The Soldier's Secret Child

by Lee Tobin McClain

  “So you made a deal with her.” He still sounded a little skeptical.

  “Yes, if that’s what you want to call it.” She stood, full of restless energy, and paced over to the fireplace, rearranging the collection of colored glass bottles on the mantel. “She’s had a lot of anxiety, which is common in people recovering from a heart attack. She’s on several new medications, and one of them causes fatigue and dizziness. The social worker was going to insist on having her go to a nursing home for proper care, which she couldn’t afford, so this was a good arrangement.” She looked over at him, mentally daring him to question her.

  He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “A nursing home. Wow.”

  “It wouldn’t have suited her.”

  “For how long? How long do you think she’ll need the extra care?”

  Lacey shrugged, moved an amber bottle to better catch the sun. “I don’t know. Usually people take a couple of months to get back up to speed. And your brother’s happy to pay for as long as we need.”

  Vito’s dark eyebrows shot up. “She told him and not me?”

  “She said you’d find out soon enough, when you came back home.”

  “And he’s paying for everything?”

  “He felt bad, being so far away, and apparently he begged her to let him help. Look, if you want to make a change in her care, I totally understand.” It would mess up her own plans, of course; she’d given notice at the hospital only when she had this job to see her through, so if Nonna left, she’d have to apply for a part-time job right away. But Nonna was improving daily. If she had Vito with her, and he could focus on her needs, she’d probably be fine. A lot of her anxiety and depression stemmed from loneliness and fear.

  Truth was, Lacey had found the older woman a hedge against her own loneliness, as her brother had gotten more and more involved in his wedding plans.

  Now Buck and Gina and their dogs would be living in a little cottage on the other side of town. She’d see them a lot, but it wouldn’t be the same as having Buck living here. “Whatever you decide,” she said. “For now, we’d better go reassure your grandma, and then I need to attend to the rest of my guests.”

  * * *

  Vito followed Lacey back into his grandmother’s room, his mind reeling. Nonna had mostly raised him and his brother, Eugene, after their parents’ accident, and she was one of the few family members he had left. More to the point, he was one of her only family members, and he should have been here for her.

  Everyone treated him like he was made of glass, but the fact was, he was perfectly healthy on the inside. His surgeries had been a success, and his hearing loss was corrected with state-of-the-art hearing aids, courtesy of the VA.

  He just looked bad.

  And while the scars that slashed across his face, the worse ones on his chest, made it even more unlikely that he’d achieve his dream of marriage and a large family, he couldn’t blame his bachelorhood entirely on the war. Women had always liked him, yes—as a friend. And nothing but a friend. He lacked the cool charisma that most women seemed to want in a boyfriend or husband.

  Entering his grandmother’s room, he pulled up a chair for Lacey, and then sat down on the edge of Nonna’s bed, carefully, trying not to jolt her out of her light doze. He was newly conscious that she was pale, and thinner than she’d been. A glance around the attractive bedroom revealed a stash of pill bottles he hadn’t noticed before.

  Nonna’s eyes fluttered open and she reached out.

  He caught her hand in his. “Hey, how’re you feeling?”

  She pursed her lips and glared at Lacey. “You told him about my heart.”

  “Yes, I told him! Of course I told him!” Lacey’s voice had a fond but scolding tone. “You should have let him know yourself, Nonna. I thought you had.”

  He squeezed his grandmother’s hand. “Don’t you know I would’ve dropped everything and come?”

  Nonna made a disgusted noise. “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. You and your brother have your own lives to lead. And I was able to find a very good arrangement on my own.” She smiled at Lacey.

  “It is a good arrangement, and I’m glad for it.” Vito glanced over at Lacey, who had gotten up to pour water into a small vase of flowers.

  With its blue-patterned wallpaper, lamp-lit bedside table and a handmade quilt on the bed, the room was cozy. Through the door of the small private bathroom, he glimpsed handicapped-accessible rails and a shower seat.

  Yes, this was a good situation for her. “Look, I want to take you back to the house, but we’ll wait until you’re a little better.”

  Nonna started to say something, and then broke off, picking restlessly at the blanket.

  “I haven’t even been over to see the place yet,” he continued, making plans as he thought it through. “I just got into town. But I’ll check it out, make sure you’ve got everything you need.”

  “About that, dear...” Nonna’s voice sounded uncharacteristically subdued.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m planning to live there with you for a while.” He smiled. It was true comfort, knowing he could come back to Rescue River anytime and find a welcome, a place to stay and a home-cooked meal.

  Lacey nodded approvingly, and for some reason it warmed Vito to see it.

  “Neither one of us will be able to live there,” Nonna said, her voice small.

  Lacey’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and he could feel the same expression on his own face. “What do you mean?”

  “Now, don’t be angry, either of you,” she said, grasping his hand, “but I rented out the house.”

  “You what?”

  “When did you do that?” Lacey sounded bewildered.

  “We signed the papers yesterday when you were out grocery shopping,” Nonna said, looking everywhere but at Vito and Lacey.

