Born in Shame (2 page)

“Still we made foolish plans. He would find a way to leave his wife provided for and bring his daughters to me in America where we'd be a family. The man desperately wanted family, as I did. We'd talk together in that room overlooking the river and pretend that it was forever. We had three weeks, and every day was more wonderful than the last, and more wrenching. I had to leave him, and Ireland. He told me he would stand at Loop Head, where we'd met, and look out over the sea to New York, to me.

“His name was Thomas Concannon, a farmer who wanted to be a poet.”

“Did you . . .” Shannon's voice was rusty and unsteady. “Did you ever see him again?”

“No. I wrote him for a time, and he answered.” Pressing her lips together, Amanda stared into her daughter's eyes. “Soon after I returned to New York, I learned I was carrying his child.”

Shannon shook her head quickly, the denial instinctive, the fear huge. “Pregnant?” Her heart began to beat thick and fast. She shook her head again and tried to
draw her hand away. For she knew, without another word being said, she knew. And refused to know. “No.”

“I was thrilled.” Amanda's grip tightened, though it cost her. “From the first moment I was sure, I was thrilled. I never thought I would have a child, that I would find someone who loved me enough to give me that gift. Oh, I wanted that child, loved it, thanked God for it. What sadness and grief I had came from knowing I would never be able to share with Tommy the beauty that had come from our loving each other. His letter to me after I'd written him of it was frantic. He would have left his home and come to me. He was afraid for me, and what I was facing alone. I knew he would have come, and it tempted me. But it was wrong, Shannon, as loving him was never wrong. So I wrote him a last time, lied to him for the first time, and told him I wasn't afraid, nor alone, and that I was going away.”

“You're tired.” Shannon was desperate to stop the words. Her world was tilting, and she had to fight to right it again. “You've talked too long. It's time for your medicine.”

“He would have loved you,” Amanda said fiercely. “If he'd had the chance. In my heart I know he loved you without ever laying eyes on you.”

“Stop.” She did rise then, pulling away, pushing back. There was a sickness rising inside her, and her skin felt so cold and thin. “I don't want to hear this. I don't need to hear this.”

“You do. I'm sorry for the pain it causes you, but you need to know it all. I did leave,” she went on quickly. “My family was shocked, furious when I told them I was pregnant. They wanted me to go away, give you up, quietly, discreetly, so that there would be no scandal and shame. I would have died before giving you up. You were mine, and you were Tommy's. There were horrible
words in that house, threats, utimatums. They disowned me, and my father, being a clever man of business, blocked my bank account so that I had no claim on the money that had been left to me by my grandmother. Money was never a game to him, you see. It was power.

“I left that house with never a regret, with the money I had in my wallet, and a single suitcase.”

Shannon felt as though she were underwater, struggling for air. But the image came clearly through it, of her mother, young, pregnant, nearly penniless, carrying a single suitcase. “There was no one to help you?”

“Kate would have, and I knew she'd suffer for it. This had been my doing. What shame there was, was mine. What joy there was, was mine. I took a train north, and I got a job waiting tables at a resort in the Catskills. And there I met Colin Bodine.”

Amanda waited while Shannon turned away and walked to the dying fire. The room was quiet, with only the hiss of embers and the brisk wind at the windows to stir it. But beneath the quiet, she could feel the storm, the one swirling inside the child she loved more than her own life. Already she suffered, knowing that storm was likely to crash over both of them.

“He was vacationing with his parents. I paid him little mind. He was just one more of the rich and privileged I was serving. He had a joke for me now and again, and I smiled as was expected. My mind was on my work and my pay, and on the child growing inside me. Then one afternoon there was a thunderstorm, a brute of one. A good many of the guests chose to stay indoors, in their rooms and have their lunch brought to them. I was carrying a tray, hurrying to one of the cabins, for there would be trouble if the food got cold and the guest complained of it. And Colin comes barreling around a
corner, wet as a dog, and flattens me. How clumsy he was, bless him.”

Tears burned behind Shannon's eyes as she stared down into the glowing embers. “He said that was how he met you, by knocking you down.”

“So he did. And we always told you what truths we felt we could. He sent me sprawling in the mud, with the tray of food scattering and ruined. He started apologizing, trying to help me up. All I could see was that food, spoiled. And my back aching from carrying those heavy trays, and my legs so tired of holding the rest of me up. I started to cry. Just sat there in the mud and cried and cried and cried. I couldn't stop. Even when he lifted me up and carried me to his room, I couldn't stop.

