Authors: Laurie Breton
He still wasn’t looking at her,
and her rapidly expanding dismay sent her stomach plummeting. He moved to the
sink and turned on the water, soaped and rinsed his hands to rid them of the
eau
de
shrimp. Tearing a paper towel from the roll on the counter, he finally
met her eyes. “I was planning to wait until after we ate,” he said, drying his
hands, “but you know me too well. Listen, babe, this came at me out of the
blue, and I don’t have any idea how you’ll react. I’m still not sure how to
react myself. I’m still having trouble believing it.”
Casey looked at her glass of
wine, closed her eyes for an instant, then tipped her head back and finished it
off in a single long slug. Rob turned off the stove, filled a plate for each
of them, and carried the plates to the table. She sat down across from him and
picked up her fork. “All right, MacKenzie,” she said. “Spill.”
He rested his elbows on the table
and ran the fingers of both hands through his tangled mess of curls. “I had a
call this afternoon from a lawyer in Boston. Do you remember Sandy Sainsbury?”
“Of course. You had an
off-and-on thing going with her back in the day.”
“She died two weeks ago. From
cancer.”
“Oh, Rob, that’s terrible! She
was so young!”
“Thirty-five. And she had a fifteen-year-old
daughter.”
“That poor girl. It’s so hard to
lose your mother at such a young age. I know how it feels.”
“Yeah. I thought about that. It’s
a lousy thing to have in common.” He was looking at her oddly, and she couldn’t
figure out why. “The lawyer,” he said. “He’s in the process of settling Sandy’s
estate.”
“I see,” she said, although she
really didn’t.
“When she first got sick, Sandy
had a will drawn up. She didn’t have much, and she wanted to make sure her
daughter ended up with what little she did have. But that wasn’t her main
concern. Both of Sandy’s parents are long gone, and she never had any brothers
or sisters, so the only family she had left was a couple of distant cousins.
She was worried about what would happen to Paige—that’s her daughter’s name—if
she didn’t beat the cancer. So she spelled it out in her will. If anything
happened to her before the kid came of age, she wanted custody of Paige to go
to the girl’s biological father.”
“And?”
He didn’t respond, just looked at
her with those green eyes, and suddenly it all came together. Lawyer.
Custody. Fifteen-year-old daughter. Biological father. She quickly did the
math. Set down her fork. And took in a hard, sharp breath. “Oh, my God,” she
said.
“Um…yeah.”
“You’re telling me that you have a
fifteen-year-old daughter?”
He raised his shoulders, looked
at her helplessly, and said, “Apparently.”
She saw her own shock reflected
in his eyes. A million thoughts raced through her mind, but when she opened
her mouth, only one came out. “Holy mother of God.”
He cleared his throat. “She’s
staying with her downstairs neighbor right now, but the woman’s already got
four kids and no husband, and she can’t take on another kid, not on a permanent
basis. If I don’t take her, the kid will go into state custody and end up in
foster care.” He paused. “I won’t blame you if you want to bail. You didn’t
sign up for this.”
“Oh, for the love of God,
MacKenzie! After everything we’ve been through together, you still don’t know
I’d walk through fire for you? I’ve probably heard something more colossally
idiotic coming from that mouth of yours at some point in the last two decades,
but right now I can’t remember what it could possibly have been.”
He closed his eyes. When he
opened them again, they were suspiciously damp. “I don’t deserve you,” he
said.
“Shut up, you fool. I love you,
and after everything you’ve done for me over the years, we have a few miles to
go to even up the odds. And I so hate that this is the first question coming
out of my mouth, but I have to ask it. How do you know for sure she’s really
yours? And don’t say it’s because Sandy wouldn’t have any reason to lie.
Considering that she couldn’t manage, at some point in the last fifteen years
and nine months, to call you up and say,
Hey, by the way, you have a kid
.”
“Don’t feel bad, it was the first
question I asked, too. He faxed me a copy of her birth certificate, Sandy’s
will, and a couple of Paige’s school photos. Once you see the pictures, you’ll
stop wondering. She’s mine.”
