Midnight Choices
She drew a deep breath, struggling to find a measure of calm. “No, Mother, he isn’t a construction worker. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he owns a construction company. Though he likes swinging a hammer when he gets a chance.”
“I suppose he told you that, too.”
“Yes, he did. And guess what? The detective confirmed it. And the letterhead you peeked at should be a clue, too.”
Most of the details of that long-ago night were smudged, like a charcoal drawing left out in the rain. But Gwen had been forced to salvage what she could of those neglected memories when she’d gone to the detective two months ago. She’d remembered Ben saying he preferred working on a site to shuffling papers. He’d looked like a man who enjoyed working with his hands, too—a big man with broad, callused hands, the kind of man a woman could depend on.
Appearances could be deceiving.
Deirdre’s gaze didn’t waver. “Is he married?”
“No. And he wasn’t married then, either.”
Her mother looked down, rubbing her forehead with a pianist’s long, slim fingers. When she spoke, her voice was unusually quiet. “I’m worried about you.”
Why did her mother always do this—pull back just before things went too far, say the one soft, right thing that crumpled Gwen’s defenses? Gwen hugged her arms around her middle and wished she knew whether the skill was intentional. “You raised me to do the right thing, even when it hurts. I know this is right.”
“Mo-om!” came a singsong cry from inside the house. “Come get me! I’m ready to get out!”
“Coming, sweetie,” she answered, relieved to have a reason to end the conversation.
“Let me get him ready for bed,” Deirdre said.
Gwen hesitated, wondering…but that was unfair. Her mother had never let their own difficult relationship spill over onto the little boy they both loved. “All right.”
“Gwen—” Deirdre surprised Gwen by laying a tentative hand on her arm “—you’re searching for something, I can tell. Ever since…well, you’ve had reason to question your life, your choices. But please don’t act hastily. Promise me you’re not going to sign away any of your rights to this man.”
Gwen met the green eyes so like her own and saw all the feelings Deirdre Van Allen would never put into words—fear, anger, frustration…and love. She didn’t doubt that her mother loved her.
“Mom.” She laid her hand over her mother’s. “I don’t know how things will work out. I’m trying not to make plans, not to expect things to go a certain way. But whatever happens, you can’t lose Zach, not really. You’ll always be his grandmother—his only grandmother, as it turns out. Ben’s parents are both dead.”
Though he had brothers. She’d met one of them—a dark, watchful man whose pale gray eyes seemed to be stuck in her memory like a burr.
Deirdre’s breath sighed out. She stepped away. “You mean well, I know. I’d better go get Zach out of the tub.” She left the room, moving with the angular grace Gwen had always envied—like an egret, Gwen thought, striding long-legged and slow through murky currents.
The currents had been murky enough tonight. Gwen rubbed her temple. They often were, between her mother and herself. It was amazing how two people who loved each other could misunderstand each other so thoroughly and so often. Though her mother had surprised her tonight, showing an insight Gwen hadn’t expected. She’d said she knew Gwen was searching…and it was true.
What woman raising a child alone wasn’t searching? Of course she wanted more. The comfort of a man’s body next to hers at night—yes, she wanted that. The passion, too, she admitted. But she wasn’t indulging in romantic pipe dreams. Maybe the thought had crossed her mind once or twice that something might develop between her and her son’s father. There had been a connection between them once—surely she hadn’t imagined that. And Ben had asked her if she was seeing anyone.
But she wasn’t pinning her hopes on a fairy-tale ending. Childhood dreams of happy-ever-after might be hard to give up, but she was too much of a pragmatist to mistake wishing for reality. And the reality was that Zach needed to know his father…just in case.
The surgeon had removed the lump along with part of her breast. It had been very small, very close to the surface of her skin. Radiation should have killed any lingering cancer cells. Statistically, her chances were good. But no one could say for sure. Cancer cells might be lurking somewhere in her body right now, malignant fugitives hiding in some organ, waiting for some unknown trigger to start them growing again.
Her mother was sixty-one. She loved Zach and would do her best for him if Gwen died, but when Zach was fifteen his grandmother would be over seventy. Gwen had no other close relatives. Oh, she had friends—one in particular whom she’d trust with her son. But the courts gave preference to close relatives. If Deirdre fought for custody of Zach, she might well win.
She wouldn’t win against Zach’s father.
Gwen glanced around the spotless kitchen. It was much too soon to make any decisions, but she’d put things in motion. Her mother knew that and hated it, and Gwen couldn’t blame her. But she had to think of Zach first.
There wasn’t a blasted thing left to clean, so she headed for her study, where work of another sort waited.