“He was so sweet, sat me down on a chair despite the mud, covered me with a blanket and sat there, patting my hand till the tears ran out. I was so ashamed of myself, and he was so kind. He wouldn't let me leave until I'd promised to have dinner with him.”

It should have been romantic and sweet, Shannon thought while her breath began to hitch. But it wasn't. It was hideous. “He didn't know you were pregnant.”

Amanda winced as much from the accusation in the words as she did from a fresh stab of pain. “No, not then. I was barely showing and careful to hide it or I would have lost my job. Times were different then, and an unmarried pregnant waitress wouldn't have lasted in a rich man's playground.”

“You let him fall in love with you.” Shannon's voice was cold, cold as the ice that seemed slicked over her skin. “When you were carrying another man's child.”

And the child was me, she thought, wretched.

“I'd grown to a woman,” Amanda said carefully, searching her daughter's face and weeping inside at what she read there. “And no one had really loved me.
With Tommy it was quick, as stunning as a lightning bolt. I was still blinded by it when I met Colin. Still grieving over it, still wrapped in it. Everything I felt for Tommy was turned toward the child we'd made together. I could tell you I thought Colin was only being kind. And in truth, at first I did. But I saw, soon enough, that there was more.”

“And you let him.”

“Maybe I could have stopped him,” Amanda said with a long, long sigh. “I don't know. Every day for the next week there were flowers in my room, and the pretty, useless things he loved to give. He found ways to be with me. If I had a ten-minute break, there he would be. Still it took me days before I understood I was being courted. I was terrified. Here was this lovely man who was being nothing but kind, and he didn't know I had another man's child in me. I told him, all of it, certain it would end there, and sorry for that because he was the first friend I'd had since I'd left Kate in New York. He listened, in that way he had, without interruption, without questions, without condemnations. When I was finished, and weeping again, he took my hand. ‘You'd better marry me, Mandy,' he said. ‘I'll take care of you and the baby.' ”

The tears had escaped, ran down Shannon's cheeks as she turned back. They were running down her mother's cheeks as well, but she wouldn't allow herself to be swayed by them. Her world was no longer tilted; it had crashed.

“As simple as that? How could it have been so simple?”

“He loved me. It was humbling when I realized he truly loved me. I refused him, of course. What else could I do? I thought he was being foolishly gallant, or just foolish altogether. But he persisted. Even when I got
angry and told him to leave me alone, he persisted.” A smile began to curve her lips as she remembered it. “It was as if I were the rock and he the wave that patiently, endlessly sweeps over it until all resistance is worn away. He brought me baby things. Can you image a man courting a woman by bringing her gifts for her unborn child? One day he came to my room, told me we were going to get the license now and to get my purse. I did it. I just did it. And found myself married two days later.”

She looked over sharply, anticipating the question before it was asked. “I won't lie to you and tell you I loved him then. I did care. It was impossible not to care for a man like that. And I was grateful. His parents were upset, naturally enough, but he claimed he would bring them around. Being Colin, I think he would have, but they were killed on their drive home. So it was just the two of us, and you. I promised myself I would be a good wife to him, make him a home, accept him in bed. I vowed not to think of Tommy again, but that was impossible. It took me years to understand there was no sin, no shame in remembering the first man I'd loved, no disloyalty to my husband.”

“Not my father,” Shannon said through lips of ice. “He was your husband, but he wasn't my father.”

“Oh, but he was.” For the first time there was a hint of temper in Amanda's voice. “Don't ever say different.”

Bitterness edged her voice. “You've just told me different, haven't you?”

“He loved you while you were still in my womb, took both of us as his without hesitation or false pride.” Amanda spoke as quickly as her pain would allow. “I tell you it shamed me, pining for a man I could never have, while one as fine as was ever made was beside me. The day you were born, and I saw him holding you in those big clumsy hands, that look of wonder and pride on his
face, the love in his eyes as he cradled you against him as gently as if you were made of glass, I fell in love with him. I loved him as much as any woman ever loved any man from that day till this. And he was your father, as Tommy wanted to be and couldn't. If either of us had a regret, it was that we couldn't have more children to spread the happiness we shared in you.”

“You just want me to accept this?” Clinging to anger was less agonizing than clinging to grief. Shannon stared. The woman in bed was a stranger now, just as she was a stranger to herself. “To go on as if it changes nothing.”

