Her Best-Kept Secret

by Harlen, Brenda

  Jenny wondered why her mother’s agreement failed to appease her.

  “And I don’t need some stranger coming into my life at this stage and making such outrageous claims,” she continued.

  Dana nodded. “If her claim is truly outrageous.”

  She frowned. “Do you believe it could be true?”

  “Are you asking that question because you really don’t believe it—or because you don’t want to know?”

  Jenny wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Because if you want the truth—” Dana placed an envelope on the bed “—you’ll find it in there.”

  She stared at the label, noted that it was addressed to Harold and Dana Anderson, but didn’t touch the package. “What is it?”

  “It’s the report of a private investigator your father and I hired to find your birth mother.”

  “When—why—” She shook her head, trying to organize the questions that were swirling around inside her head.

  “About ten years ago,” Dana said. “Because we thought there would come a time when you wanted to know. Because we thought you should know.”

  “Is it…Helen Hanson?”

  “The investigator told us he found her and he’d send the report. But we never read it. It was for you, Jenny, not for us.”

  She picked up the envelope with trembling fingers, turned it over. She traced a fingertip over the seal, but made no move to open it.

  “I don’t think Richard would have even suggested the possibility that there was a connection between you and Helen if he wasn’t absolutely certain,” Dana said. “But you can stay mad at him and take comfort in not knowing for certain, or you can open the envelope.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jenny took the envelope with her when she went back to her apartment. She put it on the dresser in her bedroom, where it seemed to mock her while she tried to sleep. Finally, at around three a.m. when she finally gave up the pretense, she climbed out of bed and carried it into the living room.

  She turned on the small lamp beside the sofa and sat for several long minutes with it in her hand. She knew it wasn’t going to stop nagging at her unless she either opened it or burned it. At the moment, she was in favor of fire—she wanted only to obliterate this evidence that had the power to turn her whole life upside down.

  But she knew that wouldn’t really change anything. It certainly wouldn’t make the questions go away.

  She slid a shaky finger under the flap, tearing the seal. Her heart was pounding as she pulled the pages out of the envelope, her throat dry as she unfolded them.

  She felt as if she was on a roller coaster, waiting for the big dip.

  Re: Jennifer Anderson.

  As her eyes scanned the black typeface on the paper, her heart settled into a familiar rhythm. There were no rises or heart-stopping falls, no quick bends or stomach-clenching turns. There was no shock or disbelief or even any anger left, because the words confirmed what she’d already known in her heart.

  She folded the papers up, tucked them back into the envelope and fell asleep on the sofa.

  Richard was on his way out the door when he spotted Helen striding briskly down the hall toward his room. Her face was paler than usual, her eyes dull—almost defeated.

  He stepped back to let her inside, instinctively knowing that whatever had brought her to his room this morning when they both should have been on their way to TAKA was something they wouldn’t want to talk about in the hall.

  “Mori Taka is threatening to pull out of our deal.”

  She made the announcement without preamble when he’d closed the door behind her.

  Richard frowned. “He can’t do that.”

  “He can if there were material misrepresentations,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She handed him a copy of the morning paper. He felt the beginning of a chill as he looked at the pictures of Jenny and Helen side by side, a chill that grew colder upon scanning the headline. “Unexpected Family Reunion or Deliberate Corporate Plant?

  The icy feeling spread as he read further.

  That is the question TAKA executives are pondering this morning in wake of the revelation that one of their own employees, American-born journalist Jenny Anderson, is the biological daughter of Hanson Media Group’s CEO, Helen Hanson.

  Ms. Anderson came to Tokyo from New York City shortly after the death of Helen’s husband, George Hanson, at about the same time it was discovered that the U.S. media giant was in extreme financial trouble.

  Richard folded the paper. He didn’t need to read any more to know that the article would hurt Jenny deeply and could be disastrous for the merger. As unhappy as she’d been to find out that Helen was her mother, he could only imagine how she’d feel having that information announced to the public—especially with the implication that she was working behind the scenes to help facilitate the merger with TAKA.

  He wished he could be there for her, but Jenny had shut him out. She wouldn’t even talk to him—never mind let him help her come to terms with the revelation. The only thing he could do now was focus his attention on the merger. It was the reason he’d come to Tokyo—and the only thing he had left.

  Jenny dumped the paper into the recycle bin. She’d always been a private person and she felt sick at the thought of the intimate details of her personal life splashed across the newspaper for public consumption. And she was furious at the implication that she would let herself be used by anyone—even her biological mother—as an inside spy. Beneath the hurt and the anger, she was also determined. She might not be able to undo the damage that had been done, but she could track down the reporter and find the “anonymous inside source” who was responsible.

  But aside from her parents and Helen, Samara and Richard were the only ones who knew the truth. She trusted her best friend implicitly and never entertained the possibility that she would leak such a hurtful story. She was just as convinced that Richard wasn’t responsible for the headlines. Even though she was angry with him right now, she didn’t believe for a minute he would do something like this. Besides, he had nothing to gain from the publicity and a whole lot to lose. If TAKA used the revelations as an excuse to pull out of the merger, the repercussions for Hanson Media Group would be a lot worse than her personal angst.

