A Mother's Claim

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Nolan laughed. “Glad to know you’re happy.”

  “It was because of Dana, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  Christian’s back was to her as she entered the living room. “You did it,” he exulted. “You said you’d get her on our side. You swore you’d fight as dirty as you had to, and you did.”

  She felt as if she’d walked into her baby’s bedroom to find him gone all over again. There was that out-of-body moment. It can’t be. Frozen in place, she couldn’t decide if her heart was still beating. If she wanted it to beat.

  Nolan was grinning. And Christian...

  Dana. He’d said Dana, not Mom.

  Oh, dear God. She took a step backward, and Nolan saw her.

  Shock transformed his face. “Dana!”

  She shook her head and backed up. Christian swung around, too, but she didn’t let herself see his expression. Instead, she turned and ran.

  Kitchen. Purse. Front door. Nolan was there to block her, but when she struck at him, he lifted his hands and backed away.

  Somehow, she made it into her car, got the key in the ignition and drove.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “BUT I DIDN’T MEAN—” Christian stared after his mother in horror.

  “You did.” Hearing his harshness, Nolan closed his eyes. What was he saying? He was to blame, not this boy. He had let Christian think—

  Don’t lie to yourself. The strategy had been his. It had never been only that; he’d wanted Dana from the first day, when she walked into his business. He liked her. He had truly believed they could be happy together. Now, gripped by panic, he knew he loved her. Had for a long time. His pursuit of her hadn’t been about Christian in weeks, if not months.

  If ever.

  He wasn’t a hearts-and-flowers guy. He’d never been in love. He was comfortable thinking in terms of strategy, practicality. He’d told himself they fit, that the three of them as a family solved problems for them all.

  He was a fool.

  “Uncle Nolan?” his nephew whispered.

  “Give me a minute,” he said, his voice like gravel.

  “She thinks everything was a lie.”

  No shit.

  “I’ll call her,” Nolan said. “Tell her—” His throat spasmed closed. Exactly what was he going to tell her?

  “I’m scared.”

  Nolan let himself look at a boy who was learning a hard lesson. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “Me, too.”

  He found his phone and sank down on the sofa, gripping it tight as he rehearsed openings. You misunderstood. Like she’d buy that. What you heard was a joke. Uh-huh. I’m sorry? He was.

  Finally, he made the call. Of course she didn’t answer. He was very conscious of Christian standing stricken in the middle of the living room. This was one of those moments when he looked painfully young. Skinny and awkward.

  Beep. “Dana, I think you misunderstood what you heard. I did tell Christian I’d fight dirty back at the beginning, when I didn’t know you and all I was thinking about was protecting him.” He took a breath. “You have to know we’re long past that. That what Christian and I both feel for you has nothing to do with being sure we’d win when we took on your ex-husband. Please.” He bent forward to hide his face, pinching the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “I need to talk to you, Dana,” he finished raggedly. “Please give me a chance.” Beep.

  “What if she goes back to Colorado?”

  “She’ll listen.” Nolan tried again. “She loves you.”

  “You mean she used to.” Christian ran for his bedroom.

  Nolan jerked when the door slammed. He didn’t have it in him to offer any more consolation. What could be more useless, when he couldn’t convince himself there was hope?

  He sat for a long time, asking himself all the same questions Christian probably was. What if she never wanted to see them again? She could be packing right now, with the intention of leaving Oregon first thing in the morning. The people at Helping Hand would be disappointed to lose her, disappointed in her, but that wouldn’t prevent her getting a job in Colorado, where she had connections.

  On a flash of agony, he wondered whether she’d gone to the inn instead of home. She could have knocked on Craig’s door and said, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s file for custody. Or even said, He hurt me. Nolan had seen the way the guy looked at Dana today. There’d been bittersweet knowledge in Craig’s eyes; he knew what he had thrown away. Would they—No! Damn it, no. Even if Stewart would cheat on his wife, Dana wasn’t that kind of woman.

  She could call in the morning to formally request visitation, preferably in a way that kept her from coming face-to-face with Nolan. Or she could file for custody, while graciously allowing him an occasional weekend. Right now, if she asked for custody, he thought Christian felt guilty enough to pack and move into her small home without argument.

  She might feel she’d been better off with dreams of finding her son than with the reality of a boy who’d participated in a plot to use her to get what he wanted.

  Nolan shot to his feet. At the foot of the stairs, he stopped only long enough to call, “I’m going to Dana’s.”

  When he reached her house, he found it dark. He jogged up to her porch to ring the bell, wait, ring it again, then pound on the door.

  “Dana! Let me in.”

  Not a whisper of sound came from inside. But he knew—she was in there, all right, huddled on her sofa or in bed, covering her ears. Crying. Or, worse, too shattered for tears.

  His chest heaving, he flattened his hands on her door and rested his forehead against it. He wasn’t sure he could make himself go home. He couldn’t imagine sleeping. But...she wasn’t going to relent right now. He couldn’t stand on her porch all night.

  And Christian would need him.

  Feeling old and very tired, Nolan turned away and started down the steps.

