“Give me another chance,” he protested.
“Ach, Jack—”
“For Nattie’s sake, if not for mine.”
She shook her head slightly, but her eyes softened at the mention of Nattie.
“You took care of us for years, Laura. I want to take care of you now.” His voice cracked with emotion, and he had to look away for a moment before whispering, “Come back to us.”
Her eyes grew misty, and for the first time, she seemed receptive to him. He swallowed and edged closer, leaning in, not sure if she’d let him kiss her, wondering if he was about to break a profound taboo, an Englisher kissing an Amishwoman. But then he was struck, suddenly, by the realization that never once, in all of their years together, had he ever imagined kissing her.
And why was that? He was inches from her face—she had already closed her eyes—when he stopped, as if frozen in his tracks.
Laura opened her eyes, and a look of bemusement fell over her. She leaned back, and her words came out playfully. “You couldn’t do it, could ya, Jack?”
He stared at her, trying to make sense of his conflicted emotions. “I’m sorry . . . I mean . . . I thought . . .”
Laura’s eyes danced with humor, and she laughed, shaking her head. “Do ya understand now?”
“It doesn’t change anything,” he replied, feeling defensive and sheepish all at once.
She laughed again. “Oh, Jack! It changes everything.”
“Laura—” He stopped, tempted to simply blurt out what he knew, that she was Nattie’s mother, but sighed with frustration.
“We were good friends, partners even,” she continued. “And I will always miss that.”
“Then let’s make this work,” Jack said, still trying to fix the mess he’d made.
Laura’s eyes twinkled again, but she shook her head. “Jack, you are handsome and kind, a gut man, and you’ve always looked out for me. But I want something more. I want a love like I had with Jonathan. And you should seek that, too.”
She looked down for a moment, and when she met his gaze again, a flicker of recognition crossed her features. Her eyes widened in surprise. “You think I’m Nattie’s mother, don’t you? Isn’t that what this is all about?”
He nodded. “You can tell me, Laura.”
She pursed her lips, and her words came out with strong determination. “Jack, as much as I love Nattie, she is not my child. Jonathan and I . . .” Her voice trailed off, and a rosy blush crept across her face. “There was no baby, Jack. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”
Laura looked away, leaving Jack dumbstruck by her fervent denial. He took another breath and let it out slowly, nodding slightly before staring straight ahead. He considered the test again. Hadn’t he read that sometimes these DNA tests were simply wrong? Contaminated? Maybe he’d made a mistake. Either way, it didn’t matter anymore.
A breeze brushed against them. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, lowering the temperature suddenly. She seemed out of breath again. He sighed and slumped in the bench, staring straight ahead, toward the street. “If you believe nothing else, believe that.”
He did believe her. He wished he didn’t. Truth was, he’d wanted Laura to be Nattie’s mother.
“I’m sorry,” she said, seeing his obvious dejection.
“No,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here.”
“It’s okay, Jack.” She touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, too embarrassed to speak, and really, there was nothing more to say. He got up, and she followed suit. Silently, they walked across the park, Laura hugging herself tightly, stepping carefully through the freshly mown grass, her tennis shoes padding as she navigated around the small clumps.
They got in the truck and he drove down the street. On the way to the farm, Laura said nothing, enduring the silence. He was back to square one. Worse than square one. What began as a foolish attempt to bring someone into Nattie’s life had only made matters worse. Laura was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
He turned into her cousin’s driveway again and traveled the gravel road to her house. Coming to a stop, he shifted into Park, and they sat there as the truck idled for a moment.
Laura put her hand on the latch. “Well . . .”
“I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you.”
She smiled. “Did you want to try again?”
Her reply broke through the gloominess, and Jack couldn’t help but laugh. Laura joined in, the earlier tension slipping away.
Another wave of silence engulfed them, but Laura didn’t get out. She bit her lip and finally spoke. “There’s something else,” she said. “This isn’t my place, but I think ya have a right to know, Jack.”
