For the Girls' Sake (6 page)

Adam Landry’s hard mouth twisted. "It would seem we have something in common. I’d fight to the death for Rose. Nobody is taking her. So you can put that right out of your mind."

Had she imagined raising both girls? "Then what?" she asked in a low voice.

He shook his head. "Visitation. We can take it slow."

"Have you told Rose about me?" Lynn asked curiously. "About what happened?"

"No. You?"

"No." She made a face. "It’s a hard thing to explain to a three-year-old."

"On Rose’s nightstand is a picture of her mommy, who she knows is in heaven. How will I introduce you?" Bafflement and anger filled his dark eyes, so like Shelly’s.

"All we can do is our best." How prissy she sounded, Lynn thought in distaste.

He didn’t react to her sugar pill, continuing as if she’d said nothing, "It’s going to scare her to death if I suddenly announce she isn’t my daughter at all. And, oh yeah, here’s your real mommy."

Lynn had imagined the same conversation a million times. To a child this age, parents were the only security. They were the anchor that made exploring the world possible.

"Maybe we should meet first," she suggested. "Would it be less scary once they know us?"

"Maybe." He made a rough sound in his throat. "Yeah. All right. We’ll all just be buddies at first."

She let his irony pass, giving a small nod. When he said nothing more, Lynn clutched her purse in her lap. "Shall I bring Shelly to Portland one day?"

“Why don’t I come there instead? Rosebud would enjoy a day at the beach. It might seem more natural."

Rosebud.
She liked that. She liked, too, what the gentle nickname suggested about this man. Perhaps he wasn’t as tough as he seemed.

"Fine. Saturday?"

They agreed. He wrote down her address and phone number, then gave her a business card with his. It all felt so...mundane, a mere appointment, not the clock set ticking for an earthshaking event.

He escorted her out of the conference room and, with his hand on her elbow, hustled her past the cluster of lawyers and administrators lying in wait.

Over his shoulder, he told them brusquely, "We’ll be in touch once we figure this out."

Lynn imagined the consternation brewing at their abrupt departure. Together.

She and Adam Landry rode down silently in the elevator, Lynn painfully conscious of his physical presence. She caught him glancing at her once or twice, but each time he looked quickly away, frowning at the lighted numbers over the door. Of course, he couldn’t help being so imposing at his height, with broad shoulders and the build of a natural athlete. Nor could he help that face, with Slavic cheekbones and bullish jaw and high forehead that together made him handsome enough to displace George Clooney in a woman’s fantasies.

She was glad that Shelly looked like her mother and not her father. It would have been too bizarre for words to see her daughter in this stranger’s face. As though they must have been together and she just didn’t remember it, or else how could she have breast-fed his child, raised her, loved her?

Heat suddenly blossomed on her cheeks. Had he had the same thought, she wondered, about her? As though he must know her on a level deeper than he understood? No wonder he didn’t want to look at her!

When the elevator doors opened, he gripped her arm again as if she wouldn’t know where to go without his guidance. Habit, she gathered, when he was with a woman. "Where are you parked?"

"My car is right out in front."

He urged her forward, his stride so long she had to scuttle along like a tiny hermit crab just to avoid falling and being hauled ungracefully to her feet. Outside the hospital doors, Lynn balked.

Adam Landry looked so surprised when she pointedly removed her elbow from his bruising grip that she might have been amused under other circumstances.

"My car is right over there." She gestured. "I don’t see a purse snatcher lurking. I can make it on my own, thank you, Mr. Landry."

"Adam."

"Adam," she acknowledged. "I’ll see you Saturday."

The lines around his mouth deepened. "We’ll be there."

Neither moved for an awkward moment. Then he bent his head in a stiff goodbye and stalked away across the parking lot. With a sense of unreality she watched him go, wondering how she would have viewed him if they’d passed in the halls earlier, before she knew who he was.

I would have thought he must be a doctor,
she decided. He had that air of money and command, as though he could make life and death decisions before breakfast and assume it was his right.

He would be a tough opponent, way out of her league.

Then she didn’t dare let him become an opponent, Lynn thought again. Although she disliked the idea acutely, she must accommodate him, coax him, play friends—do whatever it took to stay out of court.

