Can't Stop Loving You

by Janelle Taylor

  But not today.

  He knew how badly his mother wanted him to have a normal life—the kind of life she never had, and could never give him. She wanted him to have a wife, and children, and a nice place to live, and a corporate job.

  The corporate job, he had—although it was Kelly’s idea, not his.

  The nice place to live, he also had—and he would be able to keep it provided somebody promptly answered his ROOMMATE WANTED ad.

  The rest—the wife and children—he would never have.

  But even now, he couldn’t help thinking about what might have been. Not with Kelly—with Mariel. After all these years, he still wondered about her, about whether they would have stayed together if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.

  Just as he wondered if he and Kelly would have stayed together if she had.

  “Noah, is everything all right?” his mother asked, her probing dark eyes fastened on his face.

  “Everything is fine, Mom,” he lied, blotting Mariel’s face out of his mind.

  “Well? What do you think?” Mariel anxiously asked Katie Beth Mulligan, her closest friend for thirty years, since they were both in preschool and her name had been Katie Beth Miller. Now she was married to Patrick Mulligan, who had always sat behind her in classroom alphabetical order and had gone from pulling her red braids in elementary school to asking her out in high school.

  Mariel had been maid of honor at their wedding the summer after Katie Beth graduated from the nearby state university with a teaching degree. By then Mariel was following in her footsteps. By the time she had earned her own master’s in elementary education, Katie Beth, the first grade teacher at Rockton Elementary, was going on maternity leave to have her first baby. She recommended to the school board that Mariel temporarily fill her position—and that she take it permanently when Katie Beth became pregnant again three months after giving birth and decided to become a full-time mom.

  Now Katie Beth had four children, and Mariel had been the first grade teacher at Rockton Elementary long enough to have taught Katie Beth’s oldest daughter, Olivia.

  “I think she looks like you around the eyes,” Katie Beth told her, glancing from the image on the computer screen to Mariel’s face. “But I don’t know about the rest.”

  “That’s because you’ve never seen Noah,” Mariel said. “She looks like a combination of me and him. Just seeing this picture is—”

  She broke off, hearing a door slam downstairs.

  “Mariel? I’m back,” Leslie shouted.

  “I’m up here with Katie Beth,” Mariel called, quickly clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner of the screen that bore the downloaded photo of Amber Steadman. The computer complied, and the photo disappeared instantly.

  To Katie Beth, she whispered, “What am I going to do about this? I’m sure it’s her.”

  “Then, tell her.”

  “I can’t tell her something like that with an e-mail,” Mariel protested. “It’s too impersonal.”

  Katie Beth nodded, her freckled face uncharacteristically serious. “Maybe you should call her,” she suggested, her voice also low, lest Leslie overhear.

  “Don’t you think a phone call is almost as impersonal as an e-mail?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  They looked at each other somberly.

  Katie Beth was the sole person in whom Mariel had confided about her teenaged pregnancy and the child she had given up. Mariel hadn’t even told her what had happened until she had been back in Rockton for a few years. By then, the pain of the experience had subsided to a dull ache, and Mariel had planned to keep it to herself forever. But when she visited Katie Beth in the hospital the day after her friend bore her first child, she was caught off guard by a flood of emotion the moment Katie Beth laid the newborn Olivia in Mariel’s arms. She broke down sobbing and was forced to tell a bewildered Katie Beth what had happened.

  They had rarely talked about it in the years since, but Mariel was glad to have unburdened herself—and glad to have Katie Beth to turn to now, when her lost daughter had suddenly materialized in her life.

  “What are you going to do, Mariel?” Katie Beth asked.

  “What can I do?” She leaned past her friend, who was seated in the desk chair, and grabbed the mouse, maneuvering it to shut down the computer. “It’s the end of the school year, and on top of conferences, report cards, and science fair projects, I’m directing two dozen seven-year-olds in a musical version of Snow White. Plus I’ve got Leslie on my hands, and tomorrow I’m giving a bridal shower for sixty people—”

  “Oh, before I forget, Pat is dropping off the punch bowl and extra chairs tomorrow morning because I’ll be late for the shower—Ryan has a birthday party to go to, and Pat can’t bring him because the other three aren’t invited and he has to stay home with them.”

  Mariel smiled despite her dilemma. Katie Beth’s home life was a constant flurry of pediatrician appointments, play dates, and lessons. Now that Pat was working full time down at the Ford dealership in addition to his part-time house-painting business, she really had her hands full.

  “How do you feel about this, Mar?” Katie Beth asked, touching her sleeve as the computer whirred to a halt and the room went silent. “Do you want her in your life?”

  “I live in Missouri, Katie Beth, and she lives in New York. I can’t be in her life, even if she wants me to be there.”

  “But do you want her in yours?”

  Mariel swallowed hard over a lump in her throat. The answer, of course, was yes. Yes, she desperately wanted her child in her life.

  But this was far more complicated than what she wanted. Amber was no longer hers. Mariel had given her up so that she would have a mother and a father and a home and a future. Presumably, she had those things.

  So why is she looking for me?

