Dix murmured something.
“And it isn’t her fault that Dad slept with Audrey and knocked her up. Or that he met and married Mother. Or that Audrey never told him the truth. None of it is Darcy’s fault.”
“I know that!” Dix said, in a modified shout. And added, a bit more calmly, “You think I don’t know that? I’m not stupid, Savannah!”
“I know you’re not.”
“It’s just...” I waited while he very audibly got himself and his breathing together. “You’re right. It’s just going to take time. Right now I’m mad at all of them. Dad for having a baby out of wedlock. Audrey for never telling him—or us. Mom, for being so emotional about it. Even Darcy, for being born. And I know it isn’t her fault!”
“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” I said. “It just happened. Nobody planned it or meant to hurt anybody else. They all just did the best they could at the time. And now we have to learn to live with it. Because it is what it is.”
Outside the house, I heard the familiar rumble of the Harley-Davidson, and the crunch of gravel as Rafe made his way up the driveway to the front porch. A moment later, the engine shut off.
“Listen,” I told Dix, “Rafe is here. I have to go. We have things to talk about.”
“Believe me, I know.”
He didn’t, but until I’d told Rafe about Carmen, I wasn’t going to tell anyone else. So I just let my brother believe I hadn’t already called my husband to tell him about our newfound sister. “I’ll drive down this weekend and see how things are going.”
“Sure,” Dix said, as Rafe’s footsteps came up onto the porch.
“You may have to put us up for the night, if Mother won’t allow me in her house anymore.”
“That’s not a problem,” Dix said, as I heard the sound of the key going into the lock, “but give her some time. By this weekend, she might have calmed down.”
And she might not. “I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? Just to see if there’s any news.”
“Do that,” Dix said, as Rafe’s footsteps came into the foyer and the front door closed behind him. I heard the jingling of the security chain and the slide of the deadbolt before he came down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Have a good evening, Sis.”
I told him to do the same, and put the phone down just as Rafe walked into the kitchen.
I had been prepared to see dreadlocks, so when I saw that they were gone, I grinned. He grinned back, and I saw that the gold teeth were missing, too.
“Sorry I’m late,” he told me. “It took a little while to get it all gone.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “I’m just happy to see you. Instead of Ry’mone.”
“And here I thought you were starting to think Ry’mone was hot.” He backed me against the nearest cabinet and leaned in.
“Ry’mone was hot.” I tilted my head to give him better access to my neck. “But only because he was you. And I like you better this way.”
I slid my hands up his arms to his shoulders, and from there up to his head. The scratchy fluff of his buzz cut felt familiar under my palms.
“I like me better this way, too,” Rafe said, and sniffed. “Smells good.”
“Chicken fajitas.”
“Smells more like flowers.”
“That’s me.” Or my body lotion.
“I know,” Rafe said. “Even when I’m hungry, I can tell the difference between you and chicken fajitas.”
“Are you hungry now?”
“For you. Not chicken fajitas.”
“How about I turn off the chicken fajitas,” I suited action to words, “and we can go upstairs and feed you?”
“Works for me.” He didn’t wait for me to walk on my own, just picked me up and strode out of the room with me.
“One of these days,” I told him breathlessly, “you’re going to throw your back out doing that.”
“When I’m sixty. You’re safe for the next thirty years.”
He headed up the stairs with no hitch in his stride. Twenty seconds later I was on the bed. Twenty seconds after that, so was he, naked as the day he was born. I opened my arms.
And that was all any of us said, at least for a while.
But that’s how it came to be that we were in bed, stark naked, when I told him the news.
“Listen. There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yeah? Who was that you were on the phone with when I walked in?”
“My brother,” I said. Might as well get this out of the way first. And give me a couple more minutes before I had to lay the big news on him. “He called to update me about Mother.”