  “Who’d you rent it to?” If it had just been finalized yesterday, surely everything could be revoked once the situation was explained. Lacey hadn’t said anything about cognitive problems, but Nonna was in her early eighties. Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Nonna smiled and clasped her hands together. “The most lovely migrant family,” she said. “Three children and another on the way, and they’re hoping to find a way to settle here. I gave them a good price, and they’re going to keep the place up and do some repairs for me.”

  “Nonna...” Vito didn’t know where to begin. He knew that this was the way things worked in his hometown—a lot of bartering, a lot of helping out those in need. “You aren’t planning to stay here at the guesthouse indefinitely, right? How long of a lease did you sign?”

  “Just a year.” She folded her hands on top of her blanket and smiled.

  “A year?” Not wanting to yell at his aged grandma, Vito stood and ran his hands through his hair. “Either you’re going to have to revoke it, or I’m going to have to find another place for you and me to live.” Never mind how he’d afford the rent. Or the fact that he’d named Nonna’s house as his permanent residence in all the social services paperwork.

  “No, dear. I have it all figured out.” She took Lacey’s hand in hers, and then reached toward him with her other hand. Once she had ahold of each of them, she smiled from one to the other. “Vito, if Lacey agrees, you can stay here.”

  No. She wasn’t thinking clearly. “Nonna, that’s not going to work. Lacey made this arrangement with you, not with me.” And certainly not with the other guest he had in tow. No way could Lacey find out the truth about Charlie.

  “But Lacey was thinking of getting another boarder for this period while she’s remodeling. It’s hard to find the right one, because of all the noise.” Lacey started to speak, but Nonna held up a hand. “The noise doesn’t bother me. I can just turn down my hearing aid.”

  Vito knew what was coming and
he felt his face heat. “Nonna...”

  “Vito’s perfect,” she said, looking at Lacey, “because he can do the same thing.”

  Lacey’s eyebrows lifted as she looked at him.

  No point in trying to hide his less visible disability now. “It’s true,” he said, brushing back his hair to show his behind-the-ear hearing aids. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take us in.” In fact, staying here was the last thing that would work for him.

  He’d promised Gerry he’d take care of his son, conceived during the affair Gerry had while married to Lacey. And he’d promised to keep Charlie’s parentage a secret from Lacey.

  He was glad he could help his friend, sinner though Gerry had been. Charlie needed a reliable father figure, and Lacey needed to maintain her illusions about her husband. It would serve no purpose for her to find out the truth now; it would only hurt her.

  Lacey frowned. “I was looking to take in another boarder. I was thinking of maybe somebody who worked the three-to-eleven shift at the pretzel factory. They could come home and sleep, and they wouldn’t be bothered by my working on the house at all hours.”

  “That makes sense,” he said, relieved. “That would be better.”

  “But the thing is,” she said slowly, “I haven’t found anyone, even though I’ve been advertising for a couple of weeks. If you wanted to...”

  Anxiety clawed at him from inside. How was he supposed to handle this? He could throttle Gerry for putting him into this situation. “I... There are some complications. I need to give this some thought.” He knew he was being cryptic, but he needed time to figure it all out.

  Unfortunately, Nonna wasn’t one to accept anything cryptic from her grandchildren. “What complications? What’s going on?”

  Vito stood, then sat back down again. Nonna was going to have to know about Charlie soon enough. Lacey, too, along with everyone else in town. It would seem weirder if he tried to hide it now. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m not alone. I have someone with me.”

  “Girlfriend? Wife?” Lacey sounded extremely curious.

  Nonna, on the other hand, looked disappointed. “You would never get married without letting your nonna know,” she said, reaching up to pinch his cheek, and then pulling her hand back, looking apologetic. It took him a minute to realize that she’d hesitated because of his scars.

  “One of my finished rooms is a double,” Lacey said thoughtfully. “But I don’t know what your...friend...would think of the mess and the noise.”

  This was going off the rails. “It’s not a girlfriend or wife,” he said.

  “Then who?” Nonna smacked his arm in a way that reminded him of when he’d been small and misbehaving. “If not a woman, then who?”

  Vito drew in a breath. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve recently become certified as a foster parent.”

  Both women stared at him with wide, surprised eyes.

  “So I’d be bringing along my eight-year-old foster son.”

  He was saved from further explanation by a crash, followed by the sound of shattering glass and running feet.

  Chapter Two

  Lacey raced out of Nonna’s bedroom, leaving Vito to reassure the older woman. A quick scan of the hall revealed the breakage: her ceramic rooster lay in pieces on the floor.

  One of the kids, probably; they were all sugared up on wedding cake and running around. She hurried to get a broom and dustpan, not wanting any of the remaining wedding guests to injure themselves. As she dropped the colorful pieces into the trash, she felt a moment’s regret.

  More important than the untimely demise of her admittedly tacky rooster, she wondered about Vito fostering a child. That, she hadn’t expected.

  “Miss Lacey!” It was little Mindy, Sam Hinton’s daughter. “I saw who did that!”

  “Did you? Stay back,” she warned as she checked the area for any remaining ceramic pieces.

  “Yes,” Mindy said, “and he’s hiding under the front porch right now!”

