The Secret Daughter

by Catherine Spencer

  A morbid fascination drew her toward them. She pulled open the drawers, swung open the doors. And found more relics of a girl who no longer existed.

  Frilled baby-doll pyjamas for summer, full-length combed-cotton nightgowns with tucked yokes and long sleeves for winter. Cashmere sweaters and pleated skirts. A fourteen-year-old’s first evening gown of pale blue crepe with a wide velvet sash. And in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door, a woman staring at her, a stranger intruding on a shrine to a girl who’d ceased to exist a long time ago.

  “Why?” she whispered, and the word seemed to bounce back at her from every surface.

  She’d thought her mother would have had all traces of her removed, if not the furniture then at least the accessories, the clothes, the mementoes. But even her first corsage, pink roses from the boy who’d been her escort to the winter ball the year she’d worn the blue dress, had been preserved under a glass-domed display stand.

  Laying her suitcase on the bed, she hauled out her clothes as though their presence could banish the ghosts of the past. Chic, sleek styles in subtle shades of plum and orchid and pearl gray. Softly tailored blouses and loose-fitting skirts. A black linen sheath and an ivory blazer with a matching straw boater for the retirement ceremony taking place in two days’ time. A black silk two-piece suit in case she needed something dressy for evenings.

  With one sweep of the hand, she consigned the girl’s clothes to the back of the wardrobe and made room for the woman’s outfits. With equal dispatch, she dumped the contents of two drawers onto the bed and replaced them with the things she’d need during her stay—silk lingerie trimmed with French lace, smoke-gray panty hose and two handbags, one of butter-soft Italian leather for daytime and a beaded clutch purse for evenings.

  Gathering the items discarded from the drawers, she flung them into the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, stuffing them on top of old photo albums and bundles of greeting cards tied in ribbon she’d saved during her teens. And in doing so, she discovered the five-year diary she’d received on her fifteenth birthday. The cover was cream leather with an embossed gold border grown a little worn at the edges because it had seen a lot of wear and held the secrets of another lifetime.

  She made the mistake of touching it, of picking it up and running her fingers over the smooth, cool leather. As if it had suddenly become a live thing, the book fell open at the first page, at which the girl she wanted so desperately to forget came back with a vengeance, bringing with her a whole host of memories, of heartache and heartbreak.

  And the woman she’d become accepted what she’d known all along. There was no turning away from the past. The only way to defeat it was to face it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  June 25

  Dear Diary, Today’s my fifteenth birthday and you’re the first gift I opened. I’m having a pool party this afternoon and for the first time I get to ask friends from school for a change instead of girls I hardly know from the country club or equestrian center whose mothers are friends of my mother. (I think there’s supposed to be a comma in there somewhere, but this isn’t for anyone else to read so who cares.) Also, I’ve been begging for a two-piece swimsuit for ages and Mother’s finally agreed to buy one for me. Yeah! No more boring one-piece things that went out of fashion in the last century.

  June 26

  Dear Diary, the party was the pits. I wanted to die at the way Mother looked at my friends as if she thought they were going to steal the silver. After everyone left, she told me most of the girls were too common to associate with a Palmer. Also my two-piece looked gross and might as well have been a one-piece, it covered so much. When Julie Coombs saw me in it, she just about split a gut laughing. I wish Patsy Donnelly could have been here, but when I mentioned her name, Mother put her foot down. “People from Lister’s Meadows aren’t our kind of people,” she said—whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  August 17

  Dear Diary, Guess what! Dave Baxter asked me out on a date! He asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him on Friday. I said sure, but I don’t know how I’m going to persuade Mother to let me go.

  August 18

  Dear Diary, I’m allowed to go to the movies with Dave but only if there’s a crowd of us. So I phoned around and arranged it. The only problem is that Arthur, our chauffeur, has to deliver me and pick me up after. Also I have a ten o’clock curfew, but it’s a beginning, right?

  August 22

  Dear Diary, Well, here it is, the biggest day of my life, and already my mother’s ruined it. I started getting ready about an hour ago, shampooed my hair and stuff, then tried some of the blue eye shadow Debbie gave me for my birthday. I was all set to go when Mother showed up and made me wash my face and change out of my jeans because no daughter of hers was going out in public dressed like a tramp. So here I am, wearing a navy skirt and white sweater and looking like some fifties pom-pom girl, with my hair tied up in a ponytail and my nose so shiny you could see your face in it. Honestly!

  August 23

  Dear Diary, Dave Baxter is a disgusting creep. Halfway through the movie he suddenly attacked and tried to kiss me. I could feel his teeth. Worse, he had garlic pizza for dinner. Yuck! For once it didn’t bother me that Arthur was parked outside the movie theater, waiting to drive me home. The way some of the girls at school talk about it, you’d think being kissed by a boy was a big deal but I can definitely live without it Maybe I’ll become a nun.

  INSTEAD, she’d learned there was a huge difference between boys and men and allowed her fascination for Joe Donnelly to lead her down the primrose path to ruin! Was it possible she’d once been so young, so deliciously shocked by harmless vices and so filled with impossibly high expectations?