It might make a nice segue into the Carmen conversation too, come to think of it. There were similarities.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing you haven’t already heard. She was slugging brandy when I left this morning. Dix and Catherine drove over and put her to bed. Now she’s awake again, with what sounds like the mother of all hangovers—which seems appropriate. We’re all struggling a bit with this.”
He nodded.
“Darcy too, I’m sure. She was looking for her birth mother, and instead she found a whole family. A family she knew, but didn’t know was hers. And a family that has to deal with the fact that our father slept with someone other than our mother and had a baby.”
“It ain’t like he cheated,” Rafe said. “You said it was before he met your mama, right?”
“It was. A couple of months before. The baby...” I had to stop doing that, “Darcy was born while he and Mother were engaged, but before they got married. He never even knew about her.”
“Whaddaya think he woulda done if he’d known?”
I blinked. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to wonder. “I’m not sure. He was in love with Mother. And he and Audrey were never serious about each other. So I can’t see him dumping Mother and marrying Audrey instead.”
And Audrey obviously hadn’t wanted that, either, because she hadn’t told him about Darcy or made her pregnancy an issue.
If she had, would he have thrown Mother over for her? To do the right thing, even if he didn’t love her?
I shook my head to dislodge the thought. Not something I wanted to dwell on. Especially now. “We have to talk about something.”
“I thought we were talking about something,” Rafe said, stretching comfortably.
It was distracting, and it took me a second to gather my thoughts again. He chuckled as he watched me struggle.
“Stop that,” I told him, and tried to sound like I meant it. “This is important.”
“Then spit it out.” He settled down with his hands behind his head. That was distracting, too. All those nice muscles bunching under his skin. My mouth went a little dry, and I swallowed.
He grinned.
“I mean it,” I said. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to have to make you get out of bed and put clothes on. I don’t want to talk about this any more than you do, but we have to.”
His face sobered. “Then talk. Let’s get it out of the way so I can make love to my wife again.”
“I’m not sure you’re going to want to after this.”
He arched a brow, and I added, “You remember Carmen Arroyo, don’t you? The woman who ran that nightclub in South Nashville for Hector Gonzales last year?”
“Not likely I’d forget, is it?”
Not really. And I had to trust that he didn’t mean that in any way but the obvious. “She was arrested back in December. Along with Hector and all the rest of them.”
He nodded.
“I saw her the other day, when Darcy and I went to the Tennessee Women’s Prison to talk to Denise Seaver. She’s there, too. Carmen.”
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
I took a breath. The words threatened to lodge in my throat, and were hard to get out. “She’s pregnant. More pregnant than I am. Doctor Seaver said she’s due in a couple of weeks. Around the first of September, I guess.”
&n
bsp; I waited, but he didn’t say anything. So I continued. “That would mean she got pregnant sometime around the first of December last year.”
He didn’t say anything this time, either. Maybe he was going over the math in his head. Or wondering whether it was likely she’d been sleeping with someone else at the same time she was sleeping with him.
I gulped another lungful of air and threw caution to the wind. “What are the chances it’s yours?” Or maybe a better question would have been, what are the chances it’s not?
He shook his head. “I wanna say slim to none. Not sure I can.”
“I know you slept with her...”
“Yes, darlin’.” He looked at me. “And I did take precautions.”
“I’m sure you did.” He didn’t always. I knew that. He hadn’t with me. And he obviously hadn’t with Elspeth, who had caught him when he was drunk and in pain and not quite thinking straight one night in high school.
She’d had some culpability in what happened to her, just as I’d had some in what happened to me, the night I fell into bed with him with no thought for the consequences. It hadn’t been only his fault. I should have remembered to use protection, too.
But with Carmen I was sure he had taken precautions. She was part of his job. A suspect he was keeping an eye on, from inside Hector Gonzales’s South American Theft Gang, during the couple of months he was pretending to be Jorge Pena. He wouldn’t have slept with her without protection. Not under those circumstances.
“Condoms...” I had to stop and clear my throat. “They say they’re effective ninety-eight percent of the time.”
