An hour after Addie left with the girls, Skip drove through the misty rain to Burnt Bend and the grocery store his parents had managed for twenty-five years before his father died. Today, his mother was the manager.
He parked behind the building taking up the corner on First and Shore Road, a half block from the waters of Puget Sound, and thought how he hadn't visited the store since moving into the new house on Clover Road. In fact, rather than enter Dalton Foods the day he and Becky arrived to stay, he had brought several sacks of groceries from Seattle.
He hadn't wanted Becky to go through the wringer with his mother. Miriam Dalton had been too full of questions when Skip visited her three months ago, explaining his property purchase, his job change and that he planned to move back to the island with his daughter.
How did you find her? Does Addie know...? Miriam asked, astounded and hurt, he'd waited for things to settle before he told her about finding Becky. Questions Skip had answered as best he could to a mother with whom he hadn't spoken in almost a decade. Sitting in the kitchen of his childhood, he'd seen shame and guilt and remorse pool in his mother's eyes. The same feelings that had eaten at Skip for his part in the adoption.
That first meeting with Miriam broke years of ice between them, leaving Skip satisfied that their family could mend again. He'd hugged his mom with a promise to bring Becky around once they were settled, but not before his daughter and Addie had a chance to reconnect. Miriam hadn't argued, though her eyes had mourned. Becky was, after all, her only grandchild.
Climbing from the truck, Skip took a deep breath, then headed for the back door of the store, where he pressed the bell. He wondered if the manager's office was still on the second level. As a boy he'd loved standing at the one-way glass window to watch the operation of the store.
A tall, skinny teenager opened the door. His eyes went wide. "Coach Dalton!"
Trying to place the boy, Skip smiled and held out a hand. "Sorry, have we met?"
"Nate Mosley." They shook. "Coach McLane introduced us at his retirement."
"Sure, now I remember." Skip stepped inside. "You're my quarterback."
"Yes, sir. Been with the team three years."
"You as good as they say?" Skip had gone over the players with McLane on numerous occasions.
The kid squared his shoulders. "Better."
Skip nodded. "Good start," he said, and saw the boy's ego fizzle a bit. "Maybe by the end of the season you'll be the best."
"I hope so, Coach. The NFL's all I think about."
Skip grunted. "Better think about your grades first, son, or you won't be on the team."
"Yes, sir."
"Mrs. Dalton around?"
"Up in her office."
Skip headed for the stairs. At the base, he turned. "By the way, Nate. Can you call the team, tell them first practice is next Wednesday at four?"
Nate's eyes lit. "Will do, Coach."
Skip took the stairs two at a time. The door to the office stood open a crack. Knocking lightly, he poked his head in.
Contrary to the clutter when his dad managed the store years ago. this office reeked of organization, every file and paper clip in its own spot. Miriam Dalton ran her job as she had their house during Skip's youth. For a minute, he watched the woman sitting behind an unfamiliar U-shaped desk. As always, her youthful appearance surprised him. She could pass for forty rather than mid-fifties. She had cut her hair in bob and wore a purple dress.
"Mom?"
She raised her head. "Skip!" Her gaze zoomed to the door, seeking Becky. "What a lovely surprise on a rainy afternoon."
He walked to the desk as she rose from the chair.
"I've been expecting you." Mild censure lay in her words though her arms wrapped his shoulders, and he kissed her cheek. "News whips around like the wind, especially when some of your boys work here."
"Met Nate a minute ago," he said, veering from her reproof.
"Yes, he reminds me of you at that age. Determined and focused."
"The NFL's all I think about." Except Nate didn't knock up girls. Or hadn't yet.
Miriam pointed to one of three cushiony chairs circling a small coffee table. "Let's sit. Would you like a coffee or...?"
"Got a bottle of water?"
From a small fridge she pulled a bottle of Evian and handed it over before easing into one of the chairs. "I'm glad you're here, son."
She wanted to know about Becky. Skip could tell.
