The Secret Heir

by Gina Wilkins

  “I’m home, I’m home, I’m home,” Tyler chanted, bouncing on Jackson’s shoulders.

  Swinging the boy to the floor, Jackson grinned broadly. “I take it you’re glad to be back.”

  Tyler nodded happily. “Can we go to the zoo now?”

  Laurel couldn’t help laughing at the way Jackson’s jaw dropped. “So much for savoring his homecoming.”

  “We’ll go to the zoo another time, okay, sport? Right now you’d better go see your fish. They’ve been missing you like crazy.”

  “Okay.” Tyler dashed toward his room, dragging his penguin behind him.

  Pushing a hand through his hair, which Tyler had left standing in spikes, Jackson turned back toward the door. “I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”

  “I’ll go check on Tyler and then start lunch. I’m sure I already know what he wants.”

  “Macaroni and cheese?”

  “Bingo.” Anyone who knew Tyler was aware that he loved boxed macaroni and cheese almost as much as ice cream.

  Jackson cleared his throat. “As appetizing as that sounds, I won’t be able to stay for lunch, I’m afraid. I have to get back to work. You’ll, um, be okay here?”

  “Of course I’ll be okay. I’m home.”

  She didn’t resent that he was going to work today, she assured herself. After everything that had happened on his job yesterday, she knew he’d done well to take even a few hours today. And hadn’t she promised Leslie Logan that she would work a case next week, even though she was officially on a leave of absence?

  “I’m sure Mom will be over in a little while to help out.”

  “She’s welcome to visit, of course, but I really don’t need any help. I’m just going to throw some laundry in while Tyler plays. I’m sure he’ll need some extra attention, but I don’t have anything else pressing to do other than play with him or read to him.”

  “I’ll be home in time to read him a bedtime story,” Jackson promised. “I’ll try to be no later than seven.”

  She nodded. “I’ll have dinner ready. As good as the hospital food is, it will be nice to eat something that doesn’t come from the cafeteria for a change.”

  “I’ll second that.” He leaned over to give her a light goodbye kiss, then paused for another, slightly longer one. “It’s good to have you home. I’ve missed you.”

  She swallowed. “I’ve missed you, too,” she murmured.

  She doubted he knew she was talking about missing him for much longer than the last few days. But maybe things would be better now, she thought with a flicker of wary optimism.

  Just maybe…

  Jackson hadn’t been gone for an hour before Donna showed up at the front door. Laurel let her in with the usual reserved courtesy. “Tyler’s lying down for a little while. He got overexcited about coming home and used up his strength. I don’t expect him to sleep long, though. Can I get you some coffee while we wait for him to wake up?”

  “Do you have any decaf?”

  “Just made a fresh pot. I was going to have a cup with a slice of chocolate cake my neighbor brought over a few minutes ago.”

  “That was nice of her. Was it Mrs. Pelotti?”

  “Yes.”

  Donna nodded. “Beverly was always fond of her. They shared coffee together often during Tyler’s nap-time.”

  It took some effort, but Laurel kept her smile firmly in place. “Yes, so I’ve heard.”

  Donna declined any cake, and she barely touched her coffee while Laurel ate her own cake and tried to think of things to say. Laurel had the feeling there was something her mother-in-law wanted to bring up but was hesitant to do so. She decided to keep talking about inconsequential matters and let Donna take her own time in directing the conversation elsewhere.

  When Donna did finally speak, her question caught Laurel off-guard. “Am I right in thinking that you and Jackson have been getting along better lately?”

  Laurel lifted her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You think I’m prying into your marriage.” Donna seemed to have been prepared for that possibility. “It just seems to me that the two of you have grown a bit closer during Tyler’s ordeal.”

  “It’s been my observation that parents either grow closer or completely fall apart during a child’s illness,” Laurel said with a slight shrug. “Jackson and I chose to cope with the stress together. As a team,” she added, quoting him.

