Runaway Bridesmaid

by Karen Templeton

  Katey was his daughter. His little girl.

  Their little girl.

  His breath hitched in his throat. “She really doesn’t know?”

  Sarah shook her head and swiped at her eyes again. “Not yet.”

  He lifted up the piece of paper. “She would have found out eventually.”

  A sharp nod was Sarah’s only reply.

  There had to be anger, but it hadn’t worked its way through the shock yet. Eight years, he’d been a father and not known it. Eight years, a wonderful little girl had existed that carried his genes, born of the only woman he’d ever loved, and no one had bothered to tell him.

  Instantly, hot tears sprang to his own eyes and he slapped the paper with the back of his hand, nearly tearing it. “Dammit, Sarah!” He leapt to his feet, took three long steps toward her. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Protecting you,” she said softly, still staring out the window.

  “Protecting me! By not telling me I had a kid?”

  Underneath the worn cotton, one shoulder hitched. “And if you’d known, what would you have done? Come home and married me?”

  “Damn straight that’s what I would have done—”

  “Which is exactly why I couldn’t let you know about Katey.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah—that doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

  “Then let me replay the scene for you, mister,” she said, turning on him with sparking eyes, the heat, the scent from their lovemaking perfuming the room in the early morning humidity. “You told me you would die if you stayed here. You told me you didn’t love me. You even told me the very act that conceived your child was worth little more than a good night’s sleep to you.”

  “But I told you, those were all lies!”

  “But I didn’t know that!” Her eyes were searing hot ambers, locked with his; tears streamed down her cheeks. “I didn’t know you’d lied, Dean,” she repeated, as if he wouldn’t understand. “Don’t you see? I thought, if I told you about the baby, that either you wouldn’t care, or you’d feel obligated—” the word exploded like an obscenity from her mouth “—to come back and marry me.” Her gaze drifted back out the window while she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of trapping you—or me—like that for anything. It wouldn’t’ve been fair to either one of us. Or to Katey.”

  “So instead you made up this elaborate, preposterous story.”

  “I’m not looking to shift blame,” she said quietly, “but that was my mother’s doing, mostly. I got caught up in it, and decided I’d rather call Katey my sister and at least get to see her grow up, than call her my daughter and never see her at all.” After a long moment, she added, “I was eighteen and heartbroken and scared, Dean. And not left with a whole lot of options. I picked what I thought was the best of a bad lot.”

  Finally, his part in this whole screwup began to sink in. “That’s why you never got involved with anyone…else, isn’t it?” he asked at last. “Because it might’ve meant leaving Katey?”

  When she faced him, he thought he’d never seen sadder eyes. “Oh, Dean…believe me, Katey never even entered into the equation.” She fingered the edge of the curtains, her head coming to rest on the window sash. “Never.”

  His head had begun to ache, a dull throb over his left temple. He desperately needed to think, but he couldn’t. Not standing in the same room with Sarah, anyway. Part of him wanted to comfort her. But he was too hurt and stunned and angry. He needed space. Time. A rule book with the passage highlighted, telling him exactly what he was supposed to do right now.

  “This…this is just too much.” He stood for another few seconds in the middle of the room, staring helplessly at her back, then strode out of the room.

  Sounds. That’s all that was left.

  Footsteps thundering down the stairs; the front door creaking open, slamming shut; a truck engine revving up like an old man clearing his throat, then tires spitting gravel as Dean hauled out of the driveway. Then, there wasn’t even that much.

  Sarah crossed to the disheveled bed, picking up the pillow Dean had used, suffused with his scent. Hugging it to her aching chest, she sank onto the edge of the bed and wept.

  When Vivian returned about four, Sarah was seated at the kitchen table, gnawing on an overdone brownie. A corner, hard enough to challenge a hippopotamus’s teeth. She’d already eaten most of the edible ones. She’d spent the day in a haze of tears, wishing she’d had company, grateful she didn’t. She greeted her mother with the same ambivalence. Ambivalence, and overdone brownies.

