The Secret Daughter

by Catherine Spencer

  She paused on the road, glad she’d parked her car at the store on the corner. The rented Lincoln would have announced the arrival of a stranger louder than a trumpet call, and she dearly needed time to compose herself, to rehearse for the fiftieth time how she was going to share the bombshell that had landed in her lap that morning.

  In the wake of her mother’s revelation, the air m the morning room had grown still, breathless, so heavy and thick it was all Imogen’s heart could do to labor on. “What did you say?” she’d whispered.

  “Your child did not die, my dear—but it was better that you thought she did.”

  “Better for whom, Mother?” she’d cried in anguish. “For me? For Joe? Or for you?”

  “For everyone, including her,” Suzanne had replied, and when Imogen pressured her for more information, had reluctantly admitted, “She was adopted and is being well taken care of.”

  Beyond that, however, she refused to go.

  Imogen’s frustration knew no bounds. Shock, elation, anger and bewilderment had rendered her incapable of coherent thought. The questions had hammered inside her head, shrieking to be heard—who, where, when? But, overriding them all and refusing to be silenced, why?

  Eventually she’d found her answer, and the full tragedy had revealed itself. “Because,” Suzanne had said, weeping, “she was the product of rape. Every time you looked at your child, you would have been reminded of the violence from which she’d sprung. How could you live like that? And how could I allow such a blight to remain with you?”

  Imogen had stared at her mother, stunned. “What in the world are you talking about? Joe didn’t rape me. Do you hear me, Mother? He did not rape me.”

  “Imogen, I found your dress, all torn and filthy. I saw the bruises on your neck and arms.”

  “He was not the one responsible for that,” Imogen had protested, appalled.

  “You have blocked it all out of your mind because you cannot bear to remember, but I shall never forget. Or forgive. I wrestled with my conscience at the time, oh, my dear, I truly did. He should have been brought to justice for the crime he committed against you. But you were so young, Imogen—my little girl, your father’s precious child—and I could not bring myself to expose you or our fine family name to the public humiliation legal action would have precipitated.”

  “So instead of asking me what really happened, you shipped me away.” For the life of her, Imogen hadn’t been able to control the bitter edge in her voice. “Out of sight, out of mind. Was that it, Mother?”

  “A change of scene, Paris in July-it seemed the best remedy at the time and could scarcely be construed as punishment.”

  “And later, when you realized I was pregnant and sent me to live with your cousin Amy, was that also not to be construed as punishment?”

  Her mother had wilted in her chair, an old, faded rose no longer able to hold its petals together. “I don’t know! I did what I thought was best. How could I have known that, almost ten years later, you’d resume a relationship with a man you had every reason to despise? How could I know you’d be so foolish as to tell him there had been a baby? And as for his wanting to visit his daughter’s grave, who in her right mind would find such a gesture admirable? He is as much a scoundrel without conscience today as he was the night he took you by force for his own gratification. Or are you going to look at me with those big accusing eyes and tell me he did not rob you of your innocence?”

  “He made love to me.”

  “Love?” Suzanne had echoed indignantly. “You call that love? Then you are a bigger fool that I thought.”

  A movement at the front door drew Imogen to the moment and the mission at hand. Mrs. Donnelly had come out to sweep her front porch. The dog stretched and rolled over. The sun blazed on the nasturtiums and on the brick-lined path leading to the house and on the little brass letter box hanging on the wall.

  Imogen knew what she had to do would not be easy. To her shame, she briefly considered not sharing the news with Joe. What was the point? Why burden him with knowledge he couldn’t act on? They hardly had the right to search out their child and demand that her adoptive family return her to her birth parents, after all.

  And anyway, a small, mean-spirited voice had whispered, since he’s made it so clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with you, why fly in the face of his rejection?

  Because the trail of deceit has gone on too long already and has to end here, her conscience had replied severely. And because he’s been falsely accused. And because it’s my responsibility to put things right.

