A Dad At Last

by Marie Ferrarella

“We’ll discuss this later,” Megan promised. “Right now, I want to get that son of yours and bring him downstairs to dinner.”

  “He’s a little young to handle a wineglass,” Lacy quipped.

  “We’ll improvise,” Megan promised, leading the way.

  MEGAN HAD hardly touched her dinner, but sat watching the others eat theirs. Wondering if she was making a mistake by calling her children together tonight. But she had no choice. Too much time had lapsed already, time she would never get back. She’d have to make up for it by using the present and the future.

  At her elbow, her son Mitchell inclined his head, catching her attention. “You seem nervous tonight, Mother,” he noted. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Yes, why the formal gathering?” R.J. asked. She’d been very mysterious in her invitation, letting none of them know what was going on.

  “It’s an informal gathering,” Megan corrected. Setting down her fork, she gave up the pretense that she was eating. Less than two morsels had passed her lips.

  “If you say so,” R.J. replied, taking a sip from his water glass. “So why are we here informally?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Anna couldn’t stand the secrecy any longer. “What’s going on?”

  There were butterflies in her stomach, Megan realized. That hadn’t happened to her in a very long time. She’d grown accustomed to dealing with life head-on instead of wasting time with such trivial things as nerves. But this involved her family. Her children.

  Her eyes swept slowly over all seven of their faces. R.J., Anna, Mitch, Abby, Jake, Beth and Ellie. The butterflies took another pass. Other than Ellie and Connor, her children thought this was about celebrating Chase’s return. They hadn’t a clue as to why she’d called them here and what she was going to say.

  Would she wind up turning their worlds upside down? Would they bring themselves to forgive her youthful indiscretion?

  She could only hope so.

  Spreading her hands on the table, Megan took a deep breath. “I’ve gathered you all together because I wanted to make an announcement and I wanted you all to find out at the same time.” Pausing, she was tempted to look at Ellie, but she resisted.

  “You’ve found a man and you’re getting married,” Jake teased.

  “Jake!” Ellie cried. Everyone knew how faithful their mother was to the memory of their father. That she could even look at anyone else was unthinkable.

  “Well, why not?” he asked. “We all seem to have been pairing off pretty regularly this last year. Maybe there’s something in the water.” The corners of his mouth lifted in a teasing smile. “Maybe Mom drank it, too.” He turned to look at her. “So, how about it, Mom? Is there someone new on the horizon we should be getting ready to call Dad?”

  “My money’s on Hugh,” Mitchell said. Hugh Blake had been the family’s lawyer for more years than any of them could remember. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Mother. Definitely smitten.”

  “No, this isn’t about Hugh.” But there was someone new on the horizon. Someone they should be getting ready to call brother, she thought silently. Fingers icy, she began. “You all know that your father and I started Maitland Maternity so that young women who found themselves pregnant and alone would have somewhere to go. Somewhere along the line, the clinic became a trendy, in place to have a baby, and I’m not quite sure why that is, but the fact that it happened is beside the point.” She saw the question in their eyes. They were wondering where she was going with this. “What you don’t know is why the hospital was founded.”

  Confused, Abby looked at Beth, who shrugged. “You just told us, Mother—”

  “Not the whole reason.” She realized that she’d been folding and refolding her napkin and forced herself to stop. “It was started because I didn’t want anyone to have to go through what I had gone through.”

  R.J. glanced at Mitchell, then at his mother. “But you were married.”

  Megan moistened her lips. “Not when I was pregnant with my first child.”

  Abby grinned. So that was it. Their mother was going to confess being human to them. It seemed sweetly old-fashioned. “You mean you and Dad danced the light fantastic before he married you?”

  It was now or never. “I was seventeen years old and very much in love.”

  “But you’re sixty-two,” Beth protested. “If you were seventeen when you were pregnant for the first time, that would make Mitchell, what? Forty-five?”