He nodded, if only to encourage her to continue. He had no idea where she was going with this.
“The lab results,” she added, lowering her voice to a whisper, as if telling a grave secret. “Ya didn’t make a mistake, okay? I suspected it for years, but I never lied to you, Jack. It just wasn’t my truth to tell.”
He frowned. “Laura, I don’t under—”
“Be gentle, okay? Sometimes we keep secrets for a reason.”
Before he could ask her to explain, she grabbed the handle, pulled it down, and stepped out of his truck.
Jack sat there, bewildered, as Laura climbed the porch steps, opened the screen door, and disappeared inside.
What on earth does she mean?
He shook his head. The sun was setting, and Nattie would be anxious. He needed to get back, to try to salvage what remained of their lives.
He put the truck into gear and turned around in front of the barn, pausing just as Samuel Troyer rounded the corner. He waved, and Jack returned the gesture, thinking that if he ever saw the young man again, Samuel would be married and sprouting a full beard. Jack smiled at the thought, took another breath, and headed down the drive, stopping at the edge of the highway.
Something wasn’t right.
He squinted through the dust particles his tires had kicked up. In the rearview mirror, a hundred feet behind him, he could see Samuel crossing the road, heading to the house. Something nagged at Jack, but it had nothing to do with Laura’s strange riddle.
Then what is it? He racked his brain. He glanced at Samuel again, clean and shiny-faced Samuel, soon to grow a full beard because that’s what Amish boys do when they marry their sweethearts.
And then it hit him.
Heart beating against his chest, Jack put the truck into reverse and backed up the long driveway, stopping in front of the house again. Scrambling up the porch, Jack pounded on the screen door. It rattled against the old frame.
“Laura?”
No response, so he pounded again. Laura appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, her brow furrowed in concern. “Jack? What—”
He pulled her onto the porch, then yanked out his phone, typing Lancaster County Market into the search bar. Laura waited for him to speak, her eyes narrowing. “Jack, what is it?”
“Jonathan,” he said simply.
Laura looked at him, confused. “What about him?”
The site came up, and Jack clicked on the adjacent link, the company website. And then he navigated to the photo, the one with the caption: Jonathan and Becca Lynn Glick.
Jack handed the phone to Laura. She took it curiously. She stared at it for a moment, her eyes softening. “Sure, that’s him.”
“And the woman?” Jack asked.
“Jah, that’s Becca Lynn, his sister,” she said. “Remember I told you about her?”
He hadn’t remembered, not until now. The younger sister with special needs.
Laura’s face went pale. “Wait a minute. When was this taken?”
Jack told her it must be recent and pointed to the copyright on the newly created website. She frowned. “No. That can’t be.” She stared at it, shaking her head. “There must be some mistake.”
They lied to her, he realized. To punish her.
Laura gripped his phone tighter, but her hands were shaking. Finally she handed it back, tears slipping down her cheeks. She wiped them away brusquely, almost angrily, and looked off into the distance, folding her arms and breathing heavily now, hope and sadness mingling in equal measure on her face.
Jack could only imagine what was going through her mind: her first love, still unmarried, and her family, keeping the truth from her all these years.
“My Jonathan . . .” She turned to him, wonder shining in her eyes. “Could it be he’s waited for me?” She brushed another tear away, then whispered, “And here, all this time, I’ve stubbornly refused to go home.” Her expression changed then, and she smiled tenuously.
“You’ll go back, then?” Jack asked.
She nodded, adding quickly, “I’ll stay in touch with you and Nattie . . . let you know how it goes for me, okay?”
“We’ll worry,” he said. “Until we hear something.”
She smiled, but already her thoughts seemed a thousand miles away. Laura stood there for a moment longer, her eyes shining in the lowering sun. She took in a deep breath, as if sensing the world for the first time, and when she turned to him, he’d never seen her so happy.
But it worried him sick. Laura hadn’t been home in years. What will she find?