  Aware that she had a visitor, Mrs. Donnelly stopped sweeping and shaded her eyes with one hand. “Good heavens, is that you, Imogen?”

  “That’s right.” Smiling, Imogen bent to pat the dog’s head. “I didn’t expect you’d remember me. How are you, Mrs. Donnelly?”

  “Well, lovey, I’m just fine. And you’re looking wonderful. But then, you always did. Come along in out of the heat. I expect it’s Patsy you’ve come to see.”

  “Actually,” Imogen said, following her down a narrow hall to the kitchen at the back, “I was hoping to have a word with Joe.”

  “With Joe, you say?” Mrs. Donnelly eyed her keenly. “Well, he’s not here just at this moment. Drove the Thunderbird back to Sean’s, he did, but he’ll be home any minute. Patsy and I were just about to take a coffee break. Thought we’d sit under the apple tree out back, where it’s cool. Will you join us while you’re waiting, lovey?”

  A screen door slammed on the back porch and Patsy, looking no more than seventeen in shorts and a halter top, appeared. “Imogen, for heaven’s sake, what a nice surprise! I looked for you in the tea tent at the school yesterday afternoon, but someone said you left right after the ceremony.”

  “Well, she’s here now, so you can catch up on the news while she waits for Joe. Here, Pats, carry the tray and I’ll bring the coffee.”

  “You’re waiting to see Joe?” Patsy said warily as they paraded across the grass to the dappled shade of the apple tree. “Did he know you were stopping by?”

  “No.” Imogen cast a glance at Mrs. Donnelly, so warmly at ease, so hospitable, and wondered how she’d react to the news that she’d been denied knowledge of one of her grandchildren. Would her unflappable good nature extend to forgiving such an omission?

  “Have you, um, spent any time with him since you’ve been home?” Patsy asked, her manner positively furtive.

  “Some. We had dinner together last night and visited for a couple of hours the night before that. Why?”

  “Because—oh, heck, Imogen, I told him something I should have kept to myself, and it’s been eating me alive ever since.” She grimaced and blew out a long, unhappy breath. “You’ll probably never speak to me again when I tell you.”

  Suddenly, Imogen knew. Joe and Patsy had always been close. Add that to her present distress and the way she was twisting her paper napkin to shreds, and it didn’t take a genius to come up with the right answer. “You somehow found out about my pregnancy and told Joe, didn’t you?”

  The famous Donnelly eyes seemed even bluer against the brilliant flush staining Patsy’s face. “I’m so ashamed, Imogen, I could die. I know it was unethical, and you have my solemn word I’ll never breathe a word to another living soul, and I know Joe won’t, either. I wouldn’t even have told him now, except he seemed so—”

  “So what, Pats?” His voice cut through the confession like hot steel through butter. He’d come around the house without their noticing and stood behind them, leaning against the trunk of the apple tree, his arms folded across his chest and his gaze an outright challenge.

  Patsy gave a yelp and sprang out of her chair as if she’d suddenly found herself sitting on a hornet’s nest. No matter which way she turned, she was cornered.

  Realizing something was seriously amiss, Mrs. Donnelly stood with the coffeepot in one hand and an empty mug in the other. “What’s all the fuss about?”

  “Patsy’s cleansing
her soul at everyone else’s expense,” Joe said. “Go on, Pats. Finish what you were saying.”

  Miserably, Patsy searched for an avenue of escape and found none. “I...”

  “Have you been spreading gossip?” her mother asked reproachfully. “Why, Patsy Donnelly, I thought I’d brought you up to know better!”

  Imogen couldn’t stand by silently a moment longer. Her own burden of knowledge weighed too heavily for her to have the heart or energy to condemn anyone else. “It wasn’t gossip. It was something Joe had a right to know, and I should have told him years ago. I’m grateful to you, Patsy, for tackling what I was too cowardly to face.

