In spite of his mother’s protests to the contrary, David knew Margaret intimidated her. So many people did. His mother was quiet and shy and didn’t mix well with others. She liked to keep to herself, rarely even used the phone. Something had to be wrong if she’d gotten up enough courage to brave Margaret’s sharp tongue, not once, but three times in as many hours.
He instantly thought of the doctor’s appointment she’d had the previous week, the one she’d refused to talk to him about on Sunday. She’d been experiencing severe headaches, and David had insisted she go in for a checkup.
Hesitating for only a second, David picked up the phone and placed the call to Richford, the small town in upstate New York where he’d grown up.
His mother answered on the first ring, as if she’d been sitting by the phone waiting for his call. “David?”
He could hear the tremor in her voice, and his concern deepened. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
The pause that followed was so long he thought for a moment the connection had been severed. Then, in a near whisper, she said, “Come home, David. Come home now.”
“What’s—”
The phone clicked in his ear before he had a chance to finish the question. David stared at the receiver for a second, then hung up and grabbed his briefcase, hurrying out of his cramped, downtown office. He’d never heard his mother sound so distressed. Something was definitely wrong.
“I’m leaving early,” he told his secretary, who looked up from her computer in astonishment. “Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day.”
“But you have a meeting with Mr. Hollingsworth at four-thirty—”
David swore. He’d forgotten about the interview he had that afternoon at Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr, a prestigious Manhattan law firm that had approached him about joining their ranks. A thousand other attorneys would have killed for such an interview, but David was less than enthusiastic. Perhaps if he thought their interest had more to do with his merit and less to do with the fact that J.C. Hollingsworth’s daughter, Rachel, was his fianc;aaee, he might have been able to muster a little more excitement.
Besides, he liked working in the public defender’s office. He’d made a name for himself here, and every case was a challenge. If he entered the cutthroat world of Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr, he had the disturbing feeling he might never be his own man again.
“Make my apologies,” he told his secretary without compunction. “Say I was called away on a family emergency. You’d better call Rachel, too. Leave word with her secretary if she’s not in. I may not make it back in time for dinner tonight. She’s to go without me.”
“But Mr. Powers—”
He was out the door and heading down the hallway toward the bank of elevators before his secretary could finish voicing her protest. The doors slid open and Rachel Hollingsworth, dressed in a red Chanel power suit, stepped out. As always, her dark hair was pulled straight back, accenting the perfect angles of her face and the exotic tilt of her gray eyes. She looked elegant, sophisticated, and completely out of place in the institutional surroundings—not at all what she was accustomed to at the Madison Avenue offices of Hollingsworth, Beckman, and Carr.
“Perfect timing!” she exclaimed with a dazzling smile. So dazzling, in fact, that harried passersby in the hallway stopped to stare at her. “I have a one o’clock reservation at Justine’s, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
David glanced at his watch, a functional black Seiko his mother had given to him when he graduated from Columbia. “Sorry, but I’ve already had lunch, and besides, I’m on my way out.”
The smile slipped a bit. “But I came all the way down here just to see you, and you know what traffic is like on Fridays. The least you can do is keep me company while I eat. I need to talk to you about your meeting with Daddy this afternoon—”
“I’m sorry,” David said again, placing his hands on her shoulders and bending to give her a perfunctory kiss on her smooth cheek. “I don’t have time to talk.” Quickly he stepped into the elevator and jabbed the Down button with his thumb. “I’ll call you later.”
She turned to stare at him in disbelief, her elegant brows arching in icy outrage as the doors slid closed between them. Rachel Hollingsworth was not used to such treatment, and David knew there would be hell to pay later. But right now, he didn’t give a damn.
He wondered if he ever had.
* * *
A STRANGE CAR WAS parked at the curb in front of his mother’s house, and the uneasiness David had been experiencing on the drive up from the city strengthened. He pulled into the driveway, parked his own car, and got out, striding up the flower-lined walkway to the front door. He had his key, but before he could insert it into the lock, the door was drawn back, revealing his mother’s careworn face.
She was not a pretty woman, nor had she aged particularly well. Her hair had gone completely gray at a young age, and the deep lines that etched her face had been there ever since David could remember.
She used to tell him fondly that he had gotten his dark good looks from his father, who had died in Vietnam while David was still a baby. She would show him pictures of a handsome young man in a military uniform, and David would stare at his father’s image, trying to find his own features in the stranger’s face, but never seeing them there. After a while he quit searching. After a while he stopped asking the questions that always upset his mother so much.
“I came as soon as I could.” He stepped into the tiny foyer and closed the door behind him. Over his mother’s shoulder, David saw a man in the living room watching them. He looked to be about David’s age, mid-thirties, tall and lean, with inquisitive eyes and a solemn expression that matched the somber atmosphere of the house.
David glanced down at his mother. “Are you all right?”