He reached for a folded sheaf of
papers she hadn’t noticed and slid them across the table to her. Casey picked
them up gingerly, glanced at him across her untouched dinner plate, and
unfolded them. Skimmed the will until she reached the part where it said
Full
custody of the minor child to be retained by the biological father, Robert K.
MacKenzie
. She swallowed hard, then studied the birth certificate. Name
of child:
Paige Morgan MacKenzie.
Mother:
Sandra Louise
Sainsbury.
Father:
Robert Kevin MacKenzie.
She glanced at him again before
looking at the photos. The adolescent girl who stared back at her had a mass
of thick golden curls, a strong, square jaw, a face with more angles than
curves, and a light dusting of pale freckles across her nose. Although it was
impossible to tell from a black-and-white photo, Casey would have bet the farm
that her eyes were the trademark MacKenzie green. A tear ran unbidden down her
cheek. “Oh, babe. She looks just like you.”
“Poor kid got my hair.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your
hair, MacKenzie. You just need to comb it a little more often. So of course
you told him we’d take her.”
“I did not. I told him I had to
talk it over with my wife. This is a life-altering decision, Fiore. It was
hard enough springing this on you as it is. I wasn’t about to give you the
news as a
fait accompli
.”
“Um, sweetie? This
fait
is about as
accompli
as it gets. Of course we’re taking her. We don’t
have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. But
whether or not we bring her here, she’s still my responsibility. At least
until she’s eighteen.”
“She’s not a responsibility, she’s
a child. Your child.” She took in a sharp breath. “Oh, Flash—” Another tear
trickled down her cheek. “You have a kid.”
“I’m so sorry.” He picked up his
napkin and reached across the table to swipe away her tears. “I know it’s a
shock.”
“That’s not why I’m crying. I’m
crying because I’m thinking about all those years you missed because that damn
woman couldn’t be bothered to tell you that you had a daughter. She stole fifteen
years of a relationship with your child away from you. And of course I’m sorry
she’s dead. I always liked Sandy. But—damn her! How could she do this to
you?”
“I don’t know. But if we do
this—”
“There is no if. This is your
little girl we’re talking about. We’re doing it.”
“Damn it, Casey, this will change
everything! We’ve only been married for a year. We’ve barely had any time
together as a couple. And it took us so long to get here. What if this screws
things up for us? I’m not willing to jeopardize what we have. This isn’t a
matter of trying her on for size and changing our minds if she’s not a good
fit. This is a permanent commitment. One that’s so unfair to you. How can I
ask you to raise another woman’s child?”
“Rob, she’s
your
child.
Part of you. And of course it’s a permanent commitment, one that’ll change our
day-to-day life, but we’re solid, you and I. Nothing will change the way we
feel about each other. We’ll work through whatever problems arise like the
rational adults we are. We won’t let this come between us.”
“That sounds great in theory.
But in practice? It might not be so easy. You’re my first priority. Always.
The way I feel about you is the most important thing in my life.”
“Sweetie, I hate like hell to
burst your bubble, but it doesn’t work that way. The minute you step into that
little girl’s life, she becomes your number-one priority. That’s the way
parenthood works. Trust me when I say this. I know it from experience.”
He let out a long, ragged sigh. “This
isn’t the way it was supposed to be.” He took her hand and threaded fingers
with hers. “It was supposed to be you and me and a couple of babies. Our
babies. We weren’t supposed to start out with a teenager I fathered with a
woman I haven’t even thought about in fifteen years.”
She brought their joined hands to
her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Life is what happens while you’re making
other plans,” she reminded him. “And you and me and those babies? It’ll still
happen. This just means our kids will have a big sister to look up to. And we’ll
have a built-in babysitter.”
Darkly, he said, “Right.”
“You listen to me, MacKenzie.
This is a miracle! Something wonderful like this, coming out of the tragedy of
Sandy’s death, like the phoenix rising from the ashes. You’re going to have a
relationship with this beautiful daughter you never even knew about. No matter
how you look at it, my friend, that is a miracle.”