The law was a tidy goddess, and it suited Gwen. Not criminal law. There, the stakes were too high, and she knew herself too well. She could be seduced by the clarity of order and lose sight of the greater good the law was intended to serve—justice. Nor, in spite of her father’s pressure, had she been drawn to corporate law. He’d been bitterly disappointed when she told him she wouldn’t be working for Van Allen Produce, Inc.
Surprisingly her mother had supported her choice. Perhaps Deirdre understood how well real-estate law suited Gwen. It called for patience, thoroughness and attention to detail. Gwen loved the historical sweep of performing a title search, the feel of the law stretching backward in time, the digging through old records. She liked bringing her findings to the present by checking statutes on environmental protection, wildlife habitats, zoning requirements, native lands—all the written code, the regulations both federal and state, that a developer had to observe.
Since becoming a mother, she’d especially appreciated being able to do a large part of her work from home, plugged into various databases.
Gwen’s chair was already occupied by what looked like a shabby fur pillow. The pillow opened its eyes and blinked balefully at her. “You know what I’m going to do now, don’t you, Natasha?” Gwen said. Careful of old bones, she scooped the cat up and deposited her on the floor.
Natasha glared and stalked to the window, where she levitated onto the broad sill and began licking her ruffled fur back into place. Gwen smiled a little sadly. Natasha was old, cranky and set in her ways, no pet for a lively four-year-old boy. But the cat had been with Gwen for almost sixteen years, ever since she finished high school. She was one of the reasons Gwen hadn’t given in and gotten her son the puppy he craved.
Natasha wouldn’t appreciate being deserted for two weeks, but she’d be all right. Gwen’s mother might be deeply unhappy with her decision to go to Highpoint, but she’d never refuse to take care of the cat. She’d done it before. The two of them had an understanding. Natasha let Deirdre know what she wanted, and Deirdre gave it to her.
Gwen smiled as she settled in front of her monitor. The old cat was the one being other than Zach who pretty much always got what she wanted from Deirdre Van Allen.
Gwen turned on her computer. Distantly she could hear water splashing and Zach giggling. Natasha had turned herself into a purring lump again. The computer hummed.
But what she saw as she brought her fingers to the keyboard was the careful sterility of a doctor’s examining room. She remembered the chart opposite the examination table—why did doctors always put up those colorful drawings of people’s insides for their patients to brood over? The paper covering the exam table had crinkled every time she moved.
She’d shifted a lot.
Sitting at her desk with the cursor blinking imperatively at her, Gwen’s heart raced as it had that day. Her palms felt clammy.
Until the diagnosis, she hadn’t known fear. Not really. Now the two of them were intimate. Gwen inhaled slowly: I breathe in and my body is calmed; breathe out, and I smile.
According to the therapist who led her cancer support group, meditation kept you anchored in the moment, and anxiety was reduced or eliminated when you dealt only with the present moment. So far Gwen hadn’t had much success with it. Meditation required stillness, and that didn’t come naturally to her. She was working at it, though. Even the stodgiest western medical practitioners these days agreed that the mind affected the body.
After a moment, her heartbeat slowed.
Maybe I am getting better at it, she thought, pleased, and called up the land plat she was researching.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t the day she’d been diagnosed with cancer that had come back to her so vividly just now, but the day of her last checkup. When Dr. Webster had told her everything looked good. That was the day she’d broken down and bawled like a baby, her nose running and sobs choking her.
It was also the day she’d known she had to make some changes in her life. The day she’d decided to find her son’s father.
Maybe it wasn’t so odd, after all, that she would remember that day.
Gwen took another slow breath and started to work.
Chapter 4
“Are we there yet?”
Gwen rumpled the silky hair on her son’s head. “Has the plane landed yet?”
“No, but we’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“About thirty minutes still to go, champ.” Assuming the flight was on time. She prayed that it was. If Zach got wound up any tighter, he’d be bouncing off the walls.
“An’ my dad will be waiting for us when we get there, right?”
“He sure will. At the baggage claim.” That question had been asked at least as often as the traditional “How much longer?” Gwen bent and pulled a book from the tote that held a few small toys, some dried fruit and her laptop. “How about a round of Green Eggs and Ham to fill in the time?”
Gwen had read the Seuss story too many times for it to provide any distraction from her own thoughts, but she hoped it would work some of its usual magic on Zach. She began reading, with Zach chiming in loudly on the parts he knew.
A father, it turned out, was at least as exciting as a puppy.
