Cherish

by Sherryl Woods

  He walked slowly up the flagstone walk, then rang the bell. When Lizzy finally opened her front door, he felt his heart climb into his throat. She looked miserable and frightened. Her hand gripped the door as if she felt the need for something to steady her. And yet there was that familiar spark in her eyes, that hint of mother-hen protectiveness and daring.

  “Brandon,” she said after an endless hesitation. Then as if she couldn’t manage any more, she fell silent, her gaze locked with his. Time ticked slowly past as each of them measured their reactions.

  “Hello, Lizzy. We have to talk.”

  She nodded and let him in, closing the door softly behind him.

  “Would you like something? Coffee? Tea?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  She gestured toward a chair, then stood framed by the archway into the dining room as if she wanted to be in a position to flee. Suddenly Brandon saw himself as an ogre and regretted more than he could say that it had come to this between them.

  “Sit down, Lizzy. I’m not planning to take your head off.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked warily.

  “I’m not sure entirely. I just knew that all the answers I needed were here, not in Boston. I had to come.”

  He finally dared to meet her gaze. “I missed you, Lizzy. It’s odd, but the more I thought about this, the more I wanted someone to talk to. Not until today did I realize that that someone had to be you.”

  Her shoulders eased some, then, and she finally sat down. “Brandon, I never meant to hurt you like this. Never.”

  “I know. You said it before, but I don’t think I really believed it until I did some soul-searching on the flight out here. I’ve never been much good at forgiveness, Lizzy. Maybe when you’ve grown up with power and self-confidence, you start thinking that things will always go your way, that you never need to bend. I learned differently with Kevin, when we were estranged for all those years, but apparently I forgot the lesson again until you came along to test me.” He regarded her evenly. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “I’m not sure, Brandon.”

  “I think maybe you do but you want me to spell it out. I suppose that’s only fair, since I suspect my actions have put you through hell these past couple of weeks.” He drew in a deep breath. “I want you to know that I forgive you for keeping the truth from me. It wasn’t my place to criticize choices you made to protect your daughter and I apologize for that. And I’d like to ask your forgiveness for the way I bungled things when you told me.”

  Lizzy’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Brandon, thank you. Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about keeping the secret? Will you go back to Boston and forget all about us?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s the one thing I can’t do,” he said. “I can’t force myself a second time to try to forget you. And the only way you and I can possibly have the future we deserve is to tell Ellen the truth.” As soon as he said the words, he realized that it was what he’d known in his heart from the first.

  “No,” she said, her expression crumbling. “Oh, Brandon, how can you say you love me and ask me to do that?”

  “Because now that you know I’m alive, now that you know that I never stopped caring for you, you will never know a moment’s peace if you try to go on living with the lie. That’s not the kind of woman you are, Lizzy, any more than it’s the kind of man I am. The only thing left to resolve is whether you’ll tell your daughter everything alone or whether I will be there with you.”

  “You make it sound so easy, but then what, Brandon?” she demanded angrily. “Who will pick up the pieces?”

  “We’ll do that together.”

  “And what if I can’t forgive you?”

  “You will,” he said confidently. “In time.”

  She closed her eyes, as if that would block out the pain, but he could tell from the tears tracking down her cheeks that she was still desperately afraid.

  “Lizzy, I will be with you in this,” he reassured her. “Together don’t you think we have the strength to weather just about anything?”

  “There’s no way I can make you change your mind, is there?” she asked slowly, her tone resigned.

  “No.”

  “Then I will tell her, Brandon. Alone.”

  He nodded. “If that’s the way you want it. Shall I wait for you here?”

  “No. I think I’ll ask her to come here so we can be sure of some privacy.”

  “Then I’ll go for a drive. I won’t come back until I see that her car is gone.”

  He crossed the room and hunkered down in front of her, despite the sharp pain that shot through his poor old arthritic knees when he did it. He tilted her chin up with the tip of his finger, forcing her to meet his gaze.

  “It’s the only way, Lizzy. Whether I go or stay, it’s the only way you’ll be able to live with yourself.”

  She clasped his hand then. After a full minute while his hand slowly warmed hers, she seemed to gather her strength.

  “Please don’t go far, Brandon. I have a feeling I’m going to need you more tonight than I’ve ever needed anyone before in my life.”

  * * *

  It was good that Brandon had forced her hand, Elizabeth told herself over and over as she sat with the phone cradled in her lap, willing herself to have the courage to dial. Only the certain knowledge that Brandon would be back in an hour or two or three forced her hand.

  “Ellen,” she said when her daughter finally answered.

  “Mother, what’s wrong?” Ellen asked at once. “Are you okay? You sound as if you’ve been crying.”

  “I’m fine, dear, but I would appreciate it if you could stop by.”

  “When? Now?”

  “Yes, if it isn’t inconvenient.”

  “I’ll be right there,” she said briskly, as if she’d guessed the urgency without her mother expressing it in words. Elizabeth made tea while she waited. A whole pot brimming with chamomile, which was supposed to calm the nerves. Then she couldn’t even bring the cup to her lips, because her hands were shaking so badly.

