The Doctor's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  “Yes.”

  “In front of all these people?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know we’re already raising eyebrows all over the room?”

  “So let’s give them reason to rise a bit more. Come on, Molly. That dress deserves to be shown off.”

  “I didn’t think you’d noticed,” she said, allowing him to draw her onto the dance floor and into the relentless beat of “Blue Suede Shoes.”

  “Oh, I noticed! And it feels as good as it looks.”

  He should have known she’d dance like a dream, graceful and uninhibited; that they’d move together with the same instinctive knowledge of each other that they made love: two bodies in perfect unison and not one false step to throw them out of rhythm.

  “We’re creating a scene,” she warned him, after a particularly spectacular bit of footwork. “It’ll be all over town tomorrow that Dan Cordell’s giving up medicine to open his own dance studio with that dreadful Molly Paget.”

  But she was laughing as she spoke, and he was captivated by her vivacity. He’d made her angry and made her cry too often. But if they could learn to laugh together…

  The music slowed, segued into “When A Man Loves A Woman,” and when he held his arms wide in invitation, she moved into them without a murmur of objection. He pulled her close enough that her thighs molded against his and her breasts flattened against his chest.

  “You were right about my mother,” she allowed, murmuring the admission against his cheek. “I could tell she was thrilled about the flowers. And it was kind of you to bring those books for Ariel. The glamour of living in a hotel is wearing a bit thin and although she has a tutor come in five days a week, I think she’s missing being in regular classroom.”

  “She needs to put down roots, Molly. A proper home and friends her own age,” he pointed out, gambling on the fact that she seemed more receptive to him than she’d been before. “Children thrive on permanence and normalcy, we both know that.”

  She stiffened in his arms and stepped back a pace. “Is this your subtle way of telling me I’m neglecting her?”

  “No,” he said, pressing his hand in the small of her back until she melted against him again. “It’s my not-so-subtle way of trying to find out whether or not you’re willing to marry me.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know,” he said, the fragrance of her skin and hair assaulting his senses and leaving him dizzy with desire, “if we worked as a couple as well as we dance, we’d make an invincible team.”

  “If being a couple was as easy as learning to dance—”

  “I’m not suggesting it’s going to be easy, Molly. I’m suggesting it’s possible. And given the situation, that’s enough to make it worth trying.” He lifted his head and glanced around the room. “If tongues were wagging before, they’re working overtime now. You have to agree I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain, so I think I’m entitled to ask you if you’re prepared to take me up on my proposal.”

  She turned her face up to his. “Not exactly,” she said. “But I am willing to consider a compromise. I’ll find a place here, something big enough for Ariel and my mother and me, while I take your proposal under advisement.”

  “And what about room for me? Or do I get to hang out in the garage and sneak over after lights out to neck?”

  “There’ll be room for you, too—if things work out between us. Until then, stay in your own place.”

  “Holy cow, talk about making a guy feel wanted!”

  “We need to get to know one another on a different level than the one which got us into so much trouble in the past,” she said virtuously. “And you need to win over Ariel. Until we’ve accomplished both those things, we can’t make a sensible decision about marriage. For that reason, the ‘necking,’ as you so charmingly put it, goes on hold.”

  “Cripes,” he moaned. “I might as well join a monastery.”

  “Those are my terms, Dan,” she said. “Take them or leave them.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE sun was well above the horizon when Molly let herself into the suite the next morning. “I was about ready to phone the police,” her mother greeted her. “I’ve been up half the night, wondering where you were. You’re lucky Ariel’s still sleeping. I don’t know what I’d have said if she’d asked why you weren’t here for breakfast.”

  “If it puts your mind at rest any, I wasn’t doing anything I can’t tell her about, Momma. In fact, I plan to give her a full explanation, as soon as she’s up. Before then, though, there’s something you need to hear and you’d better sit down first. You’re making such a good recovery that I’d hate to be the cause of a relapse.”

  “You’re going back to Seattle.” Clutching a fist to her heart, her mother sagged onto the sofa. “Now that I’m more or less back on my feet, I knew it was only a matter of time before you left, but oh, my Molly, it’s given me new life having you and Ariel here, and I’m going to miss you something fierce.”

  “It’s not about us going back to Seattle. It’s about Dan Cordell.”

  “What about him?” Hilda looked hopeful. “Is he in love with you? Does he want you to stay here?”

  “He wants me to stay here, but not because he’s in love with me.”

  “Because he doesn’t think I should be left alone, then. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s worried I’ll slip back into that awful depression if you leave. Well, Moll, if that’s what’s keeping you here, I don’t expect you to—”

  “It’s not.” She hesitated, searching for a way to cushion what she knew would be shocking news for her mother. Dan was Hilda’s idol; a solid, upright citizen and the dedicated doctor who’d not only restored her to health but who’d been instrumental in reuniting her with her daughter. To learn he hadn’t always been such a paragon of virtue would not be well received.

