Char sat up straighter. Eli’s shoulder was almost touching hers. Despite the closeness they’d shared the night before, she knew she was on her own here. As usual. “I’ve never been married. I’m self-employed. I’m not rich, but I do have a little nest egg saved. If Damien is facing a fine or legal fees, I’d gladly give it to you.”
Wanda shook her head. “Money isn’t an issue. Tony planned well for the children. Damien has a trust that will be available to him for tuition as soon as he’s enrolled in college. If he chooses not to go to school, he can access the money when he turns twenty-five. I’m more concerned that he needs a fresh start…now.”
Char gulped. She looked at Eli. His gaze was as inscrutable as ever.
“With your permission, Mrs. Johnson—”
“Wanda. Please.”
“With your permission, Wanda, I think Char and I should introduce ourselves to Damien. One thing I know about teens is they hate having people make life-changing decisions on their behalf. He might welcome a change…or he might tell us to take a flying leap.”
Char heard the wisdom of experience behind his words. Had that been E.J.’s response to learning he had a new father? Char couldn’t imagine what that heart-wrenching revelation must have been like for both son and father.
“That’s very profound, Eli. I agree. Why don’t you two follow me to the hospital? I’ll clear your visitation with the staff. After you’ve met Damien, we’ll talk again. Hopefully my husband can join us.”
Wanda insisted on paying for the coffee then she led the way outdoors. The sky was as bright a blue as Char had ever seen, and the smell of the ocean—once she identified it—was powerful and refreshing. For no reason that made sense, Char felt tears well up in her eyes.
She handed the keys to Eli. So she was the only authorized driver. Big deal. No amount of insurance could cover what was about to happen. Even seventeen years of playing by all the rules wouldn’t count for squat if her son rejected her. And why wouldn’t he? After all, she’d rejected him first.
“It’ll be okay, Char,” Eli said, starting the engine.
“What makes you so sure?”
“He’s the missing piece, right? Joseph said I was supposed to find him. He’s why we’re here.”
She wanted to believe that, but she knew there had to be a catch. Fate, the Great Spirit, luck, whoever or whatever was in charge of such things had never been on her side. She didn’t expect divine intervention to kick in now.
She fastened her seat belt and closed her eyes, expecting to hear the old black woman’s take on the subject.
Nothing. That silence worried her almost as much as what was about to happen.
Almost.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU’RE NOT MY FATHER.”
The words still sounded as crisp and fresh and shocking as the day E.J. uttered them. Eli pressed the heel of his hand against his temple to stave off the pain.
For a good fifteen minutes, he’d been sitting alone at the bedside of a young man who appeared to be dead to the world. Char and Wanda, Damien’s adoptive mother, had taken off when it had become glaringly obvious that Char wasn’t a good waiter.
She’d paced about the bright, pristine private room like a wolf in a kennel. Finally she’d announced, “I need some air.” Then she’d dumped her tote bag on Eli’s lap and dashed away. He had no idea where she was.
If he craned his neck, Eli could see Damien’s mother at the nurses’ station going over her son’s chart. She seemed like a warm and caring person who had a way of instantly connecting with people. She’d certainly made him and Char feel welcome.
Which, he had to concede, was a little strange. One look at the copy of Damien’s birth certificate—or Baby Boy Jones, as the document read—had appeared to seal the deal, as far as Wanda was concerned. She’d accepted Char’s word that Eli was Damien’s birth father. And here Eli was, poised for a reunion with the child he never knew existed.
“Weird,” he muttered under his breath.
The boy on the bed moved restlessly. Eli was usually skilled at estimating a suspect’s height and weight, but it wasn’t easy when the person was lying in a hospital bed. Still, he guessed Damien to be about E.J.’s height, although a good twenty pounds slimmer.
Probably the drugs, Eli thought to himself, wishing he had a better feeling about how this meeting would go down.
He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands linked. The kid was good-looking—even with the two-inch square of white gauze taped to his left temple. The nurse had explained that, although they were weaning Damien off the sedatives, they wanted to keep his head immobilized until they were certain there wasn’t any swelling.
“But don’t worry. He’ll be back on his feet in no time. Kids this age are so resilient,” the woman had said, in a chipper way.
Fine, Eli thought, but if he was anything like E.J. he was going to be pissed at the world for a long time to come.
The boy’s eyelashes flickered against his tanned complexion. His skin tone seemed a perfect blend of Char’s fairness and Eli’s French-Indian mix. The shape of his eyes made Eli think of Char, although he wasn’t sure why. But something about the kid’s lips reminded Eli of his father.
He wondered what the old man would have made of this development. He’d had plenty to say when Eli broke the news that Bobbi was pregnant and they were going to get married. “A man spreads his seed. It’s nature’s way. The woman stays behind and cares for the children. That’s society’s way. This scholarship is your last shot at a better life, Eli. You can send the kid money once you start making it. Don’t let this woman pull you back down.”
Eli hadn’t agreed about his responsibility to the child Bobbi was carrying. He’d vowed to be a better father than his father had been to him. They’d argued until Eli stormed out of his father’s house, hell-bent on getting drunk. The same night of his bachelor party.