“’Bye,” Jack whispered, but Laura was already gone, letting the screen door slap behind her and rushing up the stairs as if she couldn’t wait another minute for her new life to begin.
Back in the truck cab, Jack paused, struggling with his own mixture of emotions. Protect her, Lord, he thought before putting the truck into gear and heading back down the driveway. At the intersection, he pulled out onto the highway, focusing on the road, accelerating to sixty. The truck rattled a bit, showing its age, but the engine was strong.
Good ol’ Billy Bob, he thought, thinking of Nattie waiting for him at Diane’s.
His head continued to spin, but he smiled suddenly, remembering Laura’s comeback: “Would you like to try again?”
He sighed. I couldn’t even kiss her.
Minutes later, he pulled up to the house, and Nattie came careering out of the Farleys’ door. It warmed his heart, and tears filled his eyes. No matter what, Nattie always seemed so happy to see him, even on those occasions when she wasn’t all that happy with him.
He didn’t bother getting out of the truck. Nattie pulled open the door and, without due process, hopped inside. “Where are we off to, Dad-ee-o? Just so you know, there’s nothing in the fridge.”
He smiled. “Nothing?”
“Nothing edible.” She slapped the seat. “Oh! I forgot something. I want to show you my picture.”
“I’ll wait.”
She hopped out and ran to the house, using her own key to open the door.
From the door of her own home, Diane caught his attention and waved, and he waved back.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to calm his racing mind. What a day. He gripped the steering wheel, wishing he could turn his brain off, but Laura’s words, buried in the momentous discovery that Jonathan was still single, came back to him. “I suspected it for years.”
He blew out a frustrated breath. Suspected what?
Another moment passed; and then a shiver crawled up his spine. It felt like a key slipping into a lock, the tumblers clicking into place. “I never lied to you,” Laura had said. “It just wasn’t my truth to tell.”
He groaned inwardly. Nattie was pulling open the truck door again, holding her latest masterpiece, when the final realization struck him hard.
Nattie’s mother had been with them all along.
Chapter 37
Not surprisingly, no one met Kelly at Chicago O’Hare, a sprawling warehouse of giant tunnel-like halls and endless gates, all leading somewhere, but serving only to magnify her growing nerves.
Kelly was about to meet her daughter for the first time in nine years, and after the initial excitement, she’d slowly grown terrified. Of course, Megan wouldn’t remember her, but what if Megan didn’t like her?
At the rental-car agency, which seemed miles from her arrival gate, Kelly produced her license and credit card for the woman behind the counter.
“For now, I’d like it just through the weekend,” Kelly said as she signed the contract. “But can I add on days if necessary?”
The woman nodded, putting on her glasses before circling a phone number on Kelly’s copy of the paper work. “Just call us before it’s due back, and we’ll quote you a new price.”
Since she was friendly enough, Kelly dug her notes out of her purse. “Any idea how far it is to 900 North Michigan?” she ventured, her heart pounding again.
“In this traffic?” the woman said with a frown. “Might be a good forty minutes, honey.”
Kelly groaned and headed out of the building, squinting at the blazing sun reflecting off the hundreds of windshields. Grabbing her sunglasses, she followed the numbers until she found 204, dropped her roller bag into the trunk of a very compact tan Chevy, and buckled into the driver’s seat.
After following the signs out of the parking lot, ambiguous arrows that seemed to point everywhere, she managed her way onto I-90. According to her GPS, she was now twenty-eight minutes from her destination, cutting it rather close, considering traffic and parking.
Very tight, she thought, her nerves heightening.
From the moment Ernie had told her the news, she’d brooded over this meeting, obsessing about it, praying over it. How would she feel when she saw Megan’s adoptive parents? Already, she’d alternated between relief, joy, despair, and rage.
They bought my baby, she thought. And since she’d agreed not to press charges, the parents had agreed to introduce Kelly into Megan’s life. How dare they place conditions?