  It took Ellen barely fifteen minutes to get there, a miracle by L.A. standards.

  “Mother, what’s wrong?” she was asking even before she was inside the door.

  Elizabeth kept a tight rein on her panic. Forcing herself to remain calm for Ellen’s sake was the only thing keeping her steady at all. She studied her beautiful daughter’s anxious expression, her troubled blue eyes and wished that this moment were past, that the truth was behind them and they were starting to rebuild their relationship.

  “Mother,” Ellen said again. “I’m starting to worry. Something must be terribly wrong.”

  “Sit down, darling. We have to talk.” She reached behind her neck and unclasped the locket she hadn’t taken off for weeks now. She took Ellen’s hand and allowed the delicate gold chain to pool in her palm.

  “Why are you giving me this?”

  “I want you to open it and take a good look at the man inside.”

  “But why? I already know it’s Brandon Halloran.”

  “Look again, darling. Even if you had never met Brandon, wouldn’t he look familiar?”

  Ellen studied the tiny photograph, then looked up, her expression puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “You should recognize the eyes, darling. They’re just like yours.”

  Ellen’s expression was thunderstruck as she looked from her mother to the locket and back again. “What are you saying?” she asked finally in a voice that was barely more than a horrified whisper.

  Elizabeth thought of the strong, caring man who was waiting somewhere out in the night and wished for just a little of his courage, just a little of his conviction that he could make anything turn out right.

  “Brandon Halloran is your father.”

  The locket slid through Ellen’s fingers and fell to the floor. “No,” she said, oblivious to it. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s
true, darling. Your father—that is, David—and I decided that you should never know. Maybe we were wrong, but there seemed to be no point in dredging up ancient history, especially when it seemed unlikely that Brandon would ever turn up here.”

  “You mean Dad knew all along?”

  Elizabeth nodded, worried by her daughter’s pale complexion. “You were just a baby when we married,” she explained. “He could never have loved you more if you had been his own flesh and blood. He was so proud of you, so proud of being your father. And he was, Ellen. He was your father in every way that counted.”

  “But you lied to me, Mother. Both of you lied to me. Didn’t you think I had a right to know? Maybe it would have helped me to understand why Kate and I are so different. Maybe it would have helped me to understand why she and Dad were always closer than he and I were.”

  “That’s not true,” Elizabeth said, shocked. “He loved you both.” But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. He hadn’t loved them equally. There had been a special bond between him and Kate, though he had done everything in his power to deny it. And her darling Ellen had recognized that bond and hurt for all these years because of it.

  “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I never knew how you felt. You never let on.” She couldn’t console her by explaining that Ellen was the child she had connected with—because she was the link to her lost lover.

  “I suppose I never wanted to admit it out loud.” She stood up then, picked up her purse and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Elizabeth asked anxiously. “You must have questions.”

  “I do, but I can’t deal with them right now. I have to figure out who I am.” She glanced back. “Did Brandon Halloran know he was my father?”

  “No. He never knew I was pregnant. Darling, none of this is his fault. Will you be back?” Elizabeth said, following her down the walk to her car.

  Ellen turned toward her briefly, the tears on her cheeks glistening in the glow of the streetlight. “I don’t know. It seems I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Then, with her heart breaking apart inside, Elizabeth watched as her precious daughter drove away.

  Elizabeth was still standing there, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if she were trying to hold herself together, when Brandon came back. He emerged from his car and walked slowly to where she stood. He slid his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, where she could hear the steady, reassuring beat of his heart.

  And for one brief moment she tried to imagine that she was safe in a place where nothing would ever hurt her so deeply again.

  * * *

  Brandon had grown tired of waiting, tired of watching Elizabeth grow increasingly pale, increasingly anxious as her daughter continued to avoid her day after day. Though Kate called regularly, oblivious to the undercurrents that were tearing her family apart, it wasn’t Kate whom Lizzy longed for. She needed to hear Ellen’s voice. More, she needed Ellen’s forgiveness.

  “Lizzy, I think I’ll go out for a while,” he said a week after he’d arrived in Los Angeles.

  She barely spared him a glance.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to pick up from the store?”

  “No, nothing.”

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you soon then.”

  He climbed into his rental car and drove straight to Ellen’s. She might slam the door in his face, but that would be better by a long shot than this silence that was destroying them all.

  When Ellen opened the door and recognized him, her eyes widened in dismay. “Why are you here?”

  “I think you know the answer to that,” he said quietly. “May I come in?”

  Too well-bred to deny him, she stepped aside, and he found himself once again in the house where he’d come for Lizzy just a few short weeks back. It seemed as if that had been a lifetime ago.

  Ellen followed him into the living room and stood nervously by as he chose a seat on the sofa. She kept sneaking curious glances at him, as if she weren’t quite willing for him to know how badly she wanted to reconcile the man she had met so recently with the abstract title of father that she had thought belonged to another man.