  There was an apology in her eyes as Megan looked at Mitchell. “Mitchell is not my firstborn.” Her glance shifted briefly to Connor before she dropped her bombshell. “Connor is.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS QUIET enough to hear the proverbial pin drop. Certainly quiet enough to hear the spoon that slipped from Lacy’s suddenly lax fingers, landing on her plate with a clatter.

  So that was what Janelle had been hinting at, Lacy realized. Janelle knew. Somehow, the other woman had discovered that Connor wasn’t Clarise’s son but Megan’s.

  That had to be what the letter was about, the one she’d started to say she’d found among her father’s things. Why hadn’t she pressed Janelle further when she’d had the chance?

  Reflexively covering the spoon with her hand, Lacy met Megan’s eyes and offered the woman who had befriended her so easily an apologetic half-smile. She could have sworn she saw a touch of gratitude in the other woman’s eyes just before they left hers and swept over the other occupants of the tomb-silent dining room.

  You could almost hear the light emerging from the chandelier overhead, Megan thought. There were varying degrees of shock and astonishment registered on her children’s faces. What she didn’t see, she realized, was condemnation or any looks of dismay.

  It was too early to entertain relief, but she made a mental reservation.

  It was Mitchell who found his tongue first. Slanting a glance at Connor, he then addressed his mother. “How…how is that possible, Mother?”

  Though she’d thought him dead, she’d never stopped loving her first child. And never stopped feeling the weight of the secret she’d silently carried around with her all these years.

  She folded her hands before her primly, fortifying herself with the small, formal action. It kept her hands from trembling.

  “It’s possible, Mitchell, because it’s true.” And then, very slowly, she began to bare her soul to the people who mattered most in her life. They had a right to know. It was past time. “Forty-six years ago, when I was just seventeen and very naive, I believed a tall, strapping, good-looking ranch hand when he said he loved me. That he couldn’t live without me.” Her lips curved sadly at the thought of the trusting, vulnerable young girl she’d once been. “As it turned out, he could. Easily. He proved it the moment he discovered I was pregnant.” She eased herself past the shell of pain that still lingered, even after all this time. “In one of those funny little twists of life, he turned out to be a very distant cousin of the Maitlands’, disgruntled and bitter at the way life had left him in the shadows while shining down on Harland Maitland and his family.

  “But none of that mattered to me. What did was that I was pregnant and determined to have my baby even though my father tried to convince me to find a way to ‘shed my problem.’” It was her father’s euphemism, not hers. There was a fresh emptiness in her heart. Her father had sold her baby. Megan didn’t know if she was ever going to be able to forgive him. “When I wouldn’t follow his advice, he decided to take matters into his own hands. The day I gave birth quickly became the saddest day of my life.” Unconsciously, she raised her chin, still needing to stave off the pain the memory generated. “My father told me my baby had been born dead.” Megan felt tears gathering, and she struggled to keep them back. “I was sure it was somehow my fault. I had no way of knowing that my father had sold his own grandson to Harland Maitland, who turned around and presented that baby to his only daughter, Clarise, and her husband, Jack O’Hara.”

  She wanted to look at Connor, to see hi
s expression as she made these revelations to everyone. To see if she could glean how he felt.

  But she was afraid to. Afraid he was still bonded to Clarise and would resent her for any perceived criticism of the only mother he’d ever known. Or that the entire experience of being lied to had left him hollow and lacking any emotions at all.

  Jake ran his hand along the back of his neck. The hairs there were prickling. “So how did you discover what happened?”

  After having the family beset by a legion of women, all claiming that Chase was the product of a union between them and one of the Maitland men, including him, he held any revelation suspect at the moment. He’d taken a liking to Connor, had been there when the original deception about the false Connor had been uncovered. But this was asking all of them to take a giant leap of faith.

