Screaming at him wasn’t something she’d be proud of—but it would sure as hell feel good. Crying was out of the question, but that was what she was afraid she might do. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so emotionally fragile.
At least with Thomas, there’d been no illusions of love and support. She’d thought she’d missed those things before, but only now realized that she couldn’t miss what she hadn’t had. Realized it now that she’d had it—for a few brief, wonderful moments. And missed it already.
“So you see, Mr. McDonald, it’s important to the boys that they continue through school together….”
In her navy silk suit, her two-inch heels tucked beneath her, Valerie sat before the principal’s desk, eager to be done with this business and get off the school grounds.
She had no idea why Steve McDonald was shaking his head. “We—their counselors and I—don’t think that’s a good idea, Ms. Simms. Your boys are unusually close, even for twins, and while there are some obvious benefits to that, their closeness also comes with a price. One that can be much higher than you think. The damage such intense interdependence can cause is often greater than the benefits.”
What was the man talking about? “Twins share a spiritual connection,” she told him. “It’s perfectly natural.” What kind of counselors did Menlo Ranch employ that they hadn’t known something so obvious?
“And being in separate classrooms isn’t going to change that,” McDonald said, sounding far too much like Kirk Chandler for her peace of mind. “Their identities will have to separate at some point,” he said, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. “Unless they marry two women who are willing to live together in the same house and raise their children together, unless they get the same jobs with the same company, it’s going to happen.”
Of course it would. When they were grown up and—
“Studies show that when the separation comes at an earlier age, twins are far more successful in life and in their relationships.”
She opened her mouth, ready to argue her next point, and closed it again. This was déjà vu to an uncomfortable degree. She’d fought Kirk on this very same score. And lost. But Brian had won.
Was it possible that Steve McDonald, like Kirk, could see her boys more clearly than she could?
“Will you at least promise me one thing?” she asked, relaxing back against the seat, her purse in her lap.
“What’s that?” The sandy-haired man half squinted at her.
“If the boys aren’t thriving after a semester apart, if either of them has a recurrence of the physical problems we’ve struggled with this year, you’ll agree to put them back together.”
With one dip of his chin to his chest, McDonald looked at her and smiled. “You’ve got my word on it.”
With that, she’d find a way to be satisfied. She’d worry. But she’d be satisfied.
“I hear both of your sons did quite well on the basketball team this year,” McDonald said when she rose to leave.
“They did okay,” Valerie told him with a smile. “The games sure were fun to watch.”
“Yeah, Menlo Ranch has never even come close to the play-offs before. Kirk Chandler did a great job with them. Not that I’m surprised.” He followed her to the closed office door. “He’s always had the gift of turning whatever he touches into a success.”
Stopping just a couple of feet before the door, Valerie turned. “You sound as if you know him.”
“We’ve been friends all our lives, even roommates in college. I’m actually the reason he’s here.”
“You are?”
“I’m not sure how much you know about his past, but since he mentioned having spent Christmas at your house, I guess I can be forgiven for telling you how glad I am to see the change that’s come over him these last few months.”
Valerie didn’t know what to say. And couldn’t walk the few steps it would take to get to the door. “Oh?”
“Kirk is one of the few men I consider a true friend.”
Steve McDonald seemed like such an ethical man. Yet, if he’d been friends with Kirk his whole life, he must’ve known him during the past fifteen years.
“He’s made some mistakes in his life,” McDonald continued. “The man was driven, but had no idea what was driving him.”
Driven to make money, maybe. To win the battle at all costs. Not driven to be a husband or father, though he’d promised to be both.
“After his daughter, Alicia, was killed, Kirk was as determined to kill himself for those mistakes as he’d been to make a success of Chandler Acquisitions to begin with. I offered him the job here to save the life of a friend I value very, very much.”
Valerie said nothing, just waited, needing to hear more even while she didn’t want to know as much as she already did.
“Kirk is an immensely determined man. I’ve always known that he’s got what it takes to make a real difference—on a human level, not just business. He’s finally figured that out, too, although it took a tragedy….”
Swallowing, Valerie knew she should leave. “He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“How much has he told you about Alicia’s death?” McDonald, arms folded across his chest, apparently wasn’t ready to let her go.
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” The principal nodded. “She lived for a full week after she was hit….”
Feeling a little faint, Valerie reminded herself there was no way the man could know that Blake and Brian’s father had been behind the wheel of the car that had killed his friend’s daughter.
“I went to see her a couple of times, and each time was the same. Alicia in her glass bubble room, so many machines hooked up to her body, her head wrapped in gauze, until you couldn’t even recognize the little girl beneath. Surrounded by people, her mother and various other loved ones, by a constant parade of medical personnel.” He shook his head. “She was oblivious to the world she was leaving behind.”
Valerie couldn’t take this. Had already imagined this nightmare so many times.
