Snowfall on Haven Point (27 page)

“What is this?” Herm exclaimed a moment later. “I don't understand.”

“It's a legally binding document your daughter's attorney prepared, where I relinquished—from the date on the document into perpetuity—all paternal rights to any child the two of us may have conceived together.”

Twin blank stares met this awkward explanation. “I don't understand,” Louise said. “Why would you have this? I had no idea you even knew Nicole.”

He closed his eyes, wishing he could go back and change that single weekend that had impacted so many lives. “It's a long story, but we bumped into each other when I was just about ready to ship out to Iraq and...we spent some time together.”

How awkward was it to talk about this? Nikki was dead now and it felt terribly wrong to tell her parents about a brief hookup that hadn't meant anything to either of them. He had been absolutely right to dread this.

“It was a mistake and I take full responsibility for everything. Neither of us expected a child to come out of it, of course. I don't think she wanted to believe it had, but then she found out she was pregnant with Christopher.”

“But she was already engaged to Johann when she found out she was pregnant,” Louise protested. “They were so excited about it because he'd had fertility problems with his first marriage and doctors had told him he couldn't have children of his own...”

Her voice trailed off and she looked suddenly horrified.

“I believe now that she suspected the baby might have been mine by then,” he said slowly. “I don't know that for sure, though. I can't know it. I think she was trying to protect herself and her upcoming marriage and just wanted to make sure I was out of the picture. I only know she contacted me in Iraq and begged me to sign the document.”

“That doesn't explain why a man would sign away rights to his own child.” Herm said, expression taut with a condemnation that Marshall fully deserved.

“I've asked myself that a thousand times over the years. I don't have a good excuse. At the time, I figured it was the logical choice. What could I provide a kid? I was young, single and on a dangerous deployment I wasn't sure I would even survive. On the other hand, Nikki was about to marry a rich, successful, mature doctor who seemed to be everything I wasn't.”

With the insight he had gained over the last few days, he decided to lay the rest of it on the table. “Besides that, I was pretty sure I would be a terrible father. That's the main reason I haven't said anything all these months. I told myself I didn't want to interfere or complicate his life more than it already was, but...I guess I needed to convince myself I had something to offer.”

“And do you?” Louise asked, her gaze narrowed.

“I don't know,” he said truthfully. “I would like to try, if you'll give me the chance.”

They looked at each other for a moment and seemed to carry on one of those wordless conversations he remembered his mother and father doing at the dinner table while five kids bickered and spilled milk and vied for attention.

“How do we even know you're his father?” Herm said after a moment. “What happens if we let you start a relationship and you find out it was all a mistake and you have no reason to stick around? That boy has lost enough.”

“We need some kind of proof,” Louise agreed. “All this document says is you would relinquish your rights if you
were
his father. It doesn't say you
are
.”

“We can get a DNA test. I want that, though it's going to be tough to get a swab without telling him a little about what's going on.”

“That would probably be wise.”

He paused, reaching into the envelope for what he considered a second piece of evidence. “This isn't conclusive, but I'd like you to take a look at something.”

When he handed them the picture of Wyatt and Wynona he'd found from a hiking trip they took when the twins were about the same age Christopher was now, both of them gazed at it for a long moment, and then Louise started to cry again.

“Oh my. Look at that,” she said. “Except for the different hair color, he's the spitting image of Charlene's Wyatt!”

“The first time I saw a picture of him you posted on social media, I knew,” Marshall said simply. “To be honest, I can't believe my mother has not been camped out on your doorstep since Christopher came to town, anxious to meet her new grandson. I told Andie that I think my mom couldn't see what was right in front of her eyes because she was too busy planning a wedding.”

“Andrea knows?” Louise asked in surprise.

She had been such a source of support to him and he had repaid her by making her think he completely discounted her opinion.

“She guessed, from a few things I told her. She's been pushing me to tell you the truth so that you two can figure out the best way to handle introducing the idea to him.”

“I think we should have the DNA results first. No ambiguity,” Herm said. He didn't look as wholly convinced as his wife, as Marshall.

“That's fair. There are kits we can get in the mail or I can talk to Devin Shaw about going to her office for them. Either way, we're going to have to figure out together what to tell Christopher.”

“To tell me about what?”

Marshall jerked his gaze to the doorway, where Christopher had suddenly appeared. His son had a bruise on his cheek and the beginnings of a black eye. His knuckles were bruised, too, and it looked like his thumb was swollen, the nail damaged.

Apparently one of the first things he needed to teach him was how to tuck his thumb in his fist before punching someone.

“What's going on?” the boy said into the continued silence.

Marshall looked at Herm and Louise, who didn't seem to know what to say.

“You're sending me away, aren't you?” He couldn't miss the fear in the boy's voice.

“I... No, honey,” his grandmother assured him. “We promised we wouldn't.”

He faced Marshall, belligerence clear in every line of his body. “I didn't steal that cell phone! You can't arrest me. I have witnesses who saw the whole thing go down. They didn't want to tell the principal, but they'll tell the cops. I know they will.”

“You're not going to jail. I'm not here to arrest you.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Christopher moved into the room and his gaze landed on the picture in his grandmother's hands.

“Who is that?”

Herm and Louise seemed frozen in uncertainty, both looking at Marshall to give them guidance. They had to tell him. He couldn't see any other way around it.

His heart pounding, Marshall pulled the photograph from Louise and handed it to Christopher.

“That's my younger brother, Wyatt. He was a highway patrol officer and was struck and killed by a car five years ago while helping a motorist during a bad storm.”

“He looks like me. Why?” Christopher gazed down at the picture and then his eyes—an exact match to Marshall's own—lifted. “Are we related or something?”