  “You seemed to let him take care of you more while you were pretty much trapped at the hospital during the past week. He needs to feel that he’s taking care of his family, you know. Most men see themselves as protectors and providers, and when that role is taken away from them, they become insecure.”

  “Haven’t we already had this conversation? If you’re going to try to pressure me again into quitting my job so Jackson can be secure in his ‘manly’ role, then—”

  “I’m not trying to pressure you into anything,” Donna interrupted impatiently. “I just wanted to tell you that I hope you and he are working out your problems. A wife is her husband’s safe refuge when he runs into hard times. She makes herself available when he needs to feel loved and reassured. And before you ask, no, he doesn’t talk to me about any problems between the two of you. I just know him so well that I can sense when he isn’t entirely happy.”

  She made it clear enough that she thought she knew her son of thirty-plus years better than his wife of four years did. And probably that was true, in some ways, Laurel thought. But Donna didn’t know her very well at all. Laurel wanted to believe that was as much Donna’s fault as it was her own.

  They weren’t the only mother- and daughter-in-law who felt the need to compete for their son and husband’s love and attention, she was certain. She’d read enough magazine articles dealing with that subject. But none of those articles had seemed to quite address Donna’s hot and cold attitude, or Laurel’s feeling that Donna always seemed to know something that no one else did.

  Maybe Laurel and Jackson had grown a bit closer during Tyler’s illness, but the same couldn’t be said about Laurel and Donna. In fact, Laurel felt more tense around her mother-in-law now than she ever had before. Knowing how close Jackson was to his parents, she didn’t think it boded well for the marriage that her relationship with his mother was falling apart. How could they truly be a team if they were so often on opposing sides?

  As she had predicted, Tyler’s nap didn’t last long. He came into the kitchen with the color returned to his face and a renewed spring to his step, his eyes lighting up when he saw the chocolate cake and his grandmother, in that order.

  There was no further opportunity for Laurel and Donna to talk privately, and Laurel was glad. They never seemed to accomplish much with their candid discussions.

  It was only much later that she thought of Donna’s words and wondered if there had been a warning for her in them. Was Donna expecting Jackson to face something that would leave him needing the support of a loving wife? Something that had nothing to do with Tyler’s illness?

  Was Donna finally going to talk to Jackson about whatever she had been hiding from him?

  Eleven

  Having been summoned by his mother, Jackson stopped by his parents’ house after leaving the job site Saturday afternoon. He called Laurel to let her know where he would be, and something in her voice when she replied warned him to brace himself. Either she knew something or, like Jackson, she was guessing that Donna was ready to talk—and that it wasn’t going to be a casual conversation.

  “Tyler and I are fine,” she’d told him as they concluded the call. “You spend all the time you need with your parents. I— Well, I think something’s wrong with your mother.”

  Because her words so closely echoed his own concerns, he pulled into his parents’ driveway with a tight knot of dread in his stomach. Maybe it was nothing, he tried to convince himself. Maybe they just wanted to see him.

  Knowing his dad, they were probably going to offer money for medical bills or something.
That sort of thing would embarrass all of them, and Jackson wouldn’t even consider accepting, but it would be typical of Carl to make the attempt.

  That had to be what it was about, he decided as he loped up their front steps. Money had always been an awkward subject between them. Donna said it was because both her men had so much stiff-necked pride.

  But when Donna let him in, it turned out Carl wasn’t even home. “He’s at his shop,” Donna explained, her face pale, her movements unmistakably jittery. “We both thought it would be better if I talked to you alone.”

  The knot in his stomach twisted tighter. He was surprised that his voice sounded so calm when he asked, “What’s going on, Mom?”

  “Come into the den and let’s sit down. It will be easier to talk if we’re comfortable.”

  Though Jackson didn’t think he was going to get comfortable in any way until he knew what this was all about, he followed her into the wood-paneled family room. A sense of familiarity immediately flooded through him. This was home. The place where he’d grown up. Where he’d crashed on the floor to watch TV or piled on the sofas with his friends or wrestled on the rug with his dogs.

