Brody turned away toward the dark, his back to the truth. He couldn’t believe his father had been so different with Rain from the man he knew.
“Brody, did you ever wonder why your father drank so much? Maybe it would help you to reconcile who your father was if you considered how he truly felt about your mother. I don’t know much about their relationship, but I gather he loved her very much and didn’t know how to show her, or tell her. It’s my impression she was very different from Owen’s mother, softer, sweeter of nature. Maybe a counterbalance to your father’s more gruff and hard personality. I think he regretted damaging her and driving her away. I think he lived in misery, trying to drink away his memory of her and what he’d done, because he’d let love go.”
“What does this have to do with anything between us?”
“I don’t want to see you make the same mistake your father made when he pushed your mother away and spent the rest of his life punishing himself for letting her go. I don’t want you to punish yourself for what happened, or take it out on the people around you. I don’t want to see you turn your back on us because you’re having a hard time right now.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing, punishing myself?”
“I think you believe you deserve to be punished, and for more than just what happened with us.”
She was talking about what happened while he was in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I haven’t been a very good man,” he said by way of an explanation and an excuse.
“I don’t believe that at all. You’ve made mistakes. Ones you’re willing to take responsibility for and try to make right.”
“I do want to make things right with you. I want that more than anything. And if you tell me how to do that, I’ll do it, anything to make you happy and love me again.”
“Again isn’t necessary. It’s always been, Brody. But Roxy is still standing between us, and I need to know if you’ll stand by my side when she comes back for Autumn.”
“What makes you think she will after all this time?”
Rain held up the check in her hand. “She’ll want you to give her one of these, too. She’ll take as much as you’ll allow her to take from you. Once she’s used it all up, she’ll be back for more.”
“How will she know about the money?”
“If I cash this check, everyone in town will know about it in a matter of days.” He frowned and she went on. “The teller will mention to someone I deposited a huge check drawn on your account back east. She won’t even have to say how much, it’ll just be out there. One of Roxy’s spies will hear about it and call her. They’ve already told her you’re here and about the article in the paper, listing all your accomplishments. She probably already knows about you fixing this place up and hiring a contractor to build an addition. This will only add to her curiosity and plotting to find out how she can get what she can from you and use Autumn to do it.”
“Now tell me what you’re avoiding saying and used that little story about my dad to delay telling me. Why did you give Roxy money?”
“I’d think that’s obvious. I paid her for Autumn.”
“She sold you Autumn, my daughter,” he said, not believing anyone could be so cruel and callous.
“Yes. The scene in the grocery store, her breaking down under the stress of being pregnant and realizing you weren’t coming back. Also the fact I told her I had no idea where you were and didn’t care.”
“Is that how you really felt?” he asked, afraid she did and might still.
“I think you know it’s not, but I needed her and everyone else to see I was okay on my own.”
“Eighteen, alone, and pregnant. Yeah, I can see why you’d want to convince them and yourself you could do it.”
“I did do it, but it wasn’t easy. Anyway, she cornered me and after a few choice words, she told me she wanted to get rid of the baby. She made it plain she’d do anything to be rid of it. I had a life inside of me, could feel our child growing and moving. One look at her round stomach and I knew just how precious that life was, it was my child’s sibling.”
“You couldn’t have known that for sure,” he bluntly pointed out, hating the fact he’d slept with Roxy along with a horde of others. None of them meaning more to her than the pleasure of the moment, or a means to an end.
“I couldn’t take the chance the baby wasn’t yours, so I made her an offer. I told her if she kept the baby, I’d pay her. Since we were in the store, she agreed to meet me later and discuss the details. We met privately and discussed terms.”
“Terms. Like it was nothing more than a contract to be negotiated, not an unborn child. Disgusting.” The thought so foul, he actually tasted his bitter revulsion. “It cost you everything you had.” The hate he held for Roxy spilled out with his every word.
“Twenty-five thousand to get her to carry out the pregnancy,” Rain confirmed. “Dawn came two weeks early. I like to think she wanted to be your first, even though you’d gotten Roxy pregnant before me,” she said.
He didn’t know how she could look back on this mess with any kind of humor.
“Roxy went into labor fifteen days later. Pop watched Dawn while I went to see Roxy and the baby at the hospital the next morning. I took one look at Autumn in the nursery and I knew she was Dawn’s sister.”
“They don’t look exactly alike,” he pointed out.
“Not exactly, but there was no doubt she was yours. So I went into Roxy’s room and negotiated.” Rain’s voice turned hard, which meant Roxy had really stuck it to her, made it impossible for Rain to do anything but give in to her demands. Roxy probably made sure if Rain didn’t take the deal, she’d do something to Autumn, like put her up for adoption or sell her to some desperate couple. Worse, Roxy might have kept Autumn for spite. He had no doubt his daughter wouldn’t have been safe and loved in Roxy’s care. A chill went up his back just thinking about it.
“Roxy wanted out of this town. She owned the bar, every dime she had invested in the business. Whatever else she’d made, she’d squandered away. So I paid her for Autumn and gave her a way out.”