  If there was a delicate way to phrase such a bald truth though, Molly didn’t have the luxury of time in which to find it, not if she hoped to lay the groundwork for Dan’s visit later that morning. “He’s Ariel’s father, Mom,” she blurted out. “And he wants her to know it. He wants to be part of her life. That’s why I’m staying. But for what it’s worth, if I change my mind and go back to Seattle, I’ll take you with me. You’ll never have to manage on your own again.”

  She’d hoped the last point would soften the blow some but, as she’d feared, her mother couldn’t seem to get past the first piece of news. “Dr. Cordell’s Ariel’s father?” She blinked disbelievingly. “I don’t believe it! He seems like such a nice man.”

  “He is a nice man, Mom. He always has been.”

  “Not if he waited until now to admit what he’d done!”

  “He only just found out that Ariel’s his, and he’d probably still be in the dark if I’d realized the Dr. Cordell who signed the medical end of the social worker’s report on you was Dan, and not his father.”

  But Hilda was still trying to digest the impact of the original disclosure. “You slept with Dr. Cordell?” she said, looking more thunderstruck by the second. “How often?”

  “Often enough, obviously.”

  “When?”

  “Well, when do you think, Mom? The summer I ran away. That’s why I ran away.”

  “I always thought it was one of the local boys who’d forced himself on you and you were too afraid to tell.”

  “It was Dan, and I was more than willing.”

  “You were just a child. What was he thinking of?”

  “He thought I was more than seventeen because I lied about my age. When he found out, he ended the affair. But that’s ancient history. It’s how I break the news to Ariel now that concerns me. I need your help, Mom. I have to do this right.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do. Well, it’s going to be a shock, no matter what, but it seems to me you and he should tell her together.” Hilda shook her head as if to clear away the cobwebs of incredulity clouding her thoughts and grasp the bigger picture. “If being her father’s so important
to him, why won’t he marry you, Moll? Doesn’t he think you’re good enough?”

  “He wants us to get married. I’m the one dragging my feet.”

  “Because of who he is?”

  She nodded. “And because of who I am.”

  “Oh, child, you outgrew Wharf Street years ago. You don’t have to be ashamed of who you are now.”

  That was more or less the gist of what Dan had said to her, many times over the course of the night. But old habits were hard to shed and for every reassurance he’d given her, the ghost of her father had answered with a rebuttal.

  “There’s something else,” she said, the thought of her father reminding her. “When I was at the house the other day, I found a photograph of a woman who looks a lot like me. It was hidden at the bottom of my father’s sock drawer. I meant to mention it before, but I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  Her mother nodded. “That was Sara Anne. She was your father’s twin sister.”

  “Twin sister?” Talk about all the ghosts falling out of the closet in one fell swoop! “Well, with such a strong resemblance, I guessed she must be a relative of some sort, but I didn’t know she was my aunt. Good grief, Mom, why didn’t either of you tell me?”

  “John never spoke of her. She was killed in a train accident going on twenty-five years ago, but as far as your father was concerned, she died the day she shamed him and his family by running off with a married man. Before that, she and John were very close, and it broke his heart when she took up with her fancy man. But you know how proud and stubborn he was, Molly. He never forgave her for what she did.”

  Molly shook her head, as taken aback by her mother’s news as her mother had been by hers just a minute before. “How strange,” she mused, “that they both died in an accident involving a train.”

  “I’ve often thought the same thing myself, and wondered if it wasn’t God’s way of bringing them together again. Poor John. He carried so much inside and wouldn’t let anyone get close.”

  Hearing the sadness in her voice, Molly said, “Do you miss him very much, Mom?”

  “Yes and no. He wasn’t a happy man, and it’s not easy being married to someone, knowing he isn’t content. But I understood him, and we got along better in the last few years.”

  “Once I was out of the picture, you mean?”

  “He saw Sara Anne every time he looked at you, Moll. And he was deathly afraid you’d turn out like her.”

  “Well at least I lived up to his expectations in one area!”

  “Don’t talk like that. In his own way, he grieved when you ran away, but you had to know him the way I did to understand that.”

  “He refused to acknowledge Ariel.”

  “Yes, he did. And he suffered for it. Many a time I caught him looking at the pictures you sent, but he’d never admit to it. If he’d lived and you’d come home with her, I think that little girl might have been enough to bring you and him to some sort of understanding.”

  “We’d never have been close, Mom. There was too much bad blood between us.”

  “But you might have found a way to forgive him and that would’ve been a good thing. If you could lay your father to rest in your heart, I believe you’d be able to let go of all that anger you’re burdened with, and be a better person for it.”

  Although she didn’t say much at the time, the advice stayed with Molly throughout the morning, popping unexpectedly into her thoughts at odd moments. Which was rather amazing, considering the momentous events unfolding around her.

  Or maybe not. Maybe sitting down to tell Ariel that Dan was her father without casting blame on him or herself gave her a different perspective.

  “It’s not that he wouldn’t have loved you when you were a baby,” she explained, floundering to find the right answers to Ariel’s questions. “It’s that he didn’t know about you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him, Mommy?”

  “Because I didn’t think he’d want to know.”