“Have I told you lately what an
extraordinary woman you are?”
She released his hand, got up,
and walked around the table. He pushed back his chair, and she settled on his
lap and wound an arm around his neck. “You,” she said, resting her head on his
shoulder, “are going to be an amazing father.”
He buried his face in her hair,
and they sat for a long time before he said, “I don’t know anything about
teenagers.”
“Neither do I. But we have Rose
and Jesse just down the road. Between the two of them, they know pretty much
everything there is to know about kids. We
will
be calling them
frequently.”
“Oh, shit. I have to tell Rose.
And my parents. I can deal with the rest of the family later.”
“First, you need to call the
lawyer back.” She kissed his cheek and got up from his lap. “I’ll clean the
kitchen and put supper in the fridge. We’ll reheat it and try again later.”
While he took the cordless phone
and went out onto the back steps to make his call, she sprinted upstairs to
change out of the suit. Then she stood in the hallway outside her bedroom,
contemplating all those closed doors. She had three empty rooms up here.
Would Paige feel more comfortable near them, or would she prefer to maintain
some independence, some distance between herself and these new parents fate had
forced upon her? Casey couldn’t forget the emotional roller-coaster she’d
ridden after her own mother’s death. There had been grief, and frustration,
and resentment at being forced to grow up overnight at the tender age of fifteen.
But what stood out most in her
memory was the terrible feeling of isolation. What she’d needed more than
anything had been simple human contact. Closeness with the living, to ease the
pain of the dead. She’d been lucky; Dad and her sister Colleen had been there,
and she’d had extended family nearby. Paige, on the other hand, would be with
strangers. Blood relative or not, Paige’s father was a stranger to her. It
wouldn’t be easy for the girl.
Casey went back downstairs, and
while she loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the mess he’d made cooking a
meal neither of them had touched, she listened to the soft murmur of Rob’s
voice as he talked to the lawyer. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, and
she was tempted to go outside to eavesdrop, but if he’d wanted her to hear, he
would have stayed in the kitchen. This was his personal business, and she
couldn’t step into the middle of it unless she was invited. He would share
whatever he chose to share when he was ready.
Nearly a half-hour later, just as
she was rinsing the last of the soap suds from the kitchen sink, he came inside
and set the phone in its cradle. He stepped up behind her, folded his arms
around her and pressed his face to her hair. “We’re driving down to Boston in
the morning to pick her up.”
Casey turned in his arms, saw the
terror in his eyes, and melted. It was true, what she’d told him earlier; she
would walk through fire for this man. “This will turn out fine,” she said. “We’ll
get through this together.”
“I talked to her. Paige. I got
her number from the lawyer and I called her.”
“That’s what took you so long. I
was starting to wonder. How did it go? How did she sound?”
“Like a typical teenager. Mostly
monosyllabic. I told her how sorry I was about her mother, and how excited I
was to find out I had a daughter. I made sure she understood that if I’d known
about her before, I would’ve been there for her, right from day one. I told
her about you, said we were good people and we’d give her a good home, and she’d
have aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Lots of extended family,
on my side and yours. I hope I didn’t overwhelm her. Family isn’t something
she’s ever had. I didn’t know what else to say, except that we’d be down
tomorrow to bring her home.”
“I’d say you did just fine.”
“I called Rose, too. I didn’t
tell her what was going on, just asked if they were planning to be home because
we wanted to come over and talk to them about something important. This is
kind of a big thing to tell people over the phone. As a matter of fact, I
think we should stop in and tell Mom and Dad in the morning, since we’ll be in
Boston anyway.”
“I agree. This isn’t the kind of
news a man wants to give his mother over the phone. Listen, I’ve been thinking
about where we should put her. The poor kid is going to feel so alone. I
think we should give her the room next to ours.”
“Great. There goes my sex life.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Surely
you knew that was inevitable once we started having kids?”