  Behind her, Lacey heard Vito coming out of Nonna’s bedroom, then pausing to talk some more, and a suspicion of who the young criminal might be came over her. “I’ll go talk to him,” she said. “It wasn’t Xavier, was it?”

  “No. It was a kid I don’t know. Is he going to get in trouble?”

  “I don’t think so, honey. Not too much trouble, anyway. Why don’t you go tell your dad what happened?”

  “Yeah! He’s gotta know!” As Mindy rushed off to her important task, Lacey walked out of the house and stood on the porch, looking around. The remaining guests were in the side yard, talking and laughing, so no one seemed to notice her.

  She went down the steps and around to the side of the house where there was an opening in the latticework; she knew because she’d had to crawl under there when she’d first found Mrs. Whiskers, hiding with a couple of kittens. When she squatted down, she heard a little sniffling sound that touched her heart. Moving aside the branches of a lilac bush, breathing in the sweet fragrance of the fading purple flowers, she spoke into the darkness. “It’s okay. I didn’t like that rooster much, anyway.”

  There was silence, and then a stirring, but no voice. From the other side of the yard, she could hear conversations and laughter. But this shaded spot felt private.

  “I remember one time I broke my grandma’s favorite lamp,” she said conversationally, settling into a sitting position on the cool grass. “I ran and hid in an apple tree.”

  “Did they find you?” a boy’s voice asked. Not a familiar voice. Since she knew every kid at the wedding, her suspicion that the culprit was Vito’s new foster son increased. “Yes, they found me. My brother told them where I was.”

  “Did you get in trouble?”

  “I sure did.” She remembered her grandma’s reprimand, her father chiming in, her own teary apology.

  “Did they hit you?” the boy asked, his voice low.

  The plaintive question squeezed Lacey’s heart. “No, I just got scolded a lot. And I had to give my grandma my allowance to help pay for a new lamp.”

  “I don’t get an allowance. Did you...” There was a pause, a sniffle. “Did you have to go live somewhere else after that?”

  Lacey’s eyes widened as she put it all together. Vito had said he’d recently become certified as a foster parent. So this must be a new arrangement. It would make all the sense in the world that a boy who’d just been placed with a new foster father would feel insecure about whether he’d be allowed to stay.

  But why had Vito, a single man with issues of his own, taken on this new challenge? “No, I didn’t have to go live somewhere else,” she said firmly, “and what’s more, no kind adult would send a kid away for breaking a silly old lamp. Or a silly old rooster, either.”

  Branches rustled behind her, and then Vito came around the edge of the bushes. “There you are! What happened? Is everything okay?”

  She pointed toward the latticed area where the boy was hiding, giving Vito a meaningful look. “I think the person who accidentally—” she emphasized the word “—broke the rooster is worried he’ll get sent away.”

  “What?” Vito’s thick dark eyebrows came down as understanding dawned in his eyes. He squatted beside her. “Charlie, is that you? Kids don’t get sent away for stuff like that.”

  There was another shuffling under the porch, and then a head came into view. Messy, light brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles, worried-looking eyes. “But they might get sent away if they were keeping their dad from having a place to live.”

  Oh. The boy must have heard Vito say he couldn’t live here because of having a foster son.

  “We’ll find a place to live,” Vito said. “Come on out.”

  The boy looked at him steadily and didn’t move.

  “Charlie! I mean it!”

&nbs
p; Lacey put a hand on Vito’s arm. “Hey, Charlie,” she said softly. “I grew up next door to this guy. I was three years younger and a lot smaller, and I did some annoying things. And he never, ever hit me.” She felt Vito’s arm tense beneath hers and squeezed. “And he wouldn’t hurt you, either. Right, Vito?” She looked over at him.

  His mouth twisted. “That’s right.” He went forward on one knee and held out a hand to the boy. “Come on out. We talked about this. Remember, I look meaner than I really am.”

  The boy hesitated, then crawled out without taking Vito’s hand. Instead, he scuttled over to the other side of Lacey and crouched.

  Vito drew in a breath and blew it out. His brow furrowed. “You’re going to need to apologize to Miss Lacey, here, and then we’ll find out how you can make up for what you did.”

  The boy wrapped his arms around upraised knees. A tear leaked out and he backhanded it away. “I can’t make it up. Don’t have any money.”

  “I might have some chores you could do,” Lacey said, easing backward so she wasn’t directly between Charlie and Vito. “Especially if you and your foster dad are going to be living here.” As soon as she said it, she regretted the words. “Or living nearby,” she amended hastily.

  She liked Vito, always had. And she adored his grandmother, who clearly wanted her family gathered around her. But Lacey had been planning to have the next few months as a quiet, calm oasis before opening her guesthouse. She still had healing to do.

  Having Vito and this boy here wasn’t conducive to quiet serenity. On the other hand, young Charlie seemed to have thrown himself on her for protection, and that touched her.

  “Can we live here? Really?” The boy jumped up and started hopping from one foot to the next. “’Cause this place is cool! You have a tire swing! And there’s a basketball hoop right across the street!”