  She was at the point of reading further when the phone rang, its double tone signaling that a call from the outside had come through on the house line and was being transferred to her room. Probably Tanya checking in for an update before she went out for the evening, Imogen thought, lifting the receiver. It was coming up to seven o’clock on the west coast.

  But it was Joe Donnelly, the slight echo chasing his words indicating he was calling from a cell phone. “I’m at the back gates,” he said, dispensing with preliminaries. “I want to see you.”

  She sat up so abruptly that the diary slid to the floor. “What, now, at this time of night?”

  “I wasn’t planning on camping out till morning, Imogen. And it’s only just after ten, in case you haven’t noticed. Hardly the witching hour.”

  “But I only just got here.”

  “So? There’s no law that says you can’t go out again, is there? Or do you still need Mother’s permission to set foot outside the front door?”

  Perhaps if she hadn’t just read the diary, his barb wouldn’t have found such an easy mark. But the memory of the control her mother had wielded over every aspect of her teenage years remained suffocatingly vivid. “All right,” she said, annoyed to find herself whispering and looking furtively toward the door as if afraid she might be caught consorting with the enemy. “I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

  “Make it ten, and bring a jacket,” he said, then hung up.

  No goodbye, or thanks, or sorry if I disturbed you. Just an autocratic click in her ear. Yet she could no more have ignored his summons than she could have burned the diary.

  Downstairs, a lamp burned on the carved table near the passage to the kitchen, but there was no sign of activity as she crossed the hall to the solarium and let herself out one of the big sliding windows on the west wall. From there, a flight of steps descended to the path that wound past the lily pond to the walled garden.

  The moon was almost full, marking the route clearly. Not that she’d have had trouble if it had been pitch-black. She could have found her way blindfolded. The garden, over fifty acres of it, had been her refuge when she was young, a place of peace and solitude—and, for one unforgettable night, a place of magic.

  Surefooted, she made her way to the south en
d of the property where the greenhouses stood. Only once did she falter, when she came to the glade where the little thatch-roofed cottage that had been her playhouse nestled under the low-hanging boughs of an ancient oak.

  How ironic that the same moon that had watched her then lit the way for her now as she hurried to meet the man who’d stolen her innocence and broken her heart here in this secret, silent place. Was it an omen, a sign that some things never change and some mistakes are destined to be repeated?

  Not if she had a brain cell to call her own, it wasn’t! And yet, hadn’t she already learned how little sway her head held where Joe Donnelly was concerned? The sight and sound of him were enough to send her heart spinning. She knew it, knew the danger of him, and yet, when he called, she went running, and common sense be damned.

  He was waiting in the lee of the wall outside the chief gardener’s lodge where the shadows were deepest. “Good thing you remembered the jacket,” he said and, taking her elbow, led her up the road to where the gleam of moonlight on black metal revealed a motorcycle propped next to a tree.

  He handed her a helmet and checked to make sure the strap fit snugly beneath her chin before putting on his own. “Climb aboard,” he said, swinging his leg over the saddle of the bike.

  What was it that held her in such thrall that she obeyed him with the docility of a lamb being led to the slaughter? The warmth of his body, perhaps, and the summer-night scent of his skin? The ripple of muscle beneath his shirt as he rolled the bike into the middle of the road and turned eastward, away from Rosemont? Or was she driven by the secret, shameful, totally illogical hope that, if history was destined to repeat itself, this time they’d get it right?

  Swifty, they roared toward open country, man and machine angling as one into the curves of the road as it looped around the deserted rim of the lake. And just as swiftly, Imogen was transported to the other time—the only time—the breadth of his body had shielded her from the air rushing past and the warmth of him had chased away the chills shaking her and she had wished they could ride without stopping until Rosemont and everything her life had been up until that moment was left behind forever.

  Of course, it didn’t happen, not then and not now. The moment of reckoning arrived, heralded by the motorcycle’s snarling deceleration as Joe geared down and cruised along a rough path, which ended on a strip of rocky beach.

  Low-rising hills enclosed this end of the lake, narrowing it to a lonely, deserted place restored to sudden, deafening silence as the engine died. Not a breath of air rippled the silvered surface of the water. Not a bird stirred.

  Even Joe had lost some of his urgency and seemed content to remain slouched astride the motorcycle and gaze blankly at the scene before him. But since there was no earthly reason for her to remain plastered to his spine with her arms wrapped around his waist, she dismounted and removed her helmet.

  Picking her way over the rocks, she said, “How peaceful it is here.” A blatantly inaccurate observation, given the circumstances! The tension that had charged the atmosphere in the hotel room that afternoon continued to swirl between them.

  She felt obligated to continue babbling, as though, if she distracted him with mindless chatter, he might forget the reason he’d brought her here. “I’m surprised people haven’t snapped up the land and built summer retreats here. The water is so clear, and the view—”

  His voice cut across her trite meanderings as cleanly as a scalpel slicing through flesh. “Purely as a matter of interest, what had you planned to do with the baby, had she lived?”