“I want you to give yourself time to accept, and understand. And I want you to believe that we loved you, all of us.”

Her world was shattered at her feet, every memory she had, every belief she'd fostered in jagged shards. “Accept? That you slept with a married man and got pregnant, then married the first man who asked you to save yourself. To accept the lies you told me all my life, the deceit.”

“You've a right to your anger.” Amanda bit back the pain, physical, emotional.

“Anger? Do you think what I'm feeling is as pale as anger? God, how could you do this?” She whirled away, horror and bitterness biting at her heels. “How could you have kept this from me all these years, let me believe I was someone I wasn't?”

“Who you are hasn't changed,” Amanda said desperately. “Colin and I did what we thought was right for you. We were never sure how or when to tell you. We—”

“You discussed it?” Swamped by her own churning emotions, Shannon spun back to the frail woman on the bed. There was a horrible, shocking urge in her to snatch that shrunken body up, shake it. “Is today the day we tell
Shannon she was a little mistake made on the west coast of Ireland? Or should it be tomorrow?”

“Not a mistake, never a mistake. A miracle. Damn it, Shannon—” She broke off, gasping as the pain lanced through her, stealing her breath, tearing like claws. Her vision grayed. She felt a hand lift her head, a pill being slipped between her lips, and heard the voice of her daughter, soothing now.

“Sip some water. A little more. That's it. Now lie back, close your eyes.”

“Shannon.” The hand was there to take hers when she reached out.

“I'm here, right here. The pain'll be gone in a minute. It'll be gone, and you'll sleep.”

It was already ebbing, and the fatigue was rolling in like fog. Not enough time, was all Amanda could think. Why is there never enough time?

“Don't hate me,” she murmured as she slipped under the fog. “Please, don't hate me.”

Shannon sat, weighed down by her own grief long after her mother slept.

She didn't wake again.

Chapter
Two

An ocean away from where one of Tom Concannon's daughters dealt with the pain of death, others celebrated the joys of new life.

Brianna Concannon Thane cradled her daughter in her arms, studying the gorgeous blue eyes with their impossibly long lashes. The tiny fingers with their perfect tiny nails, the rosebud of a mouth that no one in heaven or on earth could tell her hadn't curved into a smile.

After less than an hour she'd already forgotten the strain and fatigue of labor. The sweat of it, and even the prickles of fear.

She had a child.

“She's real.” Grayson Thane said it reverently, with a hesitant stroke of a fingertip down the baby's cheek. “She's ours.” He swallowed. Kayla, he thought. His daughter Kayla. And she seemed so small, so fragile, so helpless. “Do you think she's going to like me?”

Peering over his shoulder, his sister-in-law chuckled. “Well, we do—most of the time. She favors you, Brie,” Maggie decided, slipping an arm around Gray's waist for support. “Her hair will be your color. It's more russet now, but I'll wager it turns to your reddish gold before long.”

Delighted with the idea, Brianna beamed. She stroked the down on her daughter's head, found it soft as water. “Do you think?”

“Maybe she's got my chin,” Gray said hopefully.

“Just like a man.” Maggie winked at her husband as Rogan Sweeney grinned at her across the hospital bed. “A woman goes through the pregnancy, with its queasiness and swollen ankles. She waddles about like a cow for months, then suffers through the horrors of labor—”

“Don't remind me of that.” Gray didn't bother to suppress a shudder. Brianna might have put that aspect of the event behind her, but he hadn't. It would live in his dreams, he was sure, for years.

Transition, he remembered with horror. As a writer, he'd always thought of it as a simple move from scene to scene. He'd never think of the word the same way again.

Unable to resist, Maggie tucked her tongue in her cheek. Her affection for Gray made her honor bound to tease whenever the opportunity arose. “How many hours was it? Let's see. Eighteen. Eighteen hours of labor for you, Brie.”

Brianna couldn't quite hide a smile as Gray began to pale. “More or less. Certainly seemed like more at the time, with everyone telling me to breathe, and poor
Gray nearly hyperventilating as he demonstrated how I was to go about it.”

“A man thinks nothing of whining after putting in eight hours at a desk.” Maggie tossed back her mop of flame-colored hair. “And still they insist on calling us the weaker sex.”

“You won't hear it from me.” Rogan smiled at her. Being part of Kayla's birth had reminded him of the birth of his son, and how his wife had fought like a warrior to bring Liam into the world. Still no one thinks of what a father goes through. “How's your hand doing, Grayson?”

