A Mother's Secret

by Janice Kay Johnson

  One thing to his credit.

  “You’ve given a lot of thought to this.”

  “Well, of course I have. After all, we’ve been untangling this for ages now, ever since Grandma’s attorney read us that letter.”

  “Yeah, I understand that. Adam was…stunned. He’d believed all his life that his father was this war hero who would have been the dad-of-the-year if only he hadn’t died. But no, it turns out Robert just chose not to acknowledge him. As for me…Well, the part I’ve struggled with is discovering that Mom had another baby. A baby she gave away.”

  He sensed that she was nodding. “I got off easy, didn’t I?” She sounded almost rueful. “It blew Sue away. She and Joe were such close friends in high school. I think maybe Joe was in love with her. And now to find out they’re first cousins!”

  “First cousins have married before. But, yeah, it would have been weird,” he conceded. “Joe told me that Sue was the one to end things, not him.”

  “Now she thinks maybe she sensed something. He does look an awful lot like Grandad, in pictures from when he was young. So maybe that was it.”

  They talked longer, but didn’t say anything important. Some of Daniel’s restlessness had subsided by the time he hung up, though. He guessed he’d just needed to talk to someone. Maybe anyone would have done. Then again, maybe not; he felt at ease with Belle like he did with Joe. They seemed to be sliding into friendship, which he guessed was what most of this conversation had really been about. That, and introducing him to the intricacies of this new family.

  Her parents had separated, for example. He didn’t really care; the couple of times he’d met Sam Carson, Daniel hadn’t liked him. He’d been enraged when he heard that Sam had talked Adam into selling him Billy Fraser’s Medal of Honor. That medal had meant a hell of a lot to Adam, representing all he had of the man he’d believed was his father. Yeah, the medical bills were steep, but some things shouldn’t have a price.

  And then, damn it, Sam had given it back at the funeral, letting Adam take it with him to his final rest. That was a surprisingly decent thing to do. And…Sam was Daniel’s brother. Half brother. A connection by blood that was real, whether or not either of them welcomed it.

  So maybe it would be interesting to find out why he tended to be such a jackass, given that he’d been his father’s only acknowledged son.

  Daniel was better acquainted with Emily Carson, since she’d visited Adam regularly in the hospital. She had thought her husband was wrong in refusing to accept that they were brothers, and she had been determined to make up for his rejection. She was a pretty, gentle, gracious woman. Belle, he thought, had taken the best from both her parents.

  Sleep didn’t come easily to Daniel that night. What a goddamn mess! he kept thinking. Was it really possible for a man to love two women? Or had it been nothing but arrogance and lust?

  Had it occurred to anyone to wonder whether Robert Carson had had other women? Other children?

  If so, his wife hadn’t known about them. She had known about Jo Fraser, and had evidently forgiven him for that transgression. So maybe she’d believed it truly was love he felt. Which, Daniel wondered, would hurt worse? To find out your husband enjoyed other women on the side without necessarily feeling any deep emotion, or to find out he had been close to leaving you for a woman he did love and—apparently—never was able to forget?

  Not the kind of thing Daniel usually wasted any thought on. Why would he, when he’d not only never been married, he’d never been in love? But he remembered when he insisted on coming to Rebecca’s house and it occurred to him that she might have a husband and even other children. He’d felt gut-churning rage. He hadn’t seen her in five years, and yet he had violently disliked the idea of her with anyone else.

  He disliked the idea even more now. What if she started dating some guy? What if she got married? He’d be relegated to being Malcolm’s father, whose schedule had to be considered when the family made plans.

  Over my dead body, Daniel thought grimly, staring at the streetlight leaking around the curtains. Rebecca was his. He couldn’t figure out how else to articulate the emotion that made his chest feel hollow.

  Would it be so bad to get married? To forsake all others?

  For the first time, he considered the idea without feeling any panic and concluded that no, it wouldn’t be bad at all.

  Something to think about.