  The décor hadn’t changed much since he’d moved out. The same slightly dented oak tables. The same prints of landscapes and wildlife. The same framed photographs of him in boyhood uniforms and cap and gown. The lopsided ceramic vase he’d made his mother in a required junior-high art class, and which she still kept in a place of honor on the oak mantel. The upholstered furniture had been replaced through the years, but even the new pieces were covered in the same earthy colors as before.

  Home.

  Donna settled on one end of the big, deeply cushioned brown couch, and he sat beside her, half turned to face her. His eyes focused on her drawn face, he said, “All right, Mom, out with it. What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  “No.” She reached out to cover his clenched fist with her hand, which felt icy against his skin. “I’m not sick. I’ve just— Well, I have something to tell you, darling. And it’s hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to face.”

  His throat clenched. “Dad? Is he—”

  “He’s fine,” she said quickly. “This has nothing to do with our health.”

  “Then what is it?” It was all he could do not to snap. The tension was getting to be too much for him.

  She drew a deep breath that ended in what might have been a choked sob. “You’re going to hate me.”

  “Mom.” He caught her hands between both of his, squeezing them firmly enough to make her wince a little. Easing up, he said, “Nothing you could say—nothing—would make me hate you. Got that?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.

  A dozen potential explanations had been swirling through his mind, some of them crazy, some more possible. One of them suddenly seemed to make sense in context with what she’d just said. “Are you leaving Dad?”

  “Leave Carl?” It was obvious that she was shocked at the very suggestion. “Of course not. I could never leave Carl. I love him. And I owe him everything—my very life, for that matter. If it hadn’t been for him—” She choked again.

  Okay, so that was one scenario he could quit worrying about.

  “Look, I could sit here all day trying to guess what you need to tell me, but it would save us both a lot of time and trouble if you’d just blurt it out.”

  Donna drew a deep breath that must have burned a path all the way down to her lungs, judging from her pained expression. “I guess I’ve told you that I had kind of a hard-knock life growing up. I was a vain, rebellious teenager who didn’t get along well with my mother or stepfather or my two younger half-brothers. I ran with the wrong crowd, did plenty of things I shouldn’t have, got in trouble at school and even with the law at times. I came very close to going to jail on a couple of occasions.”

  She’d told him she had been an undisciplined teen, more as a warning to him than for any other reason, but he hadn’t realized quite how far she had gone in her rebellion. This was the first he’d heard of any real trouble.

  “I’ve got to admit it’s hard for me to imagine you being a wild teenager, but that certainly doesn’t change the way I feel about you now, except to make me admire you even more for turning your life around the way you did.”

  Donna looked down at their joined hands. “The credit for that goes to Carl. He rescued me from a situation that seemed so hopeless that I was considering suicide.”

  That shocked him. “Good God, Mom, what happened to you?”

  “I was stupid. And naive. And so very blind.” She drew another shuddering breath. “It started when I was barely nineteen. I’d gotten a job working in a rather seedy diner downtown. I blew every penny I earned on clothes and partying—and I made good tips because I was a pretty young blond who didn’t mind flirting with leering old men.”

  Jackson didn’t want to know if she’d gone beyond flirting with those old men for extra tips. Instead, he said, “You told me you met Dad when you were working as a waitress and he was a customer.”

  She nodded. “Your dad was a regular in the diner before I even started there. He worked in someone else’s mechanic shop then, and all I saw when I looked at him was a shy, blue-collar worker almost ten years older than me. He wasn’t movie-screen handsome, and he didn’t make much more than I did, so I have to confess I wasn’t romantically interested in him, even though I knew he had a crush on me almost from the start.”

  She choked a little. “So blind,” she whispered, sounding far away—more than thirty years in the past, Jackson figured.