  “Why? Because he didn’t like you?” Ariel straightened her spine stubbornly, reminding Molly so much of herself that she almost smiled. “If he doesn’t like you, I don’t like him.”

  “He likes me, Ariel. But at the time when you were still a baby, he and I weren’t very close.”

  “I don’t think that was very nice of him. Everybody else has a daddy when they’re babies.”

  “It was my fault, sweetheart. I went away so that he couldn’t find me, and that was a mistake. Parents do make mistakes, all the time, but they often don’t realize it until much later. And then they don’t know how to undo it, so they try to hide it.”

  Was that how her own father had felt? He’d never had much of a way with words, even at the best of times.

  “Now that he knows he’s my daddy, is he going to live with us?”

  “No. At least, not for now. But he still very much wants to be a real daddy to you.”

  “How can he be, if he isn’t even going to live in our house?”

  “We’re still working on that, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it when he gets here.”

  “He’s coming to see me?”

  “Yes.

  “Do I have to call him Daddy?”

  I’m your father, Molly Rose, and if I ever hear you call me “him” in that disrespectful way again, I’ll tan your hide!

  I wish you weren’t my father! You’re mean and hateful.

  Ah, girl, there are days when I wish I wasn’t, as well. It’s no picnic trying to do the right thing with a creature as willful as you.

  “Not unless you want to, Ariel. But I think he’d be very honored if you found you could.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Ariel said, bouncing up from the footstool and spreading out the worksheets left by her tutor. “I’ll decide after I’ve done my homework.”

  “I’m sorry if she hurt your feelings,” Molly told Dan, a couple of hours later, after Ariel, having made it all too clear that it would take more than two books and an apology to compensate for ten years without a father, had flounced into the bedroom. “I’m afraid she’s a bit overwhelmed.”

  “Understandably. It’s going to take time for her to accept me. I didn’t expect a miracle.”

  Perhaps not, but he looked crushed nonetheless, and the devastation which tinted his blue eyes the color of thunder heads moved Molly to the brink of tears. “It’s not fair that you have to prove yourself to her when I’m the one who’s to blame. If I’d been honest with you in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

  “You didn’t feel you could come to me, Molly,” he said grimly. “And for that I have to take full responsibility. Ariel’s no fool. Just because we didn’t spell out the circumstances preceding her birth doesn’t mean she couldn’t read between the lines. She feels I deserted you. And she’s right. I did.”

  The bleak picture he made, standing at the window with one arm braced against the frame and his head bent, as if he carried the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, cried out to her.

  “There’s a vulnerability that goes hand in hand with being a parent, Dan,” she said softly, coming up behind him and stroking his shoulder. “A child holds your heart in her careless little hands and can crush the joy out of it without even knowing the pain she causes. But Ariel’s not a cruel or unfeeling girl. She’ll come around, you’ll see.”

  At her touch, he pivoted away from the window and pulled her into his arms. “It’s the pain I’ve caused everyone else that’s destroying me,” he mumbled into her hair. “You might forgive me and perhaps Ariel will, too, in time, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”

  “Stop punishing yourself, Dan. What’s done is done. Parents are a work in progress. We can’t change past mistakes, but we can learn not to repeat them, and that’s what you and I have to focus on.”

  “You can’t have made too many mistakes,” he said. “Our daughter wouldn’t have turned out nearly as well, if you had.”

  The door
to the bedroom opened. “I’m getting very hungry,” Ariel announced sullenly, looking decidedly taken aback at the sight of her mother wrapped in the arms of her new father.

  “Never let it be said I can’t take a hint,” Dan replied, and how Ariel could resist his smile was beyond Molly. “There’s a really neat restaurant on the other side of the lake. How about if I take you there for lunch?”

  “Mommy, too?”

  “Of course. And Grandma.”

  Ariel took a tentative step closer, obviously as afraid of being excluded as she was afraid of showing she cared. “Will you let me have French fries?”

  “Ahem,” Molly said, looping an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I forgot to mention, when I was telling you what a wonderful daughter you have, Dan, that she’s a born negotiator.”

  He smiled again, and this time so did Ariel, just a little. “Takes after her mother then, doesn’t she?” he said.

  “I think I’ll quite like him after all,” Ariel informed Molly, when she tucked her daughter into bed that night. “I might even love him. Do you love him, Mommy?”

  Had she ever stopped? She’d thought so. For months at a time, years even, she’d been able to push him out of her mind. But she’d never forgotten him, and no other man had ever taken his place because there was no forgetting or replacing a man like Dan Cordell.

  “Yes,” she said, not only because it was true but also because she wanted her child to know she’d been conceived in love. “I always have. The mistake I made was in not bothering to find out if he loved me.”

  “Well, does he?”

  “Yes,” she said again, certain that, even if it wasn’t quite the case, he’d shown he cared about her, and this was one of those times when a little white lie served better than the literal truth.

  “Then I think it’s okay to do what you said, and live here. As long as we get to visit Auntie Elaine.”

  “We’ll visit lots, I promise.”

  “You’d better hurry up and find us a house, Mommy. Grandma said it’s must be costing you an arm and a leg to live here.”