A Daughter's Trust

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Three days without her and he was lonely as hell. He’d settled for less, all right. Less than the first happiness he’d known since Hannah’s death.

  He still hadn’t cleaned Hannah’s things out of the spare room. He was waiting for Sue. He wanted her to see it all. To share the memories with him.

  Sitting in his kitchen, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt without the sling, Rick was ready to go out for a run. Except that he’d been ready for a couple of hours and hadn’t gone. He heard a knock on his front door, and immediately thought of Sue. As though she could read his thoughts. As though his prayers had been answered.

  He didn’t recognize the newer looking compact car out front. Or the short-haired, nicely dressed woman on his porch when he opened the door.

  “Ricky?”

  He froze. He knew the voice. But it couldn’t be. “Mom?”

  “Yeah.” With a self-deprecating smile, she glanced down at herself and then back up. “Kind of a surprise, huh? Quite the change.”

  She’d been sober before. Many times. For weeks, months, even a year once. But she didn’t just look sober today. She looked…clean. Healthy.

  Standing there blocking the doorway, he stared. “You always were good at looking the part….”

  She stiffened, but managed to keep her smile. “I discovered that if you stay sober long enough, you actually get your skin tone back.”

  He wasn’t going to feel guilty for hurting her. He wasn’t going to feel anything. He couldn’t.

  “How long have you been sober?” he asked, hating his weakness, hating that he showed any interest at all. He’d almost added, “This time.”

  “Three years.”

  What?

  “I haven’t used anything hard or illegal since the first time I saw Christy high.”

  “I was told you checked into rehab after Carrie was born.”

  “I did. I’d dried out by myself, so while I wasn’t using hard stuff, I wasn’t completely clean, either. When I first quit, I figured I’d been through the process so many times, I didn’t need the program. I got a friend to sit with me through the withdrawals, to help me do that part without medication. You know…” She just kept talking, as though he didn’t have her standing out on his front porch. As though, if she stopped, she’d lose this chance. As though she knew that as soon as she let him get a word in, he was going to tell her to leave.

  “…part of my problem was that those programs, they make you feel like you have to be perfect, and I knew I never could be. I never trusted myself to succeed. I never believed I would. When I did it on my own, I didn’t ask me to be perfect. Just to stay off the hard stuff. Alcohol and illegal substances. When Carrie was born, I was sober, but still smoking almost five packs of cigarettes a day and relying on over-the-counter sleeping pills several times a month. I figured with only cigarettes and occasional sleeping pills to beat, and with a granddaughter who needed me because I’d failed her mother, I could damn well be perfect.”

  Oh, God. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Don’t make me hope again. Don’t make me want to help. Don’t make me believe.

  Reaching out with his good arm, Rick pulled the woman who’d borne him into his home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SUE WASN’T DOING SO WELL. As a matter of fact, she’d been crying on and off for three days. Crying, but only when her charges were asleep. When they didn’t need her. She’d called Belle but so far her cousin had had no luck connecting with Adam and Joe. Joe didn’t return her calls. Adam left a message that he’d called but nothing else.

  She spent the days alone with her charges. But not once, during all those long hours since Rick had left, had she felt pressured by the babies’ needs. Or needed to escape their demand on her time and emotions.

  No, she’d just loved them more. Because she knew she could send them back if she had to.

  Rick just didn’t get it. And she couldn’t blame him. Some days, she didn’t get it, either. He was right about one thing. She loved deeply. She’d loved every single one of her babies. Could still name them all, in order. She just had an all-in blockage. Emotionally, she needed to be independent. Distant.

  Just like Joe was.

  Probably because of Robert.

  They must have some chemical abnormality in their emotion genes.

  But, hey, it was Saturday and the sun was shining, and Jake’s bruises were gone. She still had Carrie.

  Deciding that a trip to the ocean was in order, Sue changed her T-shirt for a sweatshirt, and bundled up the infants. She was just loading the car when her cell phone rang.

  Her mother.

  She almost ignored the call. Mom would leave a message. She could call her back after some fresh ocean air cleaned her spirits.

  But, really, what would it take out of her to answer now? This was her mother, for God’s sake.

  “Hello?”

  “Sue? Oh, thank God.” Her mother’s anxiety reached her all the way from Florida.

  “What’s up?” Sue put up the blockades. Walled herself off.

  “It’s Adam, honey. He’s had a stroke.” Sue dropped to the front seat—her heart pounding as her mother named the hospital where they’d taken her newfound brother. “Daddy and I are on our way, but I was hoping you could get a sitter and go on over, sweetie. In case he doesn’t…”

  “And to keep us filled in until we get there.” Luke took up for his wife.

  Adam? He was awfully young to have a stroke. They hadn’t even had a chance to get to know him. Surely he would be okay. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to give them family and then snatch it away so quickly. The thoughts chased themselves across Sue’s mind.

  “I’ll call Barb,” she said, looking down the driveway. And then added, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll get there. And I’ll phone as soon as I see him. Or a doctor. Or know more. I’ll call you as soon as I’m at the hospital.”

  She hung up, thankful that she’d already been on her way out, with the babies safely in their car seats.

