From Here To Paternity

Charlene shot to her feet again and approached the cooing infant.

There. Pinned to the blanket on the far side. A folded sheet of lined paper.

The baby gurgled and cooed some more, blinking its blue eyes, smiling up at Charlene as if it recognized her.

But that was impossible. This baby was tiny—too tiny to recognize anyone—at that age when they seemed to be smiling at you, but weren’t, really. No more than they were actually waving at you when they wiggled their fat little arms in the air.

Hands shaking, Charlene unpinned the folded paper. She set the pin in a pinecone bowl on the side table. Her knees felt kind of wobbly, so she backed up again and sat in the rocker before she dared to unfold the lined sheet.

It was wrinkled, the note. She smoothed it on her knee, blinking in horrified disbelief as she recognized that sloppy, back-slanted scrawl.

“Oh, God,” she heard herself whisper. “Oh, no…”

Dear Charlene,

Surprise! LOL.

Meet your niece, Mia Scarlett Cooper. She is five weeks old, born on March 15. Isn’t she beautiful? Takes after her mommy that way. And I need a little favor. See. The thing is. It’s just not working out for me, dragging a kid around everywhere I go. I need a break, and even though you and me don’t always get along on stuff, I know you’ll take good care of her. She’s a good baby.

And I don’t know how to tell you this, but I guess you need to know that Brand is her dad. And in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes, that’s why I ran away last year. Because of Brand and how he treated me.

With love, even though I bet you don’t believe me,

Sissy

Sissy…

Charlene had the strangest feeling, as if she would shatter and fly apart, pieces of her shooting everywhere. Carefully, holding herself together by sheer effort of will, she rose again and approached the child.

The baby—Mia. Her name was Mia—and she didn’t seem to be smiling anymore. But she wasn’t crying, either. She gazed up at Charlene through wide, calm eyes and went on gently waving those itty-bitty fists.

She had the cutest little dimple in her chin.

A dimple that reminded Charlene of the cleft Brand Bravo had in his chin.

“Oh, God…”

Charlene turned and sat on the sofa at the feet of the pink-blanketed bundle. Some time went by. Seconds? Minutes? She couldn’t have said. She sat there, unmoving, staring straight ahead at the grouping of family photos on the opposite wall—pictures that included one of her mom and her dad on their wedding day. Her mother was laughing as she stuffed wedding cake into the open mouth of her groom. They looked so happy. Young. Strong in the certainty that they had long lives ahead of them.

There were family groupings of the four of them: father, mother, two smiling daughters. And of Charlene and Sissy—separately and together. In one, Charlene stood on the steps of the big white frame house on Jewel Street, the house where they’d all been a family, before the accident. The child, Charlene, was grinning wide, proudly holding her newborn baby sister in her nine-year-old arms.

“Sissy…” Charlene said the name aloud.

And then she blinked some more, shook her head and read the note again. And again—three times through before her stunned mind could finally encompass the enormity of all this.

Her baby sister had a baby of her own, a baby who just happened to be lying right there beside Charlene, kicking her tiny feet under the blanket, staring up at the slanted, beamed ceiling, making those adorable happy-baby sounds.

A baby named Mia, whose father was…Brand?

No. Charlene couldn’t bear to believe that—and really, it just wasn’t possible. Was it?

Of course not. He wouldn’t…

Yes, it was true that she had a low opinion of Mr. Bigshot Lawyer and Confirmed Bachelor, Brand Bravo. Anyone in town could tell you that. Still, Charlene would have sworn he’d never sink so low as to seduce a mixed-up kid like Sissy, a kid who just happened to be Charlene’s own sister.

But then again…

Well, the timing did add up. And last year, during Sissy’s disastrous month back in town, she’d grown swiftly notorious. And not only for her skimpy outfits, spiked purple hair and the safety pin she wore in her nose, but also for the way she would throw herself at every guy in sight.

And even if her style was way out there for a conservative community like New Bethlehem Flat, no one could deny that she was pretty in her own über-Goth kind of way. It was just possible that she’d caught Brand in a moment of weakness.

“Ga,” the baby said. “Wa…”

And what about the way Sissy left last June, vanishing in the middle of the night on the same night that someone ransacked Brand’s law office and stole his petty cash drawer? The thief had never been caught, but everyone in town—including Charlene, though she’d never admit it out loud—knew it had to be Sissy.

Why would Sissy do that, trash Brand’s office, steal the cash drawer and disappear into the middle of the night, unless she was really mad or desperately hurting—or both?

The baby kicked, sharply nudging Charlene’s thigh. Charlene instinctively responded, smoothing a hand on the blanket, feeling the shape of that tiny, perfect foot, almost smiling in spite of the shock and confusion she was dealing with.

And besides, she thought, though Sissy had problems—a raft of them—there would be no point in her lying about Brand being the father. Even a messed-up nineteen-year-old has to know that all it takes is a simple paternity test to settle that question once and for all.

So. Well. It had to be true, didn’t it?

This baby, her niece, was Brand Bravo’s child.

“Oh, no,” Charlene whispered and put her head in her hands. “Oh, God, no…”

Chapter Two

Let it never be said that Charlene Cooper didn’t take care of business—no matter how impossible and distressing that business might be.

A half hour later, she’d made use of the contents of the diaper bag to feed and change her niece. She’d called Teddy, the cook, and told him she wouldn’t be in until later, and she’d found another waitress to open up for her.

She carried Mia into her own room and put her down on the bed, bolstering her with pillows on either side. Then she collected the car seat from the living room and went out to strap it into the backseat of her AWD wagon.

Charlene had zero experience with baby seats, so the process took longer than expected. She read the half-worn-off instructions on the side of the seat and followed them as best she could, feeling edgy and frustrated the whole time, hoping the baby was all right, alone in the house.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes of fiddling with the darn thing, she managed to get it in place and secure. She rushed back inside, where she found Mia right where she’d left her, tucked among the pillows, sound asleep, sucking her tiny thumb.

Those bright blue eyes popped wide for a moment as Charlene picked her up, but then she only snuggled in on Charlene’s shoulder and went back to sleep. Same thing when Charlene put her in the car seat. She blinked awake, yawned and promptly dropped off again, her head drooping to the side, the little tufts of peach fuzz on her pink scalp clinging to the musty-looking fabric of the seat cover.

Charlene ran back inside to grab her purse and the diaper bag. She threw them both across the front seat, climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. At the end of her gravel driveway, she turned right onto Upper Main.

In no time she was driving through the heart of New Bethlehem Flat—known to all who lived there as, simply, the Flat. Resisting the temptation to continue past the diner farther along and make sure her cook and substitute waitress had got the place open all right, she turned left on Commerce Lane and crossed the Deely Bridge, passing Old Tony Dellazola strolling over town on foot as he did every morning at about that time.

Old Tony was one of Charlene’s diehard regulars. He spotted her silver-gray wagon going by and frowned, probably thinking that she ought to be at the diner, awaiting his arrival, a full pot of decaf close at hand, ready to make sure Teddy fried up his bacon just right. Charlene pasted on a smile for him, sketched a jaunty wave and drove on, past the Sierra Star Bed and Breakfast—which was run by Brand’s mother, Chastity—on the right and the Methodist Church on the left.

Up the street and around the corner, Commerce Lane became the highway. She was heading east out of town, the steep mountain to her left, a sharp cliff dropping down to the river on the right, the occasional bridge providing a way across the swiftly flowing water to the cabins and houses on the other side. She passed the bridge to the Firefly Resort and a second that led across to a series of vacation homes. At the third bridge, which was just wide enough for one car to pass at a time, she turned.