“Daddy, don’t tell him that. He’s the enemy!”
“Susan, hush right now, or leave the room. I mean it.” Henry turned back to Travis. “As I was saying, we have legal counsel too, and she’s assured us we have nothing to worry about. Your mother can’t take Hank.”
“Yes, she can. I promise you, she can. She knows things, she’ll make terrible trouble—” Travis couldn’t sit still any longer. He spun away from Henry, and his agitated steps brought him right into Annie’s path. He stopped short at the sight of her. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen with Hank in her arms, her eyes wide with worry.
“What does she know, Travis? What could she possibly know that would make a judge agree to let her take my child from me?”
“I’d like the answer to that, too.” Mark came up behind Annie and stood next to her with one arm around her shoulders and his free hand curved over his nephew’s back. Hank snuggled his cheek into Annie’s neck as he yawned. He spotted his grandfather and with a sleepy chirp, held his chubby arms out to Henry, who rose and silently took him. Henry sat back down with Hank on his lap as Travis looked on with longing.
“Travis, I think you’d better start talking.” Mark’s voice jerked his attention from Hank, and he met Mark’s stern look with something akin to panic. Mary stepped into the kitchen and took up a position next to Henry, running a gentle hand over Hank’s tousled hair. She gave him an affectionate smile.
Annie’s chin lifted as she faced him. “I don’t know what you could say to make me think your mother has any sort of case for taking my son, Travis. Our lawyer says she doesn’t.”
He wanted, needed to touch her. “Annie, my mother will think she can get Hank just because she’s Ruth Quincy. She knows high-powered people all over the state. A lot of them have been family friends for years, and they’ll go for anything she tells them.” Travis dared to reach out for one of her hands, relieved when she allowed it to rest in his.
He gripped her fingers and turned his attention to the room in general. “I came to see Annie and Hank. When I got here, I sat out in the car and all I could think of was how much you all gave to me when I was a kid, how much you all cared about me. You made me a part of your family, and I’ve missed it like crazy.”
“If you miss it so much, then why did you push it aside?” Annie pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Why did you let your mother dictate to you like that? You said she’d never tell you what to do once you became of age. Well, from what I’ve seen, she’s doing just that, isn’t she?”
“But there’s a reason, Annie. There’s a reason I let my mother have her way—”
“Oh, yes.” Her voice held sharp sarcasm. “Your schooling. I’m sure that was most important, having the Quincy money backing your Yale education. For your information, Travis, you can get scholarships to any school if your grades are good. Including Yale. You could have worked hard to improve your grades and then gone there on your own.”
“It wasn’t just college tuition that she held over my head. I wouldn’t have done what I did only because my mother threatened to take away Yale.”
“Then what else, Travis? You can tell us.” Mary moved to his side and took his shoulders in her hands. He could feel his body start to shake. Under her steady regard, Travis buckled. A part of him admitted one of the very reasons he’d driven down Spring Street in the first place today was to get it all off his chest once and for all. He was so afraid of losing Annie and Hank forever. Someone needed to stop his mother and warn the Turners of what was coming, though they were smart enough to take action themselves.
But it might not be enough, not unless they had all the information he could give them. And that was going to be the hardest thing for them to hear.
When Mary urged him back to his chair, Travis slumped there. Henry patted his knee. Annie leaned against the counter closest to where Hank dozed in her father’s lap, keeping a watchful eye on the baby.
Travis took a deep breath and scanned the faces surrounding him. Susan and Mark. Mary, on one side of him, Henry on the other, holding his son. Annie stood with her arms crossed and a worried frown on her face. He saw how two years had changed her, how motherhood and responsibility had molded her into a beautiful young woman. Yet for all her newfound maturity, she was still so innocent.
God, they all were, these gentle people. He’d never known a family more innocent of the uglier side of life. And he was about to disillusion them in the worst way. At that moment, Travis felt so damned old.