She nodded briefly, her eyes not meeting his. “Come into the living room. There’s someone you need to meet.”
The stranger came forward to greet him. “My name is Jake McClain. You must be…David.” His handshake was firm, his eyes inscrutable as he studied David’s face.
Behind him, his mother said, “Mr. McClain is a private investigator from Memphis, Tennessee.”
David glanced at her in astonishment. “A private investigator? What the hell is going on here?”
“Maybe I should leave you two alone,” McClain suggested. He looked at David’s mother, and his gaze seemed to soften in spite of himself.
She nodded. “Maybe you should.” When David started to say something, she put a hand on his sleeve. “Let’s sit down.”
An eerie sensation crept over David as he sat down on his mother’s worn sofa and watched her take a seat in her favorite rocking chair near the fireplace. In the background, the front door closed discreetly as Jake McClain slipped away to allow them privacy.
What the hell was going on? David wondered again, but for some reason, he remained silent. He had a feeling that what his mother was about to tell him was something he just might not want to hear.
Don’t ask the question, his legal mind told him, unless you know the answer. And right now, he didn’t have a clue.
Out of habit, his mother rocked to and fro, her hazel eyes glinting with an emotion David could only call fear. And despair. But it wasn’t until they heard Jake McClain’s car start up outside and drive away that she broke the silence.
“I’ve prayed this day would never come,” she murmured. “But I somehow knew it would. Secrets always have a way of coming out, my mother used to say. No matter how deeply you bury them.”
“Just tell me one thing.” David leaned toward her, resting his forearms on his knees. “Does this have anything to do with your doctor’s appointment last week?”
Her eyes clouded. “Not really. This day would have come regardless of what my doctor told me. It just makes things…a bit easier in some ways.”
“What do you mean?”
Without responding, she got up from the rocking chai
r and crossed the room to the antique walnut wardrobe in the corner. As long as David could remember, she’d kept the key to the wardrobe on a satin ribbon around her neck and only opened it to take out the picture of David’s father when he asked to see it.
Once, when he was about seven, she’d caught him trying to pick the lock with a hairpin, and her censure had been so severe he’d never tried again. The contents of the wardrobe, including the photo of his father, had soon been forgotten because that summer David had discovered Little League, and sports had taken over his life.
His mother took the key from her neck and in the almost-preternatural silence of the tiny living room, David heard the distinctive sound as the old-fashioned lock clicked open. Spreading the doors, she withdrew the white, leather-bound photo album he remembered from his childhood and another book he’d never seen before. She retraced her steps across the room, but rather than taking her place in the rocker, she sat down beside him on the sofa and opened the photo album to the picture of his father.
David stared down at the likeness. The photo was black-and-white, but he could tell that his father’s eyes were dark, almost black, not blue like David’s. The hair was similar, dark and thick with a hint of a wave, but the hairline was different, as was the shape of the face, the nose, the mouth, the high cheekbones that hinted at a Native American heritage. A heritage that did not show in David’s own features.
He looked up at his mother and she nodded. “You’ve always known, I think.”
Somewhere deep inside, David felt a brief sense of relief. The truth was about to come out. “He isn’t my father, is he?” When his mother shook her head, David asked, “Who was my real father? What happened? Did he run out on you? Refuse to marry you? Did he even know about me?” All the questions he’d wondered about for years came flowing out. It wasn’t so much an emotional response as one of curiosity. One of logic. He simply wanted to know.
His mother took a deep, trembling breath. “Your real father was an important man, David. His family was very rich and powerful. Well-educated and cultured. Everything that I’m not.”
David took his mother’s hand. “You know that’s never mattered to me.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. “You’ve always been a wonderful son, David. I’ve known from the first you were special. Destined for greatness. I’ve tried to make sure you had everything you needed to fulfill your destiny.”
His mother had scrimped and saved all his life, sometimes working two and three jobs, just so David could have the education and advantages she’d never had. It was a debt he knew he would never be able to repay her.
“Were you and my father ever married?”
She shook her head sadly.
“What happened? The family you mentioned… did they give you a hard time?”
Her hand crept to her throat, and David saw that it was trembling. “They never even knew I existed.”
“So it was him,” David concluded dispassionately. “It was his decision to have no part of me.”
She wavered for a moment, as if considering the truth of his words. Then her gaze dropped to the photograph album still lying open in her lap. She touched the picture lovingly.
“Who is that man?” David asked.
There was another pause, then, “He was my husband.”
She couldn’t have surprised him more. His mother had always been so quiet and shy. So reserved. To think that she could have had an illicit love affair with one man while married to another—
“Are you saying you were married to this man when my father got you pregnant?”
“My husband was already dead by the time I knew anything about your father.” With shaking hands, she lifted the photo album and laid it open on the coffee table in front of them. Then she opened the second album, and a picture of a little boy smiled up at them. With her fingertip, she traced the child’s features—the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the full, smiling lips. He was the spitting image of the man David had always thought was his father.