  Something else guaranteed to hold sleep at bay.

  DANIEL CALLED REBECCA’S house the next evening, hoping she’d answer rather than Malcolm, just so he could hear her voice. Judge whether he was exaggerating his attraction to her.

  But Malcolm answered, saying hello and then, without covering the phone, yelling, “It’s Daniel, Mom! I mean, Dad!”

  Wincing, Daniel pulled the phone a few inches back too late to save his eardrum.

  “I had a great day,” Malcolm told him. “Guess what?” He didn’t wait for any response. “I get to spend tomorrow night with Chace. I don’t think I’ll get scared this time. I’ve never stayed all night at anyone’s house before, except Aunt Nomi’s. But Mom said maybe I should practice. For when I stay at your house. And Chace and I are real good friends. Most of the time,” he added judiciously. “When he isn’t all braggy.”

  “About his dad’s truck.”

  “Uh-huh. But now I can say so what, because my dad has a bulldozer. And that’s better.”

  Daniel laughed. “I’m glad to be useful.”

  “I’d like you even if you didn’t have a bulldozer,” his son told him earnestly. “But I’m glad you do.”

  Should he tell the boy that he had more than one bulldozer? And a lot of other heavy equipment? Yeah, but maybe he’d need to pull them out of the hat later, when Malcolm had become less impressed by only one measly piece of earthmoving equipment.

  “I’m glad you’re practicing for staying with me,” he said. “But I hope you don’t get scared when you do. You liked my house, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I ’specially like it when Mom’s there, too.”

  You and me both, kid.

  “But I’m getting bigger all the time,” Malcolm continued. “It won’t be that long until I’m five, like Noelle. I can’t remember how long Mom said it would be. And then I’ll go to kindergarten. ’Cept I can already read. I mean, not whole books. But some. Like ‘bat’. And ‘hat’. Mom says I’m real smart, when I haven’t started school yet.”

  Daniel thought he was, too. He felt a ridiculous swell of pride.

  Malcolm rattled on. All Daniel had to do was ask an occasional question. Here he’d worried about making conversation with a four-year-old over the phone! This one had the art of conversation down pat.

  “What’s your mom going to do without you home?” Daniel managed to ask casually. “Go party with your Aunt Nomi?”

  Malcolm thought that was hysterical. His mom didn’t party! And Aunt Nomi had a friend. A boy friend.

  “She goes somewhere with him every Friday. And then she calls in the morning so she can tell Mom all about it. I don’t know why she does that,” he confides. “Once I picked up the phone, and she talked and talked, and it was really boring. But Mom said you have to listen when your friends want to talk. So that’s what she was doing.”

  “I see,” Daniel said gravely, pleased at his information-gathering strategy. Should he ask to talk to Rebecca? Invite her out?

  Or should he just drop by tomorrow night and hope she was having a peaceful evening at home? Was she listening to Malcolm’s side of the conversation? Maybe he could pretend to have forgotten Malcolm was away for the night.

  Or maybe he should just say, “I wanted to catch you home alone.” Wasn’t honesty the best policy?

  Unless she slammed the door in his face.

  Somehow, he thought she wouldn’t do that. On the other hand, he suspected that if he asked her out, she’d say no.

  He was smiling when he ended the call without asking to speak to Malcolm’
s mom.

  REBECCA FELT…RESTLESS. Which was really dumb. She had often thought how nice it would be once Malcolm was old enough to occasionally spend the night with a friend. In four and a half years, she’d had barely a handful of evenings to herself. She went out sometimes—it wasn’t as though she didn’t hire a babysitter occasionally, or leave Mal with Naomi for a few hours. And he had spent the night at Naomi’s a couple of times, but always when Rebecca had to be away. Otherwise—she just wasn’t used to him not being here.

  So no wonder she felt a bit unsettled. Plus, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had to go pick him up at some point this evening, or even late tonight. A first sleepover for a boy his age could be scary.