He nodded.
“That leaves two percent.”
“Right.”
We lay there side by side a moment, just breathing.
“It might not be yours,” I said. “I mean... you didn’t have a relationship with her. Right? You weren’t, like, dating or anything...?”
Except for that one time I had seen them at Fidelio’s Ristorante together; he in a suit and she in a drop-dead gorgeous red dress...
“She might have been sleeping with someone else, too,” I said, and sounded a bit desperate, even in my own ears. “Right?”
He nodded. “Sure. Prob’ly did.”
“So the baby could be someone else’s.”
“Could be.”
Another moment of silence passed.
“You’re going to have to find out, though. Aren’t you?”
“I prob’ly should. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “That’s why I’m telling you. So you can find out.”
He slid a hand down my side and rested it on top of my stomach. “I love you, darlin’.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not jealous of her.” Much. “I know you just did what you had to do when you slept with her. Even though you probably enjoyed it...”
He didn’t say anything, just grinned.
“But you married me. And she’s in prison. And she’ll be there a long time yet. But still... if she’s having your baby, she’ll always be a part of your life. Our lives.”
Just as Elspeth would have been, if things had worked out differently. Just as David was, with his adoptive parents.
“It can’t be helped, darlin’.” His voice was calm. “Chances are it’s got nothing to do with us. But I gotta know.”
Of course he did.
“I can pull some strings,” he added. “Or see about having Tammy pull some strings. See if there’s any paperwork on file with the doc out there that names the father.”
That would be a start. However... “There are no guarantees she named the right father, is there? I mean, how would she know? If she slept with more than one of you at the same time—”
He arched a brow and I amended, “—around the same time, it’s not like she can know that it’s his baby and not yours. Or yours and not his. It would probably take DNA to figure it out.”
Rafe nodded. “Good thing she’s locked up and can’t refuse, ain’t it?”
I guess it was. Or maybe not. Part of me wanted to know the truth, part of me didn’t.
What would we do if the baby was his? Ask for custody?
We’d probably get it. Carmen was in prison, so she couldn’t keep the baby, and if Rafe could prove paternity, he had every right to raise his own child.
I could find myself with two newborns to take care of. One that was hers, and one that was mine.
I tried to imagine it, but my brain rebelled. I adored David. He was a great kid, and he was Rafe’s son, and I loved Rafe. Of course I loved David, too. No question about it.
And I had only to look at Ginny and Sam to know that it was possible to love an adopted child as much as one of your own. They couldn’t possibly love David any more than they did.
But if I had to raise Rafe’s child with me and Rafe’s child with Carmen as siblings, was it possible for me to love them both the same? Or would I always feel that Carmen’s baby was an interloper, taking my baby’s father away from him or her?
My head started spinning, and my chest tightened. Rafe’s hand stroked down my arm. “Breathe,” he told me. “We’ll figure it out.”
I turned panicked eyes on him. “But what if it’s yours? What do we do?”
His voice was as calm as mine was jittery. “We figure it out then.”
“When’s then?”
“When we know,” Rafe said.
When we know. “When will that be?”
“As soon as I can figure it out.”
“When will that be?”
“Tomorrow,” Rafe said.
Tomorrow?
My chest loosened. “I can wait until tomorrow.”
“I know you can. And in the meantime...” He pulled me toward him, “let me take your mind off this.”
If anyone could do it, he could.
“The chicken fajitas...”
“Can wait, too,” Rafe said and kissed me.
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jenna Bennett (Jennie Bentley) writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Savannah Martin real estate mysteries for her own gratification. She also writes a variety of romance for a change of pace. Originally from Norway, she has spent more than twenty five years in the US, and still hasn’t been able to kick her native accent.
For more information, please visit Jenna’s website: www.JennaBennett.com
UNCERTAIN TERMS
Savannah Martin Mystery #12
* * *
Copyright © 2016 Bente Gallagher
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 27