  Although the question caught her off guard, at least she was on sure ground with her answer. “There was never any doubt in my mind. I’d have kept her.”

  “And would you have bothered to contact me at that point? Enlisted my help?” he asked, continuing to focus on the lake.

  “What does it matter? Our baby died, so the question never arose.”

  “I’ll tell you why it matters,” he said, climbing off the bike and spearing her with a look so loaded with pain that she flinched. “Because I was her father and I want to know. Because I have a right to know! You might have closed the book on her, but I’ve only just opened it. So whether you like it or not, Imogen, our association isn’t going to end until I’m satisfied I’ve read every chapter.”

  Predator in pursuit of victim, he strode to where she hovered like a cornered animal at the edge of the water. “And forget harping on the business of my having left no forwarding address when I skipped town,” he went on, stabbing his forefinger in her direction for emphasis, “because it just won’t wash. There was never a time my family didn’t know how to reach me. All you ever had to do was go to them and ask.”

  On the surface, his words were laced with bitter anger. But his eyes told a different tale, one of grief, of having been robbed of a part of himself. Like her, he’d lost a child. The difference was, he hadn’t had years to adjust to the bereavement.

  “I can’t change the past, Joe,” she said gently, knowing that simply to apologize was like offering a Band-Aid to a man suffering a heart attack. “All I can do is try to make you understand how it was for me and why I acted the way I did.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I was trapped and didn’t know where to turn. If you recall, that night—”

  “It’s hardly something I’m likely to forget.”

  It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d denied remembering any of it. She hadn’t been the first girl he’d made love to, nor the last, and she doubted he’d found the experience particularly memorable. “Yes, well, although I’d hoped to sneak into the house undetected, I got no farther than the front door before my mother accosted me. If I’d been thinking straight at the time, I’d have realized she’d be there, waiting for me to show up.”

  “How so?”

  “Our chauffeur had driven into town to pick me up from the dance two hours before, only to find I’d already left, and of course he reported as much to her, so she knew full well something was amiss. And just to clinch matters, when I finally did show up, I was wearing your leather jacket over my dress.”

  “Did you explain why?”

  She let out a strangled sigh. “I tried. Said I’d borrowed it because I was chilled. But my face, my hair, the hem of my dress, my shoes—they were in complete disarray. One glance, and my mother knew exactly what I’d been up to.”

  “Some mother you’ve got!”

  “And some daughter she had! I knew what she wanted me to say—that I was ashamed, repentant—and I just couldn’t do it. Because despite all that had happened earlier in the evening, what I most felt at that moment was...cherished.”

  At that, his lashes swept down to shield his emotions, but not before she saw how her confession had touched him. Almost savagely, he picked up a flat stone and sent it skipping over the water, shattering the mirrored surface into a dazzling explosion of light and shadow.

  “The one thing I couldn’t pretend was regret,” she said, “and that enraged her. She was not used to being opposed by anyone, least of all the daughter who’d always submitted to her authority and of whom she expected such high moral standards. She saw my defiance as the ultimate betrayal.”

  “Made worse, no doubt, by the fact that, of all the people you could have turned to for help, you chose me.”

  “That didn’t improve matters, no, especially since, for all your professed concern for my safety, you didn’t care enough to follow it up with so much as a phone call to make sure I was none the worse for my misadventure.”

  He stared at her in blank amazement and opened his mouth as if to refute what she’d said. Then, seeming to think better of the idea, he snapped his jaw closed.

  After a moment, Imogen picked up the thread of her story. “She read the riot act, pointing out that one had only to look at me to know I’d cheapened a great family name with my wanton behavior, that if word of my escapade ever got out, she’d never again be able to lift her head in decent socie
ty, that it was as well my father wasn’t alive because what I’d done would surely have killed him and that she’d make sure I didn’t disgrace her again with my sin-filled ways.”

  Joe choked back a laugh. “She actually used those words?”

  But the memories she’d revived were too painful for Imogen to find them amusing. It had taken a very long time for her to shed the miserable legacy of that evening. “More or less.”

  “And how did you defend yourself?”

  “Believe it or not, I was more concerned with figuring out a way to meet you again and return your jacket.”

  “The jacket wasn’t important, Imogen,” he said quietly.

  “It was to me,” she told him, remembering how she’d hugged it to her during that long night, drawing comfort from the heavy silk lining and the mingled scent of leather and whatever shaving lotion he’d used. “But I realized the odds against my sneaking away to meet you the next night as we’d planned were slim to nonexistent, so I left a note in the pocket, explaining I had to break our date, then took the jacket to the cottage early the next morning before anyone was up.”

  “I know. I found it when I went back that evening.”

  She waited for him to add something, to offer an excuse for not having bothered to try to see her when the fuss had died down. Instead, he stooped and sent another stone skimming across the lake. Only after it sank did he straighten and say, “What did she do next? Drag you to a doctor and force him to examine you to verify the worst?”

  “No. She shipped me off to Paris for a month, ostensibly to polish my French but in reality to remove me from the scene of further temptation.”