The Child She Always Wanted

From across the table she stared quizzically at him. He couldn’t blame her. He was being more curt than he intended. But annoyance had inched under his skin. Annoyance with himself for letting her into the house.

“When did Charlie die?” she asked between sips of coffee.

“It’s been a while.” Because he lived alone, he paid little attention to the house. With her there, scanning the room, he noticed the refrigerator needed wiping. Unlike Charlie, he had no housekeeper, wanted no one snooping around. “Why don’t we cut to the chase. What do you want from me?”

“This is difficult.”

“If this is about my sister, I haven’t seen her in years.” He wondered if Marnie had found all she’d wanted. Wherever she’d gone and whatever she’d done, she had to have found something better than they’d had here.

“I know.”

“You know?” That caught his attention. “Does that mean you’ve seen her recently?”

Though Rachel remained unsure what to do about Heather, she had to tell him about his sister. Being the bearer of bad news was never easy. “Marnie was in Texas.”

“In Texas?” He set down his cup and gave her his full attention. “How do you know that?”

“I was there.” Rachel wanted to stop, plead a headache, illness—escape. How would she tell him?

“I worked in a bank, and she came in for a job.”

“She has a good job.”

“She was a bank teller.”

“She—” His face tensed.

She guessed her hesitation was irritating him, but how could she blurt out what needed to be said?

“Why do you keep saying…was?”

She could have told him that Marnie had chosen not to contact him. One night over dishes of rocky road ice cream, Marnie had cried and explained that she’d never wanted to burden her brother with her problems. “Kane, I’m sorry—”

“Sorry. What the hell are you sorry about?”

“Marnie died a week and a half ago.” Rachel gave him a moment while the words registered. She prayed her voice didn’t break, and she didn’t cry. “I tried to contact you.” She hurried an explanation. “I knew from Lori—Lori Wolken—that you were still living here. I tried to reach you.” She withdrew two papers she’d slipped earlier into her jeans pocket. “When I couldn’t, I called Lori with the news about Marnie. She told me that you weren’t in town.”

Expressionless, he kept staring at her.

Rachel wished someone who knew him was here. “I learned you returned from a two-week fishing trip yesterday.”

“How?” A demand edged his voice. She could hear a silent message. Explain this to me. Tell me this isn’t real. “How did she die?”

Rachel set the folded death certificate for Marnie and a birth certificate for Heather on the table. “Your sister was proud, really proud.” Would he blame Rachel? She’d always felt as if she hadn’t done enough, hadn’t come up with good enough arguments to convince Marnie that she shouldn’t have the baby at home, hadn’t tried hard enough. If only she’d convinced Marnie to accept help, how different everything might be now.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The harsh command forced her head up. Such pain clouded his eyes. She wanted to touch him. “I was her friend, but she wouldn’t let me help. She always said she wouldn’t take charity. I tried.” Rachel felt the knot forming in her throat. “I really did. But she wouldn’t go to the hospital, wouldn’t let me pay.”

“Hospital? She was ill?”

“Oh, no.” Rachel wished she was standing closer, could touch him. “Kane, she was pregnant. But instead of going to a hospital, she decided to have the baby at home.”

His shoulders raised, but that was the only visible change.

“She had a midwife come to the trailer.” Rachel took a step closer. This was far more difficult than she’d imagined. “There were complications. We called for an ambulance, and they rushed her to the hospital, but—”

He kept staring past her as if she were invisible.

“Before she reached the hospital, she was gone.”

“Why didn’t she have it in the hospital? She had a job, medical insurance, didn’t she?”

She had loved Marnie like a sister but wasn’t blind to her faults and hoped he wasn’t, either. “She took off a lot and lost the job.” She didn’t wait for him to ask why. “There was a man. She wanted to be with him.”

His jaw tightened slightly, but he held on to a stone face.

Rachel presumed he’d mastered that look when he was young. “Kane, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do—”

His deep-set eyes came back to her. “Was she scared?”

The memory of that night closed in on Rachel again. “I don’t think so.” She felt tears smarting at the back of her eyes and grabbed a deep breath. Tears now would do no good. “She wasn’t really aware,” Rachel added. “It all happened so fast.” Her voice trailed off. She was talking to his back. “Wait,” she said before he reached the door. She wasn’t insensitive to his need to be alone. She wished she could have offered some kind of solace, but what could she have said? That evening had been awful, frightening. She’d lost a wonderful friend. But it didn’t matter what either of them felt. Heather had to come first for both of them. “What about Marnie’s baby?”

Chapter Two

S ilence hung in the air. Seconds on the kitchen wall clock ticked by with excruciating slowness before he swung back, before those eyes locked on hers. “Baby?”

No, he didn’t look baffled. He looked dazed. As much as she wished she could give him time to mourn, she had to make him understand. Heather existed. If he didn’t accept his obligation— She let the thought die for a moment, hating to think of Heather as an obligation. But his acceptance of his responsibility for Heather might be the little one’s only hope for a life that didn’t include foster homes. “Heather—the baby is Marnie’s. You’re her uncle.”

As if someone had poked him hard in the back, it straightened. “So you say.”

What did that mean? Didn’t he believe her? “I’m telling the truth.”

In anger most people shouted, he spoke low. “You come here with a story about my sister and a baby. Okay, I don’t doubt my sister is—” He paused, his gaze dropping to the folded sheets of paper on the table. In an abrupt move he picked them up and unfolded one. Absently he ran a thumb over the seal of Texas on the paper confirming his sister’s death. “Okay. My sister is…gone. You’d have no reason to lie about that.”

She heard a silent but. “You don’t think I’m telling the truth about Heather?”

“The baby could be yours. You could be trying to pawn it off as Marnie’s.”

“Pawn it off!” Fury rose so swiftly Rachel thought she’d lose her good sense and take a swing at him.

“She’s your sister’s baby. Not mine.” He had no idea how much it hurt her to say that, how often she’d made herself remember that, since she had started caring for Heather. If he saw Heather’s gray eyes, eyes so like his own, or touched her and felt the velvety soft skin, he would never turn away from her. But he hadn’t even seen her yet. “Heather is yours.”

Before she could utter a protest, she watched him snag a rain slicker from a hook by the door. A second later it closed behind him. How could he walk away? Heather was his flesh and blood. He was the only one she had. How could he be so unfeeling, so indifferent? And what should she do now? She had no choices, she realized.

Planning to return to the motel for the night, she went to the bedroom and lifted Heather into her arms. Because of Kane’s reaction, misgivings about him nagged at her. Rachel drew Heather closer, wishing for some way to know she was making the right decisions for her.

Since that night, she’d become responsible for Heather. She’d been the one who’d first held Marnie’s baby. She’d cuddled the newborn close while the midwife had frantically tried to save Marnie’s life. After a call to 911, with paramedics crowding Marnie, Rachel had wandered to a far end of the room, rocking the newborn and praying for her friend.