The Moment of Truth

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She drove by his house several times on Saturday, in between buying groceries, stopping in at the vet clinic, dropping by the home of a new Love To Go Around pet owner and spending an hour at Sharon’s house with her biology study group. Josh wasn’t home any of the times. But L.G. was. She could hear him howling. So she went in and let him out.

  “I have to talk to your dad,” she told the puppy. But she couldn’t tell him why. She hadn’t even told Lindy or Kari yet. Life was going on as normal. It was the only way she could manage. “But I can’t call him. I can’t do this over the phone.”

  It would be cruel to give devastating news over the telephone.

  * * *

  THE FIRST THING Josh noticed when he walked in after golf was that the empty containers he’d left on the counter were gone.

  Dana had been there.

  L.G. played him, though, acting as if he’d been alone for days when Josh let him out of his kennel. The goofball didn’t know he should have peed the second he hit the ground if he’d had any hope of Josh falling for the charade.

  “You had company,” he said instead as he made his way to the master bathroom to shower off, L.G. following at his heels. He wasn’t jealous of the dog. Not exactly. “What did she have to say?” he asked.

  The puppy grabbed his shoe and carried it into the bathroom as Josh stripped, lying with it on the floor outside the shower.

  A habit borne from Josh carrying the shoe in every morning, and locking the dog in the bathroom with him so he didn’t have to worry about the rest of the house while he showered.

  “Was she having a busy day?” he asked, stepping under the warm spray.

  It didn’t occur to him to wonder why she’d been there at all, until he was out of the shower and getting dressed for his dinner date with Ian and Amy.

  Once he was all ready, he attached his phone holster to his belt—but held on to the phone.

  You were here.

  Not sure he’d get a response right away, he waited, anyway.

  Yeah. I stopped by and knocked. You weren’t there, but L.G. was howling so I let him out. I didn’t figure you’d mind.

  ‘Course not. Glad he had company. You need something?

  She could have just been stopping by to say hello. It was the first time he could remember wishing he’d been with a woman rather than on a golf course.

  I haven’t seen you in a few days. You going to be around tonight?

  The answer was no. “No.” He told himself out loud. Shook his head. And typed, Later. L.G. and I are having dinner with a couple who might be needing a puppy.

  What time later?

  He hadn’t asked her for anything. Hadn’t contacted her at all. She’d come to him. Which meant that he was supposed to do this. Right? For her.

  Nine.

  Dinner was at six. He could easily be home by then. And he could talk to her about finding a puppy for Amy. Or about anything else she wanted to talk about. She wanted to see him, and his new life was about doing things for other people rather than for himself.

  My place or yours?

  She was being kind of pushy. Josh grinned.

  You pick.

  I’ll come there.

  Far more pleased than he should have been, Josh picked up his pup and headed out to the SUV, eager to eat and get back home again.

  * * *

  DANA LIKED MARK and Addy on sight. Almost as much as she liked Lillie and Jon and Abraham. But her favorite that Saturday night was Nonnie. The tiny, wheelchair-bound woman had claimed Dana as her date, and within thirty seconds of her arrival, Dana felt like one of the family.

  Lindy and Harrison rolled around and pounced and slept happily in Lillie’s gated-off kitchen. Abraham charmed everyone.

  The evening would have been nearly perfect—if she’d been able to stop staring at Abraham and wondering what it would be like to have a two-year-old of her own. And still be in school. Panic was new to her and she didn’t wear it well.

  “What’s eatin’ ya?” Nonnie leaned over to ask while the two couples conferred over the grill in the backyard, trying to determine if the steaks were done to perfection, or merely done.

  “I’m fine, why?”

  “You ain’t fine, but I know to mind my own business. You come find me when you’re ready to talk.”

  Dana didn’t even know the woman but heard herself promising that she’d do just that. And then pulled out her smartphone to add Nonnie’s address and cell phone number to her contact list.

  She watched the clock all through dinner, in between watching Abraham. Mark and Jon kept up a running repartee, but Dana couldn’t get her mind to focus on their humorous attempts to one-up each other.

  Lillie sidled up to her as Dana helped her carry the dishes into the kitchen after everyone had finished eating. “You okay?” the other woman asked.

  “Of course. I’m fine.” She was fine. Healthy. Able. Lucky, really.

  “You seem off.”

  “I just...” She wanted to talk to Lillie in the worst way. But her problems weren’t just her own. “I...slept with...someone...and I wish I hadn’t.” Not quite the truth, either, and yet, in tonight’s context it was.

  “You’re allowed to make mistakes, you know,” Lillie said softly, her gaze compassionate.

  No, she wasn’t. She had to be perfect in every way.

  Abraham started to fuss and Lillie turned her head sharply in the little boy’s direction, as Dana reflected on the thought that had just popped into her mind.