  It was only after she’d dropped Carrie and Jake at Barb’s that the full ramification of her mother’s news hit her. Adam Fraser wasn’t just her mother’s brother.

  He was Joe’s father.

  “RICKY, I DIDN’T JUST come here because of the stuff with Carrie.” They were in his kitchen, drinking iced tea. His mother had been asking him questions about his job. About friends she remembered he’d had that he hadn’t even known she knew. He’d been trying to talk about his niece, about the current issues between him and his mother. Trying to find a solution that would satisfy her, but that he could live with. Such as she’d give him custody, but be able to visit whenever she wanted.

  She seemed so genuine. Healthier than he’d ever seen her.

  But he’d believed in her so many times before. For so many different reasons.

  “I know about Hannah.”

  His first instinct was to wipe his daughter’s name off her lips. And then he looked her in the eye. And had to swallow before he could speak.

  “Sonia told you.” It was all he could say. As if it mattered how Nancy had found out she’d had a granddaughter she’d never met. One who could have known her sober.

  One who could have bridged the chasm between them, and given Christy the family she’d so obviously needed.

  “Yes.” Nancy continued to hold his gaze through the tears in her eyes. “Son, I’m sorry. So, so sorry. You were always such a good boy. So bighearted and believing in me even when no one else did, swearing that I was sober when I wasn’t, so they wouldn’t take you away from me again. Holding my head when I was sick. Telling me I could make it when I didn’t believe in myself….”

  At first, Rick didn’t understand what she was talking about. And then, slowly, memories started to surface. Years of moments that he’d forgotten.

  “I wanted to believe you’d found the love you wanted, that you had a wonderful family who adored you. You deserve no less than that.”

  He wasn’t
sure about that. He was a guy like any other. He got angry. Said stupid things. Let people down.

  “I’ve been through some rough times in this life,” she told him. “And what I know for certain is that there’s no hell worse than losing a child….”

  Rick looked into her eyes and saw his own anguish. He saw himself. Someone so filled with pain even breathing was a struggle. Someone who had the strength to take the next step anyway. And the next.

  Just as she’d always done. In spite of her demons. Just as she’d taught him to do.

  “I wish I could have known her. And even more, I wish I could have been here for you when you lost her.” Tears ran down her cheeks. And then his. He reached for his mother’s hand.

  “Would you like to see her room?”

  ADAM FRASER WAS IN intensive care. He was allowed only two visitors at a time. Sue had to call down to the nurse’s station from outside the unit. And was told there was already someone in with him. The nurse buzzed her into the unit and directed her to the family waiting room.

  Belle and Emily were already there. Emily sat in a far corner, flipping too quickly through a magazine to be reading. “We don’t know anything yet,” Belle told Sue as she met her at the door. “Joe’s in with him now. Dad’s on his way,” she finished with a grimace.

  Tense, afraid for her mother, for Joe—and for a man she barely knew—Sue quickly perused the room. They had it to themselves. Until a man with dark red hair walked in behind her. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a flannel shirt, and she was certain she’d never seen him before. Yet she felt as though she had. There was something familiar about him. His eyes, maybe?

  He caught her staring at him. And abruptly turned his back on the room to study a nutrition chart hanging on the wall.

  With another glance at her aunt in the corner, Sue said, “Your mother hasn’t stopped at a page since I’ve been here. She just keeps flipping….”

  “Through one magazine after another. Yeah, she’s worried about Adam. And about what Dad’s going to do—or say—when he gets here.”

  “He hasn’t come to his senses yet about Adam?”

  “Not at all. If anything, he’s getting more agitated by the whole thing.”

  Uncle Sam and agitation were not a good combination. Sue looked at her aunt and wondered, not for the first time, why she put up with Sam. Why she stayed married to him. Especially now that Belle was out of the house. Emily couldn’t have an easy life.

  Footsteps in the hall interrupted her thoughts, and she and Belle turned together.

  “Joe!” Sue hurried forward, took both of her friend’s—cousin’s—hands. “How is he? How are you?”

  “They don’t know anything yet,” Joe said to a place slightly to the right of her left ear. “He’s still unconscious. But all preliminary tests look good. His heart appears to be fine. Blood’s a little thick, but nothing alarming. There’s brain activity. But they won’t really know the extent of any damage until he wakes up.”

  He pulled his hands away. “And I’m fine…. Daniel?” As he spotted the other man in the waiting room, Joe left her immediately. “Hey, brother. Good to see you.” The men exchanged a half handshake, half hug.

  The cold, detached man was Daniel Fraser? Joe’s idol when they were growing up. Adam’s younger brother by twenty years. Which made him, what, thirty-eight now?

  And Sue’s uncle.

  “How is he?” she heard Daniel ask before the two men walked out into the hall.

  “Who was that?” Belle asked, coming up beside her.

  “My uncle Daniel.” Her uncle. Not Belle’s. It was all so confusing.

  After telling Belle everything she knew about Adam, Sue called her parents and left a message they could retrieve as soon as they got off the plane.

  As she hung up, Daniel came back into the room. Joe didn’t.

