. Then Patricia sat down and rested her head in her hands. Kate wondered if something she said had struck a nerve. She reached over and placed a hand on Patricia’s. “I have to ask you something,” Kate began, unsure of how to phrase the question. “There was something you said awhile ago that’s been...” She paused and decided on another course. “I’ve been wondering about something.”
Patricia withdrew her hand and sat up and took a sip of her tea.
Kate went on, “Do you recall saying that you could end Marissa’s suffering if you chose?”
Patricia nodded, her gaze fixed on the counter.
“What did you mean by that?”
Patricia sighed. “I don’t really want to talk about—”
“I know that Ray wasn’t Marissa’s biological father,” Kate interrupted. She didn’t want to divulge more for fear that it would cause Patricia to shrink further away, but she knew she had to push the issue if she was going to uncover the truth.
Patricia’s eyes darted to Kate’s.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“You and Ray both have blue eyes.” Kate shrugged. “It’s unlikely that you could have a brown-eyed child.”
Patricia let out a pent-up breath and began to shake.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. She lightly touched a hand to Patricia’s back. “I want to help you and Marissa. But I need to know the truth, and why you said what you did.”
Patricia lifted her eyes to Kate’s. “You’re right. You’ve been a friend,” she said. “I haven’t told this to a soul. Not since Ray—” She took a shuddering breath.
Kate waited. She knew that whatever Patricia needed to say, it would come out now.
“You didn’t give up on us. Even though I was so...” Patricia paused for the right word. “I wasn’t very kind to you, and yet you kept coming. Thank you for that. For your persistence. I’ve felt so guilty about the way I treated you.”
“You don’t need to feel guilty about me—I understand.”
“My guilt goes back a long way,” Patricia confessed. “Twenty-three years to be exact.” The tears came then—uncontrollable, gut-wrenching sobs. Patricia braced herself against the counter as she cried, her head down.
Finally her tears began to subside into a quiet stream. “I was eighteen,” she said. “I thought I was in love. His name was Matt Reilly. He was a star baseball player. We dated all through high school.” Her eyes met Kate’s. “I found out I was pregnant...”
“You’re what?” Matt said, his dark eyes flashing. He tugged his letter jacket tighter around himself against the cold late-November wind. They stood beneath the school’s bleachers on a gray Thursday afternoon.
“I said, I’m pregnant. I took one of those home tests, and it came back positive.” Patricia shrugged her shoulders. She tried to read his face, but all she saw there was surprise and then anger.
“How could you let this happen?” His voice rose to a near shout.
“How could I—?”
“I trusted you to take care of that. And now...” His face was red, the veins in his neck bulging. “This will ruin my life. You did this on purpose! You’re trying to trap me. Well, it’s not going to work. How do I even know this is my baby?” He turned toward her and pointed a finger.
How could he think such a thing? Patricia felt herself shriveling inside. She’d thought he was the one she would spend the rest of her life with. Wasn’t that what he’d told her when he’d been so persuasive? That they were meant to be together? He’d said he loved her, but he didn’t love anyone but himself. That was all too clear now. As if his was the only life affected by this unexpected pregnancy.
How was she going to tell her parents? That thought, more than any other, terrified her. If Matt wasn’t by her side, offering words of support, promises of marriage, how would she ever face her father? He was so strict as it was. This would probably kill him. Or he’d kill her.
She lifted her face to Matt’s as tears coursed down her cheeks, and mustering as much courage as her weak heart could gather, she said, “You don’t have to worry about it, Matt.” How she got those words out, she couldn’t even fathom. “My baby and I don’t need you.” She felt like crumbling with the words, lies that they were. “We’ll find a way without you.”
He softened then and touched her arm. “Patty,” he said. He knew it melted her whenever he called her by that name.
She looked into his eyes, hope nudging its way back into her heart. She wanted to believe he was reconsidering.
“There is another way, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to go through with it. We could go on as we’d planned. Stay together.”
“What are you talking about?” She prayed he didn’t mean what she thought he meant.
“There are places you can go to take care of these kinds of problems.”
Her hope deflated. “No. I can’t.”
He lifted his hands as if to say, “I wash my hands of you, then,” and the hard glint in his eyes returned. “You’re so stubborn.”
Then he walked away. He didn’t even turn to look back at her. He left her, shivering in the cold, to fend for herself and their baby.
In her mind, Kate could see the scene, and her heart broke for her friend as she thought about all the pain Patricia had suffered.
“When I told my parents, my father wouldn’t even look at me. He was so disappointed. They told me I had to leave Copper Mill. They were afraid their precious reputations would be ruined if people at the church knew about my indiscretion.” She shook her head at the memory.
“It must have been so hard for you,” Kate said.
“There I was, all alone at a home for unwed mothers in Chattanooga. My parents wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Matt left for college without so much as a good-bye, and I found out I was having twins.” She raised her head toward the ceiling. “It was a girl. I named her Kara Raine. Isn’t that pretty?”