  * * *

  A SMALL VOICE inside insisted that Nolan and Christian couldn’t have faked everything. No boy was that good an actor. And Dana had a hard time believing Nolan could have made love to her with such urgency, such tenderness, such need, if he didn’t care about her at all.

  But she wasn’t ready to listen to that voice.

  After making it home, she hadn’t so much as brushed her teeth. She’d stripped to her underwear, crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Curling into a ball, she felt childish, but there was no one to see her.

  When her phone buzzed, she guessed who the caller was. When the doorbell rang, she pulled the pillow over her head, too, and kept it there until Nolan gave up and went away.

  Sometime during the night, she uncurled and lay stiff, staring at the ceiling as she moved past thinking she never wanted to see either of them again.

  Given Christian’s age, connecting with him had been too easy. She had moved to Lookout only—she had to count—ten weeks ago? Or was it eleven? He’d hurt her feelings a few times, but really he had come around with astonishing speed. She should have been suspicious.

  And why hadn’t she questioned Nolan’s motivations? Initially hostile, he had done a one-eighty and become her new best friend. Supportive when it came to Christian, eager to spend time with her, happy to include her in their lives. She had deluded herself to think he appreciated her willingness to meet him halfway. It stung—no, worse—when she forced herself to meet head-on her credulity in believing that he’d be attracted to her, out of all the women in the world. Really? Was she that dumb?

  Apparently, the answer was yes.

  She never did sleep. Dana dragged herself to the bathroom the next morning, cringed at the sight of the zombie she saw in the mirror and stepped into a hot shower. After dressing, she drank a cup of coffee and nibbled a piece of toast.

  A
t work, she managed to laugh when everyone exclaimed that she had to be coming down with something. “Insomnia,” she explained, “but if I’d taken the day off and napped, I’d have ended up really turned around. This way, I’m guaranteed to sleep like a log tonight.”

  They bought it, thank heavens. Grateful she had no classes to teach, she spent the morning meeting with a few clients and sharing ideas with Meghan about how to help an unwed pregnant teenager.

  Noon arrived. She hadn’t brought a lunch. She wasn’t hungry but was contemplating getting something small when someone knocked lightly before pushing the door open.

  Nolan’s shoulders almost brushed each side of the doorframe, blocking any view behind him. Dana stiffened. It was a moment before she could force herself to look at his face. When she did, she suffered a shock. Every line had deepened. His eyes seemed to have sunk farther back into their sockets. He hadn’t slept any better than she had.

  She would not soften. “Afraid the master plan is endangered?”

  “Did you listen to my message? Or Christian’s?”

  “No.”

  He lifted a bag. “I brought lunch. Will you talk to me?”

  Dana closed her eyes, shaken by that low, deep voice, imbued with so much she didn’t want to hear. With her feeling so vulnerable, this was the worst possible time for him to show up. Someone had driven a spike through her temple this morning. The ibuprofen she carried in her purse hadn’t touched the agony. All it had done was make her queasy. How could she deal with Nolan when she felt like this?

  But I’ll have to eventually. Why not get it over with?

  “All right.” She grabbed her sunglasses but left her purse locked in her drawer and allowed him to usher her out. They walked in silence the two blocks to the small park. She didn’t let herself look at the cheerful young mothers or the giggly kids running from merry-go-round to slide to swings.

  Nolan set the sack on the picnic table. He handed her a bottle of water, followed by a cup of what she prayed wasn’t chili. She couldn’t even pretend to eat that. A paper sleeve held a scone. Lemon, her favorite.

  Dana pried the top off, relieved to see soup. It looked like lentil, which ought to be safe enough.

  “Christian cried after you left,” he said abruptly.

  She lifted her head. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth. He thinks this is his fault.”

  “When really it’s yours. No boy his age could come up with a scheme so nasty. Either that, or you embroidered it substantially after the two of you dreamed it up.” Lashing out felt unexpectedly satisfying. “I’d like to think he didn’t suggest you—” she stopped herself from saying something really crude “—have sex with me.”

  “You have to know us making love had nothing to do with Christian.”

  “Do I?” Suddenly afraid she was going to throw up, she sipped her water and concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths.

  “There are some things you can’t fake.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Nolan bent his head. He swallowed, scrubbed a hand over his face and looked at her again, his eyes holding devastation.

  “I’ve told you a lot about myself,” he said slowly. “I think I said once that I’m happiest when I have a mission.”

  Oh, God. Why hadn’t she taken that as a warning?

  “When you first called, defeating you and Christian’s father became my mission. I did tell him then that I’d do whatever I had to.”

  “Fight dirty.”

  He inclined his head, his eyes not leaving hers. “I knew almost immediately that I couldn’t do that. You’d suffered too much already, and yet you carried yourself with such dignity. I could see you had somehow held on to hope for all those years. There was no way I could hurt you.”

  Her laugh ached. “And yet.”

  He reached across the table as if he couldn’t help himself, then slowly withdrew his hand when she pulled hers away.

