Claiming The One (Meadowview Heat 3; The Meadowview Series 3)

by Rochelle French

  Disappointment shoved its way into Abbie’s stomach. Wouldn’t a mother want to hug her daughter? Say something like, “Yes, I’m your long-lost mother and you’re most definitely my beautiful daughter?” Jump up and down and cry with joy?

  “Your father told us you’d be coming,” Liz added.

  A flurry of activity stuttered about in Abbie’s stomach. Us? Did Liz mean her and Hunter? “My father?” she asked in a small voice.

  Liz tilted her head to the right. “Yes, your father. Your real father—Darrin.”

  The hope that had been fluttering around in Abbie’s tummy turned into guilt and worry and nausea.

  “Darrin found out about your little plan and called Hunter, who called me. Hunter, by the way, should be here soon. You know,” Liz added, dropping her gaze to the floor, “you shouldn’t have come. You shouldn’t have run away like that.”

  Instead of being angry, Abbie almost happy at the lecture. Her mother had worried about her. Like a real parent.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Liz asked, waving a hand toward the leather couch. Just like the ladies on the soap operas. Abbie’s heart jumped, the way it did when Jax Moran had kissed her a couple of weeks ago.

  “Thank you,” Abbie said, carefully placing her knees together and seating herself on the edge of the couch. Liz took the chair across the room from her, which disappointed Abbie. Didn’t her mom want to sit next to her? God, her emotions were so yo-yoing all over the place.

  “I thought Hunter said your name was Liz, not Elizabeth,” she said.

  “I go by Elizabeth now.”

  “I see.” What? I see? Was she living in some stupid Jane Austen novel? How uncomfortable could this situation get? And where was her father? Hunter Thorne had seemed so awesome in his emails. Her mother—Liz—seemed like she’d fall over if someone blew on her. And she looked like she never smiled.

  “Hunter should be back soon. He’s running a few errands, stopping off at the grocery store in case you were hungry. Would you like something to drink in the meantime?” Liz asked.

  Abbie shook her head, wishing Hunter were there already. She looked around the room. “You have a really nice house. I love old houses. They’re so warm and comfy.”

  “Really?” Liz’s voice seemed to grow a little less fragile. “I’m so glad. Would you like a tour?”

  Abbie jumped up, growing confused when Liz remained seated, staring at her. Was she supposed to wait until her hostess stood up first?

  “I’m sorry,” Liz said, standing. “I was surprised there for a moment. Even your movements are identical to mine. It’s like watching myself in a mirror. Well, a mirror that takes off thirteen years.” She smiled at Abbie, a brittle, tight little smile. Abbie couldn’t figure out what it meant. Or how Liz felt.

  She followed Liz through the dining room and into the kitchen. The smell of cookies wafted through the house, making her stomach growl. Hopefully when Hunter showed up he’d bring along a bag of some potato chips or something. She’d gulped down two Red Bulls earlier, but a caffeine jolt didn’t last long.

  The stairway up to the second story looked a little seedy. Unlike the wood floors on the first story, the icky shag carpeting seemed dingy and old.

  “This was my bedroom when I was young,” Liz said, opening the door to a plainly decorated room. A bed in the middle was covered by a patchwork quilt. A lace doily covered the length of a bureau, and hundreds of books lined the cheap bookshelves on the wall.

  Abbie checked out the titles, smiling to herself when she recognized a ton of classics. So she’d gotten her love of reading fiction from her birth mother.

  “Is this where you and my dad made me? Here in this room?”

  Liz whirled around, the look on her face flattening Abbie. God, her mom blushed redder than she did. Embarrassment washed over Abbie. Just barely, she kept herself from clapping a hand to her forehead. Jeez, she could be such an idiot. People didn’t go around asking other people where they had sex.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “No,” Liz said, surprising Abbie by replying. “There’s a creek out back.” She indicated a window and crouched down to stare out the dormer. “You can hike down Elderberry Creek about three miles to where it meets the Maidu River. Takes about an hour and a half. There’s a huge granite outcropping, at the confluence of the creek and river, about four stories high, I guess, called Suicide Rock. That’s…”

  Abbie caught sight of a slight smile on Liz’s face. Her eyes had that faraway glazed-over thing grown-ups did when they remembered their childhoods.