  Still, she should be doing something more extravagant than cooking a dinner she knew he wouldn’t like and planning to read one of the books she’d picked out at the library yesterday. She should be going out with a man. Naomi told her often enough that it was past time.

  Rebecca had told herself she just hadn’t met anyone who appealed enough to her. Of course, it was hard to be attracted to another man when you were still in love with the last one.

  She turned the burner on to heat as she sliced beef into thin strips, then browned them and cut up an onion into slices thin enough to be near-translucent. All the while, she kept…oh, expecting the phone to ring, she supposed.

  Malcolm wouldn’t cry, of course. She smiled, imagining how brisk and reasonable he would be.

  Mom, I think I want to practice spending the night some other time. Tonight’s not a good night. I’d like it better if you were tucking me in tonight, instead of Chace’s mom.

  She measured burgundy and water, adding them to the sizzling strips of beef, then reached for the jar of bay leaves. Already it smelled wonderful. She’d have her burgundy beef on brown rice, Rebecca decided, another food her incredibly picky son was quite sure he didn’t like.

  She had just put the lid on the pan and turned the heat to low when the doorbell rang. Her hand jerked. Who on earth…?

  But she knew, even before she opened the front door a cautious crack and saw Daniel Kane on her doorstep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  REBECCA THOUGHT SHE’D become used to his presence, able to—almost—turn off her powerful awareness of his body. But this time Malcolm wasn’t here. If she let Daniel in, they’d be alone. That changed everything.

  Of course, he was as imposing as ever. In jeans and a brown-and-russet plaid shirt in some nubby fabric open over a brown T-shirt, he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen. His face was craggy and pure male, his mouth tight to disguise whatever he felt.

  “Daniel,” she said warily.

  “I hope you don’t mind me showing up like this.”

  “What if I told you I had company?”

  A shutter seemed to close over his expression. “Do you?”

  A flutter of excitement told her even before she opened her mouth that she was about to be reckless. She made a face at him. “No. But I wish I did, just to teach you to call first.”

  “If I’d called, you would have made an excuse.”

  “Probably.” She hesitated, then finally opened the door wide and stepped back. “Fine. Come in.”

  Choosing not to comment on her ungracious invitation, he walked in, so close to her she had trouble breathing. Damn him. And yet, she reminded herself, he’d been civil when she asked him to meet her for lunch that day in the city. She owed him for that.

  She closed the door, then faced him. “Daniel, why are you here?”

  He was silent for a moment, and she saw some struggle on his face. “I’ve been thinking about you this week.” His voice sounded slightly hoarse. “Wanting to talk to you.”

  “About Malcolm?”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, uh, about me.”

  About him? She studied him, noticing belatedly the way his hands were shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. New lines drawn on his face.

  Understanding dawned, along with compassion. “You got the DNA results back.”

  His mouth twisted. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said involuntarily.

  He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I doubt either answer would be a relief.” She touched his arm. “Come on back to the kitchen. Let me check on my dinner.”

  Following her, he said to her back, “I was going to offer to take you out.”

  “I’m making burgundy beef, and there’s enough for two.” She smiled over her shoulder. “Although the leftovers would have made a great lunch.”

  Daniel paused in the kitchen doorway, his broad shoulders filling it, the gravel back in his voice when he said, “I was presuming a hell of a lot, showing up here like this.”

  “Yes, you were, but I’d like to hear what you learned.”

  “I’m related to Belle Carson,” he said. “Robert was my father.”

  “Oh.” She gave her dinner a perfunctory stir, but studied him the whole time. “How do you feel about it?”

  He gave a grunt that was probably supposed to be a laugh. “How do you think? Pissed. Relieved. Illuminated. Hell, confused, shocked, indifferent. Ask me in five minutes and who knows what I’d say?”

  Rebecca picked one word out of this string. “Why illuminated?”

  He stayed in the doorway, watching her. “Because it explains a lot.”