Brows knit, Gray flexed his fingers—the ones his wife had vised down on during a particularly rough contraction. “I don't think it's broken.”

“You held back a yelp, manfully,” Maggie remembered. “But your eyes crossed when she got a good grip on you.”

“At least she didn't curse you,” Rogan added, lifting a dark, elegant brow at his wife. “The names Margaret Mary here called me when Liam was born were inventive to be sure. And unrepeatable.”

“You try passing eight pounds, Sweeney, and see what names come to mind. And all he says, when he takes a look at Liam,” Maggie went on, “is how the boy has
his
nose.”

“And so he does.”

“But you're okay now?” In sudden panic Gray looked at his wife. She was still a little pale, he noted, but her eyes were clear again. That terrifying glaze of concentration was gone. “Right?”

“I'm fine.” To comfort, she lifted a hand to his face. The face she loved, with its poet's mouth and gold-flecked eyes. “And I won't hold you to your promise never to touch me again. As it was given in the heat of
the moment.” With a laugh she nuzzled the baby. “Did you hear him, Maggie, when he shouted at the doctor? ‘We've changed our minds,' he says. ‘We're not having a baby after all. Get out of my way, I'm taking my wife home.' ”

“Fine for you.” Gray took another chance and skimmed a fingertip over the baby's head. “You didn't have to watch it all. This childbirth stuff's rough on a guy.”

“And at the sticking point, we're the least appreciated,” Rogan added. When Maggie snorted, Rogan held out a hand for her. “We've calls to make, Maggie.”

“That we do. We'll look back in on you shortly.”

When they were alone, Brianna beamed up at him. “We have a family, Grayson.”

 

An hour later Grayson was anxious and suspicious when a nurse took the baby away. “I should go keep an eye on her. I don't trust the look in that nurse's eyes.”

“Don't be a worrier, Da.”

“Da.” Grinning from ear to ear, he looked back at his wife. “Is that what she's going to call me? It's easy. She can probably just about handle it already, don't you think?”

“Oh, I'm sure.” Chuckling, Brianna cupped his face in her hands as he leaned over to kiss her. “She's bright as the sun, our Kayla.”

“Kayla Thane.” He tried it out, grinned again. “Kayla Margaret Thane, the first female President of the United States. We've already had a woman president in Ireland,” he added. “But she can choose whichever she wants. You look beautiful, Brianna.”

He kissed her again, surprised all at once that it was absolutely true. Her eyes were glowing, her rose-gold hair tumbled around it. Her face was still a bit pale, but
he could see that the roses in them were beginning to bloom again.

“And you must be exhausted. I should let you sleep.”

“Sleep.” She rolled her eyes and pulled him down for another kiss. “You must be joking. I don't think I could sleep for days, I've so much energy now. What I am is starved half to death. I'd give anything and more for an enormous bookmaker's sandwich and a pile of chips.”

“You want to eat?” He blinked at her, astonished. “What a woman. Maybe after, you'd like to go out and plow a field.”

“I believe I'll skip that,” she said dryly. “But I haven't had a bite in more than twenty-four hours, I'll remind you. Do you think you could see if they could bring me a little something?”

“Hospital food, no way. Not for the mother of my child.” What a kick that was, he realized. He'd hardly gotten used to saying “my wife”—now he was saying “my child.” My daughter. “I'm going to go get you the best bookmaker's sandwich on the west coast of Ireland.”

Brianna settled back with a laugh as he darted out of the room. What a year it had been, she thought. It had been hardly more than that since she'd met him, less since she'd loved him. And now they were a family.

Despite her claims to the contrary, her eyes grew heavy and she slipped easily into sleep.

When she awakened again, drifting hazily out of dreams, she saw Gray, sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her.

“She was sleeping, too,” he began. And since he'd already taken her hand in his, he brought it to his lips. “They let me hold her again when I harassed them—said a few interesting things about the Yank, but were pretty indulgent all in all. She looked at me, Brie, she
looked right at me. She knew who I was, and she curled her fingers—she's got gorgeous fingers—she curled them around mine and held on—”

He broke off, a look of sheer panic replacing the dazzled joy. “You're crying. Why are you crying? Something hurts. I'll get the doctor. I'll get somebody.”

“No.” Sniffling, she leaned forward to press her face to his shoulder. “Nothing hurts. It's only that I love you so much. Oh, you move me, Grayson. Looking at your face when you speak of her. It touches so deep.”