“And always, in a small waiting room with one small window that had a view of the little girl’s bed, sat Kirk. All alone. Staring. I can only imagine the helplessness he must’ve felt, this powerful man, so filled with determination, finding out that in the end, he was powerless.”
Valerie didn’t, couldn’t, respond.
Steve looked away. “There was no question about the depth of his grief, though. Even an insensitive klutz like me could feel it.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that sprang to her eyes. Didn’t even care, at that point, that she couldn’t stop them. Steve McDonald was pretty close to tears himself.
“Did you know his ex-wife wouldn’t let him in the room to see Alicia?”
When Susan had told her that, Valerie hadn’t blamed her….
“The night Alicia died, Susan had finally been led away for a couple of hours’ rest. The child could’ve hung on another week, and Susan hadn’t slept at all.” McDonald paused, peering at Valerie, but she had a feeling he wasn’t really seeing her.
“So quietly people barely noticed at first, Kirk slipped inside that room and had an intent conversation with his daughter. I have no idea what he said, but he walked out of that room a changed man. A dying man—until he came to work here.”
KIRK WAS SURPRISED and delighted when there was a message from Valerie on his cell phone Thursday afternoon. She wanted to meet him for coffee at their usual time that night. He left her a message that he’d be there.
And he was, in time to get the private alcove in the back of the coffee shop, and have their drinks ordered and waiting for her. He hadn’t yet heard the final results about his son, but was eager to share the good news, anyway.
And to find out what had been bothering her the night before. Half afraid she’d heard that he’d been to see Abraham again, he had a full artillery planned to convince her to agree with him.
She looked grea
t in a pair of black jeans and a white angora sweater, her feet clad in suede boots with the requisite high heels. She didn’t meet his eyes as she sat down—as far from him as she could get on the small love seat.
“I know who you are.” The words were ominous. He felt them with a force that was as familiar as it was debilitating. It was the same way he felt every single time he thought of his daughter. Fear, guilt, grief…
“You’ve always known who I am,” he said, attempting to buy time even realizing it was up.
“I know about your past. You’re Susan Douglas’s ex-husband. Alicia’s father. Owner of the now-defunct Chandler Acquisitions.”
Walls of ice slid around Kirk. He sat back, leaving his coffee on the table. Hot though it was, it wouldn’t thaw him. “You’ve got good sources.”
“My husband, Blake and Brian’s father, was the drunk who killed your daughter.”
Heart jerking out of rhythm, Kirk stared at her. They were in a coffee shop, for God’s sake. You didn’t just blurt out something like that.
“He was?”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She nodded. And, white and pinched, looked as sick as he felt.
Weren’t they just a pair, a mass of mangled emotions, of mistakes and regrets and unfixable pain.
Shock was a good thing. It numbed.
“Small world.”
She didn’t acknowledge the statement.
“I guess you don’t see what you don’t want to see,” he said a few long seconds later.
Still nothing from her.
“How long have you known?”
Have you been lying to me as long as I’ve been lying to you? Not that it mattered. It was over.
Just like the rest of his life.
Except Colton. He’d have his son. Which was more than he’d ever dared hope. More than he deserved.
“Since Monday.”
Which certainly explained why she’d blown him off the other night.
She hadn’t been lying nearly as long as he had.
She’d been married to the man who’d killed Alicia. A man Kirk hated with every part of him. A man he hated almost as much as himself.
Watching Valerie, wondering distantly, if she hated him now as much as he hated himself, he hoped she didn’t feel any responsibility for the accident. Even while he knew she did.
He wondered, too, from an even greater distance, how much she regretted sleeping with him.
Rocking forward, her torso leaning over her knees, she stared at the space between their table and the floor. “I’m sorry.”
For what? That she’d slept with two bastards? That his daughter was dead? That her husband was?
Sorry their relationship, whatever it was, had ended?
He’d known it was coming. Cosmic justice. He’d fallen for a woman who hated everything his life stood for—the wife of the man who’d taken Alicia’s life. Surely something stronger than human will created this twisted, farcical mess of coincidence, this confusion of identities, almost Shakespearean in its dimensions.
Were they laughing now, whoever had arranged this—to punish him?
Had he finally paid what he owed?
Did the bill ever get marked “paid in full?”
“How’d you find out?” It didn’t matter; he just didn’t know what else to say to fill the suffocating silence.
“I’ve been advising Susan regarding the paternity case.”
He thought he was beyond surprise. Apparently not.
“After the…accident…I saw Ali—your daughter’s obituary in the paper.” She looked at him over her hunched shoulder. “Her name wasn’t Chandler.”
“When Susan took her maiden name back, she gave it to Alicia, too. Said it was better that way for school records and such.”
“And let me guess, you didn’t fight her on it.”
“Nope.” Which was why even Alicia’s headstone bore no part of her father. Other than the roses he kept putting there.
“I saw that picture and couldn’t get her out of my mind,” she continued after a while in a faraway voice. “Eventually, I went to see Susan, to offer to help her. We kind of became friends. She used to call. I’d do what I could. What we had in common was horrible, but it was still something in common.”