  “There’s a paper trail,” Megan answered, and she thanked God for it. Otherwise, who knew how long they would all be in limbo while this was being untangled and verified? “The secret apparently was too much for Harland to bear, and just before his death he put everything down in two letters, one for William and one for Clarise. Somehow Jack intercepted the letter for Clarise and found out the baby was mine. That’s when he engineered a rift with William and took Clarise and their son, my son—” she had to add that, needed to make the distinction “—and moved away. By this time Connor was already three, and Jack must have figured Clarise would be devastated to give the baby up. Apparently Clarise didn’t find out the truth until her husband died when Connor was sixteen. Even then she chose not to tell her son the whole story, but wrote him a letter and entrusted it, with Harland’s letter, to her lawyer, instructing both to be delivered on the first anniversary of her death.”

  Megan sighed and looked regretfully at Connor. “I should never have believed Petey when he claimed to be you, but his version of what happened was exactly the same as yours, and you have Clarise’s letter to prove it.”

  Megan had tried putting herself in Clarise’s place, all those years ago, and she could understand the woman’s actions. Clarise was probably afraid that Connor might curse her memory and Jack’s once he discovered the deception about his birth.

  While he sympathized with what his mother had to be going through, making this painful revelation to them, R.J. still harbored a few doubts about the situation. “If you don’t mind my asking, how can we be sure that this Connor is the Connor and not just another impostor?”

  In true motherly fashion, Megan came to his defense. “Connor has already submitted to a test to prove his paternity, something, if you recall, Janelle kept postponing.” Looking back, Megan felt embarrassed at how easily she’d been duped by the duo. But that had been because she’d been so stunned by the news and so eager to take her son to her heart. Looking at Connor, she knew he was her son. “As soon as Lacy regained her memory and told Connor that the baby was his, we asked him to submit to a buccal test, and he was more than happy to do it. None of us could afford to have any more paternity mix-ups.”

  “How did Janelle and her husband know about Connor being alive when you didn’t?” Abby wanted to know.

  Megan shook her head. “Somehow they got hold of Harland’s letter to William, but how, I don’t know—though I definitely intend to find out.”

  “I think I have an idea.”

  Everyone, including Connor, turned to look at Lacy when she spoke.

  “You do?” Megan queried. “What do you mean, Lacy?”

  “I went to see Janelle today. When I left Chase with you,” she explained.

  She’d asked Megan if she could leave the baby at the clinic’s day-care center for a few hours. Megan had quickly volunteered to take the rest of the afternoon off and play grandmother, giving Lacy the use of her car. In the generosity of spirit that defined her, Megan had asked no questions. At the time, Lacy had felt as if she was deceiving her by being deliberately vague. But she’d been afraid that if she told Megan her plans, Megan would forbid her from going to see Janelle.

  Lacy made her confession. “That was the errand I had to run.”

  It was Connor, not Megan, who expressed disapproval. “You went to the jail?”

  Lacy tried not to let his tone affect her. Much as she loved him, Connor had no say in her life. He’d given up any rights to orchestrate her life when he’d distanced himself from her.

  Lacy raised her chin defensively. “There were things I had to find out.”

  Megan sensed this was escalating into a confrontation and intervened. “What did you find out about the second letter—the one that must have been for William?” she asked Lacy.

  Relieved to get back to the subject, Lacy said, “Janelle told me she found it amid her father’s things after he died.”

  Confused, R.J. looked at the others. The story was beginning to take on epic proportions. “Who’s her father? Or was?” he amended.

  Lacy took a deep breath. This was going to come as a shock to him and his sister more than to the others. “Robert Maitland. Janelle’s your half sister.”

  Anna and R.J. blanched as they looked at each other.

  “What is this, another one of Janelle’s tricks?” Connor demanded.

  This was going too far, he thought. Somehow, Janelle had stumbled across a genealogy of his family and was fabricating things right and left to serve her own ends. He’d had his fill of the lies that had infiltrated his life ever since Janelle had entered it. She’d been his mother’s companion at the end, and he’d initially been grateful to her for making Clarise’s life more tolerable. But her subsequent actions negated that.