Her stomach roiled. It was bad enough that a divorced woman with a child had to spend the next twenty years somehow getting along with her ex-husband. Now she, Lynn Chanak, had gone one better: she had to get along with a man she hadn’t chosen, even if foolishly. A man she’d never married, never been close to—a total stranger. All for the sake of the child they shared.

For better or worse, they were tied together until Shelly and Rose were grown.

How bizarre did it get?

* * *

L
YNN MADE THE LONG
, winding trip back over the coastal range to the Pacific Ocean and home. Her instinct was to collect Shelly right away, to reassure herself by her daughter’s presence that nothing would ever change, that they were a family.

But there were things she didn’t want Shelly to hear, and she should make some phone calls first.

She got Brian’s answering machine and started to leave a halting message, feeling like an idiot. Why was she always taken aback when the beep sounded and she had to talk onto a tape? But this time she’d barely begun when he picked up the phone.

"Yeah, I’m here."

"I, um, I told you I’d found her."

"Our daughter."

"Yes." She took a breath. "Today I saw pictures of her. She has your eyes. And my hair."

Strangely, what flitted into her mind at that moment wasn’t the photo, but rather the potent way Adam Landry’s gaze had touched her and the grit in his voice when he’d said, "She looks like you."

"How do you know this is the right kid?" her ex-husband, the true stranger, said with an audible sneer.

Closing her eyes, Lynn said evenly, "We’ve had DNA testing done. And you’d know, if you saw her."

He grunted. "So what do you want from me?"

"Nothing." How glad she was to be able to say that! "I thought you should know. That’s all."

"Uh-huh. Well, you do what you want." His tone changed. "Hey, my call-waiting beeped. Hold on." When he came back on a minute later, Brian said, "You don’t have her there, right?"

"The man who has been raising her didn’t hand her over to me, if that’s what you mean."

Brian being Brian, he stayed focused on all that he cared about. "Well, I’m not paying any more child support. I mean, Shelly’s not my responsibility. And I’m not paying this other guy, I can tell you that."

How could she ever have married this man? How had she deceived herself, even for a while, into thinking she loved him?

"You held Shelly and kissed her and changed her diaper. She thinks you’re her daddy. After all these years, don’t you love her at all?" Lynn asked, trying to understand.

"She’s not my kid," he explained, as though she was an idiot not to grasp the concept immediately. "Maybe it’s different for a woman. But for a guy...hey, we want to pass on our own bloodlines. I mean, sure, Shelly’s a sweet kid. But she’s got a dad now, right?"

"That’s lucky for her, isn’t it?" Lynn carefully, gently, hung up the telephone receiver.

However much she feared Adam Landry, he had to be a better father than the man she’d married.

She picked up the phone again and dialed quickly. Her mother answered on the second ring.

"Mom, I saw her picture today."

"Oh, honey," her mother said, compassion brimming in her voice. "I wish we were there. I can hardly wait to meet her. And to cuddle Shelly and make sure she knows we’ll always be Grandma and Grandpa."

Just like that, tears spilled hotly from Lynn’s eyes. "Oh, Mom." She sniffed. "I wish you could be here, too."

Her mother had raised Lynn alone, but she’d remarried right after Lynn left home. Hal would never feel like "Dad" to Lynn, but he was a kind man who loved to be Grandpa. Lynn was grateful her mother had found him. She only wished his work hadn’t taken them to Virginia.

“For Christmas," her mother said. "I promise we’ll come for Christmas."

She gave a watery laugh. "I’ll hold out until then. No, really, we’ll be fine."

"Do you need money? We can help more than we have been, you know. If we have to, we’ll take out a loan."

Lynn’s mother and stepfather had loaned her the seed money for the bookstore and her mortgage on this old house. She wasn’t going to take another cent from them. She knew darn well they didn’t really have it.

"No, money’s not the problem," she said, meaning it. "It’s just...everything."

"Then tell me everything," her mother said comfortingly. "And we’ll see which parts of it really count."

Lynn saw herself suddenly, a child. What grade had she been in? Third or fourth? The teacher had accused her of cheating, and she hadn’t been! Goody Two-shoes that she was, she never would. She’d been humiliated and hurt that Mrs. Sanders hadn’t believed her. All the way home, she’d dragged her feet. What if Mom didn’t believe her, either?