  Patsy promptly burst into tears.

  “Well,” Mrs. Donnelly said, taking her by the elbow, “since we know Imogen came here to see Joe and not us, we’re going to make ourselves scarce and leave them to sort out whatever troubles they’ve got without any more help from you, Patricia Mary Louise.”

  Joe waited until they’d disappeared inside the house before swinging his gaze to Imogen. “Well, what gives?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “So I gather.” He shifted irritably and shoved himself away from the tree. “Why? What’s up?”

  “We need to talk.”

  He flung her a look of unutterable weariness. “I’m all talked out, Imogen. So if you’re still insisting on trying to cobble together the remnants of what you fondly believe to have been the romance of a lifetime, you’re wasting your time. I thought I made that clear last night.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Well, good. Because I’m beginning to find this whole business tiresome. You’re a nice woman, an attractive woman, and I’d be more than happy to have a fling with you if you were anyone but who you are. But as things stand, the—”

  “Our daughter is alive, Joe.”

  If dramatic effect was what she’d been aiming for, she couldn’t have timed the announcement better. For a second, the silence was deafening. Then, dazed, he muttered, “Say that again.”

  “Our daughter is alive.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since my mother admitted it to me this morning.”

  He slumped into one of the lawn chairs. “What the hell kind of game are the two of you playing here, Imogen?”

  “No game, I promise you. At least, not on my part.”

  “Oh, yeah?” His gaze probed her face, seeking the lies he was so sure she was concealing. “You’ll be telling me next that she’s been hidden away in the attic all this time.”

  “No. She was adopted.”

  “What? Who—”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How bloody convenient! Just enough information to keep me hanging around begging for more! You don’t seriously expect me to believe all this, do you?”

  “I expect you to focus on what’s important here. I’ve just told you that the child we thought had died is alive. I’m halfway between heaven and hell, my stomach’s in knots, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and you think it’s all some sort of devious game. What’s wrong with you, Joe Donnelly?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” he sneered. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that, ever since we ran into each other again, you’ve managed to keep me so off balance that I don’t know what to expect next. First I find out from someone else that I fathered a child.”

  “You found out from Patsy, as you very well know.”

  “Big deal!” He waved that aside as being of no consequence. “When you can’t wriggle away from that truth, you trade on my sympathies by giving me some cockamamie story about the baby having died. I ask for details, and you can’t tell me a damn thing—no reason for the death, no birth records, nothing. The past is over, you tell me. It’s the future that counts.”

  “It is!”

  “But not with me, princess. I’ve already spelled it out. The only way we’d ever have headed down the same road is if the baby had lived. So now what do we have?” Grabbing a couple of forks, he rattled them on the tray in a fair imitation of a drumroll. “Surprise, folks! The man isn’t off the hook, after all. The daughter he thought was dead and buried just turned up alive and well.”

  “I know how you must feel. I—”

  “I feel screwed around! I feel like a goddamned fool! And I want to know what other schemes you’re hatching.” He nailed her in a glower. “How many more alligators are swimming around in that pond you call a brain?”

  She traded him glare for glare. “If your chief concern is that you’re going to find yourself saddled with me despite your best efforts to escape the net you seem to think I’m casting, let me ease your mind. This may come as a shock to a man who obviously has an inordinately high opinion of his charms, but the more I see of you, the less attractive I find you.

  “As for the schemes you correctly assume I’m hatching—well. brace yourself, Joe, because here comes another blow to that massive ego. They don’t concern you. I’ve got more important missions in mind. For instance, I want to see my child. I want to know that she’s happy and healthy. I want to know if the people she’s living with have enough money to give her the kind of life she needs and deserves. If they haven’t, then I hope they’ll allow me to help them out. Regardless, I intend to set up a trust fund for her future.”

  She stopped because she’d run out of breath.