  “No,” Lacy countered firmly. She could see by his expression that she’d surprised Connor. “It’s true. I looked up the birth and marriage certificates in the Las Vegas records—that’s where Janelle was born,” she added. She felt like she was stumbling over her own tongue, the words tumbling out haphazardly. This wasn’t the way she’d wanted to tell them, but facing this formidable family made it difficult to think clearly, even if they were friendly for the most part. “I asked Chelsea to help me.”

  “Chelsea knows?” Anna’s heart sank. Chelsea had only recently walked away from her television job. Would the prospect of unearthing yet another scandal surrounding the Maitlands prove to be too much of a temptation to resist?

  “Only that I was trying to find birth certificates,” Lacy replied quickly. “I didn’t tell her why or whose. And she didn’t ask,” she added in the woman’s defense. Lacy looked at Megan, hoping she would understand. “I wanted to tell you first, but I didn’t want to come to you until I was sure that Janelle wasn’t making all of this up for some reason.”

  Jake, looking decidedly uncomfortable, turned to his mother. “Lacy’s right, Mom. We found out the same info when we ran a check on Janelle’s finger-prints. I should have warned you, but so much was happening, there never seemed to be a right time. We decided to wait until we had confirmed Chase’s paternity—and then he was kidnapped.”

  Megan could hardly speak. The thought that someone in the Maitland family was capable of these kinds of sinister machinations was difficult for her to reconcile. Hurt and saddened, she could only shake her head. She knew that a desire for money was at the bottom of all this. If Janelle had just come to her honestly, things could have been so different.

  “Where is Robert?” she asked Lacy.

  “He’s dead.” Lacy hated being the one who had to tell her. “He and his wife were killed in Las Vegas some time ago.”

  “Car accident?” Mitch guessed. He looked at Anna and R.J., wondering how deeply this affected them.

  “No.” Lacy shook her head. She’d gone through the death certificates, as well, just in case Janelle had lied about her father being dead. “They were gunned down in back of a casino, probably for a gambling debt.”

  Stunned, Megan looked at Anna and R.J. She’d thought of them as her own children for so long, it was difficult to remember that they really weren’t. “I’m sorry, my darlings.”

>   R.J. shook his head, touched by what he saw in his mother’s eyes. “Don’t be. He stopped being our father a long time ago, even before he left us. William was our father.”

  Anna nodded her agreement. “And we couldn’t have had a better one.”

  Megan smiled her thanks. “I’ll have Max look into this further,” she promised. “That should help satisfy Chelsea’s curiosity, which I know must be bursting. Not that I don’t believe you,” she added quickly, looking at Lacy and Jake. “I just want to make sure this somehow isn’t just another clever twist on that girl’s part.” She sighed, remembering. “There’ve been so many lies this last year, it’s hard to keep sight of what’s true and what isn’t.”

  “Speaking of which,” Abby interjected, “do we send out birth announcements, or what?” When her mother looked at her quizzically, Abby indicated Connor with raised eyebrows.

  Relief flooded through Megan, warm and cleansing. She knew by Abby’s question that at least Abby had welcomed Connor as her brother.

  One look at the faces gathered around her told Megan that they had all accepted Connor. Why had she ever doubted them?

  She unfolded the hands she had been squeezing together so tightly and smiled. “I don’t know, that depends on you.”

  Mitchell pretended to give his new sibling the once-over, then laughed. “He’s a little big for that, don’t you think?”

  “You never get too big to be told that you’re an important member of this family,” Jake interjected, raising a glass in Connor’s direction.

  Ellie, seated closest to Connor, leaned over and placed her hand on his forearm. “I am so glad that the secret is finally out and I can stop worrying about letting it slip accidentally.”

  “You knew?” Beth asked, stunned.

  “I wasn’t supposed to. I overheard,” Ellie admitted to her twin before looking at Connor again. “I guess it’s goodbye cousin, hello brother.” She grinned broadly at his slightly bemused expression. “Welcome to the family, Connor.”