His voice came out in a low croak. He cleared it, and tried again. “Two years ago I had a horrible fight with my mother, the morning after our annual Christmas party.” At Annie’s sudden intake of breath, he flicked her an apologetic glance and nodded slightly. “Yeah, that one. She’d said some rotten things about you, Annie—and your family. I couldn’t take it any longer, and I demanded to know why she felt this way about all of you, why she had always hated you so much. I told her I’d leave and never come back, if she didn’t tell me why. I must have gotten across to her how serious I was because she finally told me.”
He blew out a shuddery breath. “She said a lot about her past, things she’d always kept hidden from me. How she grew up dirt-poor in West Virginia, the oldest daughter of an alcoholic mother and an abusive stepfather. How, when she was only fifteen years old, her parents sold her in a poker game. Her stepfather had played and lost, and the man he lost to would have killed him if he hadn’t offered my mother as payment for his debt.”
“Oh, Travis. Oh, my Lord. Poor little girl. What a terrible way to live.” Mary’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears. She took one of his hands in comfort and winced when his fingers latched onto hers in a bruising, needy grip.
Everyone in the kitchen gaped at him in horror, no doubt trying to imagine people so heartless and inhuman as to sell their own child to pay off a gambling debt. Travis dreaded what he needed to say next, for he knew it would hit them worse than anything else ever could.
“The man who took my mother, who won her in that game . . . was Franklin Turner. Your father.” Travis held Henry’s gaze as he spoke, and watched fresh horror spill into his eyes.
“My father? I don’t—how could—” Shock robbed Henry of his breath as he stammered.
Surprisingly, Susan came forward to reassure Travis first. Rising from her seat, she moved to his side and knelt in front of him, took hold of his free hand. “Finish it, Travis. There’s obviously a great deal more. Say it, and then we can deal with it.”
He nodded, grateful, and he clutched her hand as well as Mary’s. Searching for enough inner courage to get the rest of it out, his eyes locked with Annie’s compassionate gaze. He found all he needed, there.
He turned back to Henry. “Franklin Turner took my mother as his winnings that night, and he . . . he raped her several times.” He heard gasps around the table and gritted his teeth, determined to purge it all out. “He would have kept her locked up somewhere and done it to her again and again. But she got away from him and she ran for miles, until she found the driveway to Quincy Hall. My father and grandmother took her in.” Hot tears rolled down his cheeks, but he couldn’t let go long enough to dash them away. “They took care of her, and a year after it happened, Dad married her.” His voice reduced to a whispery croak. “She never reported it to the police, never spoke of it again until the day she told me. The same day my father had his second stroke.”
His face white and drawn, Henry stood and handed Hank to Mark, who balanced him on his hip and let him play with the ID tags he wore around his neck.
Mary wiped at her wet cheeks and eyed Henry with helpless concern. Travis could imagine what went through her mind: how could anyone related to her wonderful husband have been so plain evil?
“My God, I can’t process this,” Henry rasped. “My father was a bastard and treated my mother abominably. He drank almost every day of his life that I can remember, gambled away all of our savings, sold off
Mama’s few pieces of good heirloom jewelry. He sold my valuable rare stamp collection for whiskey and gambling at the track. But this—” He looked sick to his stomach.
“There’s more.” Travis broke into Henry’s pained reverie with reluctance. What he had to say next was the very worst. Henry seemed to almost brace himself, and the room got deathly quiet as Travis admitted, “My mother told me she’d found a hammer on the floor of the car’s backseat. She got the hammer in her hand, and when the car swung around a curve, she hit him in the head. The blow knocked him out, and the car crashed into an embankment. That’s how she got away. My father said Franklin Turner was found dead in his car the next morning. An autopsy revealed he’d had a heart attack, too. They were never able to find out if he’d died from that, or from the hammer.”
