by Nora Roberts
“He’s wrong, and he has the best example of how wrong in his own mirror. He not only has her blood but he spent the first twelve years—the most impressionable years—with her in an environment that could warp any young mind. Instead, he’s Ethan Quinn. Why should his children—children that come from the two of you—be any less than he is?”
“I wish I had thought to say that,” Grace murmured. “I was so shocked and sad and shaken.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t think it would have mattered if I had. He wasn’t going to listen. Not to me,” she said slowly. “He doesn’t think I’m strong enough to live with what he’s lived with.”
“He’s wrong.”
“Yes, he’s wrong. But his mind’s made up. He won’t want me now. He says the choice is mine, but I know him. If I say I can accept this and we go on as we are, it’ll eat at him until he pulls away.”
“Can you accept it?”
“I’ve asked myself that, thought about that for days now. I love him enough to want to, maybe to settle for it, at least for a while. But it would eat at me, too.” She shook her head. “No, I can’t accept it. I can’t accept only one part of him. And I won’t ask Aubrey to accept anything less than a father.”
“Good for you. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. Not when we both need different things.”
Anna let out a huff of breath. “Grace, you’re the only one who can decide. But let me tell you, Cam and I didn’t just float to the altar on gossamer wings. We wanted different things—or thought we did. And to find out what we wanted together, we hurt each other, we got in each other’s faces and we dealt with it.”
“It’s hard to get in Ethan’s face about anything.”
“But it’s not impossible.”
“No, it’s not impossible, but . . . He wasn’t honest with me, Anna. Underneath it all, I can’t forget that. He let me spin my daydreams, all the time knowing he was going to cut the threads of them and let me fall. He’s sorry for it, I know, but still . . .”
“You’re angry.”
“Yes, I guess I am. I had another man do that to me. My father,” she added, coolly now. “I wanted to be a dancer, and he knew I was pinning my hopes on it. I can’t say he ever encouraged me, but he let me go on taking lessons and wishing. And when I needed him to stand up and help me try for that dream . . . he cut the threads. I forgave him for it, or tried to, but things were never the same. Then I got pregnant and married Jack. I guess you could say that cut his threads, and he’s never forgiven me.”
“Have you tried to resolve things there?”
“No, I haven’t. He gave me a choice, too, just like Ethan did. Or what they seem to think of as a choice. Do this their way. Accept it, or do without them. So I’ll do without.”
“I understand that. But while it may buffer your pride, what does it do to your heart?”
“When people break your heart, pride’s all you’ve got left.”
And pride, Anna thought, could turn cold and bitter without heart. “Let me talk to Ethan.”
“I’ll talk to him, as soon as I can work out what needs to be said.” She blew out a breath. “I feel better,” she realized. “It helps to say it all out loud. And there was no one else I could say it to.”
“I care about both of you.”
“I know. We’ll be all right.” She gave Anna’s hand a squeeze before she rose. “You helped me stop feeling weepy. I hate feeling weepy. Now I’m going to work off some of this mad I didn’t realize was in there.” She managed to smile. “You’re going to have a damn clean house when I’m done. I clean like a maniac when I’m working off a mad.”
Don’t work it all off, Anna thought, as Grace went inside. Save some of it for that idiot Ethan.
It took two and a half hours for Grace to scrub, rinse, dust, and polish her way through the second floor. She had a bad moment in Ethan’s room, where the scent of him, of the sea, clung to the air, and the small, careless pieces of his daily life were scattered about.
But she drew herself in, calling on the same core of steel that had gotten her through a divorce and a painful family rift.
Work helped, as it always had. Good, strenuous manual labor kept both her hands and her mind busy. Life went on. She knew it firsthand. And you got through from one day to the next.
She had her child. She had her pride. And she still had dreams—though she’d come to the point that she preferred to think of them as plans.
She could live without Ethan. Not as fully perhaps, not as joyfully, certainly. But she could live and be productive and find contentment in the path she forged for herself and her daughter.
She was finished with tears and self-pity.
She started on the main floor with the same single-minded fervor. Furniture was polished until it gleamed. Glass was scrubbed until it sparkled. She hung out wash, swept porches, and battled dirt as if it were an enemy threatening to take over the earth.
By the time she got to the kitchen her back ached, but it was a small and satisfying pain. Her skin wore a light coat of sweat, her hands were pruny from wash water, and she felt as accomplished as a corporate president after a major business coup.
She checked the clock, measured time. She wanted to be finished and gone before Ethan came in from work. Despite the purging wrought by labor, there was a small, simmering ember of anger still burning in her heart. She knew herself well enough to understand that it would take very little to fan it to full flame.
If she fought with him, if she said even a portion of the things that had careened through her head over the last few days, they would never be able to be civil again, much less friends.
She wouldn’t force the Quinns to take sides. And she wouldn’t risk putting her precious and vital relationship with Seth at risk because two adults in his life couldn’t mind their tempers.
“I won’t lose my job over it, either,” she muttered as she went to work on the countertops. “Just because he can’t see what he’s throwing out of his life.”