  “I think...the need to fulfill the mission kept humming in the background, even when I thought I’d discarded it. Christian knew I wanted us to be a family, but I never came out and told him, ‘I’m not saying that because it gives us the most certainty of staying together.’”

  “You wanted us to be a family,” Dana echoed. “What a perfect way to say it was all about Christian.”

  He nodded. He held her gaze, his eyes burning. “You’re right. I kept thinking of our relationship that way, even though—”

  Please don’t let him say it, she begged. Not now. Believing him right now wasn’t remotely possible.

  “I fell in love with you a long time ago.”

  She put the lid back on the soup, then set it in the sack and the scone on top. Then she swung her leg over the bench and stood, grabbing the sack. “Thank you for the lunch. You may tell Christian he’s free to call me or...stop by to see me.” She nodded and walked away.

  Nolan didn’t come after her.

  * * *

  WITH THE SUN setting so late now, Uncle Nolan let Christian ride his bike to friends’ houses in the evening as long as he’d be home before dark.

  After leaving his bike on Mom’s lawn, he sat down on the porch steps to wait for her to come home. Uncle Nolan said she hadn’t even listened to the messages they’d each left. Christian’s stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a bunch of river water. Didn’t she want to hear what he had to say?

  He’d been there for only, like, fifteen minutes when her red Subaru appeared. He thought she’d seen him, because it hesitated partway down the block. What if she didn’t want to talk to him and just kept driving? But she parked in the driveway and sat for a minute without moving. Eventually, she pushed the door open, got out and walked across the lawn toward him.

  “Christian.”

  He rose to his feet, feeling shaky. “I came to say I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything immediately. Finally, she nodded. “I think you need to be honest with me.”

  “I will be.”

  She passed him, going up the steps. He hovered as she unlocked the door. Would she close it in his face? But she said, “Come on in,” and he hurried after her.

  “Let me take off my heels.” She dropped her purse on this little side table and went down the hall to her bedroom.

  Christian shifted his weight from foot to foot and began thinking she was taking an awful long time. When she reappeared, she’d changed from her work clothes to jeans and a sweatshirt. She barely looked at him, but he followed her to the kitchen.

  “You’re...” He hesitated.

  His stomach clenched at her blank stare. He swallowed to keep down this acid taste.

  “You’re kind of scaring me,” he blurted.

  As if she hadn’t heard him, she said, “There are cookies in the jar and soda and milk in the fridge.”

  For once, he poured himself a glass of milk, thinking it might settle his stomach, and one for her, too. He put a few cookies on a plate and carried that to the table, too, even if he was the opposite of hungry.

  His mom seemed surprised to see the milk appear in front of her, but she did take a sip, then a longer swallow. When she put the glass down, she focused on him for the first time.

  “Christian, from what I heard, it’s pretty clear you still wish I wasn’t in your life.”

  “No! That’s not true.”

  Her smile looked sad. “I won’t promise to go away no matter what you say. You are my son, whether you like it or not.”

  “That’s not—”

  She talked right over him. “Would you be happiest if I went back to Colorado and you just came for a short visit once or twice a year? Or if I stay in town and we do things together sometimes and maybe you occasionally spend the night?”

  He st
ruggled not to cry. “No! I want...I want everything like it was. With you and me and Uncle Nolan. I thought—” he gulped “—you might marry him.”

  “As part of the plan?”

  “No!” He’d said that a bunch of times, but she hadn’t listened. “It wasn’t like that. He kept saying if all of us stood together, my dad wouldn’t be able to take me away from you and Uncle Nolan. But...Uncle Nolan, he wouldn’t lie, like you’re thinking he did,” Christian continued desperately. “He looks at you all gooey. My friends pretend to gag. But I like it, even though I don’t tell them that.”

  “So exactly how did your uncle ‘play dirty’?”

  “I...don’t think he did. I don’t even know why I said that!”

  “Did he send you here to talk to me?” Her voice was hard. “Be honest, Christian.”

  “He doesn’t even know I’m here.” He held his breath, waiting to see if she believed him.

  She looked at him for a long time, not even blinking. And then she closed her eyes and sighed. She seemed to sag, her head bending forward like it was too heavy for her to hold up.

  “He looks like he did after my mom...” He gulped. “You know, his sister killed herself. Like the most terrible thing in the world happened. He thinks this is his fault, too, and it’s not! It’s mine. I said something stupid, and now you don’t trust us.” He grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and used it to wipe his eyes, hoping she was still looking down and didn’t see. But when he lifted his head, he saw that she had, too. Her face was twisted with some emotion, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

  “Why don’t you have some cookies? They’re good.”

  “I don’t—My stomach feels all—”

  “Mine, too.” Her smile was sort of crooked. “I’ll think about what you said, okay?”

  “I like it when you come to Wind & Waves and have dinner with us and...” He couldn’t say the rest. That he wanted a mom who talked to his teachers and watched his games. Stuff his other mom—Marlee—had never done.

  Her eyes were wet, too. She used the back of her hand instead of her shirt to catch tears. “Okay, Christian. Please don’t look so worried. I’ve loved you since the day you were born. There isn’t anything you could do to make me quit loving you.”