And now he got to explain to a kid who didn’t know him from Adam—and probably couldn’t have cared less—that after his drunken brawl with his son’s real father he’d managed to knock up an innocent young girl who was forced to give her child up for adoption. Shit.
“Who are you?”
Eli knew the tone if not the voice. Groggy, with a hint of antagonism. Snarl first; smile only when you must. That was E.J.’s motto, too.
Eli scooted his chair a few inches closer to the bed. “My name is Eli Robideaux. Your mother said she told you about my call last night. I’m someone from your past.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed. Char again. “You’re not my father.”
The irony of hearing those exact words from two different boys’ lips was not lost on Eli. He gave a sharp, raspy laugh.
“You think this is funny?” the kid snarled. “My dad was a hero. And Italian.”
The message came through loud and clear but Eli had to ask. “Are you prejudiced against Native Americans?” It hardly seemed likely given his adoptive mother’s heritage.
“Don’t you mean First Peoples? If you’re born here, you’re a native.”
Smart kid. He probably got that from Char, too. And apparently his anger was universal. “Either way, you have my blood running through your veins.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Eli could have told him about the DNA test Char had arranged for them to take, but instead, he reached down and pulled the Pierre High yearbook out of Char’s bag. He flipped through it until he found the header: Seniors.
“Here,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
He stood and held the page open with his finger pointing to a mug shot. Eli had gone cheap—the senior special at Sears. No fancy outdoor setting. Just a stark white background that looked almost identical to the pillow resting beneath Damien’s head. “Want a mirror?”
Damien looked for a moment then turned his chin toward the door. “Where’s my mother?”
“She was talking to the nurses a moment ago. Do you want me to get h
er?”
“I mean the one who gave birth to me.”
“Oh. Char. She went for a soda. I can call her cell phone if you want—”
Damien made a low, raw sound that held an edge of agitation. “I don’t want anything from you. I’ve always known I was adopted. Mom and Dad offered to help me look for my birth parents, but I didn’t want to. You had your chance to be part of my life and you chose not to so…like…what do I care about you now? Why are you here anyway?”
Eli closed the book. He should have been thinking about how to answer these kinds of questions; instead his mind felt blank.
Show him our chickadee.
Eli’s fingers tingled and he quickly flipped back a few pages in the yearbook. The photos of the freshmen and sophomores were smaller, every one with the same background. He ran his finger down the list in alphabetical order. “J…J…Jones. Here she is.”
He stepped closer to the head of the bed so he could make sure Damien was looking at the right picture. “This is Char. I think she was fifteen when this was taken. She might have turned sixteen by the time you were born. Too young to raise you on her own. And that’s what would have happened because I got married and joined the Marines a few days after Char and I were together.”
Damien’s thick black eyebrows pulled together but only for a second. It was obvious to Eli that the boy was in pain.
“Let me call the nurse.”
“No. Not yet. First, I want to know why. You just screwed her and left? Why?”
Eli hesitated. The truth was ugly and hurtful. He was about to lie when he happened to catch a glimpse of red-orange highlights standing near the interior window. “I don’t remember being with Char. I was drunk. It was the night of my bachelor party. I got in a fight with my cousin and he took me to a local nurse—Char’s aunt—in case I had a broken nose. Char’s aunt was gone. Char took care of me. We had sex.”
Blunt, but honest.
“Okay,” the kid said. His eyes closed a second later and he didn’t stir again—even when the nurse came in to take his vitals.
“Would you mind stepping out?” she asked. “Wound check.”
Eli didn’t mind at all. In fact, he had half a mind to find the closest bar and disappear into a bottle of tequila.
But he didn’t do that. Because when he exited the room Char was there, and without a breath of hesitation she stepped straight into his arms and hugged him. “Good job, Dad,” she said softly against his chest. “Good job.”
IT WAS CHAR’S TURN to face the music. So to speak. Eli was meeting with Wanda and her husband in the hospital’s café, which was situated next to a large, beautiful koi pond. Char had never seen anything like it. The sound of running water was a placid, calming backdrop for the life and death drama many of the people visiting loved ones in the hospital were facing.
She was lucky. Her son—she could almost say the word out loud now—was going to be fine…physically. But Wanda had been adamant that Damien was in bad shape—emotionally and spiritually. “He’s like a wounded bird that has to relearn how to fly.”
As West Coast goofy as that sounded, Char understood what Wanda meant. Libby once told Char that when Mac was eleven or twelve he found a wounded hawk in an aspen grove. He brought the large bird home and nursed it back to health. “Poor Mac nearly lost a finger,” Libby said. “That was one miserable animal and it made sure everyone in the house knew how unhappy it was.”
Char could sympathize with what Wanda was going through. The woman’s love for Damien was obvious but her concern for holding together her new marriage and protecting Damien’s siblings was also apparent. The war had extracted a terrible toll on this family.
But Char knew what it was like to lose a father you worshipped. Maybe, just maybe, she could be of some help to this boy who looked so much like a young Eli.
“What’s with the hair?”
His voice was deeper than she’d expected. When she’d eavesdropped earlier, Eli had been doing most of the talking.