  “That’s where you were conceived,” Liz said.

  Abbie wrinkled her nose. “On a place called Suicide Rock? Yick. Did people die there?”

  Liz laughed then, and Abbie thought her heart would fall right out of her body. Her mother had her laugh—the same light, tinkling noise.

  “Only according to rumor. Supposedly some boy got mad at his girlfriend and told her to take a flying leap of a really high rock, and she did, off that hunk of granite.” Liz turned to Abbie and smiled. “But it’s just a rumor. Mostly kids would hike out there to get stoned. Or have sex.” Her eyes became hooded again and she swept her gaze away.

  Probably thinking about when she made Abbie. Was she ashamed? Sad? Before Abbie could say anything, Liz wheeled about and strode out of the room. Whatever.

  At the landing, Abbie stopped and pointed to the stairwell that continued upward. “Can we go up there? Is it an attic? I love attics.”

  Liz’s face took on a pinched look and her shoulders pulled in on themselves. “No,” she snapped. “You can’t see the attic.”

  Abbie recoiled. She blinked, swallowed. What had she said? It was just an old attic she wanted to see. Liz didn’t have to go all ballistic on her. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed to get out.

  Apologizing for her reaction, Liz smiled, but the smile looked totally fake. Abbie felt hot tears fill in her eyes and her nose started to run. This was so not the greeting she’d dreamed about. Her birth mother was acting like Abbie was one big pain in the butt. Which she probably was, at least to Liz Pritchard. No. Elizabeth Picard.

  Abbie felt a pounding in her chest. At least Hunter wanted to meet her. He’d be happy to see her. He’d probably even want her to stay. She sniffed loudly, not caring if Liz Pritchard saw the tears of hurt in her eyes. Even if her birth mother had a stick up her butt, Hunter would still like her. Right?

  * * *

  Liz bit the inside of her lip until the taste of copper flowed onto her tongue. Where the hell was Hunter? He should be here, smoothing things over, making everything all right. He’d been the one to get her into this mess in the first place. Damn that man. Why had she agreed to his plan in the first place? Why had she come back to Meadowview to meet her daughter? Liz cast a glance at Abbie, glowering in the kitchen.

  Who was she kidding? She hadn’t been able to say no because Hunter had said the girl needed them. He’d implied she could be in danger, and the part of Liz that had once been a mother—if only for a few precious minutes—had roared to the surface.

  So she’d stayed.

  But with the lousy way she was handling meeting her daughter for the first time, she sure as hell wasn’t making any points as Mother of the Year. Snapping at the girl for wanting to explore the attic hadn’t set things right. From there she’d only made the air between them even more thick and uncomfortable, holding the girl at a distance, unwilling to meet her eyes.

  She couldn’t seem to stop pushing the girl away, even as part of her desperately yearned to pull her into her arms, soak up her scent, and bawl her eyes out. Instead, she crossed her arms and legs and leaned against the kitchen counter, watching Abbie watch the clock. Both of them waiting for Hunter.

  “Do I have grandparents?”

  The girl’s question surprised Liz. “Um…not that I know of.”

  Abbie tore her gaze away from the clock then to look at Liz. “What do you mean, not that you know of? Wha
t, did they like walk off the edge of the earth or something?”

  Liz closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Something like that. Look, Hunter’s folks died in a car wreck when he was in college. My mom died recently—”

  “How?”

  Liz raised her head. “What?”

  “How’d my grandmother die? I mean, aren’t adopted kids supposed to know medical history and stuff?” Abbie kicked lightly at the metal garbage can, the toe of her running shoe causing a light “ting” every time it hit the metal canister.

  “Um…I suppose so,” Liz answered. “Although I don’t know what kind of medical information you can get from someone dying of alcoholism. Don’t become an alcoholic, I guess.”

  Abbie stopped kicking the garbage can. “Your mom was an alcoholic?”

  “She was known as the town drunk,” Liz said, looking out the window, ignoring the girl. She noticed the soft white clouds drifting about in the distance earlier that morning had moved closer to town. The light that had suffused the house dimmed. A summer storm was brewing.