  Vivian walked into the kitchen, hung her bag by the door. “You baked?”

  “Yep.” Sarah hacked off another piece of brownie with her teeth.

  Vivian sank heavily onto the chair beside her. “What happened?”

  “Where’s Katey?” Sarah countered, wiping crumbs from her fingers.

  “At the kennels, checking on the pups. Well?”

  “I told him.”

  “I figured. And?”

  “And he left.”

  “Well, yes. He needed to get back, anyway—”

  “Mama, don’t.”

  Vivian crossed her arms over her bosom, speared her with her gaze. “He loves you.”

  “Loved,” Sarah amended, exaggerating the final d. “Maybe.”

  But Vivian was shaking her head. “He’s probably hurt. Angry, even. Doesn’t mean anything’s changed—”

  “Mama, please. When are you going to snap out of this fantasy you’re in?” A dozen brownies heaved in her stomach. “I kept his child from him for eight years, for God’s sake. You should have seen the look on his face—”

  “If it’s anything like you looked, nine years ago, I’ve seen it,” Vivian parried, unaffected. “It’s not fatal. Either to him, or to what he feels for you.”

  Sarah shot up from her chair. “It’s over, Mama. Okay? He’s not coming back, we’re not getting married, there is no happily-ever-after here—”

  “What’s this?” came a small, tight voice from the kitchen door.

  Both Sarah and Vivian whipped around. Katey stood stock still, her eyes wide with bewilderment. And the first stirrings of anger. “I went into your room to play with Bali,” she said, as if needing to justify herself. “And I found this.”

  She held out a piece of paper. A piece of paper Sarah realized with horror she’d forgotten to put away.

  Oh, God…no. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not that she’d yet figured out what the right way was, but this wasn’t it. She’d changed the linens, disposed of the unused condoms, everything. And left this.

  “Katey,” Sarah began, then fell silent before the blaze in her daughter’s eyes. The child was only eight—who would’ve guessed she’d know how to decipher the information on a birth certificate? But, as Sarah knew all too well, Katey was no ordinary child.

  “You’re my mother?” Katey sounded almost appalled.

  A nod was all Sarah could manage over the baseball-size lump lodged in her throat.

  Katey’s gaze darted to Vivian. “You lied to me?” Back to Sarah. “You both lied to me?”

  “Honey,” Vivian said, rising and going to her. “There were reasons…”

  But Katey backed away, shaking her head. Shock had given way to tears, and Sarah knew the little girl was on the brink of hysteria. Sarah understood. Oh, boy, did she understand.

  “You lied to me!” Katey shrieked, then thrust the birth certificate at Vivian as if it had caught fire in her hands, spun around and ran out of the kitchen. Before either of the ladies could reach her, she slammed the front door between them, hard enough to rattle the windows.

  Sarah started after her; her mother grabbed her arm. “Leave her be. She’s gonna have to sort this one through on her own.”

  “She’s only eight years old, for crying out loud!” Sarah retorted, furious with herself, furious with her mother. Even, irrationally, with Katey for wandering into
her room without permission. “How the hell is she supposed to sort out something she knows nothing about?” She jerked her arm out of her mother’s grasp and yanked open the front door, hurtling through it before her mother could recoup.

  “Sarah—you’re making a mistake!”

  Already down the steps, she reeled around, rammed her hand through her hair. “No. I made a mistake eight years ago. Now, since I’d very much like to end this day with as few people hating me as possible, I’m going to go find my daughter and beg her forgiveness. I just hope to God I’m not too late.”

  She found her in the kennels, crouched in a corner of Mariah’s pen, cradling a little black furball in the crook of her arm and bawling her heart out.

  Her heart in jagged pieces, Sarah curled her fingers around the wire mesh and leaned her head against the gate. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered.

  Palsied with sobbing, Katey turned a blotched, wet face to her but said nothing.

  “Can I come in?”

  Tiny shoulders hitched, one jutting up so she could wipe her nose on the sleeve of her blouse.