  And then there was Noah. She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, and she had tried her hardest to put him out of her mind. The unexpected contact with Amber Steadman was a reminder that she wasn’t the only parent involved here. Noah was the girl’s father.

  What if she’s found him, too? Mariel wondered. What if somehow, by contacting Amber, she opened the door to a confrontation with Noah after all these years?

  “Maybe she’ll be better off if I don’t tell her she found me,” Mariel told Katie Beth, cringing at the thought of facing Noah again. “Maybe I should just write back and say sorry, wrong person.”

  “Maybe you should.” Katie Beth’s green eyes were troubled. “Or maybe you should tell her the truth. That you’re her mother…”

  “And I gave her away.” Mariel felt hot tears stinging her eyes. “And then she can hate me, just like Noah did.”

  “From what you said, Noah didn’t hate you,” Katie Beth said gently. “He stood by you the whole time you were pregnant. He visited you in that home for unwed mothers, and he was there when you were in labor—”

  “And afterward, to sign the papers he never wanted to sign.” Mariel shook her head. “That was when it was over between us, Katie Beth. Whatever feelings he might have had left for me throughout the pregnancy were only because his child was inside me. Once she was out, and he realized I was going to go through with giving her up—I’ll never forget the look on his face when he finished signing the adoption papers. It was just so…”

  “Angry?”

  “No. Just…dead. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. He just wasn’t there anymore, not the way he had been there for me. I guess he always had hope I would change my mind.”

  “And you never considered it?”

  “How could I, Katie Beth? I couldn’t marry him and raise a child. I was eighteen. And I couldn’t come home with a baby after never telling my parents I was even pregnant.”

  “I can’t believe none of us ever suspected when you came home that Christmas,” Katie Beth said. “I just figured you had gained the usual freshman ten pounds. We all had. Only mine never came off, and I added five more with ea
ch baby,” she said ruefully, patting her ample hip.

  “I couldn’t believe nobody figured it out, either,” Mariel said. “I spent half of that vacation throwing up and the rest of it sleeping. My parents figured I had the flu. And when I flew back east, they thought I was headed back to college. They never realized I was moving into St. Agatha’s.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering what that had been like. She had taken a cab from the airport to the home for unwed mothers, conscious of the taxi driver’s curious glances in the rearview mirror as he steered over the snowy highways. When she got out to walk up the icy steps of the big renovated Victorian home, he had hurried around to help her and insisted on carrying her bag for her. He had told her he had a one-year-old at home and that his wife was pregnant with their next child, as though they had something in common.

  Even now, Mariel remembered the feeling of shame and utter loneliness that had seeped into her that day.

  “You went through hell, Mariel,” Katie Beth said, clasping her hand. “Maybe you should just leave it alone. Don’t answer the e-mail at all. Let it go.”

  She nodded slowly. But she wasn’t sure she could just let it go.

  Amber Steadman had reached out to her. This was her one chance to connect with her lost child. And she knew in her heart that if she didn’t take it, she would never get it back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The sun was shining for a change in Syracuse, New York, but the June weather was far cooler than in Missouri, where the usual summer heatwave had kicked in earlier than usual this year.

  As Mariel, lugging a large suitcase, walked through the airport parking lot toward her midsized rental car, she shivered despite the sunlight on her shoulders. She was wearing a sleeveless white cotton blouse, khaki shorts, and sandals. She would have been better off in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. She should have known better.

  She couldn’t help remembering the first time she had left the Midwestern heat to come east. It had been surprisingly cool here that day, too. But back then it had been summer’s end, rather than its beginning. And back then, she had come here to embrace her future, rather than her past.

  Almost three weeks had passed since she had received the e-mail from Amber Steadman. She had spent the time finishing out the school year and helping Leslie put away her shower gifts and decorate the small ranch house she and Jed were fixing up a few blocks away.

  Every minute of every day, her daughter had been on her mind.

  She knew what she had to do long before she went down to see Tammy Harper at All Aboard Travel to make reservations for a flight back to New York.

  “Goin’ on vacation, Mariel?” Tammy had asked. They had gone to high school together, and Tammy was the nosy, gossipy type.

  Naturally, Mariel had responded with a simple yes.

  “Syracuse, New York,” Tammy mused. “That anywhere near New York City?”

  “About four hours away,” Mariel had told her, thinking that as a travel agent, Tammy could stand to brush up on her geography skills.

  “So you’re not goin’ to New York City?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you goin’ to Syracuse on vacation? What’s out there?”

  “I went to college nearby,” Mariel had said, gritting her teeth. “I’m going to visit an old friend.”

  That was what she had told Leslie and her father, too—that she had decided to attend a Strasburg reunion.

  “But I’m getting married in less than a month, and you were only there for two semesters,” Leslie had protested.

  One semester, really, Mariel thought now as she opened her suitcase and grabbed her jean jacket to wear. She got behind the wheel and started the engine.

  Actually, maybe the fact that Leslie was getting married in a month was part of the reason Mariel suddenly felt as though she had to get away from Rockton. It wasn’t just her sister’s self-centered dependence on her to handle all the wedding details. She could do without Leslie’s daily dramas, yes. But she could also do without the constant reminder that her sister was about to get married and leave home.