Gwen had spoken with Ben briefly two days ago. He’d asked to speak to Zach—and Zach had been hanging by eagerly, waiting for his chance. Of course, as soon as the phone was in his hands, her ball-of-fire, never-met-a-stranger son had turned shy, barely able to breathe a yes or no to whatever Ben had asked him. He was always like that on the phone, she’d assured Ben. The rest of the time, his mouth worked just fine.
“‘Would you like them in a house?’” she read, thinking about last Christmas and wondering if the next one would be different. If she would have to share her son for part of the holidays. “‘Would you like them—’”
Zach tugged on her arm. “What does his house look like?”
“Well…like the picture here, I guess.”
“My dad’s house,” he said impatiently.
Of course. What other “he” was there these days? “It’s painted white and has a staircase and a big front porch. I think all the bedrooms are upstairs, so we’ll probably have a room on the second floor.”
“Will we be next to my dad’s room? Or my uncle’s?”
“You have three uncles now, remember? Your dad’s two brothers are your uncles, and his sister is your aunt, so his sister’s husband is your uncle, too. That makes three.” Ben’s sister and her husband were someplace in Africa at the moment, and the youngest brother was a long-haul truck driver who lived with Ben when he wasn’t on the road. And the other brother, the one she’d met, would be there at the house, though he didn’t usually live there. “Which uncle did you mean?”
“The army uncle,” Zach said. “I forgot his name.”
“Duncan,” she said, her mouth oddly dry. “He’s your uncle Duncan. I don’t know where our room will be, sweetie. We’ll just have to wait and find out.” She began reading again, hoping to stem the flood.
Zach had been brimming over with questions ever since she told him about his father—but they weren’t the ones she’d expected. And dreaded. He’d wanted to know what his dad looked like and if he liked little boys. How long would they stay there? Were there other kids to play with? Could he take his army guys with him? How big were the mountains? Could he climb one? Did his dad have a dog?
Puppies hadn’t been entirely eclipsed by the advent of a father.
Gwen didn’t fool herself that the other questions wouldn’t come up at some point. When she’d told him about his father, she’d tried to scale her explanations to a four-year-old’s understanding, saying simply that she hadn’t known how to get in touch with Ben when Zach was born, so his dad hadn’t known about him. “You didn’t have his phone number?” Zach had asked.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t have his address, either, so I couldn’t write him.”
“So how come you found him now?”
“I hired a private investigator.”
Zach had been desperately impressed. A real private eye? Wow. He’d wanted to meet the man and maybe see his gun. Gwen had been glad the investigator and his gun, if any, were safely distant in Denver…and selfishly relieved she hadn’t had to face the other questions. Yet.
When they finished the book, Gwen judged it time to make a trip to the rest room or else Zach would undoubtedly need to go the moment they were instructed to stay in their seats. “C’mon, short stuff, time to take a walk down the aisle.”
Since Zach was fascinated by airplane washrooms, he didn’t object. No doubt he was tired of sitting still. So was she. Her mother often said she was as fidgety at thirty as she’d been at three. She wasn’t far wrong.
An older woman who reminded Gwen vaguely of Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show was already waiting her turn. She fussed over Zach, insisting he go ahead of her—“it’s difficult for them to wait at this age, isn’t it, dear?”—and asked him if this was his first time on a plane.
“I been on lots of airplanes,” he informed her. “My mama an’ me like to fly. We don’t like airports very much ’cause they won’t let you run, even if there is lots and lots of room. But we like airplanes.”
She smiled at him indulgently. “Are you going on vacation, or is this a family trip?”
“We’re going to see my dad. He lives in the mountains in a big house with a porch, an’ he likes little boys. My mama said so.”
“Oh, ah…how nice.” She gave Gwen a quick glance, her eyebrows raised. “I assume he’s talking about a new stepfather?”
Zach answered before she could. “No, he’s my dad. A private eye found him for us.”
The woman’s rather protrudent eyes bulged further. Fortunately the rest-room door opened just then. Gwen breathed a sigh of relief and chivvied her talkative son inside. Zach was blithely unaware there was anything odd about meeting his father for the first time at the age of four. She didn’t want some stranger’s attitude casting clouds over this visit, making him worry about things he couldn’t understand.
Not that Gwen herself didn’t worry. How could she not? Between her mother’s furious disapproval and the expectations Zach had built up in the past eleven days, she had plenty to worry about.
Her nervous stomach clenched tighter as she helped Zach refasten the snap on his jeans. Heaven knows her own expectations had been knocked sideways when she’d seen her son’s father again—expectations she hadn’t known she’d had.
The plane was descending when they emerged, and she had the dickens of a time keeping Zach halfway still through the landing process. Finally, though, they were off the plane and headed for the lower level, where they could claim their four suitcases. And one father.
