Lilac Lane

by Sherryl Woods

  “I believe you’ll find that’s not true, but it’s something for the two of you to discuss. I’ve already said more than enough.” She led the way to a table in a darkened corner where the two could have some privacy, brought the tall glass of water and once more patted the girl’s hand. It was cold as ice. “Try to take a deep breath and relax. I’ll be right back.”

  In the doorway to the kitchen, she drew a deep breath of her own and gestured for Bryan to disconnect the call he was on. “In a minute,” he said impatiently.

  “Now!” she said just as firmly. “There’s someone here to see you, Bryan. And it can’t wait.”

  He seemed about to argue that there was no time for visiting, but she held up a hand. “Tell whoever you’re speaking to that you’ll call back, most likely not until tomorrow. You’ll need to take the time for this.” She leveled a look into his eyes. “Trust me on this.”

  He searched her face and must have found something there that told him the seriousness of the situation. He murmured an excuse to the person on the phone, then crossed the kitchen to look deep into her eyes.

  “Why the fuss? Is it a problem? Where’s Luke?”

  “The person is here to see you, not Luke.” She touched his cheek. “It’s a moment you’ve been dreaming of.”

  His eyes widened at that, and the color drained from his face. “Kiera, what are you telling me?” he asked, his voice shaky.

  “She’s here, Bryan. Your daughter is here.”

  “Deanna?” He looked as if he hardly dared to believe it might be true after all these years of fruitless searching. “Truly? You’re sure?”

  “So she says. And she looks enough like you that I believe her. Now, go. Don’t keep the poor girl waiting. She’s a bundle of nerves.”

  Kiera stood aside, wishing she had the right to give his hand a squeeze as she had his daughter’s, but he brushed past her, then came to a sudden halt. He glanced back.

  “What do I say?”

  “Start with hello,” she said softly. “You’ll go on from there.”

  But hearing the hurt and pain, the accusatory note, in Deanna’s voice earlier suggested it wouldn’t go so smoothly after that.

  *

  As he approached the table where his daughter sat, Bryan felt as if his whole life came down to this single instant. After years of searching, years of hoping and dreaming about this moment, he wanted desperately to get it exactly right. He stood in the shadows, drinking in the sight of this young woman who bore no resemblance to the baby he’d last held in his arms so many years ago.

  Instead, she had her mother’s wavy hair, though it was the color of his. She had a slender grace, a chin that had a belligerent tilt to it, also reminiscent of her mother. He had no doubt that if he could see her eyes clearly, they’d have her mother’s fiery temper flashing in them, as well.

  He drew in a calming breath and took the few remaining steps that brought him into her line of sight. “Dee?”

  “Mr. Laramie?”

  He winced at the formality, the icy tone. “I’m your father, yes. I’d recognize you anywhere. You look exactly as your mother did at your age.”

  “You’re not my father, not in any way that counts,” she said, though her voice faltered a bit as if the words and tone had been rehearsed, but didn’t fit comfortably now that she was face-to-face with him. Steadying herself, she added more forcefully, “Ashton Lane is the only father I’ve ever known.”

  In an instant, Bryan hated this Ashton Lane, the man who’d taken his place in his daughter’s life. Railing against him, though, trying to claim his rightful place in her life, wouldn’t get them anywhere right now. He prayed for the wisdom to choose his words carefully.

  “If that’s so, what brought you here?” Bryan asked, trying to hide the pain her words caused him. None of this was her fault. She’d been little more than a baby when her mother had taken her and left.

  She clung to her glass of water with a death grip, her gaze on everything in the room except him. “Ash said I should find you, that I’d never be able to move on with my life until I understood how you could abandon us. My mom and me, I mean.”

  Bryan’s temper stirred, but he managed to keep his voice even. “Is that what your mother told you, that I’d abandoned the two of you?”

