Somebody's Baby

“January.”

“What?”

“He was conceived in January, one year, eight months and two weeks ago.” She faced him, her mouth set in grim accusation. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t even ring a bell. Maybe you’ve just been with so many women that it’s all a blur.”

“Oh, it’s a blur all right, but not for the reasons you think.” He scratched at his cheek while his mind struggled to force all the pieces together. “Maybe you don’t recall this, but…”

Adam faced a choice. Speak the truth and risk having it sound like a plea for pity or at least leniency for his behavior or skim over it. He could stand here and own up to that bad behavior without any preface or attempt to put it in context.

His mother had died. He felt he had not only lost the only one who’d seen him truly as her own but that he had also lost his place in his family. When his suggestions to take the Carolina Crumble Pattie to a wider market had been ridiculed by his father and brothers, Adam felt he had lost his reason for staying in Mt. Knott as well. By the time he met Ophelia, a beautiful woman who shared his disdain for the small town, he had not been thinking about right and wrong.

He had been in pain. He needed to feel he wasn’t a lost cause, just a stray that nobody wanted. He felt worthless and figured he didn’t matter to anyone, not even God. It became easier to fall into sin, he had learned, when you take your eyes off the Lord and start looking at the mess you have made of your life and the mess life has made of the world around you.

He had long prided himself on being a man who told the truth. It was one of the things, he felt, which set him apart from his father.

While Conner Burdett was not a dishonest man, he had built his business on the belief that knowledge was power. And Conner protected his own power by controlling what knowledge he allowed others to have.

On the other hand, telling her about all the years of pain and loneliness that led up to those few wild nights that January would probably just sound like an excuse.

Adam didn’t like people who made excuses. Besides, he had no way of knowing if he could trust Josie with an emotional truth that could cut him to his core. She may yet prove herself the enemy in a bitter custody case. He decided to tell the truth, but not all of it. It twisted low in his gut that he would follow his father’s path but if she listened, really listened, she would hear the message beneath the words and have an inkling of what had fueled his angry rebellion.

“If you recall, I came into my inheritance in January.” I lost my mom. My only ally.

Her determined jawline eased a bit.

“I found myself with a totally new status.” Finally, officially, on my own. Alone.

Her gaze dipped downward.

“I didn’t handle it particularly well.” I’m not making any excuses.

She nodded, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”

“Thanks.” He’d struck a chord, he supposed.

“She was a remarkable lady. A real force in the community. A good Christian who supported so many social causes and cared about people. She really put her faith in action.”

“More than you probably know.” He thought not only of how his mother had taken him in as a child and raised him as her very own, but also of the ways she devoted her own inherited fortune to help those in need. It tugged at Adam’s heart to realize that back then he’d been so fixated on striking back at his father and brothers that he had done nothing to honor his mother and the things she had taught him. That did not alter his plan for revenge, however.

He was a Christian. He just wasn’t that kind of Christian. He fought back a twinge of shame over having even thought that, much less allowed it to stand as his justification. “If it helps, I am not proud of what I did.”

“I’m not the one you owe an apology to.” Josie poked her chin up, fidgeted with the folds of the blanket that still concealed his son from him.

“An apology? I wasn’t aware I owed an apology to anyone.” It was what it was. He felt bad that it had gone so wrong. Felt some shame that his grief and resentment had uncovered his weaknesses instead of revealed his inner strength. But getting all touchy-feely about it now wouldn’t change the past or set things right today.

He had come to town with only two indisputable responsibilities, to claim his son and ruin his so-called family. Neither Josie nor Ophelia Redmond figured prominently in his designs. “Your sister was a willing partner in what happened between us. Don’t forget that she was the one who failed to notify me about the baby. It’s not as if I haven’t paid a price for my poor choices.”

“I don’t doubt that.” She gave him a look of sympathy that did not sink to the level of pity.

He hadn’t known anyone who had ever managed that with him and appreciated it in a way he could not for the world have articulated. His whole life, people had given with one hand and taken away with two. Encounters with even the most sincerely empathetic often left him undermined and exposed. He wondered if Josie would finally be the exception.

“However…”

“I should have known,” he muttered under his breath.

“Hmm?” she asked over the wriggling and almost inaudible fussing of the baby in her arm.

“Give with one hand, take with two,” was all he felt compelled to say.

“However…” She patted the blanket and adjusted the form beneath it, raising it higher against her own small frame. The legs kicked and a tiny hand flailed out to grab a strand of her hair. She ignored it and forged on. “Your choices have resulted in this small life. And whether you have suffered enough or who is to blame for how the two of us arrived in this situation no longer matters. When you are a parent, it’s not about you and your feelings anymore, it’s about what’s best for your child.”

“My child,” he echoed softly. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She batted her eyes in a show of seeming disbelief, then leaned back to look under the blanket and the wriggling infant in her arms. “I don’t usually yell at strangers like that, but…”

“I’m not thanking you for yelling at me.” He chuckled at the very notion. He could go just about anywhere in this town and get yelled at, and by people a lot more experienced and colorful at it than Miss Josie Redmond.

“Then, I don’t—” She hook her head.

“When,” he explained as softly as the baby’s gentle stirring.

“What?”

“You said when you are a parent. Not if. Your intention with that little speech was to put me in my place. And with that small distinction, you did.” He reached out and brushed the blanket from atop the child’s head.

The baby squirmed and made a sound that went something like “ya-ya-ya,” then laughed.

Neither music nor birds nor even the grandest of majestic choirs could ever sound as sweet as the sound of his baby laughing.

“Anyway,” he explained, knowing he’d have to appease Josie in some way before she’d even think of allowing him to hold his son, “I admit to my part, my shortcomings in all of this. I did spend time with your sister, obviously, and—”

“And it didn’t mean a thing to you.”

He lowered his head and his tone and took one step toward the woman holding his son. “You will never understand what it meant to me, lady.”

She cupped the baby’s head and took a step back from him. “Then why didn’t you call her? Why didn’t you try to find out what happened to her?”

“Because…” Again a choice loomed before him. Tell the whole truth and risk losing some of his power in the situation or say just enough to get what he wanted now. He looked long and deep into Josie’s defiant yet anxious eyes and knew he only had one real course of action. The truth. “Because I was only thinking of myself. I acted like a wounded dog, snarling and mean and willing to do anything to protect myself. I spent a night with your sister, drunk most of the time but aware of what I was doing, and then I walked away and never looked back. Because that’s what suited me.”

There he’d said it. He’d given her plenty of ammunition to take a potshot at him and do some emotional damage. He did not deserve this child. But, as he hoped both his words and tone made quite clear, he would do whatever it took to be a part of young Nathan’s life. Because it suited him.

“Oh.” Clearly she did not know what to make of that. But she did not seem even remotely willing to use his confession against him. “Are you saying that if you had known sooner, you’d have returned sooner?”

“No.” Again he spit the hard truth out. He had worked diligently this past year and a half to put himself in a position to do the most damage to…or good for, depending on one’s vantage point, the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory. If he had learned about his son sooner, he would have come for the child, but not until the time was right. “No, I can’t say I’d have come back sooner. But I can say I am here now and that’s what we have to deal with.”

They stood in silence for a long, anxious moment.

Adam could practically see the thought process playing out over Josie’s features. He wanted to say something to tip her confidence in his favor, but in the end he could only say straight-out what was on his mind. “You asked me earlier tonight not to take your son away, Josie, and I agreed. I won’t. I can’t do that to him—or to you.”