The Gazebo

Deirdre’s throat felt so tight it hurt to squeeze words through it, but she wouldn’t have spoiled Emma’s pleasure for anything in the world. The child was far too intuitive as it was, always picking up on the hurts and secret sorrows of everyone around her. “Then keep it.”

“Uncle Cade says Grandma’s stuff is all yours. You don’t have to give this to me.”

“I want you to have it.” Maybe Emmaline McDaniel was looking down from heaven, delighted, too. Her beloved play script was going to someone who wouldn’t regard it with cynical distaste.

Reverently Emma cradled it in her hands. “Listen! I’ll read the part I used for the audition!” She started to open the script, but it fell open in the middle, a yellowed envelope seeming to mark a place. “What’s this?” Emma said, slipping the envelope free. Deirdre recognized her mother’s elegantly swirled handwriting.

“It must be a letter your grandmother wrote to somebody.”

“But it’s stamped ‘return to sender.’ I wonder why she kept it. It must have been important. This is the place she kept all her most precious stuff. Maybe it’s something wonderful! Mysterious! Like something in an old Nancy Drew book.”

“Or maybe she was reading the play and had to stop to cook dinner or answer the phone so she just stuffed a stray letter in to mark her place. Go ahead and open it. I can see the suspense is killing you. Just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be no big deal.”

Emma folded herself down to the floor, crosslegged, and pillowed the script on her lap, carefully loosening the flap of the letter. She withdrew folded sheets of stationery embossed with a graceful bunch of lilies of the valley.

She cleared her throat, beginning in her most theatrical way.

“Dear Jimmy,

After so many years, I hardly know how to begin. Three nights ago there was a horrible accident. My daughter, Deirdre, fell off the wing of a plane in the local hangar, damaging her kidneys. She nearly died, and the doctor says it’s so serious she may need an organ donor.”

“That’s why you’ve got those scars on your back, right?” Emma glanced up at Deirdre through her lashes.

“Not one of my finer moments. I was climbing around on the plane, trying to get your uncle’s attention and—well, it was a really bad idea.” Bad? How about catastrophic? The guilt had all but destroyed Cade. She’d come out of the anesthetic to find that the bright, laughing older brother she’d adored had vanished forever.

She’d tried to prove to him she wasn’t worth all the misery in his eyes. She was so wild, so reckless, it was no one’s fault but her own when life steamrolled her.

But what the heck was Mom writing to this Jimmy guy about the accident for? One of the few things Deirdre could remember from the fog of pain that had engulfed her as she drifted in and out of consciousness was the Captain’s gruff voice, telling the doctor to cut him open right then and there, give his daughter his kidney, hell, his goddamned heart if the girl needed it.

She’d felt so loved for that short space of time. Her mother’s tear-streaked face desperate, her father so fierce, as if he could hold back death. And Cade…he’d looked as if the sky had fallen on his head. But there had never been any question her big brother loved her. She’d never doubted it for a moment, even years later when she’d gambled everything on his love, taken advantage of his generous heart.

The memory still brought tears to Deirdre’s eyes. Why hadn’t her family been able to hold on to that far-too-brief closeness? How could it have slipped away?

Emma cleared her throat, began reading.

“They tested my husband and me to see if either of us is a suitable donor. The tests showed the unthinkable. My husband can’t help my baby girl. Neither can I. There is only one person who can. Her real…”

Emma stumbled to a halt, hurt welling up as she raised her gaze to Deirdre. “I thought we told each other everything. Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not.” Deirdre took the letter out of Emma’s hands, scanned to where her daughter had stopped reading. Her real father…

Deirdre reeled, struggling to grasp the unthinkable. “I didn’t know…” she breathed, her knees starting to shake. Deirdre began to scan the writing silently, but Emma put a pleading hand on her arm.

“Read it out loud. Don’t…shut me out.”