“Forgive,” Chet and Eloise had counseled her. She’d stayed overnight in the couple’s home, in the beautifully appointed spare bedroom suite. They’d fed her a gourmet breakfast in the morning, and then Chet had driven her to the airport.
“I do forgive,” she’d told them, “but it’s easier said than done.”
“They didn’t know,” Chet reminded her.
But they should have, Kelly thought. They didn’t want to know. They wanted their beautiful brown-eyed beauty, their little trophy child. My child.
She drove in mind-numbing traffic for as long as the GPS had promised, then found her destination. The office itself was on the twelfth floor of a limestone and glass high-rise in the middle of downtown Chicago, anchored by upscale shops at the street level, and thankfully, underground parking.
She located a spot for her car and gathered her things in the dingy darkness, making her way quickly to the bank of elevators leading up to the offices. She wrinkled her nose at the dank, oily smell of the parking lot and breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors finally opened with a muted ping.
A tranquil environment greeted her—lush carpet, etched glass, dark wood, and modern art.
The blond woman at the front desk greeted her with a guarded but professional smile.
“Kelly Maines,” Kelly said softly. “For Michael Stedman.”
“Maines,” the woman said out loud, clicking the keys on her keyboard, the artificial smile still in place. Finally she asked her to have a seat and spoke into her phone. Kelly could imagine the conversation: “We have an unfortunate interruption, a poorly dressed woman who goes by the tedious name of Maines.”
Kelly clutched her own phone and texted Chet to soothe his worries. Earlier, he’d fretted, “Downtown Chicago is no picnic.” He’d planned to accompany her to the meeting, but a family illness had kept him away.
I’m here, she texted.
Wonderful, he responded. I was praying.
She smiled. Sometimes Chet treated her as if she were barely out of middle school, and yet it was comforting.
How can I ever thank you?
He texted back: The smile on your face is all the thanks we’ll ever need.
I’m so happy, she replied, perhaps the worst lie she’d told in years.
Truth was, she was scared to death. Yes, she wanted desperately to see her daughter, but her own emotions, tangled and contradictory like a twisting tornado switching directions at a whim, threatened to tear her apart. She had no idea what she was going to say to her daughter’s parents. She had no planned speech. No kind words: “Thank you for watching over her all these years.” Not at the moment. Maybe later. Maybe never.
She bowed her head subtly, lest the receptionist roll her eyes, and prayed. Again. She’d prayed constantly since that phone call from Ernie, but nothing seemed to resolve the turmoil of emotions.
From what Chet said, these people were rich. As in yachts and jets, vacation homes in Aspen and Paris, and whatever else people purchased when they had enough money to buy other people’s children.
She closed her eyes. Help me be kind, Lord.
Suddenly the door burst open and a friendly faced man—isn’t he too young to be an attorney?—wearing an immaculate blue-gray suit greeted her warmly. “So! You must be Kelly Maines!”
He had wavy brown shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle, about an inch from requiring restraint of some sort. Fortunately, the suit compensated for his Bohemian appearance.
Kelly forced a smile as he took her hands in his.
“I’m Michael.” He pushed open the door and gestured for her to go first. “It’s an honor to meet you. I have to say, you look just like Megan.”
Kelly felt as if she’d been punched. Her head was fuzzy again, and she feared she might actually faint.
Oblivious to the effect of his insensitive remark, Michael led the way down the hall, past a dozen cubicles. Halfway to where he seemed to be leading her, she stopped, frozen. Paralyzed.
I can’t, she thought, feeling dizzy.
Michael was several yards beyond her before he realized she wasn’t with him anymore. He turned around. “Kelly? Are you okay?”
No, she thought, looking down, leaning over, hands on her knees.
“Ellen!” she heard him call.
Someone answered from the cubicle next to her, and suddenly there was a young brunette woman holding her arm and telling her, “Breathe, honey. Do you want to sit down? Do you need something to drink?”
Child of Mine Page 33