“She hated knowing you had plans to leave for college. I’ll bet she gloated about you having to stay here.”
“And a lot of other things,” Rain confirmed.
He just bet Roxy had really gone after Rain, embellishing what happened between the two of them. He wanted to hit something.
“I paid her the money she needed to get the hell out of town. I wanted her gone from my sight for good.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand for the pregnancy. Thirty-five thousand for her to give me Autumn.”
“She sold my child for sixty thousand dollars.” Disgusted with himself for ever laying a hand on the woman, or letting her get under his skin and using him.
“Yes,” Rain began, only he cut her off.
“How the hell have you been making ends meet?”
“It’s not easy. I do okay at the shop, but there have been a few times Owen bailed me out of a tight spot. I owe him about three thousand dollars. Pop helped me pay for the private detective I hired to track you down. So thanks for the check, that’ll go a long way to paying Owen and my father back for their help.”
“I’ll pay them whatever you owe.”
“I feel strange taking your money as it is. I’ll pay them.”
“This is my fault, my mess to clean up,” he told her, and meant it.
“There’s more, Brody. Roxy came back to town when the girls were three. She’d gone through all the money I’d given her. She came back, thinking you owed her, blaming you for all the bad in her life. This time, she went to your father to find you. Your father could be nasty and meaner than a rattlesnake when he wanted to be.”
“Truer words,” he said, agreeing with her.
“She told me later he laughed at her and told her if you wouldn’t come back for me and your children, you certainly wouldn’t come back for her. It’s all she needed to turn her cruelty on yo
ur father.”
Yeah, he knew all about it. “She got him drunk,” he said. “Well, more drunk than usual and sent him home. He hit a deer and the tree and died.”
“After, she worked herself into a rage and came to my house.”
“The cops were called.” Small towns, word got around quickly.
“A neighbor overheard us fighting. She tried to take Autumn. When I wouldn’t let her, she asked for more money.”
“Money you didn’t have,” he guessed.
“Not the kind of money she was asking for, and I didn’t have any idea how to contact you. Both those things really pissed her off, but not as much as Autumn coming down the stairs and calling me Mommy.”
“Like she cared,” he spat out. “She sold you her child.”
“I got her out of the house with a promise to scrape together whatever I could.”
“Why would you pay her more?”
“I had no choice. All she had to do was take Autumn. Legally, she’s her mother and has every right to her child.”
“Any judge would have given you custody after they found out you’d paid Roxy for Autumn.”
“How could I prove it? I paid her cash. She never signed anything giving me legal custody, or allowing me to adopt her. All she’d have to do is tell the judge she asked me to care for Autumn, but wanted her back now.”
“What a mess.”
“It gets even worse. The next day, she snuck into the house and took Autumn. I’m telling you, Brody, there is nothing scarier than having your child go missing. I was frantic. Dawn saw Roxy take her, so I called the police. They sent an officer to the house, but once I explained who Roxy was to Autumn, they shut me down. I didn’t have any legal right to keep Roxy from taking Autumn. I was able to get them to agree to find her and make sure Autumn was safe. Not any great comfort, because it would be a low priority since there was no reason to believe Roxy would harm her own child.”
His heart slammed into his chest and thrashed against his ribs. The thought of Autumn at Roxy’s mercy made him sick. He could only imagine the pain and anxiety and fear Rain must have felt not knowing where her daughter was or if she’d ever get her back.
“How did you get Autumn back?”
“Roxy waited three days to call me. It was agony not knowing anything about Autumn, or if I’d ever see her again. Dawn was a mess without her sister. She stopped talking the second day, and on day three she stopped eating. Brody, I’m telling you, I’ve never felt fear like I did watching my child living in misery, knowing my other child was out there with that selfish, conniving bitch.”
“There’s no end to the amount of pain I’ve caused you.”
“Brody, stop doing that. Stop taking everything that’s happened onto your shoulders when Roxy has a lot of the weight to carry all on her own.”
He dismissed her words all together. “How did you get Autumn back?”
“Roxy asked me to meet her at a fleabag motel outside Solomon. If you think the cabin looked like a dump, it had nothing on this place.”
“This is where she had our daughter?”
Rain put her hand on his chest over his heart. “Thank you for that, for believing she’s mine and yours.”
He took her hand and kissed her palm. “There’s no getting around the truth. Is there, Rain?”
“No. I guess not.”
Rain sucked in a shuddering breath and spilled the rest. “Roxy was there with some seedy-looking guy. The room . . . Oh, Brody, just the thought of Autumn being stuck there for three days in all that smoke and filth and seeing and listening to Roxy and that guy smoke and drink themselves into oblivion. Roxy was a complete stranger to her. She was so scared.”
He lost Rain to her memories and the emotions she couldn’t hide from her expressive eyes. Offering what little comfort he could now, he kissed her palm again and held her hand to his heart, waiting for her to go on.
“Long story short, I paid Roxy another eight thousand dollars. It wasn’t as much as she wanted, but it was all I could come up with, everything I’d saved for the girls to go to school someday.”