  He stayed quiet, knowing she would continue when she was ready, but keeping a supporting hold on her cold, trembling hands.

  “One morning this man came in for coffee. Oh, he was something. Blond, blue-eyed, tanned. Expensive clothes and a way of carrying himself that let everyone know he was somebody important. He was in his mid-thirties—seventeen years older than I was. I took one look at him and I fell hard. I’m pretty sure I made a fool of myself fawning all over him, flirting and flaunting myself at him. When he left, he tipped me twenty dollars for a three-dollar order of pie and coffee. I spent the rest of the morning giggling and daydreaming about him. The next day he came back.”

  It wasn’t hard to guess where the story was leading. His jaw clenched, Jackson nodded for her to go on.

  “He was married,” she said flatly. “He had children. But he told me his marriage was an unhappy one, and that his wife was a cold, bitter woman who didn’t understand him. I fell for it like the silly, shallow teenager I was.

  “I was his mistress for almost two years. I suspected that I wasn’t the only one, but I refused to believe it, because the things he said to me sounded so perfect and sincere. He told me he would leave his wife as soon as he could do so without causing too much pain to his kids.”

  She swallowed audibly. “He gave me money, but he wanted me to keep my job at the diner. I didn’t ask him why, but I kept working. I saw Carl there almost every day. He knew I was headed for big trouble, and he tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. I liked him a great deal, considered him a friend, but I was too stupid then to know the difference between a real, decent man and a flashy, selfish opportunist.”

  “You’re being awfully hard on yourself, Mom,” Jackson murmured. “You were just a kid, for crying out loud.”

  “I should have known better,” she argued flatly. “I did know better. But I didn’t care about his wife or his kids. I wanted him to marry me. I wanted the money, the prestige, the good life he shared with them. The more demanding I became, the further he drew away. Until he quit coming around all together. I hounded him, chased after him, begged him. We had a big scene when he told me it was over. I was devastated.”

  “And that’s when you turned to Dad?”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She swallowed, then said woodenly, “A few weeks after the big break-up, I realized I was pregnant.”

  Jackson’s heart fell into the pit o
f his stomach. Acting on blind instinct, he released her hands and sprang to his feet, shoving his fists into the pockets of his jeans.

  A startled curse escaped him in a hiss. His mother didn’t even bother to reprimand him for it, as she would have at any other time.

  Several long moments passed while Jackson tried to deal with all the implications of her admission. And then Donna spoke again, her voice barely recognizable. “I waited until it was too late for an abortion before I contacted him again. I was convinced he would leave his wife and family then. It never occurred to me that he would refuse even to talk to me. I got a note from him denying that he was the father of my child, threatening to expose me as a slut and a gold digger, and ordering me to stay away from him. I received that letter on my twenty-first birthday. I was almost six months pregnant.”

  The sound that escaped Jackson then sounded much like a growl. He couldn’t seem to make himself look at her now. He stood with his back half turned to her, his head down.

  Donna didn’t give him time to speak before she forged on. There was no emotion at all in her voice now, just an obvious determination to finish this. “Carl was worried about me. He came to my apartment to check on me, and he found me unconscious. I had taken a handful of pills. The letter I had received was lying beside me.

  “He rushed me to the hospital, where the staff saved my life…and yours. Carl has always said you must have had a really efficient guardian angel, because you survived that to develop into a full-term seven-and-a-half pound baby, and because you were never seriously injured in any of the reckless stunts you pulled as an active, growing boy.”

  Carl, Jackson thought with a hard swallow. The dad he had grown up idolizing and emulating. The man he now knew was not his biological father.

  Donna moistened her lips before saying, “Carl convinced me to marry him a few days after I was released from the hospital. I was scared and depressed and lost, and he wanted to take care of me. He hasn’t stopped taking care of me—of us—since. He loved me without question. He loved you with all his heart from the moment he first held you in his arms. And before our first anniversary had passed, I had learned the difference between obsessive infatuation and true love.”