  “What about your dad?”

  The question triggered a primal response in Liz, a bolt of fear wrapped in anger shot through her. “That’s where the not knowing part comes in. My dad took off when I was a kid. I have no clue where he is. And I really, really don’t want to know.”

  “So I don’t have any grandparents.”

  Liz shook her head.

  “Or aunts or uncles.” Another shake. “Or cousins, or second cousins, or anyone. Just dead grandparents, a deadbeat grandpa, and a dead town drunk for a grandmother.”

  Liz sighed. She couldn’t seem to say anything right with this girl. “You have your father. Your real father, Darrin. When Hunter gets here he’ll make arrangements with your dad to get you back to Colorado, safe and sound.”

  “No!” Abbie’s voice, sharp and tense, had Liz flicking her gaze back to the girl. “I won’t go. He doesn’t want me, anyway. I want to stay here, with you and Hunter.”

  Liz let out a sharp, biting laugh. “Here? Sweetheart, I don’t live here. I live in Marin. It’s on the coast, three hours away.”

  Abbie wrapped her arms around her chest, squeezing tight. Her eyes went dark with emotion, almost terror, Liz thought. “I’ll come to Marin. I can find a high school and get my transcripts transferred.”

  “That’s impossible,” Liz snapped. “You have a family already. You can’t stay with me.”

  Abbie shook her head, like a horse tossing off a bridle. “Hunter, then. I can stay with Hunter.”

  “Listen, even if your father was okay with it—which I’m sure he wouldn’t be—Hunter lives on the road. He’s a wildland firefighter, traveling everywhere from Montana to California. He hasn’t stayed in the same place for the last eight years. You can’t live with him.”

  “You don’t want me,” Abbie said, clenching her hands into fists, liquid pooling in her eyes. “No one wants me.” The tears spilled then, flooding all over her face. She choked out a sob, then another.

  Horrified, Liz stood transfixed as the girl collapsed in front of her, crying, hitting her thighs with her fists, tears coursing down her face.

  Oh, God, she needed Hunter.

  “No one loves me. I’m totally alone,” Abbie sobbed, triggering Liz’s memory of her own teenage histrionics. “I might as well be dead. Better yet, I never should have been born. God”—she raised her head to throw Liz a look of sheer hatred—“why couldn’t you have used a stupid condom? Why didn’t you get an abortion? Why’d I ever have to be born?”

  Something inside Liz snapped. She’d loved her baby, had loved the life growing inside her. She and Hunter had planned to have their baby, their family. They’d made a mistake—stupid adolescents playing with fire, thinking they couldn’t get pregnant. Yes, they’d made a mistake not using birth control, but it had been their mistake to fix.

  And they’d tried, except Tina had wedged her way in the middle and fucked it all up. Liz felt her heart hammering in her chest. Abbie needed to know why she’d been born, how she had been like a little miracle of life, of love, of hope.

  “It was a mistake,” Liz said, intent on starting at the beginning. She’d tell Abbie how she and Hunter had both believed that if Hunter pulled out, she couldn’t get pregnant. But that was as far as she got.

  “I knew it.” Abbie’s sobs interrupted her. “I was an accident. A stupid, horrid mistake.”

  “No!” Liz started toward Abbie, but the girl backed away, her gaze shooting desperately around the room, finally landing on the door to the back yard.

  Abbie took a heaving breath and said, “I won’t be anyone’s mistake again. I’m leaving.” She looked at Liz, her eyes inscrutable. “I’m leaving you. Hunter, my dad, all of you. Since nobody wants me, I’ll do everybody a favor and go. No one will ever have to deal with their mistake again.”

  Abbie pushed past her, tore open the back door, and ran out into the back yard. Within seconds, the girl had disappeared into the underbrush surrounding the creek. Liz’s heart filled with aching at the girl’s statement…then it emptied, like life had been vacuumed out of her.

  Once again, Abbie had run away. Only this time, Liz realized as her throat constricted, she’d been the one to chase the girl off.