Still holding her hand, he gave it a squeeze to let her know he understood how important that money was for their future. Pennies scraped together by Rain to make sure the girls had every opportunity.
“The whole time, I was frantic. I didn’t see Autumn anywhere in the room. I thought maybe they’d made her wait in the bathroom. Then Roxy went to the closet door and opened it. Autumn was curled up in the corner in the dark.”
Tears streamed down Rain’s face, every one of them tore his heart to shreds. “She’s just a little girl, afraid of the dark and monsters. I can’t imagine how terrifying it was for her to be locked in there for three days.”
“What? How do you know they didn’t just put her in there before you arrived?”
“Autumn told me later at the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so listless. They’d barely fed her, just some French fries and pancakes. They hadn’t given her anything to drink. She was severely dehydrated. Roxy had slapped her. Autumn’s cheek was bruised. I’d never even given her a little swat on the butt.” Rain swiped at the tears on her face and went on. “I grabbed her and headed for the door. She held me so tight, like she was terrified I’d leave her there.
“The guy blocked my way out and said the eight grand had only bought me time enough to make sure Autumn was in one piece. They wanted more, and I didn’t have it.”
“How’d you get out of there?”
“Sheer determination and force. When I tried to shove past the guy, he grabbed me and Autumn. I struggled and managed to knee him in the balls, but Roxy grabbed me just as I got the door open. I don’t know what came over me, but I punched her in the mouth, split her lip and made her scream. It was all I needed to get past them and haul ass out of there.”
“What the hell. That bitch. Unbelievable.”
“I’d have done anything to get her back.”
“Of course you would, but that bitch didn’t think twice about hurting you or Autumn.” He vibrated with the need to find Roxy and that guy and make them pay. “If something happened to you, to her, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“I took Autumn to the hospital. I could barely get her to open her eyes. After answering a lot of questions and getting my hand looked at . . .”
“What happened to your hand?”
“I broke it when I popped Roxy.” She went on like it was nothing. “The cops asked a lot of questions about Autumn’s condition and why she lives with me. I called Pop to check on Dawn and tell him what happened. He told me Owen was in town dealing with your father’s death. Pop spoke to him and sent him to me at the hospital. Being Autumn’s uncle and a lawyer went a long way to the cops leaving me alone and letting me keep Autumn.”
“Why didn’t you have Owen call me then?”
“He wanted to, but I talked him out of it.”
He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and stared over her shoulder at the lights of the cabin behind her. Dark as it was outside, he could still see everything, including the regret and need for him to understand written all over her face.
“Please listen to me, Brody. I wasn’t trying to punish you by keeping them from you. You were about to be shipped overseas to Afghanistan. Your response to Owen about your father’s death told us just how much you wanted to leave this place behind. I don’t know what it’s like to be a soldier, but I know enough to realize you didn’t need to worry about two kids and what Roxy was doing back here.”
“I could have helped you, sent you money.”
“Helped me from a country halfway around the world where you were facing life and death each and every day. How would you have been a father to those girls? By sending them letters? They were three years old. They didn’t know who you were, except for a picture in a frame. How could I explain to them anything you’d written when they didn’t know who you are, o
r if you were coming back?”
“Better for me to die over there never knowing I had them,” he shot back.
“What do you want me to say? I made the best choices I could for those girls. Autumn was in no condition for you to come rushing back, a stranger in her life, who might take her away from me, too.”
“I’d have never taken her from you,” he said, furious she’d even think it.
“I couldn’t take that chance,” she shouted back. “I couldn’t risk her mental state at that time. Brody, please understand, after I got her to the hospital, she was a mess. She wouldn’t speak. She clung to me, and I had to stay in the bed with her, or she’d scream. Her voice was so hoarse, and she’d have nightmares.
“After a week with a psychiatrist, I decided to take her home. She wasn’t responding to him. I had a long talk with the doctor, he gave me some advice on how to handle her. When I brought her home, I got a few books and I worked with her. She didn’t speak for almost a month. When she finally started coming around, it was at night when we’d lay in bed together. She had to sleep with the light on and always with me.
“You have to understand, before this happened she was a happy little girl, always ready with a smile. She wasn’t shy, but exuberant, like her sister.”
“There’s a definite difference in their personalities.”
“There always was, but Autumn never used to be so reserved, afraid of shadows. Roxy changed her, made her something she’d have never been, except for those three days with Roxy that stole the little girl I’d raised until then. It took a lot of patience and time to discover what happened those three days.”
“I have a feeling I don’t want to know,” Brody confessed.
“If you don’t, I’ll keep it to myself. The point is that Roxy can never take her from me again. Autumn won’t survive. She’s sensitive, has always been that way. Roxy has no idea what she did to that little girl because she only ever thinks of herself.”
“What did she do to Autumn?”
“Besides locking her in a dark closet and slapping her more than once for crying. Autumn was terrified. She didn’t know Roxy and that man. They scared her, yelled at her, mistreated her. Locked in that closet. Autumn heard what she thought was Roxy being hurt, maybe killed. She thought she was next.”
The Return of Brody McBride Page 17