He sat. elbows to knees, the bottle dangling from his fingers, and came right to the point. "Becky's with Addie over at Kat's B and B for the night. Tree came down on Addie's house."
"Oh, no. Is there much damage?"
"Enough that she'll need a crew." Aren 't you going to ask if she's okay?
"Will she be able to afford the repairs?"
Skip looked at his mother. Finances had always been the biggest object in the Dalton household. "If not, I'll loan her the money."
Miriam glanced away. "Yes, well. I suppose you can."
He was not going there. All the years he'd played pro ball. Skip remembered his parents' mantra after a scout picked him from the college league. "You're in the big leagues now. You'll be going places and seeing things far beyond this island."
His father had slapped him on the back in this very office and said, "You'll have your pick of women, son. Just be careful they're not gold diggers."
One way or another they had all been gold diggers.
Except Addie.
She hadn't wanted a damn thing to do with him. Not when he'd phoned her after the adoption, just to see how she was faring because he'd been hollow with loneliness and so heartsick. And not when he tried to call again the following Christmas. No, what she'd said on that occasion was If you ever contact me again, I'll slap a restraining order on you so fast your head will spin.
It hadn't stopped him from thinking about her, from wanting to be with her, from loving her.
Miriam smiled. "You've done well, Skip. Can't deny I'm not proud. I just wish..."
"What, Mom? That I hadn't got Addie pregnant? That you're still worried someone might put two and two together, even though she went to the mainland, to that home for unwed mothers, finished her education and had Becky? Hell." He threw out his hands in an encompassing gesture. "Who here doesn't know about us?" The thought concerned him with school starting next week. Becky would meet kids whose parents remembered.
"Very few know," his mother said quietly. "Your father and I made sure of that."
Skip scowled. His dad—along with Addie's father—had done everything in his power to scoot her off the island...before the evidence was revealed.
Before Addie's belly grew.
"Yes," Miriam said. "We were worried that—that..."
"Say it, Mom. That it would affect business. People might point fingers and whisper, maybe stop buying from Dalton Foods. That's why you didn't want Addie here. Let's be honest."
"Yes, let's," she said, eyeing him. "This store was our livelihood. It put you through college, got you to the NFL." She studied her clasped, ringless hands in her lap. "I don't know how often I have to apologize, son. What we did... I know, it wasn't right." She looked away suddenly as a tear slid down her cheek. "I wish I could make it up to you."
Seeing his mother cry again shifted something inside Skip. He, too, had suffered over the estrangement he'd put between them. And then losing his father to cancer...
Skip set the water bottle, untouched, on the coffee table. "The past is what it is, Mom. You can't put something else in its place." He stood, prepared to leave. "I'll try to bring Becky around next week."
Miriam pushed slowly to her feet, and Skip realized how much his mother had aged.
"I'd like that," she said, wiping at the last of her tears.
"I might bring Addie and her little girl along with Becky. The girls have become pretty good friends."
Miriam's smile dimmed briefly. "That would be nice."
Skip studied his mo
ther. All was well, as long as Addie and her family stayed over there, and he and his family remained over here.
Well, tough. Miriam would accept Addie as the mother of her grandchild, or the estrangement would continue into eternity. Skip would not give up Addie again. His mother had better understand that.
"Damn straight it's nice," he said, and strode for the door. Pausing on the threshold, he looked back. "I want us to be a family, Mom. I'm not asking your permission, I'm telling you. Maybe this time instead of a football, you can toss a little hope my way."
"Oh, son." Miriam covered her face, startling Skip. Concerned, he walked back to where she plopped onto the chair. Her eyes drenched, she said, "It's never been about football for me. Your father... He didn't want the same to happen to you as what happened to him."
"I don't follow."
She took a deep breath. "I'm forty-nine, Skip, not fifty-five."
Skip stared at his mother. Was she losing it?