  And leave Mariel.

  Everyone had left. Her mother, her father, and now Leslie.

  Ironic, because Mariel had been the one who had tried to leave them.

  She wondered what people were saying in town about her now. Had they written her off as a spinster schoolteacher yet? Probably.

  And she didn’t care.

  Rather, she shouldn’t care.

  But it hurt, being left alone in a house—and a town—she had never wanted to call her home.

  At least when Mom and Dad and Leslie lived with her, she had a family. Now she had no one.

  Except a daughter who lived half a continent away and who still had no idea that she had found her mother.

  Mariel had decided against e-mailing Amber Steadman in reply, or even calling her. She had decided that an encounter like this should take place in person—it seemed the least potentially traumatic alternative.

  So here she was, back in Syracuse, heading south on the winding, hilly highway that led out of the city toward the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Strasburg was almost an hour’s drive away, with Valley Falls another twenty-five miles beyond that.

  Tammy had made her a reservation at the Super 8 just off the highway exit for Strasburg. Mariel had told her that was fine.

  But when she pulled into the parking lot and eyed the functional, cement two-story building, she realized that this wasn’t where she wanted to be.

  Impulsively, she turned the car around and headed back out to the main road, making a right in the direction of a green STRASBURG 2 MILES sign with an arrow.

  As she drove along the tree-lined highway, with the window down and a crisp breeze billowing through the car, she noticed town house complexes and businesses that weren’t there fifteen years ago. Back then, everything had seemed shabby. Now quite a few of the rambling nineteenth century homes along the familiar route seemed to have had face lifts, with fresh paint, wicker porch furniture, and blooming window boxes. Some were fronted by BED AND BREAKFAST signposts. As she drew closer to town she saw that the old mediocre A&P had been replaced by a twenty-four-hour superstore with a bakery, pharmacy and florist. Nearby, a crumbling barn had been turned into an upscale antiques center.

  As she turned along Main Street, she saw a row of quaint, tidy storefronts. The used bookstore was now a New Age boutique, and several bars had been transformed into cafes with sidewalk tables. Pots spilling over with bright pink and purple impatiens and petunias hung from every lamppost. In the small town green, surrounded by benches, the crumbling fountain she remembered had been restored with a statue at its center and streams of sparkling water spilling from tier to tier.

  She had almost reached the end of Main Street. There, adjacent to the entrance to the campus, a threestory Victorian loomed.

  So it was still here.

  Mariel pulled into a diagonal parking space on the street in front of the building and sat for a moment, staring up at the familiar structure through the windshield.

  It used to be a muddy yellow color, with black trim.

  Now it was painted in a period palate—shades of rose and mauve and eggshell adorning the ornately scrolling gingerbread trim, the wooden shutters, and the rows of fish-scale shingles way up under the gables. The big wraparound porch was still intact, but the white rocking chairs she remembered had been repainted a dark maroon to match the color scheme. The place looked, all in all, like a rose-colored valentine.

  Over the years, she had often thought about the Sweet Briar Inn.

  It was here that Noah had brought her on the September night when they had been alone together for the first time. It was probably here, in the pretty white iron bed she remembered so clearly, that their child had been conceived.

  She opened the car door and got out, walking briskly toward the front steps before she had a chance to change her mind, to question the wisdom of staying in a pl
ace that would only bring back memories of her first love.

  Hell, her only love.

  There had never been another man in her life.

  She had dated, back in college. She had tried to make herself fall in love with one after another of the nice local boys who were interested in her. But every time she went out with one, she felt as though she could see what her life would be like if she married him. With every boy, the vision was the same.

  It was the life her mother had, and Katie Beth had, and Leslie was about to have.

  It was the ordinary life she never wanted.

  Or maybe, she thought as she mounted the wooden steps, she just didn’t want it with the wrong person.

  There had been a time when she had glimpsed a future like that with Noah—marriage, and a home, and a family—and it hadn’t made her want to cringe or run away.

  But she had lost Noah, and she had kept the local college boys at arm’s length, and when she graduated and started teaching, she had found herself the lone unmarried, twentysomething woman in Rockton, aside from Pat Carver, the middle school gym teacher, who lived with another woman and whom nobody liked to talk about.

  There simply wasn’t anybody for Mariel to date as long as she stayed in Rockton. And at this point, she was past considering leaving. It was too late to recapture her dream of becoming an actress, even if she were motivated. The truth was, she had long since lost the burning desire to be onstage. She no longer needed the adoration of thousands—though the adoration of one might be nice. One special person who loved her more than anything else…

  But that wasn’t meant to be.

  Her plans to see the world had evaporated, too. This trip east was the first solo vacation she had taken. Until now, her travels had been limited to yearly trips to Florida with her family, and then alone with Leslie for Thanksgiving and Easter after Dad had moved there. Now that Leslie was getting married, their visits to Dad on holidays wouldn’t even be the same because Jed would be along and Mariel would always feel like a third wheel.