Over Zach’s protests, she scooped him up onto her hip before stepping on the escalator. She’d read a horrible story about children whose clothing got caught in the treads….
“Do you see him, Mama? Is he here? Do you see him yet?”
“Zach, you have to be still or I’m going to drop you.” The tote was trying to slip off her shoulder. She didn’t have a hand free to anchor it, and her heart was pounding, pounding…. “Ugh,” she said, shifting him slightly. “I must be feeding you too much. You weigh two tons.”
He giggled.
Gwen looked over the top of his head. Waiting at the bottom of the escalator were two men. Two, not one.
Her face felt hot. Ben had brought his brother to welcome his son to the family—and that was good, that was wonderful. She was here because Zach needed his family—all of it. But it wasn’t what she’d expected. Why do I keep expecting things? she thought fretfully. It doesn’t do any good. I just trip over those stupid expectations every time.
Ben’s gaze was fixed on the boy in her arms. As the moving stairway carried them to him, a smile spread over his hard, square face. The man who waited with him neither moved nor smiled. His expression was every bit as intent as Ben’s. But his gaze was on her, not her son.
Gwen’s mouth went dry. “Zach,” she whispered. “Zach, that’s your dad waiting for us at the bottom. The man in the blue windbreaker.”
He twisted around to stare. The little arm around her neck tightened. “There? The big one?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “The big one.”
The escalator deposited them on level ground. She stepped aside to let those behind her get off, then cleared her throat. “Zach, this is your dad. And this is your uncle Duncan.”
“The army uncle.”
“That’s right.”
Zach’s choke hold on her tightened. The boy’s blue eyes met the man’s brown eyes—met and held in the same straight-on way. Two male faces focused completely on each other, one of them large and hard, the skin weathered and shadowed by beard; the other small, soft and rounded, but with the same stubborn jaw and short, blunt nose.
“You’re my dad,” Zach whispered.
“Yes.” Ben’s throat worked. “Yes, I am. I’m so glad to see you, Zach. So damned glad.”
Zach nodded solemnly. “I’m dam’ glad, too.”
Duncan made a choked noise. “Ah…been a while since you were around kids, hasn’t it, Ben?”
“Yeah.” Ben’s eyes never left his son’s face. “Your uncle Duncan means I wasn’t supposed to say ‘damn.’ You shouldn’t, either.”
“Okay.” Zach squirmed around so he could capture Gwen’s face in his two small hands. “Mom, put me down. Put me down now. I’ll show my dad our suitcases. I bet he can carry all of ’em. He’s really big.”
Slowly she lowered Zach to his feet, stricken by a pang of separation so acute it was a physical ache. She wanted to scoop him up and run away, but it was already too late. “Keep hold of your father’s hand, Zach. Don’t be running off.”
He held up a hand, his face turned up to Ben’s in sunny confidence. “C’mon. Mom packed hunnerds of things. I brought all my army guys. We’re gonna stay with you for two weeks!”
“So I hear.” A large hand reached down and swallowed the little one. Ben glanced at her. “I won’t let him get lost.”
She nodded. “I’m not sure which carousel is ours.”
“I’ll find it. I know your flight number.” He looked down at Zach, his expression soft and grave. “I don’t know if I can carry hundreds of things. I might need some help.”
Zach giggled as they set off. “It’s all in suitcases. Do you have a dog?”
Gwen smiled. And swallowed hard. Dammit, she was not going to cry.
“Ben’s good with kids,” the man still beside her said quietly. “And he’s already gone on this one.”
“Zach’s good with everyone.” She gave Duncan a smile—and looked quickly away. Damn, damn, damn…
“I take it your flight was uneventful?”
“Aside from reading Green Eggs and Ham twenty times, yes.” What was wrong with her? Couldn’t she get anything right? She tried to pull her thoughts together, watching as Ben and Zach stopped at the first of the baggage carousels.
Ben hunkered down, putting himself at Zach’s level. Zach was chattering away. His clear voice carried enough for her to catch a few words—something about his army guys. Then he pointed at a blue suitcase. Ben stood and heaved it off the conveyor belt.
They were so delighted with each other. She couldn’t do anything to mess that up.
The man beside her spoke quietly. “The two of them look right together, don’t they?”
“Yes. Yes, they do.” Her body was humming to itself, making her feel so alive. Making her feel, for the first time in so long, very much a woman.
Stupid, treacherous damned body—this wasn’t the first time it had betrayed her. “We’d better catch up with them,” she said. “My luggage isn’t blue.”
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