  “It’s what happened,” she said flatly. “I don’t remember you at all. You never sent a single birthday card or Christmas gift. You never paid support.” The heat in her voice climbed. “What kind of man does that? What kind of man simply walks away from his wife and child?”

  There were years of pent-up emotion behind the accusations, emotions she probably didn’t even want to acknowledge, but it told Bryan quite a lot. Whether she wanted to admit that she’d thought about him or not, he’d been on her mind, if only as an elusive concept. And, with either erroneous information from her mother or from her own imagination, every scenario she’d imagined had left him as the bad guy.

  Bryan recognized that the angry denials he wanted to utter would only escalate the situation. He took a moment to let his temper cool. Now that she’d said her piece, Deanna seemed suddenly deflated. Perhaps she’d been expecting outrage, after all.

  “That’s not how it was,” he said quietly, pulling out a chair and sitting down to face her. He waited until she met his gaze. “If that’s what you were told, I’m sorry to say, it was a lie.”

  “My mother didn’t lie,” she said, but the anger had gone out of her voice, leaving a faint question mark in its place.

  “Not typically, no,” he agreed, because that much was true. The Melody he knew had always been brutally honest. “But in this case, she did,” he said evenly, holding her gaze. “And if you like, if you’ll keep an open mind, I can prove it.”

  “How? With a bunch of lies of your own? Why would I ever believe you?”

  “I think you want to,” he said, understanding that most of all she needed reassurance. After years of believing she’d been abandoned, how could she be anything except angry and cautious? “I think that’s really why you came, to hear my side of things. Isn’t that true?”

  “I guess,” she said, a little of the belligerence fading.

  “The reality is that you don’t know me at all. And I totally get that. I don’t expect you to believe something just because I say it’s true,” he assured her. “But I assume you’re not the kind of person who would dispute facts that you can see in black and white. You can look at my proof, then ask your mother if I’m the one who’s lying.”

  Tears welled in her eyes then. “My mother is dead.”

  The cold, hard truth blurted out like that shook Bryan. It felt as if it was the second time in his life he’d lost the same woman. This time, though, it came with an undeniable finality. Right now he couldn’t even think about what that might mean for his own future. He had to deal with the undeniable pain that truth was causing his daughter.

  “I’m sorry, Dee. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Why would you be sorry? You walked out on her a long time ago. You never loved her.”

  Proving that he’d searched for his wife and their baby girl wasn’t the same as trying to prove that his feelings had run deep and true. He had police reports, bills from private detectives that stated clearly just how long he’d looked for his family. Feelings couldn’t be so easily confirmed.

  “Dee, what is it you really need to hear from me? What did you come here to learn? Or did you only come to hurl accusations, say all the things you’ve wanted to say to me over the years?”

  More tears spilled down her cheeks at that. “I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice cracking. “Everybody kept telling me I needed to do this. They had a whole long list of reasons, some practical like getting a medical history, some emotional like making peace with my past. I’ve been told I have abandonment issues, though I don’t see how that can be since I don’t even remember you. And I have a dad, so it can’t be that I needed another one.”

  “I ca
n only imagine how confusing it must be,” he said, hearing the confusion in her voice, the longing to make sense of things. “I’ve wanted to find you for years because a piece of my heart was missing, but now that you’re here I can barely find the right words to say. You said the man you consider to be your father convinced you to come.”

  “In a way. When Ash told me he knew where you were and that he thought I should come, I felt like it was inevitable, you know?”

  “Where have you been living all these years?”

  “In Richmond.”

  He thought the terse response was the end of it, but then she added with a hint of pride, “I’m going to school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, though, and this summer I got an internship in a medical research program at Johns Hopkins.”

  “Brains and beauty,” he said lightly. “I’m impressed.”

  She smiled then, and it lit up her face. “That’s what Ash says all the time. Ever since I got to Johns Hopkins I’ve been trying to work up the courage to meet you. I even came here twice. The first time I just sat across the street, hoping you’d come outside. The last time was on the Fourth of July. I came in with a friend, but we didn’t stay. I was too nervous to eat. He got our dinner to go. It was delicious, by the way.”