  Sarah slipped inside the pen, slid down beside her daughter and handed her a tissue from her pocket, which the child snatched out of her hands. Sarah scooped up a puppy, too, her heart breaking anew at the sound of her daughter’s staccato breathing beside her. That she had been the cause of Katey’s anguish nearly ripped her in two. “We screwed up,” she said, aching to pull the little girl into her arms, for her own comfort as well as Katey’s.

  “W-why didn’t you tell me the t-truth?”

  Sarah rested her head against the wall, waiting for the Perfect Answer to fall out of the sky. When it didn’t, she realized she was on her own. “Listen, baby, I don’t expect you to understand all this. Heaven knows, I don’t understand a lot of it myself. Just remember that grown-ups aren’t always perfect, okay? Sometimes we make mistakes.” She huffed. “Big mistakes. And I guess Mama and I kinda took the prize, considering the size of the one we made.” Frowning, she peered over at Katey. “I’m not saying what we did was right, but we did what we thought was the best thing at the time.”

  Katey’s sobs began to settle down, at least enough for her to finally get out, “Dean’s my real d-daddy?”

  Apparently, this part of it had just sunk in.

  “Yeah.”

  Carefully, Katey set the pup back down, watched it scuttle back to its mother. “Were…were you m-married?”

  Oh, Lord, Sarah thought. Quicksand would be preferable to this.

  “No, honey,” she said on a sigh. “We weren’t.” She caught Katey’s eyes in hers. “You know how babies are made?”

  Katey nodded. A series of rattling hiccups had replaced the sobs. Now alarm registered on an already ravished face. “You and Dean…?”

  “Yes,” Sarah replied as calmly as she could. “Dean and I made you.” She reached out, smoothed a tendril of hair off her baby’s forehead. Katey flinched, as did Sarah’s battered heart. “And you happened out of love, honey, in case you’re wondering. But…” She wriggled her back against the wall, scratching it. “Things got all fouled up, somehow. He went away, and I thought he didn’t love me anymore. Turns out that was a mistake, too.”

  “Did he know about me?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No.”

  “Why didn’t you tell ’im?”

  The question of the century, she guessed that was. “Because he said some things that made me think he wouldn’t want to know,” she finally said. “Which is where I was wrong.”

  Those amber eyes weren’t going to let go for a second. Behind them, Sarah could practically hear the thoughts shuffling through that steel trap of a brain. “Does Dean love you now?”

  Sarah tried to slip her arm around Katey’s shoulders, but the child shied away. Duly chastised, Sarah pulled her knees up, linked her hands around her ankles. Thought about how much to tell her. “Turns out he always did.” She snorted. “Between the two of us, we sure got things balled up. A mess we’d just started to straighten out.”

  Until I told him about you.

  “Does he know about me now? Is that why that piece of paper was out?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Then why’d he leave? Doesn’t he like me?”

  “Oh, sweetie…” Sarah swallowed so hard the lump lodged in her chest. “You know he does. But he’s real angry with me. He was…just as upset as you are. Maybe even more.”

  Katey assumed a pose identical to Sarah’s. “He couldn’t possibly be madder than I am.” In spite of feeling like barn muck, Sarah had to smile.

  “Yeah. You’re probably right. And I don’t blame you. If I were you, I probably wouldn’t like me very much right now. I am me, and I don’t like myself very much.” She looked over, regarded the top of her daughter’s head. And the justified scowl lodged underneath. “But, well…at least you still had me. Maybe you thought I was your sister, but I’ve always been here for you. We’ve been together just as much as we would’ve if you’d known I was your mama all along. But Dean never even got to see you before now.”

  One of the pups had shimmied over to Katey and was nuzzling her sneaker. She gently played with its ears, but Sarah could sense the tension in her jerky movements. “I didn’t know about him, either.”

  “True.”

  Katey scrambled to her feet then, whacking dirt off the bottom of her romper as she stalked over to the gate. Before Sarah could get up, she turned to her, her eyes once again brimming with tears. “If I never see Dean again, it’s all your fault,” she hurled at Sarah, then ran out of the kennel, the soles of her sneakers reverberating against the concrete.