  AN HOUR LATER, Sue was still sitting in the room with her family, waiting to hear anything at all about Adam. The longer he was unresponsive, the more grim the room became.

  She’d tried to speak with Daniel, had introduced herself, but he’d been more reticent than Joe.

  So the family trait must have come from Jo, not Robert.

  And was still in Sue’s blood.

  Sam certainly didn’t suffer from any such dysfunction. He’d talked to everyone. Including every doctor and nurse who had the misfortune to cross his path. He wanted answers, and he wanted them immediately.

  That was his half brother in there. He had to know if he was going to make it.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t that just work out fine for him if Uncle Adam dies?” Belle whispered to Sue as they shared a small couch after Joe’s latest return to tell them there’d been no change. “He could save himself attorney’s fees.”

  Because then he’d be the only Carson son.

  Like that was going to get him something he didn’t already have.

  With her uncle Sam reminding her of a vulture circling, waiting for death, and Joe either pacing the hall or sitting in with his unconscious father, Sue was tempted to call her dad to delay her mother’s arrival at the hospital. Jenny wasn’t as good at dealing with tension as Sue was.

  And she thought about calling Rick. Except that there was no reason to. It seemed as though he should be made aware that she was there, sitting in vigil for the uncle she barely knew, but she couldn’t come up with a logical reason for calling him. He’d made his feelings for her clear three nights before.

  Either she married him or he was through. She hadn’t heard from him since.

  Joe was out in the hall again, speaking with an older doctor. His face grew more and more sober as he listened to something the man said. He nodded. Nodded again. And without a smile, went back toward his father’s room.

  And it hit her: Joe was really scared he was going to lose his father. He might think he couldn’t stand the man, but he was staying right by his side as though he could somehow pull him through this crisis. Or wanted to be present in case there were going to be any lucid moments left in Adam’s life.

  Joe might be distant. He might be independent and reticent. But he cared.

  Waiting to hear from her parents that they’d landed, and later as she sat with them in the quiet waiting room, Sue thought about her grandfather. By birth as well as by adoption. He’d brought them all there together. Her and Belle. And Adam and Sam. And Joe. He hadn’t fathered Daniel, but the woman who’d had two of his children had.

  He’d fathered his children in an untraditional way. He’d been unable to raise them as a family—or incapable of doing so? But here they were, all together.

  She thought of the choices he’d made and hoped they were sacrifices, even if that meant the decisions had led to agony for the father of three children who had only raised one as his own. And one as his adopted child.

  How he had felt about sleeping with two women at the same time, she couldn’t even fathom.

  Not just any two women, but his wife and his best friend’s widow.

  He’d lost his innocence in the war. His best friend right afterward. Had it unhinged him? Was that why he’d been so distant?

  As she pulled into Barb’s drive later that afternoon, with still no word about Adam, Sue had a feeling she was never going to know the answers to the questions that haunted her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  RICK SAT WITH HIS MOTHER in Sonia’s office Monday morning, ready to accept whatever decision the agency had reached.

  “How you doing?” he asked Nancy, giving her hand on the arm of the chair next to him a squeeze.

  “I’m good.” She smiled at him, squeezed back. “I’m the best I’ve ever been, Ricky. Yesterday, having you in my home, meeting the Franks, I didn’t think that day would ever happen.”

  “I liked them,” he told her, referring to the pastor and his wife, who rented to Nancy. “They seem genuinely kind.”

  “They are. Christy was about ten when I met them. Bonnie Frank is the friend who sat with me du
ring the worst of the withdrawals.”

  He still couldn’t believe it. That this woman was his mother. But he was working on it.

  “I’m okay with however this goes today. I…she’ll be fine with you,” he told her, and she smiled again. “You’ll just have to get used to having me hanging around the place, butting in….”

  “Good morning!” Sonia breezed in, put down a folder, sat. Hands clasped on top of her desk, she made eye contact with each of them, a huge grin on her face. And when she turned to his mother, Rick knew he’d lost.

  He barely heard the social worker’s spiel about policies and laws and regulations, trial placement and monitoring, for the disappointment crashing through him. A disappointment far worse than he’d expected. He’d told his mother that Carrie would be fine with her, and he believed it now. If something horrible happened and Nancy faltered, Rick would be there to pick up the pieces. As would the Franks. Nancy had something now that she’d never had before. A support system. And self-confidence. Things he couldn’t have understood when he was younger. Things he couldn’t have given her.

  “After the sixth-month period, assuming all is well, the adoption is pretty much a given, and happens quickly. The judge will…”

  Carrie would be fine. But he wished she could be his little girl. Live in his home. Wished he could be the one to carry her to bed each night, to hear her prayers and kiss her good-night. To see her frown over a math problem, vegetate in front of the television on a lazy day. Wished he could teach her how to play softball, and guard her against all the boys. Hear her giggle and watch her grow. Minute by minute.

  Carrie. Not Hannah. Because she was his baby sister’s little girl. Because she was Carrie. An innocent baby whose smile made his world right.

  And he wished Sue could be there with them. Mothering Carrie for the rest of her life.

  He wished she was with him now.