  He tried to imagine how Kevin would feel if some woman appeared after all these years and stripped him of everything in which he’d believed. Kevin was having difficulty enough simply accepting that there was a woman in Brandon’s life who meant as much to his father as Grace Halloran had, a woman who’d preceded Kevin’s mother in Brandon’s affections.

  “I think I have some idea of what you must be feeling,” Brandon told Ellen finally.

  “Do you? Then you’re better off than I am. All I feel is numb. I keep trying to fit all the pieces together, but it never comes together right. My father, the man I’ve always known as my father, no longer fits. In his place there’s this stranger. Worse, my mother never told me, never even hinted at it.”

  “So you feel as though your whole life has been a lie?”

  “I suppose.”

  “In a way that’s very much what I’m feeling. You see in my picture, there is a woman who looks nothing like your mother and there is a son. Later there’s even a grandson. But there is no daughter. All of a sudden, I discover there is this beautiful woman who carries my blood in her veins. But try as I might, I can’t make her fit in, either.”

  He regarded her steadily then, until she met his gaze and held it. “I want to, Ellen. I want more than anything to get to know my daughter, to become a part of her life. I don’t expect that to happen overnight, but if we took it slowly, don’t you think we might create a whole new family portrait?”

  Her gaze slid away from his. Her lower lip trembled. “My mother says she loved you very much,” she said in a low voice that begged him to confirm it.

  “And I loved her with all my heart. You are the blessing of that love, Ellen. Don’t ever believe anything less.”

  She blinked away fresh tears. “All my life I was told there was no sin worse than lying. The two people who told me that carried out the biggest lie of all.”

  “Why?” he said. “Why do you think they did that?”

  She was silent for what seemed an eternity before she finally said, “I want to believe they did it out of love, not fear.”

  “Then believe that, because it’s the truth.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Then I would have to forgive them,” she said in a small voice, “and it still hurts too much to do that.”

  “Ah, Ellen,” he said with a rueful sigh. “Let me tell you something I’ve only recently discovered about forgiveness. It’s when it’s needed the most that it becomes the hardest to give. You will never be happy until you forgive your mother, your father, even me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because I set it all in motion by searching for your mother. If I hadn’t, you would never have known. Would that have been better?”

  She hesitated, then finally admitted, “No. I think, if I give it some time, it might turn out that I’m luckier than anyone to have had the love of two fathers.”

  Brandon knew then that though it would take time for Ellen to accept him into her life, it would be all right. The healing really had begun. “Do you think you could tell your mother that?”

  “Now?”

  He nodded. “I think it’s the only way I’ll ever convince her to marry me.”

  A smile crept over her lips. “Better late than never, I always say,” she said with more spirit. “Just let me fix my face.”

  “Your face is lovely just as it is.”

  “Only a father would say that,” she said, then caught herself. Her smile broadened. “How about that? I can actually begin to laugh again. By the way, am I the only thing standing between the two of you?”

  “Not the only thing,” he conceded. “Just the most important.”

  “What else stands in the way? I knew weeks ago you loved each other.”

&
nbsp; “Time. Too much water under the bridge. Stubbornness.”

  “Yours or hers?” she asked slyly.

  Brandon could tell his daughter had Lizzy’s spunk from the twinkle in her eyes. “Maybe some of each.”

  Before Ellen could offer any advice, the front door slammed open and Lizzy stood there, her expression wary. “Brandon,” she said worriedly. “You didn’t say you were coming here.”

  “Ellen and I were just getting to know each other,” he said.

  Elizabeth cast an anxious glance at her daughter. “Is everything okay?”

  Ellen hesitated, her expression indecisive. Then, after a glance at Brandon, she moved slowly toward her mother and put her arms around her. “Not quite yet,” she said with the kind of honesty Brandon had come to respect. “But it will be. I’m sorry for shutting you out. I needed time to sort things out for myself.”

  “You had a right to be angry.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” She glanced at Brandon. “It was…it was Father who made me see the light.”

  Lizzy turned to him, tears glistening in her eyes. “Thank you,” she mouthed as she held her daughter.

  Ellen gave her one last squeeze, then shot a pointed look at Brandon. “I think I’ll leave you two alone now,” she said. “There’s tea in the kitchen, if you want some, Mother.”

  When she had gone, Lizzy crossed the room to him. “You worked a miracle here this afternoon.”

  He shook his head. “No, Lizzy, the miracle is you and me. We’ve got our second chance. I don’t plan to let it pass us by. How about you?”

  A smile spread across her face and her eyes lit with sparks of pure mischief. “You knew all along you’d have your way this time, didn’t you?”

  “Of course,” he said. “You never could resist a story with a happy ending, could you?”

  “Brandon, how will I be able to thank you?”

  “By marrying me, Lizzy. By letting me become a part of your family, just as you’ll become a part of mine.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I do love you, Brandon Halloran. I always have.”

  “And I you, my love. And I you.”