Carolina Girl (25 page)

It had taken him four days to arrange transportation to the main camp, Leatherneck, so he could make this call. Another eight and a half hours waiting for Eastern standard time to catch up with Afghanistan so that he could talk to this lawyer person, K. Dolan, in her office. His head throbbed. His mouth was dry. His nerves stretched tight with stress and fatigue. This was not a conversation he intended to have via email. Not a conversation he wanted to have at all.

But he was determined to be responsible. Reasonable. He had no proof this kid was even his. Only Dawn’s word, and Dawn was dead.

“That’s understandable and practical,” the lawyer said in a voice that matched her letter, crisp and dry. “If you’re not a blood relative of the child, you have no real standing for custody.”

Perversely, her attitude made him want to argue.

“Except for Dawn’s will,” he said.

“The court is not bound by Dawn’s decision,” the Dolan woman said. “If you want to renounce your claim to the child, her grandparents are very willing to take her.”

Grandparents. God. How would his parents react to the news? They’d already rallied once, to help raise his brother’s child. He couldn’t ask them to . . .

But she wasn’t talking about his parents, he realized. She meant Dawn’s folks, Ernie and Jolene Simpson. Were they even around anymore? He vaguely recalled his mom saying they’d moved off island when the fish house closed eight years ago.

“That’s not what Dawn wanted,” he said.

“I don’t think Dawn truly anticipated this situation ever arising. Her death was very sudden.”

Dawn. Dead. He still couldn’t get his mind around it. There had to be something he should say, something he could do. “When’s the funeral?”

“August thirteenth.”

Two weeks ago
. His throat tightened.

“I’m sorry.” The lawyer’s voice softened slightly.

He swallowed. “Why the hell did it take you so long to contact me?” he asked roughly.

“I took the will to the clerk’s office to be probated within a few days of Dawn’s death. After which, I had to locate you.”

“How’d you find me?” It wasn’t like he and Dawn had kept in touch. He didn’t even know she had a child.
He
had a child. Hell.

“Your parents still live on the island where Dawn grew up. I looked them up.”

“Do they know?”

“Only that you’ve been named in a will that I’m probating and I needed to get in touch.”

“Did you tell them it was Dawn?”

“I didn’t see the need,” the lawyer said coolly.

So it was up to him to tell them. To explain that while he was overseas, they had suddenly somehow become grandparents again. “How did she die?”

“An aneurysm. A ruptured blood vessel in the brain,” Dolan said, as if using little words would help him understand. “The doctors said it was probably the result of a congenital condition.”

“Did she suffer?”

“As I said, her death was very sudden.” Did he imagine it, or did her voice shake slightly? “Dawn had a headache, a bad one. I told her to take the afternoon off. And then . . .”

“Wait. She worked for you?”

“Yes.”

“Where was the kid?”
The kid
. His kid. He didn’t believe it. Dawn would have told him.

Wouldn’t she?

“In school,” Dolan said.

Yeah, sure, the kid would be school age. Nine? Ten?

Dawn had written to him in boot camp, he remembered suddenly. Once, ten years ago, the summer after high school graduation. But try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything beyond some hello-how-are-you kind of bullshit. He’d had other, more important things on his mind than a remorseful ex-girlfriend. He’d been too exhausted, or too pissed off still, to reply.

And when he’d gone home for his ten days of leave before his unit was deployed, Dawn had already left the island with ol’ Bo.

Part of him had been disappointed she wasn’t around to admire him in his new uniform. Maybe he’d even been hoping for one more fling for old time’s sake, a little pre-deployment nookie. But he’d been relieved, too. Dawn had made it clear when she dumped him that she didn’t want a boyfriend in the Marines. She was already part of his past, part of the life he was leaving behind.

How the hell was he supposed to know she had been pregnant?

He struggled to organize his thoughts. “You said she left a letter. What did it say?”

“It was sealed.”

“But you’re her lawyer. You could open it.”

“I would have, if there had been no other way to find you. Since I was able to locate you through your parents, that wasn’t necessary.” The lawyer had this precise, deliberate way of speaking, like an officer covering his ass.

Luke bit back impatience. “Well, can you read it to me?”

“If that’s what you want.”

His teeth clenched. What he wanted didn’t enter into it. This was about what needed to be done. “Yeah.”

“One moment. All right. Here we go.” He heard her take a breath. “‘Dear Luke, I guess you never expected to hear from me again. But Kate says every parent ought to have a will naming a guardian, and I couldn’t think of anybody better to raise our baby girl than you.’”

Oh, shit. He cleared his throat. “Who’s Kate?”

“Me.” The lawyer sounded subdued. “When Dawn came to work for me, I told her that a lot of cases I see . . .”

“Yeah, okay, I get it. Go on.”

“Er . . . ‘Her name is Taylor. She’s wonderful, Luke. The best thing that ever happened to me. I feel bad because you haven’t had a chance to see her, how special she is. Maybe you never will. I didn’t figure I’d ever have to ask you for anything. We’ve never needed anybody, Taylor and me. But if you’re reading this, then she needs you now. I love her more than anything. I hope you can, too. Take care of her for me. Dawn.’”

No explanations. No excuses. None of the answers Luke craved. Just the faint, remembered rhythm of her speech and the weight of expectations reaching across the years and miles.

His blood pounded in his head.
She needs you
.

“It’ll take me a couple days to get there at least,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll get emergency leave. But even with a good connection through Ramstein Air Base, it’s thirty hours from Kandahar to Lejeune.”

The phone was silent. Then, “I appreciate the thought. And your effort, Staff Sergeant,” the lawyer said carefully. “But we need to find a long term solution for Taylor.”

“That’s why I’m coming home,” Luke said. “I can’t take care of this over the phone.”
Take care of her for me
.

Another measured breath. “I hear what you’re saying,” the Dolan woman said almost gently. “But we have to think practically. Taylor has no relationship with you. You’re a stranger to her.”

I feel bad because you haven’t had a chance to see her.

“So she’ll meet me now,” Luke said. “If she is my kid, she’s entitled to military benefits. I can take her to the base, get her ID.”

“Obviously, it’s in Taylor’s best interest to have health care,” the lawyer said. “I can ask the court to grant you temporary custody, which would allow you to remove her from the Simpsons’ home. But the issue of long-term care still has to be addressed. You have options. Dawn’s parents . . .”

“We’ll talk about it when I get there,” Luke said.

After the paternity test. After he’d met her, this daughter.

The daughter he’d left behind.