  She had to be perfect....

  “He’s tired,” Lillie said as Abraham came toward them rubbing his eyes. Setting down the dishes in her hands to reach for the little boy, Lillie continued, “You have my cell number. Call me tomorrow.”

  Nodding, Dana busied herself with washing the dishes while she reeled in her thoughts. She didn’t have to be perfect anymore. She wasn’t back in Indiana, in a family where she didn’t fit. In Shelter Valley her existence wasn’t a mistake.

  By eight-thirty, when she couldn’t sit still any longer, Dana excused herself.

  “We’re teaching Addy and Lillie how to play five-card stud,” Jon said to her. “I remember hearing you were pretty good at it.”

  She’d mentioned the game in math class one day, in response to a question the professor had asked. It had had to do with a calculus problem.

  “I wouldn’t want your wives to see me whup the two of you,” she said with a grin, tucking Lindy Lu under her arm. Truth was, she’d be the loser at any game she attempted to play right then.

  She’d been struck with a complete inability to concentrate—an inability that was increasing with every minute that passed.

  If she wasn’t careful she was going to burst into tears.

  Calm. She just had to stay calm.

  To put one foot in front of the other.

  She knew two things for sure. She was going to get through this.

  And tears wouldn’t change anything.

  * * *

  SHE’D BEEN THERE fifteen minutes and Josh wasn’t nearly as happy as he had been when he’d opened the door to her.

  Something was different about her.

  He’d told Dana about Ian and Amy, about the dinner he’d had at his work associate’s home and asked her if she’d be willing to find a rescue dog for them.

  “Are they particular about whether or not it’s a puppy?”

  “They were, but I took L.G. over with me and told them about the work you do, the Love To Go Around thing, and they said they’re willing to take either an abandoned pup, like him, or any other dog that needs a home.”

  “Do they have children?”

  “No, does it matter?”

  She shrugged but didn’t look at him. Didn�
�t smile. “Some breeds are better with children than others. And some rescue dogs are timid and afraid around children. What size is their backyard?”

  “Same as mine. And it has a block fence, as well.”

  “Have they ever had a dog before?”

  “Ian has. I’m not sure about Amy.”

  “I’m sure I can find something for them,” she said, heading out in the yard to scoop up that ridiculously small ball of fur she called a dog. “How soon do they want it?”

  “They’re ready now.”

  “I’ve got a fifteen-pound, short-haired mix that’s about a year old in foster care. If you give me their contact information, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Pulling out his phone, Josh texted her his contact listing for Ian as they headed back inside. She’d said she wanted to see him, but she sure wasn’t acting like it.

  “You mad at me?”

  “Absolutely not.” She walked in ahead of him and didn’t turn around as she responded. “You want to go for a walk?”

  “With the dogs?”

  “I thought maybe we could leave them here.” She’d brought a little kennel in with her.

  Josh was happy to do anything she wanted to do. He was just glad to see her. But, stopping in front of her, he bent until she was looking him in the eye. “You sure you aren’t mad at me?”

  “What do I have to be mad at you about?”

  He searched her wide-open gaze and couldn’t find any subterfuge there. “I don’t know,” he said. But he wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d pissed her off. “Maybe I should have done something I didn’t do.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Josh,” she said, her tone softening to one he was more familiar with.

  “Let’s go for a walk, then.”

  Taking a second to change into tennis shoes, Josh set off with her. And realized he couldn’t remember a single time in his entire life when he’d walked just to walk.

  Hunched against the chill, Dana half buried her face in the thick black cardigan sweater she was wearing over her jeans and shoved her hands in her pockets.

  “I stopped by today because I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Many years ago my mother slept with a guy she’d just met. Her mother had just died and she felt all alone in the world. She was in a bar, drinking—my mother never drank—and she told the guy all about her dad being killed in the army when she was a kid. He’d been empathetic and supportive, encouraging her to lean on him for as long as she needed. She ended up spending the night with him, but when she woke up the next morning, he was gone. He’d left no phone number or address, and when she looked him up, there was no listing for him. She figured that he’d lied about his name, that he was married or something. She met Daniel the next day through a mutual friend and they hit it off immediately.”

  He’d been perfectly warm earlier in the pullover sweater he’d worn in Ian’s backyard. Suddenly, he was chilled. Dana was going to tell him she’d made a mistake in having slept with him. She’d met someone else. Someone she’d hit it off with immediately.

  She stepped up their pace. He was fine with that.

  The night air was nice. Walking just for the sake of walking was nice. He was going to do it more.

  They turned a corner onto a street that was wider than his, with yards that were larger than his, homes with more square footage than his had, and no sidewalks. Dana started down the side of the street, walking close to the gutter.