“I didn't know it would be like this,” he murmured, stroking her hair as he cuddled. “I didn't know it would be so big, so incredibly big. I'm going to be a good father.”

He said it with such fervor, and such a sweet hint of fear, that she laughed. “I know.”

How could he fail, he wondered, when she believed in him so completely? “I brought you a sandwich, and some stuff.”

“Thanks.” She sat back, sniffling again and wiping at her eyes. When the tears cleared, she blinked again, then wept again. “Oh, Grayson, what a wonderful fool you are.”

He'd crammed the room with flowers, pots and vases and baskets of them, with balloons that crowded the ceiling with vivid color and cheerful shapes. A huge purple dog stood grinning at the foot of the bed.

“The dog's for Kayla,” he told her, pulling out tissues from a box and stuffing them into her hand. “So don't get any ideas. Your sandwich is probably cold, and I ate some of the chips. But there's a piece of chocolate cake in it for you if you don't give me a hard time about it.”

She brushed the fresh tears away. “I want the cake first.”

“You got it.”

“What's this, feasting already?” Maggie strolled in, a bouquet of daffodils in her arms. Her husband came in behind her, his face hidden behind a stuffed bear.

“Hello, Mum.” Rogan Sweeney bent over the bed to kiss his sister-in-law, then winked at Gray. “Da.”

“She was hungry,” Gray said with a grin.

“And I'm too greedy to share my cake.” Brianna forked up a mouthful of chocolate.

“We've just come from having another peek.” Maggie plopped down on a chair. “And I can say, without prejudice, that she's the prettiest babe in the nursery. She has your hair, Brie, all rosy gold, and Gray's pretty mouth.”

“Murphy sends his love and best wishes,” Rogan put in, setting the bear beside the dog. “We called him just a bit ago to pass the news. He and Liam are celebrating with the tea cakes you finished making before you went into labor.”

“It's sweet of him to mind Liam while you're here.”

Maggie waved off Brianna's gratitude. “Sweet had nothing to do with it. Murphy'd keep the boy from dawn to dusk if I'd let him. They're having a grand time, and before you ask, things are fine at the inn. Mrs. O'Malley's seeing to your guests. Though why you'd accept bookings when you knew you'd be having a baby, I can't say.”

“The same reason you kept working with your glass until we carted you off to have Liam, I imagine,” Brianna said dryly. “It's how I make my living. Have Mother and Lottie gone home then?”

“A short time ago.” For Brianna's sake, Maggie kept her smile in place. Their mother had been complaining, and worrying about what germs she might pick up in the hospital. That was nothing new. “They looked in and saw you were sleeping, so Lottie said she'd drive Mother back and they'd see you and Kayla tomorrow.”

Maggie paused, glanced at Rogan. His imperceptible nod left the decision to share the rest of the news up to her. Because she understood her sister, and Brianna's needs, Maggie rose, sat on the side of the bed opposite Gray, and took Brianna's hand.

“It's as well she's gone. No, don't give me that look, I mean no harm in it. There's news to tell you that it isn't time for her to hear. Rogan's man, his detective, thinks he's found Amanda. Now wait, don't get too hopeful. We've been through this before.”

“But this time it could be real.”

Brianna closed her eyes a moment. More than a year before she'd found three letters written to her father by Amanda Dougherty. Love letters that had shocked and dismayed. And finding in them that there had been a child had begun a long and frustrating search for the woman her father had loved, and the child he'd never known.

“It could be.” Not wanting to see his wife disappointed yet again, Gray spoke carefully. “Brie, you know how many dead ends we've run into since the birth certificate was found.”

“We know we have a sister,” Brianna said stubbornly. “We know her name, we know that Amanda married, and that they moved from place to place. It's the moving that's been the trouble. But sooner or later we'll find them.” She gave Maggie's hand a squeeze. “It could be this time.”

“Perhaps.” Maggie had yet to resign herself to the possibility. Nor was she entirely sure she wanted to find the woman who was her half sister. “He's on his way to a place called Columbus, Ohio. One way or the other, we'll know something soon.”

“Da would have wanted us to do this,” Brianna said
quietly. “He would have been happy to know we tried, at least, to find them.”

With a nod, Maggie rose. “Well, we've started the ball on its roll, so we won't try to stop it.” She only hoped no one was damaged by the tumble. “In the meantime, you should be celebrating your new family, not worrying over one that may or may not be found.”

“You'll tell me, as soon as you know something,” Brianna insisted.