Kingsley Baby Trilogy: The Hero's Son\The Brother's Wife\The Long-Lost Heir (45 page)

David stared down at the likeness. The photo was black-
and-
white, but he could tell that his father’s eyes were dark, almost black, not blue like David’s. The hair was similar, dark and thick with a hint of a wave, but the hairline was different, as was the shape of the face, the nose, the mouth, the high cheekbones that hinted at a Native American heritage. A heritage that did not show in David’s own features.

He looked up at his mother and she nodded. “You’ve always known, I think.”

Somewhere deep inside, David felt a brief sense of relief. The truth was about to come out. “He isn’t my father, is he?” When his mother shook her head, David asked, “Who was my real father? What happened? Did he run out on you? Refuse to marry you? Did he even know about me?” All the questions he’d wondered about for years came flowing out. It wasn’t so much an emotional response as one of curiosity. One of logic. He simply wanted to know.

His mother took a deep, trembling breath. “Your real father was an important man, David. His family was very rich and powerful. Well-
educated and cultured. Everything that I’m not.”

David took his mother’s hand. “You know that’s never mattered to me.”

Tears glimmered in her eyes. “You’ve always been a wonderful son, David. I’ve known from the first you were special. Destined for greatness. I’ve tried to make sure you had everything you needed to fulfill your destiny.”

His mother had scrimped and saved all his life, sometimes working two and three jobs, just so David could have the education and advantages she’d never had. It was a debt he knew he would never be able to repay her.

“Were you and my father ever married?”

She shook her head sadly.

“What happened? The family you mentioned… did they give you a hard time?”

Her hand crept to her throat, and David saw that it was trembling. “They never even knew I existed.”

“So it was him,” David concluded dispassionately. “It was his decision to have no part of me.”

She wavered for a moment, as if considering the truth of his words. Then her gaze dropped to the photograph album still lying open in her lap. She touched the picture lovingly.

“Who is that man?” David asked.

There was another pause, then, “He was my husband.”

She couldn’t have surprised him more. His mother had always been so quiet and shy. So reserved. To think that she could have had an illicit love affair with one man while married to another—

“Are you saying you were married to this man when my father got you pregnant?”

“My husband was already dead by the time I knew anything about your father.” With shaking hands, she lifted the photo album and laid it open on the coffee table in front of them. Then she opened the second album, and a picture of a little boy smiled up at them. With her fingertip, she traced the child’s features—the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the full, smiling lips. He was the spitting image of the man David had always thought was his father.

A cold knot of dread wedged somewhere in David’s chest. The whole scenario had taken a turn he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure what to prepare himself for next. He glanced at his mother, but she was still gazing down at the child’s face.

“Who is
he?
” he finally asked.

“My son,” she answered softly, so softly David had to strain to hear her.

He gaped at her in shock. “Your
son?
”

Her nod was almost imperceptible. “He and my husband died in a car wreck. My baby was only three years old.”

The knot of dread turned to confusion, but David, sensing his mother was teetering on some emotional edge, forced his tone to remain neutral while the world as he knew it started to crumble around him. Before his eyes, the woman who’d raised him had suddenly become a stranger—and his life, a lie. He felt a slight panicky sensation in his chest, not unlike the rare times when he’d been ambushed by his adversary in court.

He checked the date stamped in the right-
hand corner of the picture. David had been three years old that year, also. “How could you have two sons the same age? Unless, of course, we were twins, but I don’t think that was the case, was it?” He bore not even a passing resemblance to the child in the photograph.

“David.” At last his mother looked up at him. A tear spilled down her cheek as she reached out to touch him. Inadvertently he flinched, and pain flashed in her eyes as she let her hand drop to her lap. “I’ve loved you with all my heart,” she whispered. “I couldn’t have loved you more if I’d given birth to you.”

David sucked in a sharp breath. He’d always known the man in the photograph wasn’t his real father; but now, to learn that his mother…wasn’t his real mother… What other secrets did she harbor?

He gazed at her for a long moment, then said slowly, “So you’re telling me I’m adopted?” When she didn’t respond, he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why keep it from me?” Then another thought dawned on him. “The private investigator who was here—who does he work for? My birth mother?” There was an edge of bitterness in his voice that surprised him.

In his line of work, David had seen the worst life had to offer pass through his office door. He’d made sure he was both mentally and physically tough; he couldn’t have lasted in the public defender’s office for twelve years if he hadn’t been. But the knowledge that his birth mother had given him away wasn’t exactly easy to shrug off—even for him.

“Your real mother is dead,” Helen Powers told him.

David frowned, unsure how he felt about that revelation. “So who sent the detective? My father?”

“Your grandmother.”

David sat back against the sofa, trying to digest all that he’d learned. He had a grandmother somewhere. A grandmother who was trying to find him. And a father? Brothers and sisters? A whole damned family he’d never known anything about?

“Your mother—your real mother—loved you very much. I’m sure of it. She died when you were only three years old. She had nothing to do with any of this.”

“Whose idea was it to give me away, then? My father’s?” When she didn’t answer, David leaned toward her. “Look, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me the rest. You took me in when they didn’t want me. You’ve given me a good life. You’re still my mother, and nothing you can say will ever change that.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You don’t know how much I want to believe that,” she whispered. She bowed her head, as if overcome with emotion. But when David put his hand on her arm and she looked up, her eyes were clear and resolved.

“I was barely twenty when I lost my husband and my son,” she said. “They were everything to me, the only good and decent thing I’d ever known in my life, and then, suddenly, they were gone. Just…gone, as if they’d never existed. I was all alone again. And my arms were so empty. So very empty…”

A cold chill crept up David’s spine. Her eyes were no longer clear, but glazed and distant, as if she’d somehow transported herself back to that time. Back to that dark fantasy.