Henry sank slowly onto his chair again and groped for his wife’s hand, then wrapped an arm around her hips when she hastened to his side. She stroked her palm against his nape soothingly. Henry’s breath caught in a choke before he could speak coherently. “Travis, your mother . . . I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry, that my—my—that he would have committed such a terrible crime against her—”
“It’s not your fault,” Travis protested. “I told my mother that the sins of the father—or mother, in my own maternal grandmother’s case—don’t always leave a smear on their children. I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. All she wants to think of is how I fell in with the relatives of a monster.”
Travis stood up to face everyone, and his heart sank at the shock and anger he saw on each face. How could any of them accept this story based on nothing more than his word? Hell, he sure wouldn’t have accepted it, if he were in their place.
“Look,” he appealed, “My mother is dead wrong about so many things. She never made an effort to get to know Annie. She plotted to get me away from all of you. Every single time I’ve tried to live my own life these past two years, she’s threatened to reveal this information to ruin your family. Now she’ll use it as ammunition against you once she finds out about Hank, and not suffer a speck of guilt over it. She’ll try to discredit you. To prove Annie couldn’t possibly be a decent mother.”
He had to push it out of his mind, that his mother might have any kind of right to Hank. Never, not with the kind of hatred she felt.
Tears coursed down Travis’s face as he met the devastation his story left behind. “I wanted you to know. Because if there’s a way for her to use this to her advantage, and if she can find an attorney and a judge she can put in her pocket, she’ll do it.”
He edged toward the door, knowing as a family, they needed time to process this. “I’m going to go. I’m sorry,” he whispered to Henry, who still looked shaken and crushed. “So sorry. Whatever you need, testimony, anything, you’ve got it. I just want you to know I’m on your side. My mother has no right to do this to you. No right to treat Annie this way.” With that, he moved to the back door and let himself out, before he broke down any further. He didn’t dare look at Annie or Hank, otherwise he’d beg to stay. The door swung shut behind him.
Annie hurried to catch up with Travis as he strode down the sidewalk. He turned to face her, his body slumped, his hands shoved into his pockets.
She came to a stop three feet from him. Her eyes searched his and her heart clenched at the anguish she could see in their drenched blue depths. “Travis—”
“It’s all right. I won’t bother you again, Annie. Just let me know if you need me for anything, okay? If my mother’s attorneys contact you, I’ll be there for you and your family.” He took several steps backward. She could see the way he trembled.
“Travis, listen to me—”
He kept his head down, shoulders hunched inward as if to ward off pain. “I don’t have much money right now, but I promise as soon as I can get something set up for Hank, I’ll be sending you regular support for him, and I’ll—”
“Stop!” she shouted, and watched him flinch. His air of utter defeat cracked her aching heart. She stepped forward and pulled him into her embrace. His arms snapped around her body reflexively and he shook even harder.
She buried her face against his shoulder. “I don’t want your money. Hank doesn’t need your money. But he does need his daddy. You can’t put a price on family, Travis. Don’t even try.” She raised her face to his and tenderly brushed at the fresh tears on his cheeks, knowing hers were just as wet. “If you mean it, if you want to be part of this family, if you’re ready to tell your mother what she can do with her control, that’s all I need to know.”
He released a shuddery breath and rested his forehead against hers. Intoxicated by the feel of his arms around her after two years of starvation, Annie clung to him. Maybe it was wrong to put herself through it, or take a chance he wouldn’t hold steady this time. Maybe she courted another broken heart. But she’d never stopped needing him.
“It could get ugly, Annie.” He rumbled the warning against her temple.
Her lips curved into a relieved smile. “I can handle ugly. Just as long as you’re beside me, I can handle just about anything.”
Travis slipped his hands up her arms and cupped her face, and she could have drowned in the love she saw there. He whispered, “Do you still have my ring?”
She nodded. “I still have it.”
“Will you wear it again, Annie? Will you let me put it back in your finger?”
Her head tilted to one side as she considered his request. She wore the ring on a chain around her neck, hidden beneath her clothes. She’d placed it there a few days after their breakup. Except for when she’d been in the hospital giving birth to Hank, it never left her side.