"I was fifteen when I got pregnant, your father was twenty and. yes, we married, but Ross always felt stifled because of it, that he'd missed out on things." Miriam's mouth trembled. "He didn't want you carving the same path, and I wasn't strong enough to go against his wish."
Skip couldn't move. "Are you saying you had a loveless marriage?"
"No." She shook her head slowly. "But after you were born, we saw life differently. I'm not blaming him. I'm simply saying how it was." She sighed heavily. "In his senior year of college, he was a running back. The best. Major teams were talking to him, and then..."
And then they had a baby. But they had married and kept their child. A slow simmering rage fanned through his chest. "Except you did the opposite to what you asked of me."
Tears slipped down Miriam's face. "I couldn't give you up," she whispered.
As he and Addie had done with Becky.
He wanted to smash his fist onto the coffee table. He wanted to kick the chair. "How did your parents feel?"
"My father disowned me."
"But not dad's parents."
"No. They were glad because your grandfather always wanted Ross to take over the store. And when we had to marry..."
The son made his choice. His dad's store over the NFL.
Skip didn't know whether to hate his parents or himself more for his own weakness, his own cowardice.
"Son," Miriam said. She stood, went to wrap her arms around him. "Please forgive me for not being strong enough to stand in your corner."
All at once the logjam of anger broke away. Slowly, he set his arms around his mother, bowed his head to hers. "I can't fight this anymore." His heart felt battered.
"Then don't. Live for today, for now. For your little girl. And Addie." Miriam took his face between her hands. "Just be happy, son. Please."
He could do that.
The rain stopped by four-thirty and the sun broke through the clouds, warming the earth at once. Addie contacted Zeb Jantz to meet her at the house for a restoration estimate. Within minutes, she knew she could afford his price, and that he could repair the damage by the end of the week.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She did not want to be living with Kat when school began the following Tuesday.
Driving Kat's pickup back to town Addie thought of her sister's astonished look when she brought Becky to the B and B more than an hour ago and introduced the girl as Skip's daughter.
Kat had hidden her surprise, although Addie caught the intonation in her whispered. "A daughter?" once the children—including Kat's ten-year-old son, Blake—went off to watch cartoons.
Rather than responding, Addie had walked into the kitchen and called Zeb Jantz. Rushing out the door, she promised to explain everything when she returned.
Now, her heart pounded as she drove up the lane accessing her sister's timbered property. Before she could think it through, she brought the truck to a halt. Shielded by the trees, her sister's Victorian-style bed-and-breakfast waited. And so did Kat.
Come on, explaining Becky won't be that hard. Kat is not Lee.
No, thirteen years ago Lee had wanted to hunt down Skip and put a dagger between his ribs for bailing on Addie.
A nervous laugh escaped. She wouldn't put it past her older sister to pursue her original objective once she heard this latest news.
Addie let out a squeak as the passenger door suddenly opened and Kat jumped into the cab.
"Jeez," she cried. "You scared me silly."
"You'll live," her sister said mildly. "Now, 'fess up about Becky."
"There's nothing to 'fess. As I said, she's Skip's daughter."
"So why run a marathon to meet Zeb Jantz? And why are you sitting here hiding in the woods?"
Evading Kat's scrutiny, Addie looked down the road and gripped the steering wheel so tight her knuckles turned white. "I'm not hiding."
"Come on, sis," Kat said softly.
She couldn't breathe. An eternity passed. "She's my daughter."
Kat sat back in her seat. "I knew it."
Addie looked across the cab. "How?"
"Oh, honey. She has your eyes, your ears...the way she smiles."
"She smiles like Skip," Addie pointed out.
"Not always. And she has your tone of voice."
"Your imagination is running amok. Her voice is a young girl's, that's all."
"Maybe. Except I hear your inflections in it."
They sat in silence for several moments.
Addie whispered. "What if she doesn't like me when she finds out who I am?"
"What's not to like? You're a wonderful mother."
"Not to her."
"Don't shoulder all the blame. Others were involved. When are you planning to tell her?"