She hissed out a breath, scooped her fingers through her hair, which the heat and her exertion had dampened at the temples. And calmed herself by giving the drip pans on the ancient range a good scouring.
When the phone rang, she snatched it up without thinking. “Hello?”
“Anna Quinn?”
Grace glanced out the window, saw Anna puttering happily among the back garden. “No, I’ll—”
“I got something to say to you, bitch.”
Grace stopped, two steps from the screen door. “What?”
“This is Gloria DeLauter. Who the hell do you think you are, threatening me?”
“I’m not—”
“I got rights. Do you hear me? I got fucking rights. The old man made a deal with me, and if you and your bastard husband and his bastard brothers don’t live up to it, you’re the ones who’ll be sorry.”
The voice wasn’t just hard and harsh, Grace realized. It was manic, the words shooting out so fast that one ran into the back of the other. This was Seth’s mother, she thought as more abuse rang in her ear. The woman who’d hurt him, who frightened him. Who’d taken money for him.
Sold him.
She wasn’t aware that she had twisted the phone cord around her hand, that it was so tightly wrapped it bit into the flesh. Struggling for calm, she took a deep breath. “Miss DeLauter, you’re making a mistake.”
“You’re the one who made the goddamn mistake, sending me that fucking letter instead of the money you owe me. You fucking owe me. You think I’m scared ’cause you’re some asshole social worker. I don’t give a shit if you’re the goddamn Queen of goddamn England. The old man’s dead, and if you want things to stay like they are you’re going to deal with me. You think you can hold me off with words on paper? You’re not going to stop me if I decide to come back and take that boy.”
“You’re wrong,” Grace heard herself say, but her voice sounded far away,
echoing in her head.
“He’s my flesh and blood and I got a right to take what’s mine.”
“Try it.” Rage tore through her like a storm surge. “You’ll never put your hands on him again.”
“I can do what I like with what’s mine.”
“He’s not yours. You sold him. Now he’s ours, and you’re never going to get near him.”
“He’ll do what the hell I tell him to do. He knows he’ll pay for it otherwise.”
“You make one move toward him, I’ll take you apart myself. Nothing you’ve done to him, however monstrous, is close to what I’ll do to you. When I’m finished, they’ll barely have enough left to scrape up and toss in a cell. That’s just where you’ll go for child abuse, neglect, assault, prostitution, and whatever it is they call a mother who sells her child to men for sex.”
“What kind of lies has that brat been telling? I never laid a finger on him.”
“Shut up. You shut the hell up.” She’d lost track, mixed Seth’s mother and Ethan’s into one woman. One monster. “I know what you did to him, and there isn’t a cage dark enough to lock you in to suit me. But I’ll find one, and I’ll shove you in it myself if you come near him again.”
“I just want money.” There was a wheedle in the voice now, both sly and a little scared. “Just some money to help me through. You’ve got plenty.”
“I don’t have anything for you but contempt. You stay away from here, and you stay away from that child, or you’ll be the one who pays.”
“You better think again. You just better think again.” There was a muffled sound, then the clink of ice against glass. “You’re no better than me. I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be afraid. You should be terrified.”
“I’m . . . I’m not finished with this. I’m not done.”
The click of the disconnect was loud. “Maybe not,” Grace said in a soft and dangerous voice. “But neither am I.”
“Gloria DeLauter,” Anna murmured. She stood just on the other side of the screen door, where she’d been for the last two minutes.
“I don’t think she’s human. If she’d been here, if she’d been in this room, I’d have had my hands around her throat. I’d have choked her like an animal.” She began to shake now, fury and reaction crashing against each other inside her. “I’d have killed her. Or tried.”
“I know how it feels. It’s hard to think about someone like her as a person and not a thing.” Anna pushed the door open, her eyes on Grace. She would never have expected to see that white-hot rage in such a mild-tempered woman. “I see it all too often in my work, but I never get used to it.”
“She was foul.” Grace shuddered. “She thought I was you when I answered the phone. I tried to tell her at first, but she wouldn’t listen. She just shouted and threatened and swore. I couldn’t let her get away with it. I couldn’t stand it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. From the end of the conversation I could hear, I’d say you handled it. You want to sit down?”
“No, I can’t. I can’t sit.” She shut her eyes, but still only saw that blinding red haze. “Anna, she said she’d come back and get Seth if you didn’t give her money.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Anna moved to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of wine. “I’m going to pour you a glass of this. You’re going to drink it, slowly, while I get my notebook. Then I want you to try to tell me what she said, as close as possible to exactly what she said. Can you do that?”
“I can. I can remember.”
“Good.” Anna glanced at the clock. “We’re going to want to document everything. If she does come back, we’re going to be ready.”
“Anna.” Grace stared down into the wine Anna had given her. “He can’t be hurt anymore. He shouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“I know it. We’ll make sure he’s not. I’ll only be a minute.”
Anna took her through the conversation twice. As she went through it the second time, Grace found herself unable to sit. She rose, leaving her glass of wine half full, and got a broom.
“The way she said things was every bit as vile as what she said,” she told Anna as she began to sweep. “She must use that same tone on Seth. I don’t know how anyone can speak to a child that way.” Then she shook her head. “But she doesn’t think of him as a child. He’s a thing to her.”