“I’m quirky. Ask anyone who knows me,” she said, keeping her tone light. Inside her chest her heart was pounding so furiously she was surprised she even had a voice.
He didn’t reply but he moved his mouth as if he needed a drink so she hopped to her feet and picked up the small tumbler with a cap and straw. She shook it to see if there was water in it. Enough. “Drink?” she offered.
“I don’t do drugs,” he said out of the blue. “I got picked up for selling, but I don’t use.”
“Why were you selling?”
He gave her a duh look. “Money.”
“What do you need money for?”
He fumbled with the straw clumsily but finally got it between his lips and sucked. A couple of long draws seemed to exhaust him. He collapsed back against the pillow.
“I’m gettin’ outta here.”
She returned the glass to the bedside table. “You needed money to finance your escape. Got it. But…it never crossed your mind to find a job instead of breaking the law?”
His eyes popped open as if he wasn’t used to such blunt talk. “I wanna go now. Not ten years from now.”
She made a pffing sound. “Ten years, huh? Isn’t that about what they give drug dealers?”
His expression turned to a scowl. “My mom’s new husband is a lawyer. He’ll get me off.”
Char pretended to be surprised by the revelation. “Oh, I see. This was a test. If the new stepdad goes to bat for you, then you might not hate him quite so much for taking your father’s place.”
He glared at her but didn’t say anything.
“I can do one better. My mom never dated legal professionals so I couldn’t run the risk of getting tossed in the Pen—that’s what they call the state prison in Sioux Falls—but I devised my own rigorous tests.” She scooted the chair closer to the bed as though what she was about to tell him was a secret. “There’s the ever-popular trial-by-fire method. But unless you can afford to repaint the interior of your house, I don’t recommend it.”
Damien’s lips flickered a tiny bit but he didn’t smile.
“With this other guy she was seeing, I’d set my alarm for 2:00 a.m. then I’d sneak out and let the air out of his tires. For a while he carried a portable compressor with him, but that got old and finally he just stopped coming around.”
“Was he a creep?”
Char shook her head. “Not really. But he wasn’t Dad, and I was still punishing my mother for the fact Dad died. Not that it was her fault, you understand. It wasn’t. But I was angry. And sad. And I was too afraid to have anything to do with drugs. I’d heard whispers that Dad was either high or drunk the night he died. The van he was riding in got hit by a train.”
Neither spoke for a few minutes, but Char sensed he wanted to ask her something. Probably the first question she would have asked if their positions were reversed. So she asked it for him. “You want to know why I didn’t try to keep you?”
His nod was almost invisible.
“Actually I did,” she told him. “I kept you a secret for nearly seven months. You have no idea how hard this was. My mom and I were living in my late grandmother’s home with my aunt—a nurse-practioner. Aunt Pam would have pressured me to get an abortion if she’d suspected the real reason for my weight gain.”
His swallow was loud enough for Char to hear.
“But I was determined not to tell anyone until there was no chance of that happening. I thought about running away but decided you needed better prenatal care than you’d get if I was living on the street or in some shelter. I bought over-the-counter vitamins for lactating women. I ate healthy and walked every day. I was in great shape, even though I flunked P.E. after my teacher figured out all the excuses I’d been bringing in were forged.”
“Nobody guessed?”
“If you make yourself noticeably different, people actually look at you less closely. They feel embarrassed for you or something. I started wearing kooky clothes. Garage-sale grunge.”
“But your aunt found out.”
“I started spotting. I was afraid you might come prematurely. It was probably from stress. Once Mom and Pam found out, the pain and the bleeding went away.”
She decided to spare him the details of the horrific fight she’d had with her aunt. Her mother had been more worried that she was going to get stuck raising a second kid, when she’d obviously done such a lousy job with the first. Asking her mother to help care for her child had never entered Char’s mind. She’d known what she had to do, and she planned to negotiate the best terms for her baby.
“My aunt had a lawyer friend who would help facilitate a private adoption. She gave me a long list of reasons why this was better than going through a state agency. I believed her. She assured me that you would go to a Native American family. Even though Eli’s name wasn’t on the official birth certificate, I wanted you to fit in. I also hoped you’d be proud of your heritage.”
He made a rude, snorting sound. “Yeah, whatever. My dad’s Italian. My mom’s half-Mexican and half-Piute. Big deal. The only one who ever talked about that kind of bull was my great-grandpa and he died a couple of months after we moved back. So much for your big plan.”
“At least mine didn’t land me in jail,” she said, sounding way too much like the old black woman.
Damien gave her a dirty look and tried to roll over. He apparently pinched one of the wires attached to his body because an alarm started to ring and a nurse rushed in.
“Sorry, hon,” the woman told Char. “Best let the boy rest a bit.”
Char gathered her things and left. She looked around for Eli, but he wasn’t in the waiting room. Was he still talking to Wanda and her husband? An uneasy feeling in her gut told her this wasn’t a good thing. The last time she’d dealt with a lawyer she lost her son.
But she’d been a terrified young girl at the time. Now she could stand up for herself…and for Damien, if she needed to.
She hoped.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Finding Their Son Page 14