“You first have to tell me what the ring means to you, once it’s back on my finger.”
In her ear he affirmed, “It means I marry you as soon as we can find a preacher. You’re almost nineteen. I’m over twenty-one. I’ve never stopped loving you, not for an instant.” He brushed his mouth over her lobe, and she shivered. He raised her chin with a finger until her eyes met his. “I need you, Annie. You and Hank.”
Her smile bloomed.
“Yes.”
First, Susan noticed the huge smile on Annie’s face when she and Travis returned to the kitchen. Then she saw the sparkle of Travis’s topaz and diamond ring, back on her sister’s finger. Even the most insensitive clod in the world could have felt the love between them.
Maybe it was a match made in heaven, after all. But Susan knew they had a hell of a lot of challenges to face and tribulations to overcome, including Ruth Quincy.
Silently she stepped to Mark and took Hank from his arms. As soon as their brother realized what was going on, he’d probably be too angry to want to cuddle his nephew. Mark used to like Travis. But a lot had happened, and Mark protected the women in their family. Plus, he sported a mean temper.
“Mama? Daddy? We’re getting married.” Soft words from Annie, but the tone stayed firm. Her hand clasped Travis’s as they faced the family, determination on both their faces. Susan leaned against the counter and grinned. Seemed she was getting herself a brother-in-law, after all. She brushed her fingers over Hank’s hair and felt him cuddle closer. He yawned against her neck, needing a proper nap. But no way would she leave the kitchen long enough to take him upstairs. Judging by the dark frown on Mark’s face, she might miss some entertainment.
Next to Annie, Travis seemed to radiate youthful confidence as well, but even from several feet away, Susan spied a film of nervous sweat on his upper lip. He feared they’d all reject him for leaving Annie the way he did. For things that were his fault and all the things which weren’t. For telling them what kind of monster Franklin Turner had been.
Susan watched as Mama got to her feet and shushed Mark for whatever he muttered under his breath. She spoke in an undertone to him, and he ground his teeth together. Susan pursed her lips at him in a mock-kiss and almost laughed aloud at the nasty glare he shot her.
Annie and Travis both clung to Mama w
hen she slipped an arm around each of them. Daddy took her place as soon as she let them go, and he hugged them as well. Annie wiped her tears away and took Hank from Susan’s arms, then carried him over to Travis.
They faced each other. Two identical heads of silky black hair, two sets of eyes, one bright blue and one deep brown. Hank tilted his head to the side, and when Susan glanced at Travis, she saw the same tilt to his head. It brought a sting of emotion to her eyes.
Annie must have seen the similarity as well because she gulped back a laugh/sob, and said to Hank, “Can you say ‘Daddy,’ Hank? This is your daddy. Can you give your daddy a hug?”
Without hesitation, Hank held out his arms to Travis, who awkwardly balanced him on one hip. He flung a look of new-father panic around the room, before his eyes fastened on Hank. The baby stared at him, fascinated.
“Hi, Hank.” Travis visibly shook with emotion.
Hank fluttered long, inky lashes at his father and smiled, showing off several baby teeth. He patted Travis’s cheek with one dimpled hand and exclaimed, “Da!”
Travis brought Hank close to bury his face in his son’s neck. “Yeah. That’s who I am.” His voice broke. “I’m your Da.”
PART FOUR
Reunion
Chapter 25
Every muscle in her body tightened, Ruth perched on the settee in her study. Fury rushed through her.
The old fool! How dare he patronize her? How dare he treat her with such triviality?
She’d expected Judge Timothy Harbawker’s cooperation, his agreement to instigate the paperwork necessary to serve the Turners with a custody challenge. She’d expected him to assure she’d win.
Instead, Timothy patted her hand as if she were a five-year-old imbecile, mouthed a few ridiculous platitudes, and hurried up the stairs, eager to spend his time with Ronald, her vegetative spouse.
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