  He immediately took advantage and jumped in with both feet. “You’re going to try to buy her, you mean. As if that’ll make up for the fact that you let your mother—” he ground his teeth and fairly spat the word out “—trample all over that baby’s right to know her own parents.”

  “You could put it that way, I suppose, if you lacked the charity to view my actions in a kinder light.” She stood and faced him, head held high. “I’m tired of trying to change your mind about me, Joe. Think what you like. I no longer give a royal hoot.”

  She was halfway to the house before he caught up with her. “Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asked, hauling her unceremoniously to a stop.

  “To start searching.” Pointedly, she looked at the long fingers clamped around her wrist “Kindly let go of my arm. I’ve wasted enough time on you.”

  The breath hissed between his lips. His eyes sparked blue fury. “We will start searching, princess. Together. And we’ll begin with Mother Dearest. How’d you get here?”

  “By car,” she retorted. “Did you think I swooped in on a broomstick?”

  “As long as you’ve got transportation and we can get a move on, I really don’t give a damn.”

  Suzanne had recovered sufficient poise to change from her morning robe to a tailored blue two-piece. Pale but composed, she stood in the doorway to her sitting room, triple string of pearls in place, hair immaculate, lipstick perfect.

  She said nothing when she saw Joe. Instead, with a faint lift of her delicately arched brows, she turned to Imogen. Only her tightly knotted hands betrayed her agitation.

  “He knows,” Imogen said, in response to her mother’s inquiring look. “I passed on to him everything you told me, but I think you know that it isn’t nearly enough. We both deserve to hear the rest.”

  “I suppose you do, but not here,” Suzanne replied sharply. “Come into the sunroom where we won’t be overheard.”

  She turned and left Imogen and Joe to follow her to the solarium. Only when the doors were securely closed did she face Joe. “You may be seated, Mr. Donnelly.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “As you wish.” She chose a sofa as far away from him as possible, perched on the arm and regarded him regally. “Well, fire away. No doubt you have plenty to say.”

  “Right now,” he said, “I’m more interested in hearing what you have to say.”

  She stood and with a shrug moved to a gardenia flowering in a jardiniere. “To you?” she said, and plucked a dead bloom from a stern before looking him in the eye. “Nothing. I owe you neither explanation nor apology. Anything I ha
ve done I did for my daughter and I harbor not a single regret. Her best interests were all that concerned me.”

  He ate up the distance separating them in two strides. “And my daughter’s best interests are all that concern me now, so let’s cut to the chase. I want to know where she is—and don’t bother saying you don’t know, because it won’t wash.”

  “She is living in a loving and stable home, and that is all I intend telling you.” In a final gesture of defiance, Suzanne tossed the dead bloom onto the soil covering the plant’s roots. There, that is what I think of you and your demands!

  He looked from her to the crumpled flower and back, tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and took a leisurely turn about the room. He stopped to gaze out the south window. Just when Imogen thought she’d scream at the tension-filled atmosphere, he circled until he stood directly in front of Suzanne.

  Then he stooped so his eyes were level with hers and, in a voice so deadly that even Suzanne flinched, said, “Do you think that I am going to let you get away with playing God again? Do you really think you’re going to kick me out of your front door as if I were some unwashed vagrant begging for scraps, the way you did the day I came and asked to be allowed to see Imogen, nine summers ago?”

  Imogen watched, hypnotized, as the war dance unfolded between her mother and Joe. At this revelation, she let out a smothered exclamation. “Mother? Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Suzanne said, her gaze never flickering from Joe’s. “The pity of it is, I didn’t kick him hard enough to deter him from coming back.”

  Joe smiled, and Imogen thought she had never seen him look more beautiful or more ruthless. His claim that he’d killed a man with his bare hands no longer struck her as an absurd overstatement. Yet despite the threat he presented, his voice was as deceptively mild as a cat’s contented purr when he said, “I’m your granddaughter’s father. Is that any way to talk about family?”

  “I will die before I admit you as a member of this family.”