She found her mother in the kitchen. Unable to speak, she began crying. Funny how clearly she remembered every sensation of her mother’s embrace, the soothing warmth of her voice. "Tell me what’s wrong," Mom had murmured, "and we’ll see which parts of it really count."

Mom had always said that, when troubles seemed overwhelming. And her analysis invariably did help. She brought problems down to size.

Well, not even Mom was going to be able to shrink this one.

But she told her mother everything anyway, the way she always did.

* * *

T
HIS WAS THE SECOND
toughest phone call Adam had ever had to make. Both to his parents-in-law.

He probably should have told them these past weeks what was going on, so that they could absorb the shock slowly, as he apparently had.

But he hadn’t wanted to alarm them. It might all come to nothing. Jenny Rose was all they had left of their Jennifer. They always called her Jenny, and sometimes he was sorry he’d named his daughter after her mother. He’d turn, half-expecting to see Jennifer. Besides, Rosebud shouldn’t have to live up to such an intense emotional demand. She wasn’t her mother, and shouldn’t have to fill Jennifer’s shoes. Her own were enough, right?

So he hadn’t told them. Unfortunately, the time had come. Some things couldn’t be avoided forever.

"Mom," he said carefully, when Angela McCloskey answered the phone.

"Adam, dear! Oh, I was just thinking about you. And Jenny, of course." She chuckled. "Christmas is coming, you know."

It was barely autumn. Adam was interested in how retailers did in November and December, but he didn’t do his own shopping until the last week or two before Christmas. How hard was it to take a day and fill the trunk of his car?

He made a noncommittal sound. "Mom, something has happened." At her intake of breath, he regretted his choice of words. "Rose is fine. Nothing like that. The thing is..." He didn’t know how to be anything but blunt, but instinct told him he needed to edge into this.

"What?" His tone had given something away. His mother-in-law sounded scared.

"There was a mix-up at the hospital."

"Not Jenny’s...Jenny’s ashes."

"No," he said hastily, then closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Not Jenny. Rose. We’ve, uh, had DNA testing done. Rose isn’t my biological daughter. Or Jennifer’s."

"Rose isn’t...I don’t understand." She was pleading with him.

How well he knew the feeling.

"The other mother and I met today. We...exchanged pictures."

"You’ve found her, then?" Angela latched on to the idea with frightening, pitiful eagerness. "Our Jenny’s little girl?"

"Yes."

"You’ll be bringing her home, won’t you?"

He pinched his nose again. "Mom, we’re taking it slowly. This mother...she loves Shelly. That’s the girl’s name. Shelly Schoening. And I love Rose."

"We do, too, of course," she agreed, but he heard no conviction in her voice. "But...but Jenny’s daughter. You can’t leave her to be raised by someone else."

"How can I not?" he said brutally. "I wouldn’t trade Rose away, even if I could."

His mother-in-law was crying now, he could hear hitches of breath, the salty pain in her voice. "No...but our granddaughter..."

"I hope you’ll still think of Rose that way."

"Jennifer was all we had."

How well he knew!

Gently he said, "I’ll try to arrange for you to meet Shelly as soon as possible. The, uh, mother seems like a decent woman." He still had his doubts, but he wasn’t sharing them with Angela, reeling from one blow already. "I can’t imagine that she won’t be willing to involve you in Shelly’s life."

"Shelly! That wasn’t even on Jenny’s list of possible names."

"No, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?" he soothed. Had she even heard him?

"Yes, I suppose. Adam..."

"We have to take it slow. For the girls’ sake."

"Does she know?"

"She" wasn’t Rose, he guessed, anger stirring. "Neither Rose nor Shelly has been told. They’re really too young to understand. We’ve agreed to meet, get to know the other child, so it’s less frightening when they have to be told."

"You’re just going to leave her?" Fixated, his mother-in-law made it sound as if he was deserting his own flesh and blood.

"I am not going to wrench her from the only home she’s ever known, if that’s what you mean," Adam said evenly. "We’ll see what happens. You’ve got to be patient."

"We want to meet her."