  “Why your dad walked away.”

  He nodded.

  “What did you think before? That it was because he was so mad at your mom?”

  “No.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I thought it was me.”

  “You?” she echoed, appalled. “You were a child!”

  “What else was I supposed to think?”

  What else would he think, a five-year-old boy whose father hardly bothered to call after he left? Rebecca imagined Malcolm, if she suddenly lost interest, and felt tears sting her eyes for this man, who had believed his entire life that he was somehow lacking.

  “I’m not sure it’s an improvement to find out my real father was even less interested.” He sounded…detached. As if they were talking about somebody else.

  And yet he’d come here tonight to talk about this. He’d admitted to confusion and shock, too. Even to anger. Which meant the indifference he projected was a big fat lie.

  “You said yourself that he might have assumed you were Vern’s son,” she reminded him. “And that’s if he and your mother maintained any kind of contact. What if she told him not to call again? That she couldn’t bear to see him? It might be that he never knew about you.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. He had sex with her. You can’t tell me he wouldn’t have kept an ear to the ground, wanting to be sure there weren’t consequences.”

  Consequences. He said the word drily, reducing himself to a mere nuisance.

  “I played sports,” he continued. “Later on, he’d have seen my name in the newspaper. No. He had to know about me.”

  “Could your mother have flat-out lied? Told him you were Vern’s?”

  He gave another of those shrugs that broke her heart. “Sure. If you’d been Robert, would you have believed her?”

  She didn’t say anything, but he could probably read her answer on her face. No, of course she wouldn’t. She would have insisted on the truth. She would never have turned her back on a child of hers.

  Any more, she thought, than he was willing to do. Raised with so little love, how had Daniel Kane turned into the kind of man who was incapable of abandoning his son, even though he hadn’t planned for him, hadn’t wanted him? She couldn’t imagine.

  Her chest burned. How could she hold on to any resentment at having to share Malcolm? If ever anyone needed someone to love, it was Daniel.

  “Well, he was an idiot,” she declared, bending to clatter pans in the cupboard while furiously blinking away tears. She thought she’d subdued them by the time she straightened with a saucepan in her hand. “To b
e so careless in the first place. And then to have two sons that somebody else raised. I’m glad he’s dead. I wouldn’t want Malcolm to have to pretend to love him.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked that of Malcolm,” Daniel said in a mild voice. “Not when I sure as hell wouldn’t have been willing to pretend.”

  Rebecca made herself revert to her original point. “But…it might not have been all his fault.”

  “No. Some of it was Mom’s.”

  There it was again, that utterly flat, expressionless voice that hid…something. A great deal of hurt, was Rebecca’s best guess.

  “What was she like?” she asked curiously.

  He was silent long enough she wasn’t sure he’d respond, but eventually he did start talking about his mother while Rebecca put water on to boil for the rice, cut up broccoli and found a pan for it, and made a salad.

  He had never known his grandparents, which made his mother harder to put into perspective. Very young, she’d married a man who immediately went off to war. He survived the fighting only to die shortly after coming home. Robert and her husband had served together, and he had evidently felt a responsibility toward her. One that had quickly become more.

  “Apparently Mom managed to pass Adam off as her husband’s child, although he was born a month too late. She built Billy Fraser up to be this big war hero and fabulous guy.” He shrugged. “Maybe he was. They looked happy in their wedding picture.”

  He talked about the job his mother had held in the county assessor’s office, about her fondness for baking even though she worried about her weight and made everyone else eat the fruits of her labors.

  “Which wasn’t a problem when any of us lived at home. Wait’ll Malcolm starts shooting up. I could put food away, and Mom always swore Joe could push back from the table, stuffed, then be back foraging in the refrigerator an hour later.”

  His mother had been a big reader, one reason he was, as well. They’d visited the library once a week, religiously. She couldn’t afford to buy many books, although she often had a bag of paperbacks from the secondhand bookstore, too.