“She didn’t...?”
“Die? No. She was smaller and weaker than Marissa when she was little. The cord was wrapped around her neck, so she was blue for a few long moments. But she was okay. They put her in an incubator at first. Then she came home with Marissa and me.”
“Home being where?” Kate asked.
“A tiny apartment above a drugstore. I was on welfare for a while, but even that didn’t cover what I needed, and with day-care costs when I did find a job, there was just no way...Who wants to hire an eighteen-year-old with no college education, no experience, and two infants at home? I finally got a job at a grocery store in town, but that was barely above minimum wage.” She took a long sip of her tea, then set the cup back in its saucer. “And I was exhausted. It was a miracle I’d been able to keep them both as long as I did, but I was barely with my girls those first few weeks. It just wasn’t right. Then I got behind on my rent, and my landlord was talking about evicting me.”
She wiped at her cheeks with a tissue from the counter. “What could I do? Live on the streets wit
h my babies? The county would surely have taken them away from me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing both of them. So I made the painful choice to give up Kara for adoption, my tiny second-born. I figured an adoptive family would have better resources to care for her than I had. She was so little, she’d never even remember that I was her mother.”
Another torrent of tears began, and Kate waited for Patricia to regain her composure.
“I’ve missed her every day since,” Patricia finally went on. “I thought it would get easier with time, but it hasn’t. When Marissa would do something new—when she learned to talk or walk, when she had her first solo in a school concert—I wondered if Kara was doing the same things. I’d see a little girl who looked like Marissa and imagine it was Kara. And now that Marissa is so ill...”
“So that’s what you meant when you said you could end Marissa’s suffering,” Kate realized.
Patricia nodded. “I know it’s wrong of me not to tell her. I let her believe Ray was her father all her life because I wanted to believe it. Then when I found out Matt died”—she closed her eyes at the memory—“it was easy to believe my lie. Matt would never come back to prove me wrong. Ray loved Marissa as if she were his own daughter...If only I’d met him before I’d given Kara away. We could have all been together, and this horrible mess...” She hung her head as tears filled her eyes again. “But it was too late by then.”
Kate held Patricia’s hand and cried with her for a long time. Finally Patricia rose and padded down the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom. Kate could hear her footsteps on the risers. When she returned, she had the old photo album in her hands, the one she had tried to hide from Kate.
As if she were extending a precious gem, she handed the album to Kate, who laid it carefully on the counter and opened its dusty cover. Inside were aged photos of Patricia with her two daughters. She looked so young, a baby herself. The twins were wrapped in pink blankets and snuggled beside each other in a white crib. Their cherubic faces smiled into the lens, revealing the deep dimples Kate recognized in the grown Marissa.
“Have you had any contact with her adoptive family since then?” Kate asked as she turned to the next page.
Patricia shook her head. “They wanted a closed adoption. It was the thing to do in those days. Not like today where adopted kids grow up knowing and spending time with their birth mothers. We believed ignorance was bliss. That was another lie, it seems.”
“You need to tell Marissa the truth,” Kate said when she’d paged through the whole album.
“I’ve been telling myself that for so long, but I don’t know how to even begin. She’ll hate me.”
“She won’t hate you,” Kate assured. “She deserves to be told.”
“She might be healthy now. Once we get the test results back, she might not even need a marrow donor...”
Kate gazed into Patricia’s eyes. “You know this isn’t just about the leukemia.”
Patricia sighed. “I know. I’ve tried so many times to tell her...You have no idea. But I choke up. I’m terrified of it. I can talk to you about it so much more easily than I could with her. I’ve kept the truth from her all her life—how could she forgive that?”
“You did the best you could. You love Marissa, and she loves you.”
“It was so perfect when Ray was alive,” Patricia said wistfully. She ran a finger around the lip of her teacup, then lifted it for another long sip. “It was as if I had finally found forgiveness...And then the other shoe dropped. God is punishing me.”
“God isn’t punishing you,” Kate countered. “He loves you, Patricia. Regardless of what you’ve done. He understands your reasons. He’s not out to punish you. He wants to forgive you. Don’t you see he’s giving you another chance? That’s what grace is all about...You need to forgive yourself too.”
SEVERAL DAYS PASSED. Kate hadn’t heard anything from Patricia, but she knew her friend needed time to work things out on her own. Patricia would tell Marissa the truth when the time was right. As for finding Kara Raine, Kate hadn’t even brought the subject up. It was simply too soon. And if the doctor pronounced Marissa healthy, it was something they could do in their own time and their own way.
Kate knew if she were in Patricia’s place, she’d want the same choice.
Kate had been working in her studio the past three days, on her surprise for the church. Twice Paul had come into the room from his study, taking a break from his Saturday-night sermon preparations, and had almost seen the piece, but she’d managed to cover it quickly with a bedsheet she kept handy for just such an occasion.