  A red Ford Taurus sat parked in front of Liz’s house. Hunter steered Liz’s Mercedes into the driveway and took the stairs up the front porch two at a time, his heart hammering away in his chest. She was early. Abbie had arrived hours before he’d expected. She must have left around three in the morning. His hands shook as the realization that he was about to see his daughter for the first time sunk in.

  Finally, he’d be able to hold his daughter in his arms and ask for her forgiveness. Finally, he’d be able to ease the weight of guilt off his chest.

  “Hello?” he called out when he stepped through the front door. “Liz? Abbie?” Nothing. No motion, no noise. He walked through the empty house, noticing the cup of coffee with congealed creamer on the surface in the kitchen. A soft sound caught his attention. Muffled hiccups. Or sobs, he couldn’t tell. Stepping lightly up the stairs, as if he were afraid of what he’d see, he followed the sound to the attic.

  There, sitting on the floor of the closet, all curled up in a tight ball with her arms wrapped around her legs and looking like a pill bug, sat Liz. But no Abbie.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Gone.”

  He pulled his head back a bit, straightened his spine. “Gone as in taking a walk, or gone as in…gone?”

  Liz shrugged. “Gone as in she ran out the back door into the woods, claiming she was a mistake, saying she was leaving us all.”

  Hunter stepped into the cramped closet. “Why’d she think she was a mistake?”

  Again, Liz shrugged. “I guess because I called her one.”

  “What?” Hunter stood there, shocked. “Why would you do something like that? You loved that little girl—you always have. You put up a great front all these years, even tried pushing me away. But you came when I told you she needed us. And all this”—he broke off his words and jabbed a finger at the cradle, the magazine pictures lining the walls—“doesn’t say ‘mistake.’ Why would you let her think that?”

  Liz raised her head. He noticed then the trail of tears streaming down her face. Her eyes looked hollow, empty. A muscle in her cheek kept spasming, sending her cheek twitching.

  Hunter drew in a breath. “What happened?” he asked, gentling his voice.

  Liz leaned her head back on the closet wall and rocked it from side to side. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I handled everything wrong. I said all the wrong things, made her think she wasn’t loved, or hadn’t been wanted. I tried to stop her, to tell her that the mistake had been us not using a condom. That she never was the mistake. But she misunderstood and got all worked up in an instant and then she ran out the door and into the woods.” Her body shivered once, then again, until shiv
ers consumed her.

  He bent at the knees, briskly rubbed his hands up and down her arms. Even with the heat of the attic, she was losing body heat. Her body was thin, too thin, he thought. What had Michelle said? Liz didn’t eat because she was hooked on becoming the perfect woman, what she thought a man would want. Was that true? He gave an inward curse. Liz had been literally starving for attention. For a chance to belong.

  “She’ll be back, Liz, I promise. I talked to her dad again on the way back over here. He said she’s a bit of an emotional hothead, flying off the handle at any old thing, but she calms down. She’ll be back.”

  Liz rocked her head to the side and gave him a dull stare. “But she was so angry, so hurt.”

  Hunter tugged at her arms, pulling her up to standing. She swayed, her body rocked by the shaking coming from the inside. He caught her to him, wrapping his arms around her body, supporting her weight.

  “She’s a teenager, remember? They’re all angry and hurt and full of angst and drama. Besides,” he said, tucking her head under his chin, swaying with her back and forth to a beat in his head, “her father told me Abbie’s been resistant to him remarrying, but only because she resents Ember, her stepmother, for taking over the role of her mother. Apparently she and her mom been quite close before her mom died. Ember adores the girl, but so far Abbie hasn’t given her much of a chance.”

  Liz went stiff under his arms. “Wait. I thought her mother ditched her. Like my dad did me.”

  “No,” Hunter said. “Abbie seems to have a flair for the dramatic. In one of her emails, she’d said something about her mom leaving her when she was young. In reality, though, her mom died from a complication during a routine surgery when Abbie was about seven. So in Abbie’s reality, I guess she had been abandoned by her mom, just not in the way she led me to think. Plus,” he added as an afterthought, “her mom dying happened right after she found out she’d been adopted.”

  “She still must have been processing that news when her mom died. What a nightmare.” Liz jolted, another shiver rocketing through her body. “She probably came here looking to belong, and I told her she’d been a mistake. No wonder she ran off.”