The Prodigal Cousin

She found her husband in his usual late-morning spot on the bench across the square from the courthouse. From there, he and Homer Tinsdale got a clear view of every miscreant—both the members of the legal profession and their clients—who set foot inside the building.

Patrick stood, alarmed the second he saw her. She’d never been good at hiding her emotions. He grabbed her by both arms, his fingers biting into her skin. “What’s wrong?”

She wanted to blurt “My son found me,” but she loved her husband and couldn’t bludgeon him with the truth in front of his friend.

CHAPTER THREE

ELIZA PUSHED ASIDE the orange-leafed branch of a maple.

“I need to talk to you.” She glanced at her husband’s friend, who’d also risen. “Alone, if you don’t mind, Homer.”

“Let’s get a coffee,” Patrick said.

He was still holding her too tightly, almost hurting her, but she said nothing. This might be the last time he would touch her. Grass whipped around their ankles like grasping fingers until they stepped onto the sidewalk. Dimly, she noted cars and people and the chirping of a few hardy birds that hadn’t fled with the approach of cool weather.

At the crosswalk she stepped in front of a slow-moving vehicle whose driver hit his horn and his brakes, shouting insults she couldn’t hear.

“Damn out-of-towner.” Patrick yanked her closer. “What’s wrong with you, Eliza?”

She memorized every beloved line on his face, the concern in his warm green eyes. “I’ll tell you when we sit.” Even God couldn’t begrudge her a few more moments of her husband’s love.

Patrick stared. “You’re worrying me. Are you ill?”

“No—nothing like that. I’m… Let me tell you inside.”

He waited for her to precede him through the doors of the Train Depot Café. Over the years, they’d divided the work at the B and B so that she did most of the morning shift and Patrick manned the evening desk. Patrick spent the cold mornings of winter at the café with Homer and sometimes with his father, Seth. Eliza often joined them for a late breakfast. The café’s owner waved at them now as a signal that she’d bring their usual orders.

“Just coffee,” Patrick said, and Becky Waters nodded.

Patrick pulled a vinyl-upholstered chair away from one of the Formica tables. Eliza sat, avoiding her husband’s gaze until Becky brought their coffee.

“Tell me,” Patrick said.

The truth trembled on the tip of her tongue, astounding her with the promise of unexpected relief. Sam had been a hard secret to keep for forty years. She looked at her husband, but his wary eyes made her hesitate. “You won’t like it.”

“After twenty-seven years of marriage, what are you afraid to tell me?”

“You’re an honest man, Patrick, a blunt man.” Another of his friends strolled past, clapping him on the shoulder and greeting Eliza. The second he saw her face, he cut his welcome short and sped to his own table. She leaned across the Formica, lowering her voice. If she didn’t get this out now, she’d never say it. “I haven’t been honest.”

As if Patrick sensed the dangerous secret she was about to disclose, he leaned back, adding several inches of distance between them. The morning grew cooler. Desperate to keep her old life even as she forced her way into a new one, Eliza peered around at the walls. She cataloged the familiar menus and feed store advertisements, calendars that featured Jesus praying in the garden and others with scantily clad women sprawled on tractors.

This town had become her home. She’d have to leave if Patrick couldn’t accept her and Sam. She took a deep breath. How could she doubt her husband? Gary Masters, Sam’s birth father, had abandoned her to deal with consequences alone, but Patrick had always stood at her side.

“I did something I’m not proud of. Before I met you, when I was sixteen, I gave birth to a child.” That wasn’t what she meant. She wasn’t ashamed of Sam—though she had been ashamed, the smart young girl who’d gotten in trouble with a boy who’d almost immediately left her.

Patrick’s mouth opened on a sigh that might have been a groan. Eliza couldn’t stop.

“A son,” she said, “whom I gave up for adoption. My parents refused to help me. I went to a home for unwed mothers, but it wasn’t like what your mother and Sophie do for the girls at the Mom’s Place. I can’t tell you how awful—”

“What are you saying?”

“You have to listen to me.” He’d heard, but a blank expression betrayed his shock. She tried again. “I have a son. I gave him up—”

“I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“You have to.”

He wiped sweat off his upper lip. “That’s why you always slip Mom money.”

“You knew?” Her donations were supposed to have been her secret.

“Molly noticed. She thinks you do it because she was one of those girls. She gives her grandmother what she can as well.”

Eliza covered her face. “What will Molly think of me? What will this do to her? Me, falling off my pedestal.”

Patrick eyed her with the neutral expression he offered defendants in unwieldy court cases. “I was going to ask if you’d told her.”

“Not before I told you.” How could he think that?

“You’re so close I thought you might have…. What made you speak up after all this time? Certainly not an obligation to come clean.”

His unexpected taunt nearly strangled her. She left it hanging, poisonous in the air between them until she managed to gasp a short breath. “I wanted to tell you many times, but I’ve been afraid.”

“After lying to me all these years, you should fear the truth.” He sipped his coffee as they stopped being a couple and turned into two separate people.

“Sam is my son.” Best to tear the Band-Aid off in one quick motion. Screaming inside, she allowed herself no outward reaction to her husband’s hand falling limply from the table or to his eyes dulling in shock. “Nina and Tamsin are my granddaughters. Sam brought them because he was afraid they’d have no one else if something happened to him. I want to know them, Patrick.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sam?”

“Sam is my son.”

“Sam at the Dogwood, with the two little girls?”

“Patrick, are you all right?” Had she caused him to have a stroke or something?

“I’m lost. You had a baby, and the baby grew up to be Sam?”

“I need him. He thinks he wants something from me, but I’m getting a second chance I can’t turn down.”

“Even if it costs you Molly and me?”

“Patrick, Tamsin knows—and she needs us. Sam and his girls could have all of us.”

“I’m sorry about Tamsin, but I don’t see us as one big happy family.” As he straightened, he looked like a stranger. Patrick had never been a man who could withhold love for the sake of revenge, but his anger felt like hatred.

Her world splintered. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment, but she had no time for fear. She’d been afraid and given up Sam. Look where that had brought them.

“I can’t stand to lose you, but I can’t turn my back on my son again,” she stated. “Think of Tamsin. She troubled you, too. She needs a family’s love.”