  That Dean hadn’t received a speeding ticket on the way back to Atlanta was a miracle. That he hadn’t gotten creamed by a semi was even more miraculous. Like a saloon brawl in an old Western, so many emotions were fighting it out in his head he couldn’t even tell them apart. He had no idea what to do. What to think.

  He walked into his stifling apartment, threw a week’s worth of mail onto the table by the front door, and caught his reflection in the entryway mirror. Seven days, and he’d never noticed. The resemblance. She looked so much like Sarah, he’d just assumed… But now, he could tell. The shape of her forehead, high and broad. Her wide-set eyebrows. The deep eyelids. She’d gotten those from him.

  The litany from the past several hours started all over again: Katey was his daughter. His…daughter. A daughter whose first eight years, because of Sarah’s deceit, he knew nothing about.

  Damn, he thought as he walked into the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge. Eight whole years, gone. How dare she…

  How dare she what? Do exactly what he’d done to her?

  He popped the top and gulped half the contents.

  No. This was far worse.

  Than what? Making love to a woman without protection and assuming there’d been no consequences? Leading Sarah to believe he’d never loved her when the truth was he’d never loved anyone else?

  But she should have told him. Maybe not right away. But before this.

  Certainly before she’d made love with him last night.

  His eyes stung; his hand worked its way to his mouth. The fear in Sarah’s eyes—this was what had scared her so much.

  He took another long, cold swallow of beer.

  Small wonder.

  He drifted into his living room, dropped onto the sofa. There was no air in the apartment, having been closed up for a week. He should open windows or turn on the fans or the air-conditioning. Something. Instead, he just sat. Brooding. An activity he kept up the rest of the afternoon.

  Until his aunt called.

  “What the hell you doing there, boy?” she said the instant he picked up.

  This was a woman who never swore. Ever.

  “You know I had to come back,” he started, but her snort cut him off.

  “What I know is, Sarah told you Katey’s your little girl and you took off like the Devil himself was o
n your tail.”

  He froze. “You knew?”

  “Only for a few days, so don’t go getting your drawers in a knot. Vivian told me.” He heard a dry chuckle on the other end. “Which ticked Miss Sarah off right good, from what I hear.”

  “I imagine so,” he said bitterly.

  “Oh, get off your high horse, Dean. We’re all in this together. Except poor Katey, who’s the only innocent one in the whole shebang. But now it’s all out in the open….” She paused. “Katey needs you.” Another pause. “So does Sarah. They both think you don’t want to see them again.”

  Pain clamped his heart like a vice. “Sarah told you this?”

  “No, Vivian did.” After a moment, she added quietly, “You know apologies don’t come easily to me, guess because I’m just too blamed stubborn to admit when I’m wrong, but I’m apologizin’ now. I should never have tried to break you two up when you were teenagers. I’m sorry, Dean. From the bottom of my heart.”

  Dean leaned forward, cupping his head in his palm. “Thank you,” he said softly. “But I know you were only trying to protect me.”

  Her laugh startled him. “Wasn’t just you I was trying to protect, boy.”

  Dean frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Not what. Who. Shoot, I knew you’d land on your feet, one way or the other. Parrish men always do. No, honey—it was Sarah I was worried about, not you.” Before Dean could even react, his aunt continued. “You know your Mama’d won a scholarship to Columbia University when she was eighteen?”

  He started. “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope. I remember overhearing one of her teachers talking down at the Winn Dixie one day, saying Marion was one of the brightest students she’d ever had the privilege of teaching. She was the editor of the school paper, wanted to pursue a career in journalism. Oh, she had big plans, and it looked like she was well on her way to accomplishin’ them, too. ’Cept she fell in love with your father. And got pregnant.”

  It took a second to register that Dean would have been the result of that pregnancy. He blew a stream of air between his teeth. “So she got married.”