“What do you think I’m going to do? Go blabbing to everyone in the church about it?” Paul said.
“No,” Kate said. “I just want it to be a surprise, that’s all.”
He’d shrugged his shoulders then. “If that’s the way you want it, but you never know when I might sleepwalk into this room.”
“You aren’t a sleepwalker,” Kate reminded him.
“I might take it up.”
She laughed. Even after all their years together, Paul could still make her laugh.
The phone rang then, and Kate picked it up.
“Hanlons...This is Kate,” she said.
A male voice that sounded slightly out of breath said, “Is Paul there?”
“Is this Eli?” Kate asked.
“Yes, it is. Hey, Kate.”
Paul pointed to himself, asking if the call was for him, and Kate nodded.
“I’m calling about those Wilson brothers again,” Eli explained, but Paul was already at her side, so she held the cordless phone out to him.
“Hello?” Paul said. “Yes, Eli.”
He waited while Eli talked. “He didn’t! What did Jack say?”
Kate couldn’t make out Paul’s words from where she sat, but she was fairly certain it had to do with that dog again.
“Can someone do that?” Paul listened. “Where are they now?” Again a pause. “I’ll be right over.”
He ended the call and came up behind Kate, resting his hands on her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “Guess what?”
“Jack and Carl are fighting again. What about this time?”
“It seems Carl kidnapped the dog from the vet’s, and Jack is suing for custody.”
“You can sue for custody of a dog?” Kate asked.
“That’s what I wanted to know.” Paul left to go get his winter coat. When he returned, he said, “Don’t wait up. Who knows how long I’ll be arm-wrestling these two!”
AN EARLY FEBRUARY WIND bit Paul’s cheeks as he walked up to the Wilson brothers’ house. He could see Eli through the first-floor window. His back was turned slightly, and he was shaking his head.
Climbing the rickety stairs, Paul gave three knocks on the front door and waited for an answer. Eli opened it, a relieved expression on his face. He whispered as Paul came inside, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Scout was barking and running in frantic circles around the two brothers. Jack stood, warming his hands by the potbellied stove that was central in the messy living room. Piles of old magazines and newspapers were everywhere, as were clothes, blankets and books. It was a kind of clutter stew, a little of everything all tossed together.
Carl was sitting in a rickety-looking rocker, his arms crossed in front of him. “Jack, this is ridiculous,” he was saying. “We aren’t getting a divorce; you can’t sue for custody of Scout.”
“I can do whatever I want to do!” Jack shouted. “You had no right to go get her from the vet!”
“She’s my dog—I had every right. Besides, the vet called me. What should I have done? Left her there?”
“I gave that flighty receptionist Aunt Susan’s number. The vet was supposed to call me.”
“Maybe she never told the vet,” Carl said. “Anyway, does it matter? I picked up Scout. Big deal.”
“But I’m the one they sent the bill to!” Jack protested. Scout jumped up in front of him, but Jack ignored her.<
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Carl shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not my fault.”
Paul cleared his throat, and both brothers glanced his way.
“Do you know what he did?” Carl said, glaring at his brother. He handed a document to Paul, who scanned it quickly. It was a summons for a court date, with the details of Jack’s custody suit.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Carl went on. “I’m tired of fighting, Jack. We can find some middle ground.” His eyes entreated Paul’s as if looking for some assistance.
The dog, no doubt tired from circling the room, hopped into Carl’s lap and licked at his face. Carl scratched Scout’s ears, and she leaned into the touch before settling down to nap.
“This doesn’t seem right,” Paul began as he handed the paper back to Carl. Both brothers looked at Paul. “Do you really want to pay court fees and lawyer fees? It seems so unnecessary.”
“If he would stop interfering—” Jack began.
“You mean taking care of my own dog?” Carl started.
Paul held up a hand, and the two, thankfully, stopped their tirades before they were fully off the ground. “I have a solution.”
“Go on,” Jack said tentatively, crossing his arms in front of him.
“What do you say to a little competition? You agree to drop your custody suit, Jack, and I’ll set up an obstacle course of sorts for you two. You’ll each run Scout through a series of tests. Whoever Scout obeys the best and seems more attached to will get sole custody of her.”
“Who would judge the contest?” Jack asked. His gaze turned accusingly toward his brother. “All it takes is for Carl to bribe some judge, and—”
“Unbelievable!” Carl said. “Like I’d sink to your depths. I’d have no problem winning the contest because I know Scout is my dog.” At hearing her name, the dog lifted her head. Carl patted her head, and she lay back down.
“We’d need someone impartial,” Eli agreed.
“And neither of you qualify,” Jack insisted. “Not after that skunk fiasco.”
“Okay...” Paul thought for a moment. “How about this? We ask someone from the dog-food company to come judge our contest. They don’t know either of you. And they have a vested interest in seeing Scout in their ads.”