“If you were called on to testify, you’d be able to swear under oath that she demanded money.”
“More than once,” Grace agreed. “Will it come to that, Anna? Will you have to take Seth into court?”
“I don’t know. If it heads in that direction, we should be able to add extortion to the list of charges you reeled off. You must have scared her,” she added with a small, satisfied smile. “You’d have scared me.”
“Things just come flying out of my mouth when I get worked up.”
“I know what you mean. There are things I’d like to say to her, but in my position, I can’t. Or I shouldn’t,” she said with a long sigh. “I’ll type this up for Seth’s file, then I suppose I’ll have to compose another letter to her.”
“Why?” Grace’s fingers tightened on the handle of the broom. “Why do you have to have any contact with her?”
“Cam and his brothers need to know, Grace. They need to know exactly what Gloria DeLauter and Seth were to Ray.”
“It’s not what some people are saying.” Grace’s eyes flashed as she yanked a dustpan out of the broom closet. She couldn’t seem to sweep away the simmering anger inside her. “Professor Quinn wouldn’t have cheated on his wife. He was devoted to her.”
“They need to have all the facts, and so does Seth.”
“I’ll give you a fact. Professor Quinn had taste. He wouldn’t have looked twice at a woman like Gloria DeLauter—unless it was with pity, or disgust.”
“Cam certainly feels the same way. But another thing people say is that when they look at Seth they see Ray Quinn’s eyes.”
“Well, there’s another explanation for it, that’s all.” Her own eyes were hot as she shoved the broom and dustpan away, yanked out a bucket and a mop.
“Perhaps. But it may have to be faced and dealt with that the Quinns hit a rocky patch in their marriage, as people often do. Extramarital affairs are distressingly common.”
“I don’t give a damn about all the statistics you hear on television or read in magazines about how three out of five men—or whatever it is—cheat on their wives.” Grace dumped cleanser in the bucket, dropped it into the sink, and turned the water on full blast. “The Quinns loved each other, and they liked each other. And they had an admiration for each other. You couldn’t be around them and not see it. They were tied only tighter together because of their sons. When you saw the five of them together, you were seeing family. Just the way the five of you are family.”
Touched, Anna smiled. “Well, we’re working on it.”
“You just haven’t had as many years as the Quinns did.” Grace hauled the bucket out of the sink. “They were a unit.”
Units, Anna thought, often broke down. “If something had happened between Ray and Gloria, would Stella have forgiven him?”
Grace thrust the mop into the bucket and gave Anna a cool, decisive look. “Would you forgive Cam?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said after a moment. “It would be hard to because I’d have killed him. But I might, eventually, put flowers on his grave.”
“Exactly.” Satisfied, Grace nodded. “That kind of betrayal doesn’t swallow down easily. And it follows that if the Quinns had that kind of tension between them, their sons would have known it. Children aren’t fools, no matter how many adults might think so.”
“No, they’re not,” Anna murmured. “Whatever the truth is, they need to find it. I’m going to type up my notes,” she said as she rose. “Will you take a look at them, see if there’s anything you want to add or change before they go into the file?”
“All right. I�
�ve still got some wash to hang out, then I’ll be . . .”
They heard it at the same time, the wildly happy barking of dogs. Grace’s reaction was pure distress. She’d lost track of the time, and Ethan was home.
Going on instinct, Anna slipped her notebook into a kitchen drawer. “I want to talk to Cam about this before we tell Seth about the phone call.”
“Yes, that’s best. I . . .”
“You can go out the back, Grace,” Anna said quietly. “Nobody could blame you for not wanting another emotional hit today.”
“I have wash to hang out.”
“You’ve done more than enough for one afternoon.”
Grace straightened her shoulders. “I finish what I start.” She turned into the laundry room and the lid of the washer clanged as she tossed it up. “Which is more than can be said of some people.”
Anna lifted a brow. Ethan was in for a surprise, she decided. And wasn’t it handy that she was around to see him get it?
NINETEEN
When he saw her car in the driveway, Ethan had to force himself not to rush into the house just for a look at her. A quick glimpse, just one. He could take all of her into his mind with just one look.
He hadn’t known it was possible to miss a woman—to miss anything—the way he was missing Grace.
The way, he thought, that left him empty and achy and edgy every hour of every day until he was desperate to fill the void. Until he laid awake at night listening to the air breathe.
Until he thought he was losing his mind.
The control he’d kept in place for so many years where she was concerned seemed constantly shaky these days. The walls of that control had already been breached, were tumbled at his feet so that he could swear he was choking on their dust.
He supposed once a man let it go, it was hard to build it back up again.
But he’d left the choice in her hands, he reminded himself. Since she hadn’t made a move in his direction in days, he was afraid he knew which choice she’d made.
He couldn’t blame her for it.
She would find someone else—someone she could make a life with. The thought burned in his gut as he loitered by his truck, but he refused to let it pass. She deserved to have what she wanted out of life. That was marriage and children and a pretty home. A father for Aubrey, a man who would appreciate both of them for the treasures they were.