A cold knot of dread wedged somewhere in David’s chest. The whole scenario had taken a turn he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure what to prepare himself for next. He glanced at his mother, but she was still gazing down at the child’s face.
“Who is he?” he finally asked.
“My son,” she answered softly, so softly David had to strain to hear her.
He gaped at her in shock. “Your son?”
Her nod was almost imperceptible. “He and my husband died in a car wreck. My baby was only three years old.”
The knot of dread turned to confusion, but David, sensing his mother was teetering on some emotional edge, forced his tone to remain neutral while the world as he knew it started to crumble around him. Before his eyes, the woman who’d raised him had suddenly become a stranger—and his life, a lie. He felt a slight panicky sensation in his chest, not unlike the rare times when he’d been ambushed by his adversary in court.
He checked the date stamped in the right-hand corner of the picture. David had been three years old that year, also. “How could you have two sons the same age? Unless, of course, we were twins, but I don’t think that was the case, was it?” He bore not even a passing resemblance to the child in the photograph.
“David.” At last his mother looked up at him. A tear spilled down her cheek as she reached out to touch him. Inadvertently he flinched, and pain flashed in her eyes as she let her hand drop to her lap. “I’ve loved you with all my heart,” she whispered. “I couldn’t have loved you more if I’d given birth to you.”
David sucked in a sharp breath. He’d always known the man in the photograph wasn’t his real father; but now, to learn that his mother…wasn’t his real mother… What other secrets did she harbor?
He gazed at her for a long moment, then said slowly, “So you’re telling me I’m adopted?” When she didn’t respond, he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why keep it from me?” Then another thought dawned on him. “The private investigator who was here—who does he work for? My birth mother?” There was an edge of bitterness in his voice that surprised him.
In his line of work, David had seen the worst life had to offer pass through his office door. He’d made sure he was both mentally and physically tough; he couldn’t have lasted in the public defender’s office for twelve years if he hadn’t been. But the knowledge that his birth mother had given him away wasn’t exactly easy to shrug off—even for him.
“Your real mother is dead,” Helen Powers told him.
David frowned, unsure how he felt about that revelation. “So who sent the detective? My father?”
“Your grandmother.”
David sat back against the sofa, trying to digest all that he’d learned. He had a grandmother somewhere. A grandmother who was trying to find him. And a father? Brothers and sisters? A whole damned family he’d never known anything about?
“Your mother—your real mother—loved you very much. I’m sure of it. She died when you were only three years old. She had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Whose idea was it to give me away, then? My father’s?” When she didn’t answer, David leaned toward her. “Look, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me the rest. You took me in when they didn’t want me. You’ve given me a good life. You’re still my mother, and nothing you can say will ever change that.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “You don’t know how much I want to believe that,” she whispered. She bowed her head, as if overcome with emotion. But when David put his hand on her arm and she looked up, her eyes were clear and resolved.
“I was barely twenty when I lost my husband and my son,” she said. “They were everything to me, the only good and decent thing I’d ever known in my life, and then, suddenly, they were gone. Just…gone, as if they’d never existed. I was all alone again. And my arms were so empty. So very empty…”
She took another long breath, as if willing her strength. “Their deaths…did something to me. I
couldn’t let go. I used to go out to the cemetery and sit by their graves for hours at a time, talking to them and pretending we were all still together. I finally managed to convince myself they weren’t really dead, after all. They were just…away somewhere. And one day they’d come back to me.”
A cold chill crept up David’s spine. Her eyes were no longer clear, but glazed and distant, as if she’d somehow transported herself back to that time. Back to that dark fantasy.
She took another trembling breath. “I was working as a waitress in a downtown coffee shop in Memphis. A lot of cops came in there. One of them in particular…he was always so nice to me. Always so kind. He reminded me a little of David.”
David started at the sound of his own name. The movement seemed to bring his mother back for an instant. She nodded absently. “My husband’s name was David. So was my son’s. We called him Davey.”
The chill deepened inside David. He’d always known his mother was a little on the fragile side, but the woman who sat before him now seemed almost…lost. She’d named him for her dead husband and son—a husband and son she’d thought were coming back to her.
Was it his imagination or had the temperature in the room suddenly dropped?
David gazed at her with morbid fascination. He told himself he didn’t want to hear anything more. Somehow he knew that what she was going to tell him would change his life forever, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking, “What happened with the cop?”
Helen Powers’s fingers twisted together in her lap. “The more he came into the coffee shop, the more I thought he looked like my husband, and the more I started looking forward to his visits. We began seeing each other, and he seemed to know all the places that David and I had gone to, all our favorites songs and movies. I realized later that I’d probably told him these things in all the long talks we had in the coffee shop and at his apartment, but at the time…”
Kingsley Baby Trilogy: The Hero's SonThe Brother's WifeThe Long-Lost Heir Page 41