  Now it was Bryan’s turn to smile. “Thank you.”

  She regarded him nervously. “Was it a mistake, my coming here? Am I turning your life upside down or anything?”

  “Not from my point of view,” Bryan assured her. “I’ve been longing for this moment since the day you and your mom left. Will you see this through? Will you stick around and let me show you proof that I spent years looking for you and your mother? Will you listen to what really happened?”

  He hated the pleading note in his voice, but he knew he couldn’t let her go without fighting for this one chance to make things right, to correct the record, at least.

  “I didn’t really plan ahead,” she said. “I was going to come on the weekend, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Again,” she added ruefully. “But when I got up this morning, I made up my mind that it was time. I took the day off at work, but that was as much planning as I did. I don’t have a place to stay.”

  “I have a guest room—”

  “No.” She shut down that idea immediately.

  Kiera appeared just then. It was apparent she’d been hovering nearby. For once he welcomed her uncanny knack for knowing when she might be needed.

  “Deanna, would you be needing a place to stay for a night or two?” she asked gently. “My cottage is very close to your dad’s, but it would give you some space for your thoughts to settle.”

  “It’s an excellent solution,” Bryan said, giving her a grateful look. “Will you consider that, Dee? A day or two’s not long. We’ll only have a start toward getting all the answers we both need, but it’s an excellent beginning.”

  Deanna’s gaze held Kiera’s. “Are you sure I won’t be an imposition?”

  “Not at all,” Kiera said. “I can take you there now and you can have a bit of a rest.”

  “And I’ll stop by as soon as I get through the dinner rush here,” Bryan said. “If there were some way for me to leave now, I would.”

  He waited for what seemed an eternity as his daughter weighed her options.

  “I’ll stay,” she said at last. “But just for tonight. I need to go back to work tomorrow morning. This summer job is a volunteer internship, but it’s important. I don’t want them to think I’m irresponsible. And you should stay and finish here for the same reason. If Kiera doesn’t mind my staying with her, I could use a little time to let this sink in.” She gave him an odd look. “I thought you’d ask me to prove who I am.”

  He smiled at that. “Even Kiera saw the resemblance, Dee. There was no need for proof.”

  She pulled a picture out of her purse and handed it to him just the same. “Ash found this recently and sent it to me. I’d not seen it before. It’s the only picture my mother kept of the two of us.”

  Bryan looked at the faded photograph and remembered precisely when it had been taken, on a rare day they’d spent at the park with a picnic. His eyes welled with tears.

  “You remember it?” Dee asked.

  Bryan nodded. “I have others I’ll show you. They’re worn on the edges from my looking at them so often. Thank you for agreeing to stay for the night. There’s so much I want to know.”

  “Come along, child,” Kiera said.

  As the two of them left, Bryan stared after them with a sense of wonder. It wasn’t just seeing his daughter for the first time in all these years. It was seeing this entirely new side of Kiera, a woman with compassion and understanding, who’d given him the gift of time to make things right with Deanna.

  Chapter 18

  “Bryan has a daughter and you knew about it?” Moira was practically shouting in Kiera’s ear, her shock and dismay evident. “Yet you never said a word.”

  “Because it wasn’t my news to share,” Kiera told her quietly. “And I really can’t discuss this now. I’m trying to get Deanna settled in the guest room. Luke’s given me the night off to help out. He would have given Bryan the night off, but we agreed that my offering to take over in the kitchen for him, even under these circumstances, wouldn’t help the situation given how touchy Bryan is about my invading his space.”

  “Hold on!” Moira commanded. “She’s staying with you?”

  “For tonight, anyway. She and Bryan need some time to figure things out.”

  “Tell me this much at least, because my conversation with Luke was completely unsatisfactory. Unlike the other O’Briens, he doesn’t always get the details of the latest gossip straight.”