She took another trembling breath. “I was working as a waitress in a downtown coffee shop in Memphis. A lot of cops came in there. One of them in particular…he was always so nice to me. Always so kind. He reminded me a little of David.”

David started at the sound of his own name. The movement seemed to bring his mother back for an instant. She nodded absently. “My husband’s name was David. So was my son’s. We called him Davey.”

The chill deepened inside David. He’d always known his mother was a little on the fragile side, but the woman who sat before him now seemed almost…lost. She’d named him for her dead husband and son—a husband and son she’d thought were coming back to her.

Was it his imagination or had the temperature in the room suddenly dropped?

David gazed at her with morbid fascination. He told himself he didn’t want to hear anything more. Somehow he knew that what she was going to tell him would change his life forever, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking, “What happened with the cop?”

Helen Powers’s fingers twisted together in her lap. “The more he came into the coffee shop, the more I thought he looked like my husband, and the more I started looking forward to his visits. We began seeing each other, and he seemed to know all the places that David and I had gone to, all our favorites songs and movies. I realized later that I’d probably told him these things in all the long talks we had in the coffee shop and at his apartment, but at the time…”

“You wanted to believe that he
was
your husband,” David said.

His mother glanced up hopefully. “Then you understand how it could have happened?”

David wasn’t sure he understood any of it, but he felt obliged to try. “You were very young, and you’d just suffered a terrible loss. This man preyed on your vulnerability.”

She nodded. “He told me he had a child, a son that was the same age as Davey. He wanted me to look after the boy for a few days while he was out of town. He took me to a secluded cabin in the mountains, and told me he’d bring the boy there in a day or two. I was to wait for them. We’d have the time of our lives. He made it sound like an adventure, just the way my David would have.”

Her eyes sparkled for a moment in remembrance, then darkened with reality. “I waited in the cabin for two days, and when he finally showed up with the child, I knew right away something was wrong. The boy was crying. He wouldn’t stop sobbing. He kept calling for his mommy. It nearly broke my heart.”

“And this man, this cop,” David said grimly. “What happened to him?”

“He left. He said he’d be back in a week and the three of us could spend a little time together before he had to take the boy back to his family. I knew by then the child wasn’t his, but I was afraid to ask too many questions. Afraid of what I might have gotten myself into. So I just didn’t think about it. I concentrated all my efforts on the boy. On comforting him. And after a while, he responded. After a while…he clung to me.”

David knew what was coming. Like a freight train racing out of control, the truth was about to hit him head-
on, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

“I don’t know.” She glanced up, meeting his eyes briefly before turning away again. “I wasn’t there. I took the child and…left.”

The weight of her words pressed down on David. His chest tightened painfully. “You kidnapped me. That’s what you’re saying.”

She winced as if he’d physically struck her. “Please, try to understand. I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone taking you away from me. Not again.”

“Not
again?
But I wasn’t your son. I wasn’t Davey.”

“But I wanted you to be.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “I wanted it so badly that I just left that mountain and disappeared with you.”

He rubbed his hands over his eyes. It was like the plot of a made-
for-
TV movie, stranger than any case he’d ever worked on. It couldn’t be true, and yet it was. He didn’t doubt the validity of her words—not for a second, because he’d always known that something about his life wasn’t
right.
“What about my birth certificate?” he asked numbly. “How did you manage that?”

“My father and brother were in and out of prison all of their lives,” she said. “I learned things from them. I knew there were ways to get things done.”

“So you bought a fake birth certificate.” He didn’t bother to ask her where she’d gotten the money to do so. He didn’t want to know. “All these years, I’ve thought you were my mother. I’ve thought you the most caring, the most loyal, the most generous woman I’ve ever known, when all along you perpetrated the most selfish act I can imagine. You kept me from my real family. Who am I, Moth—” he started to ask, then stopped himself short on the last word. He took a deep breath. “Who am I?”

Without answering, she flipped several pages of the photo album until she came to a newspaper article. The headline read: Kingsley Baby Stolen From Nursery.

A thrill of adrenaline shot through him.
My God,
he thought. Was she trying to tell him
he
was Adam Kings
ley?

He glanced up, unable to give voice to the dozens of questions crashing through his head.

“Turn the pages,” she said softly.

He flipped the page of the photo album and another headline read: The Search Continues For Adam Kings
ley. Still another: Kingsley Baby Found Dead.

David kept turning the pages. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. The headlines blurred before his eyes like some strange and horrifying kaleidoscope.

Kingsley Kidnapper Found Guilty.

Cletus Brown Sentenced To Life In Prison.

And then, toward the back of the book, there were more recent articles with headlines proclaiming Cletus Brown’s innocence, and the revelation by the real kidnapper, an ex-
cop named Raymond Colter, that Adam Kingsley might still be alive.

David turned the pages until he reached the end of the book. Then he sat numbly as the images continued to flash inside his brain. Adam Kingsley.
He
was Adam Kingsley.

Was it possible?

David knew all about the kidnapping. One of his professors in law school had reenacted Cletus Brown’s trial in the classroom. David had even been assigned to Brown’s mock-
defense team.

He thought about that now and wished he could appreciate the irony. He’d gone over every aspect of that case in preparation for the classroom trial. He knew the most minute details of Adam Kingsley’s kidnapping, but he hadn’t known that
he
was Adam Kingsley.

What a joke, he thought. What a great joke. The best joke he’d ever heard.