"Skip thinks it's best we get to know each other a little first." She looked over. "Can you keep this to yourself for a while?"
"It's not my place to tell."
"Thanks."
"And," Kat continued, "much as I hate to agree with anything Skip Dalton says, I think he's right. You and Becky need time."
Another pause ensued.
"He's not the same person, Kat."
"Of course he isn't. He's had years to fine-tune the charm and charisma with women."
Sighing, Addie gazed at the tree-shaded road. "I love you for being so protective, but you're wrong. He feels incredible guilt for what happened. He wanted to marry me, Kat. It was the pressure of his parents and my father that broke us up."
"Fine. I'll admit Cyril had a hand in the adoption decision—"
"More than a hand," Addie muttered, remembering her father's ranting about grades and futures and boys who couldn't keep their pants zipped....
"You'll ruin your life, that's what you'll do, marrying that punk. In two years when the diapers pile up and the squalling never quits, he'll run like a bat outta hell. And then where will you be? You're smart, Addie. Top of your class. Make a smart decision. Don't throw away your career."
And then came the argument that tore most at her heart....
"Think of your baby. Do you honestly believe you'll be able to give it the best home possible working a clerk's job or waiting tables in some hole-in-the-wall diner? Can you afford day care? Is that how you want your child raised, by some stranger, while you work two or three jobs to make ends meet? What kind of life is that for a child? Is that what you had, Addie? And what about Skip? You 'II be taking away his chance at the NFL just the way you'll be taking your chance at becoming a doctor."
The "sensibility" theme tipped the scale in favor of signing the adoption papers. She'd had a secure and loving home. Yes, her dad had been querulous at times and her mother a meddler, but overall Addie had liked her childhood.
And then there was Skip. Would she be wrecking his prospects by agreeing to marry—as he first wanted? Would he eventually hate her for that choice? She never found out. While in her first trimester, he'd come to the house, glum and silent, and taken her for a ride in his beat-up Chevy, to the lake where they had first made love.
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And he had done what she couldn't do.
He'd ended their relationship.
A week before her baby's birth, she signed the adoption papers—and let Becky go to unfit parents. You didn't know!
For that she would never forgive her father or herself.
In the passenger seat, Kat sighed. "Maybe it's best we put the past where it belongs. Rehashing it isn't going to change a darn thing."
She glanced at her sister. "Oh, Kat. You're still wondering, aren't you?" About who your father was and why Charmaine has guarded that bit of information so carefully all these years. The secret had put bitterness in Kat's heart toward their mother in the same way Lee despised her father for walking away from his family when she was three years old. The way Dempsey had done to Addie and Michaela.
Of the three men, Cyril Wilson, Addie's father and the last of Charmaine's husbands, was the only one who'd stuck around 'til the end.
"I haven't wondered any more than you did with Becky before Skip brought her home," Kat said.
Home. The word set Addie's heart aflutter. Becky was home. At last. At long last.
"You're right." She put the truck in gear. "And no matter how many years went by, it was never okay."
Never okay that she'd had to worry—helplessly—about the possible misfortunes her baby could endure. Misfortunes, like dysfunctional families.
Oh, Addie. As if your own family marched down the glory road.
But they weren't murderers.
None she knew about, anyway.
Kat set a hand on Addie's arm. "One day, sis. One day we'll be there. I know we will."
Be there. When all the questions were answered and all the heartaches healed. She drove to where their children skipped rope on the sunny porch of Kat's Country Cabin.
Chapter Ten
The dream sucked at Becky, pulling her deeper and deeper into the horror she watched from afar.
Her mom...screaming, fighting, battling. Arms flailing, legs kicking. Her father. ..standing over her in the kitchen. Shouting cruel words. His face twisted in drunken rage.
Becky couldn't understand his meaning. She only knew she had to flee, had to run out of the house, out of their lives.
Her mouth opened to get air. to yell for help. Mommy!
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