At least now he understood the complete change in her. Not only had she found him out, but she’d heard it all from the tainted perspective of an emotionally disturbed woman.
“Do you want to hear any of this from my point of view?” he asked, although he wasn’t sure why. What could dragging this out possibly serve? Except to complete his penance and let him move on.
And maybe to help her see that, while he was definitely a bastard, she hadn’t slept with the devil himself, which was how Susan would surely have painted him.
“Okay.”
Her tone of voice, her hunched, dejected posture, her expression, were not encouraging. He’d been accused, tried and convicted.
For a crime he’d committed.
Telling himself it was for her sake, he tried anyway. He spared himself nothing as he told her about the years after college, the thrill of finally having a real challenge. The thrill of being in control. Of being the one with power, instead of the one being chained down by the power of others. And then he told her a bit about his life after the accident.
About the night Steve McDonald had stopped by and found him on the third day of a drunk that could eventually have killed him. And how, during the long hours of sobering up, his friend had talked to him and he’d begun to see a way to actually keep the promise he’d made to his dying daughter.
“What promise?”
Kirk leaned forward, elbows on his knees, turning his head to look at her. “That I’d lived my last day for me. That the rest of my life was going to be for others—for kids—who needed my help. That I’d give everything I had over to making sure that other children benefited from the drive and determination that had kept me from her life.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could sense a softening. And was pathetic enough to let it touch him.
Her silence was unnerving. But he couldn’t just walk away and leave her like this.
Yeah, and how much was he kidding himself to think he could walk away at all? Until she sent him out of her life.
He couldn’t believe she knew the man, had loved the man who’d killed Alicia.
Couldn’t believe he’d never made the connection before. Couldn’t believe he wasn’t more appalled by it. Except that he knew how Valerie felt about her ex-husband. And he also knew he and that man were alike.
It was probably just the shock, the blessed deadness inside him, but the bitterness, the vile acid, that normally ate him alive when he thought of Thomas Smith was not there.
How could he revile Thomas Smith when he, Kirk Chandler, had hurt his daughter so badly himself?
“So where are you?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t know.” Her hands clasped in front of her, she glanced at him and then away. “I just keep weighing the evidence over and over.”
Always the judge. Which just about killed any chance he might’ve had. Not that he’d really had any.
“What’s the evidence?”
There had to be a way to get up and simply leave. A statement that would allow him to say goodbye. To exit the final scene of this tragedy. He just hadn’t found it yet.
“Susan’s testimonials over the past two years. And, more recently, Steve McDonald’s.”
The testimony of an unstable woman. And… “You talked to Steve?”
She nodded, but wasn’t forthcoming with any more. Steve would’ve had only good things to say, Kirk knew that, because Steve was his friend and supporter.
He wondered if Valerie had figured that out—and discounted the testimony.
“There’s Alicia’s nonexistent father,” she continued. “And the hostile takeover of your father’s business.”
His composure didn
’t waver. At least on the outside.
“And then there’s the man who rescued my sons’ health, who’s been more of a father to my boys than their own father ever was.” She recited her list as though by rote.
So he knew what was in her mind. But not in her heart. Her voice gave nothing away.
She took a deep breath. “There’s the man whose wave every morning gave even my worst days a boost.” He’d thought she was finished. And braced himself for the other side of that one. “The man who’s making a very fragile woman miserable by insisting on a paternity test that her husband didn’t even know could be necessary. And the man who feels his responsibility to that child so strongly he can’t abandon him, no matter the cost.” She paused. “The man who’s learned from his mistakes,” she said slowly, “and will go to his grave making sure he doesn’t make the same ones again.”
Glancing over at her, Kirk couldn’t help asking, “Does that mean you might be able to trust me around your boys at some point in the future? That you might someday be able to trust me with a long-term relationship?”
He didn’t know where the words had come from. He wasn’t in the market for a long-term relationship.
And the scared look in her eyes was all the answer he needed.
“I guess the judge has made her judgment,” he said. Standing, he walked quietly away.
He’d found his exit line.
ON BREAK between her morning and afternoon calendars on Friday, Valerie picked up the phone to find Linda James, Abraham Billings’s caseworker, along with his attorney, on the line with a conference call.
“Judge, Abraham Billings is in the hospital.”
“What?” She sat forward. “Why?” Had his mother been notified yet?
“Took a bottle of pills. Trying to kill himself. We got to him in time. Pumped his stomach. He’s stable now.”
“I’ll write an order for a 72-hour assessment in the psychiatric ward immediately,” Valerie said, sick to her stomach. In moments the business was done and the three of them said goodbye.
Still on the line, Valerie wasn’t surprised that Linda hadn’t hung up, either.
“He left a note,” Linda said as soon as the attorney had clicked off. “It’s scrambled and hard to read, but the gist of it is that without his mother, or a chance at a basketball scholarship, there’s no point in dealing with all the other crap.”
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