  “Within three months of meeting, Mom and Daniel were running off to Las Vegas to get married. He had no immediate family, either, at least not that he was close to, and they were eager to move into the same home and start a life together.”

  Made sense to him.

  And then he remembered what she’d said about Daniel being her stepfather. And his name on her birth certificate.

  Obviously Dana’s father was the lowlife who had sex with a grieving drunk woman and then ran off.

  Daniel was one hell of a stand-up guy to have married a woman pregnant with another man’s child. He could see why Dana felt beholden to the guy. But her conception hadn’t been her choice. Or her fault, either. She had to see that.

  “My mother knew she was pregnant when she married Daniel, but she didn’t tell him.”

  Whoa. “Did she think the baby was his?”

  It was dark out. There were very few streetlights on the road they’d taken. But he could still see the shake of Dana’s head. “She knew she was pregnant before she slept with Daniel.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “She didn’t tell him after I was born, either,” Dana continued, marching forward with her hands shoved in her pockets, her head bent against the cold. “He thought I was his.”

  “When did he find out?”

  He was assuming the other man knew, since Dana did. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Daniel had just found out...

  “The same time I did.” Dana put an end to his theory before it was even fully formulated. “I was thirteen. We were on a father-daughter field trip with school. We’d gone to a forensic museum and were the first ones to raise our hands when they asked for volunteers for a DNA demonstration.”

  Holy hell. He knew what was coming and couldn’t imagine.

  “While forensic DNA tests take a long time because of all of the steps involved, the test to actually compare one sample to another only takes about thirty-five minutes to run. That’s a total of an hour and ten minutes for two samples. They sent us off to lunch and told us that when we came back after lunch they’d show us how our DNA is connected.”

  They were up to a brisk walk. Josh put his arm around Dana. She didn’t settle into him as Michelle would have done. But she didn’t shrug him off, either.

  “Instead, they came into the lunch room and found us. They took Daniel aside and talked to him while I waited with another technician in the lab. He was my best friend in the world when he walked off. And a stranger when he came back.”

  “He did not put that on you.”

  “No. He was kind. Just in shock.”

  “So who told you what they’d found?”

  “My mom. Later that night. We finished the field trip. The technician told everyone that the sample had been destroyed in the testing and they used that as an example of how sensitive the tests can be and how expensive, and moved us quickly on to the next exhibit. I couldn’t tell you what it was. I don’t remember much else about the day except Daniel acting so weird. I couldn’t figure out why he was so upset that they’d destroyed our test.”

  “I respect the fact that he waited to talk to your mother before saying anything to you.”

  “He’s a good man,” Dana said without any of the obvious affection he’d heard in her tone when she’d been telling the first part of the story. “And I love my mother, too,” she said. “She made a mistake. And she’s spent the rest of her life paying for it.”

  “Did Daniel divorce her? They’d have had your two sisters by then, right?”

  “Yeah, and no, they didn’t divorce. They love each other. But that day changed our lives completely. My sisters changed as soon as they found out. I’d always been the oldest, of course, but also the boss of them. They no longer listened to me like they used to. My mother’s lie is there, like a member of the family. Daniel lost his ability to trust.”

  And maybe Dana had, too?

  They turned another corner and were back on a sidewalk but the yards were still an acre or more in size, and the streetlights low. He pulled her a little closer so they could fit side by side on the poured cement.

  “From that day forward, Daniel has been unsure if Mom married him because of me, because she was afraid to be a pregnant single woman, because she wanted a father for her child and a wed
ding ring for her finger when she gave birth or because she really fell in love with him like he’d fallen in love with her.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I can, too. Completely. And ever since then, he’s had this thing where he puts her in situations where she has to choose between him and me. She has to prove that she’d put him first. That he was the reason she married him, not me.”

  “You can’t possibly ask a woman to choose between her child and her husband.”

  “Sure you can. It happens all the time. Especially in blended families. But it’s not fair to anyone involved.”

  “You think they would have been better off if they’d divorced?”

  “I can’t make that call.”

  “You think you would have been better off?”

  “I don’t know that, either. I just know that my life changed that day. I wasn’t really a Harris. And I didn’t know what I was.”

  “Daniel loved you, though. That couldn’t have changed.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he did. But I was also a constant reminder of Mom’s lie, of the fact that I was another man’s child who’d been foisted on him without him having any say in the matter. And those feelings took precedence. He wasn’t abusive, or neglectful, really. We just weren’t close anymore. I’d ceased being his little girl. He made sure I was safe and had what I needed, but we never had another father-daughter date. And when he’d take time out to do something fun like play video games, it was always with my sisters, not with me. Same for attending school functions.”

  “And this is why your mother didn’t stand up for you when he wanted to marry you off to his friend’s son.”

  “Yep.”

  “And why you agreed.”