Marshall looked one last time at Herm and Louise. After a pause, Herm gave a slight nod, tacit permission, and Marshall turned back to the troubled boy he already cared so deeply about and wanted desperately to help.

“There is a pretty good chance he's your uncle. Which would make me your father.”

* * *

A
N
HOUR
LATER
, feeling utterly exhausted yet also buoyed by more optimism than he'd known in a long time, Marshall made his slow way across the snow to his house.

He had a son.

Yes, they still needed to do the DNA test, but he had no doubt what the results would be.

Christopher had taken the news with surprising nonchalance, though Marshall knew that could be a temporary state of shock. Really, though, the boy hadn't even seemed all that shocked.

“I knew Johann wasn't my dad. I've known it for a long time,” he said, which had made his grandmother burst into more tears.

“How?” she had asked. “Did your mother tell you that?”

He shook his head. “I heard them fighting about it four or five years ago, I think, after my mom's second divorce. She was trying to get more child support, and he refused, and I heard him say he was already paying out the nose for someone else's bastard. They didn't know I heard. I didn't know what bastard meant and had to look it up.”

What must that have been like, to be a young boy hearing your father disavow you. No wonder Christopher adopted a smart-ass attitude to the world.

Marshall's chest felt jagged and raw as he contemplated the pain his son had endured because of Marshall's own foolish choices.

“I am so sorry,” he had said, knowing the words were wholly inadequate.

His son had shrugged with that indifference Marshall now realized was so carefully cultivated. “In some ways, it made it all easier, you know? Before that, I just thought he didn't love me because of something I did.”

Though he had grieved deeply each time, he had tried hard not to weep when Wyatt died or he lost a buddy in Iraq or when his beloved father had been shot.

In that moment, as he listened to Christopher's casual acceptance of another man's cruelty to an innocent child, he felt his eyes burn and his throat close.

He had wanted to hug him even as he sensed they weren't quite there yet. It would come, but Marshall knew it would take time before Christopher would accept that kind of easy affection from him.

He was grateful when Louise did it for him, wrapping Christopher in her arms and holding tightly while Herm managed to put an arm around both of them.

“I have a lot of regrets in my life,” Marshall had admitted. “The biggest, though, is not fighting for you when I found out thirteen years ago there was a chance I might have a son. I should have. I can make a hundred excuses for why I didn't—why at the time I thought I was doing the best thing for you—but they don't really matter. In the end, I'm only left with remorse.”

After a few more moments of talking, Christopher finally asked the question on Marshall's mind and, he guessed, the boy's grandparents.

“So what now?”

“We'll do a DNA test if you want, to be sure. It might make your grandparents a little more comfortable with the whole thing, but I know everything I need to. You're my son and, more than anything, I'd like the chance to be your father, if you'll let me.”

Christopher had given him a measuring look that contained wariness, doubt and, maybe, just maybe, a little happiness at all the possibilities ahead of them.

Marshall would have to work for those possibilities, he knew. As if to confirm the thought, Christopher tilted his jaw up. “Yeah, but what if I don't want some weird cop for a dad?”

“I can try not to be so weird, I guess. But as for the rest, I'm afraid you're stuck with it. I'm a cop to the bone. Don't know if I can be anything else.”

“I guess that's okay,” Christopher said, and Marshall had to fight a smile of pure happiness.

After a few more moments of talking, Marshall sensed Herm, Louise and Christopher needed a little time alone to absorb the shocking grenade he had just tossed into their world.

As he said his goodbyes, Christopher walked him to the door. At the last moment, Marshall reached out and hugged the boy. To hell with what he should or shouldn't do or what Christopher might want. To his great joy, his son had hugged him back, just for a moment, before he stepped away.

“I never thought I wanted children,” Marshall had admitted to his son, that raw emotion back in his throat and chest. “I had no idea until I found you how very wrong I was.”

Now, as he made his way to his house, he couldn't wait for Andie to get home. He wanted to tell her everything, the entire word-for-word conversation.

He wanted to hold her close and tell her she was right and to thank her for showing him by example how to find the strength and courage he needed to move forward with the hard choices he had needed to make.

To his disappointment, the house was empty of all but Sadie and her slinky black feline friend, who peeked around the corner when he walked in the back door, stared at him for a long moment out of hypnotic green eyes, then bounded back to parts unknown.

He stood for a moment, knowing the last half hour had changed his life irrevocably—and Christopher's, as well.

How would he tell his mother? His sisters? Elliot?

He didn't want to rush into anything. After the DNA test results, when all the formalities had been followed, he would sit his family down and explain the situation.

He didn't question how they would respond. The Baileys would embrace his son completely. He knew his family and he had no doubt whatsoever. Charlene would be in ecstasy to have someone else to fuss over and Uncle Mike would probably want to give the kid a job down at the body shop, just like he'd done for Elliot, Marshall and Wyatt. As for Wyn and Katrina, he imagined his sisters would instantly be crazy about Christopher, not least of which because he looked so very much like Wyatt.

Wyn would sob when she saw him, and Kat would probably want to teach him to drive in her little sports car, and both of them would spoil him horribly.

That wasn't even counting all the other great-aunts and uncles and cousins who lived in Lake Haven County.

Poor kid. He would have so much family he wouldn't know what to do with it.

How would the kid feel about adding a younger stepbrother and stepsister to their little tribe?

The thought came out of nowhere and Marshall had to grip the edge of the table as a deep yearning just about knocked him over.

Whoa. That wasn't going to happen. He wasn't going to marry anyone, especially not a lovely widow who had told him in blunt, unmistakable terms that he was the worst possible man in Haven Point for her. She didn't want to marry another police officer with the accompanying risks and he had already established that he couldn't imagine being anything else.