If there was any place on God’s earth Deirdre understood the pain of being shut out, it was here. Swallowing hard, she started over in a wavering voice.

“I knew in my heart God would find a way to punish me for loving you.”

Loving who? This stranger? This Jimmy?

“What happened between us fifteen years ago was wrong. My husband will never forgive me. And my son—oh, God, Jimmy, he knows all about us.”

Deirdre fought to breathe. Her mother…her mother had cheated on the Captain, gotten pregnant…

No! Icy hooks tore at Deirdre’s stomach. She wished she could shove the letter back into the chest and burn it. Wished she’d never seen the envelope tucked in the play script. Wished Emma were anywhere on earth but here, peering at her with dark, stricken eyes.

Deirdre pressed her hand to her mouth. This was impossible. She couldn’t believe it. But suddenly a life-time’s worth of pain and rejection made horrible sense.

They’d known she wasn’t a McDaniel at all! Her mother and the Captain and Cade. Did they talk about the dirty little secret when she wasn’t around? Shake their heads and say it was no wonder she’d been such a disaster as a kid? She’d been a mistake from the moment she’d been born.

She closed her eyes, remembering every time she’d found the three of them around the dinner table, whispering, going silent when she walked in the room. And yet, her parents had hurt her before, hadn’t they? It was Cade who stunned her now. Cade’s silence that cut the deepest.

“Mama?” Emma hadn’t called Deirdre that since she was so tiny Deirdre could pick her up in her arms. Deirdre struggled to control her own reaction, felt as if she were about to shatter. “Did Grandma have an affair?”

Deirdre’s head swam with betrayal. She’d been born out of some sleazy affair. No wonder the Captain couldn’t be in the same room with her for five minutes without exploding. No wonder Cade had run away to the air force and tried to leave her behind. She was the living evidence of how his mother had betrayed him. Of all the McDaniels’ secrets, Deirdre’s mere existence was the dirtiest, the ugliest.

“I’m sorry,” Emma quavered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to…”

Dig up the rotten truth after so many lies? Emma blamed herself. Deirdre could see it in her daughter’s anguished face.

Deirdre tried to keep her voice calm, even. “You didn’t write that letter, Emma. You didn’t lie or cheat or bury things so deep I never understood…until I thought…”

There was something horrific about me, some flaw so ugly, so unforgivable neither of my parents could love me the way they loved Cade.

Deirdre unfastened the brace and closed the lid of the trunk, the edge of the letter crushed in her hand. “Emma, you head on in to work. Okay, honey? I need a little time alone.” Wasn’t that what she’d told Cade what seemed a lifetime ago? Why the hell hadn’t he listened? Was that why the stuff in the trunk was a mess? Had he been looking for that letter? Anything that could sully the image of his precious, perfect mother?

“Time for what?” Emma asked, as Deirdre scooped up her keys. “Where are you going?”

“To find out the truth. The Captain and Cade owe me that much at least.” Deirdre started down the stairs.

“But, Mom…I want to come with you. I—”

“No!” Deirdre snapped. Emma flinched back, tears spilling over her dark lashes. “No.” Deirdre repeated more softly. She cupped Emma’s cheek in her hand. “You head on over to the library. They’re expecting you to show up for work, and you’re going to need time off for play practice starting next week.”

“I want to stay with you.”

“Please. Just…go. Try to understand.” She felt flayed wide-open inside, bleeding. Didn’t want her baby to see her like this.

“What’s going to happen now?” Tears ran down Emma’s face. “You’re all upset with Grandpa and Uncle Cade.

I just got my family back. I’m scared everything will be all ugly like it was before. Mom, promise me…you won’t…”

Run away again? Turn her back on Cade and the Captain? Pretend away her pain? It had been six years since Deirdre felt such an urge to leave Whitewater behind her.

“Promise me you won’t let this change everything.”

Oh, God. Emma was so young. So innocent. She couldn’t possibly know that the letter already had.