  Kiera laughed despite herself. “Be thankful for that. It’s enough that Mick has a corner on spreading the gossip.”

  “Did Bryan know he had a daughter, or did this come as a complete shock to him?” Moira asked. “And where’s the mother? Is he married?”

  “He knew. It’s a very long story, but he’s been searching for her for years. He’d only recently given up hope of finding her. And, yes, he was married to her mother.”

  “They’re divorced, then?”

  “No, Moira, there was no divorce.” At her daughter’s dismayed gasp, she said, “I am not getting into this with you now. There’s a lot that’s yet to be sorted out.”

  “I can’t believe you would do such a thing. You’ve been getting serious about a man who’s still married? You, who always gave us these long lectures about values and such.”

  Kiera sighed. It was true that she’d tried to teach her children right from wrong, and dating someone married to someone else certainly fell into the forbidden category. None of her lectures had taken serious hold with her sons, but apparently Moira, at least, had heard them well enough to be throwing them back in her face now.

  “Moira, not now. I really have to go. If things work out and Bryan can persuade his daughter to come here more often, then you’ll meet Deanna for yourself when you get home. At the least there will be answers to all your questions and explanations if you feel you’re owed those, too.”

  Unfortunately, given the tension earlier in the day between Bryan and his daughter and the complexity of the situation, Kiera thought that was simply wishful thinking on her part.

  *

  Taking a page from Nell’s book, Kiera set about making tea and baking a batch of scones. They wouldn’t measure up to anything Nell might make, but the aroma would make the kitchen especially cozy and perhaps make Deanna feel a little more comfortable. She’d just pulled the scones from the oven, when Deanna came in looking refreshed after a shower and hopefully a bit of a nap.

  “How are you feeling?” Kiera asked.

  “As if I’ve been put through a wringer,” Deanna admitted. “I knew today wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be so emotional. I felt as if I was being torn between two people, two very different truths. Three, if I add Ash into the mix. Thank you
for offering to let me stay here so I’ve time to sort them out.”

  “Let that be a lesson, then,” Kiera told her gently, setting a steaming cup of tea before her, and then sitting herself. “Every story has two sides, perhaps more. You’d do well to listen to all of them with an open heart and reach your own conclusion about the truth. It’s often somewhere in the middle.”

  “In the gray area,” Deanna suggested with a faint smile, “That’s what Ash is always telling me, when I’m looking for black-and-white truths.”

  “He sounds like a wise man.”

  “He’s great,” Deanna said enthusiastically. “He really is, but I’ve been awfully hard on him lately since some things about this situation have come to light. I’ve felt betrayed and taken it out on him, partly because it’s hard to blame my mom now that she’s gone.”

  “And you adored her,” Kiera said, seeing it in Deanna’s eyes, hearing it in her voice. “You thought she could do no wrong.”

  Deanne nodded, looking chagrined. “But, of course, everybody can make mistakes.”

  “And still be a fine person,” Kiera suggested.

  Deanna took a sip of her tea, her expression thoughtful. “You believe my dad’s version of what happened, don’t you?”

  “I have no reason not to,” Kiera said, then felt compelled to add, “But I wasn’t there, Deanna, so I’m basing that on my experience with your father. He’s been honest with me. He told me all about your mother leaving, about his search for the two of you. He’s not spared himself in the telling, either, admitting to the mistakes he made.”

  “And about never getting a divorce?” she asked skeptically. “I’ll bet he never mentioned that.”

  “Actually he did.”

  Deanna looked surprised. “That’s more than my mother and Ash ever told me. I was still very young when they got together. I thought they’d married, maybe eloped or something, and that I’d been adopted by Ash. Instead, they just had our names changed legally. Why do you suppose my mom let me believe such a huge lie?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t know how to tell you the truth or were afraid you’d judge her for the decisions she’d made.”