  While Jenny didn’t have any ready suspects, she was a reporter and she did have contacts in the newspaper world. The Herald had got the story from someone, and she was determined to uncover that source.

  Helen returned to Chicago and tried to go about the day-to-day business of running a company whose future was increasingly uncertain. She could blame George for leaving Hanson Media in a hell of a mess, but she knew her own actions since taking the helm had only compounded the problems.

  She’d been reluctant to leave Tokyo—for a lot of reasons, but especially because she didn’t want to lose the daughter she’d just found. She’d tried contacting Jenny, by calling her apartment and visiting the newspaper. But Jenny refused to see her and in the end, she’d accepted that her presence was needed at home. Richard had remained in Japan to continue discussions with TAKA.

  The phone on her desk buzzed and she sighed. Just one more interruption in a never-ending series of them.

  “Yes?” she asked wearily.

  “Jenny Anderson is here to see you.”

  The weariness was immediately replaced by equal parts anticipation and trepidation. The way things had played out the last time she’d seen her daughter—the first time since she’d given her up—she’d believed it might very well be the last time she saw her.

  She didn’t know what it meant that Jenny was here now, but she was anxious to find out. “Send her in.”

  Helen pushed her chair back and stood up, brushing her hands down the front of the navy skirt she wore, smoothing imaginary wrinkles. Her heart was pounding furiously and her chest was tight.

  Then Jenny was there, standing in the doorway, and the love for her child
that she’d kept bottled up inside for so long spilled over.

  Don’t rush, Helen reminded herself. Don’t push for too much too soon. She’d made that mistake once already.

  Jenny was here—she’d taken that first step. For now, that was enough.

  “Hello, Jenny.”

  Her daughter hovered on the threshold between the corridor and Helen’s office, hesitant, uncertain. “I probably should have made an appointment with your secretary to set up a more convenient time to see you.”

  “Of course not,” she denied immediately. “Please, come in.”

  Jenny took two steps into the room, the distance of at least ten feet and twenty-five years still separating them.

  “I didn’t know you were planning a trip to Chicago.”

  “I wasn’t.” She took another tentative step forward. “It was my parents’ idea.”

  Her parents being Harold and Dana Anderson, of course. Helen wondered if the choice of words was deliberate or not.

  “They thought I should talk to you,” she continued. “And I agreed.”

  Helen waited.

  Jenny was clutching the strap of her purse so tightly her knuckles were white. Helen wanted nothing more than to comfort her child, ease her obvious pain. But she didn’t delude herself into thinking this was a reunion—it was a confrontation. Her daughter’s next words proved that.

  “I’d like you to answer some questions. I would have asked them earlier, but you left Tokyo less than forty-eight hours after dropping the bomb that blew apart my life.”

  Helen looked away. “You wouldn’t take my calls. I couldn’t stay in Japan indefinitely, hoping you would talk to me.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “The news created a crisis for Hanson and since I was responsible, I needed to deal with the repercussions of it personally.”

  “What would you know about responsibility? It seems to me you’re best at walking away from it.”

  It was a well-aimed blow and Helen took the hit, accepting there would be a lot more before she and Jenny came to any understanding of the past—if they ever did. “I can’t blame you for thinking that, but you don’t understand the circumstances that existed twenty-five years ago.”

  “You didn’t want to be bothered with a child.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem all that complicated to me.”

  Helen’s own hurt was forgotten as her heart broke open for the obvious pain hidden deep within her daughter’s deliberately casual response. “If that’s what you really believe, why are you here?”

  She shrugged again. “I guess I just wanted to hear you admit it.”

  After too many years of wondering, Jenny wanted only to put the questions and doubts behind her. She’d spent too much time wondering about her birth mother, imagining various scenarios to explain why she’d been given away.

  What she’d read in the private investigator’s report gave her some answers but no explanations. Helen had been sixteen when she got pregnant, and although Jenny could muster some sympathy for a teenage girl with no education or resources to care for a baby, she didn’t understand the twenty-five years of silence that had followed. In that time, Helen moved away from her controlling parents, went to college and married a wealthy and successful businessman—all without expressing any interest in the child she’d given up.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Helen said softly. “Because the truth is that I wanted you more than anything else in the world.”

  Jenny refused to be swayed by the tears she saw shining in the other woman’s eyes—eyes that she could admit now were almost exactly like her own.

  “But I was still in high school and my family refused to support me if I kept my baby. I didn’t want you growing up in that kind of home, anyway. I wanted you to have a loving home—a real family.”

  She remained silent.

  “You’re still skeptical,” Helen said.

  “I don’t know what I expected you to say,” she admitted. “And I guess there’s a part of me that can’t help thinking you’ve had twenty-five years to come up with a good story.”

  Helen opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a stack of envelopes. She pushed them across the desk toward Jenny. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ve had twenty-five years. And those are the letters I wrote on your birthday on each of the past twenty-five years. I want you to have them. Maybe then you’ll understand that I spent every day of those twenty-five years wondering if I’d made a mistake. Questioning if there might have been some way I could have made it work. Hoping you were truly happy with the family you’d been given.”

  Jenny picked up the bundle of letters, noted that the envelope on top had the current year inscribed on it.

  “I was happy,” she said. “My parents are wonderful.”

  Helen nodded.

  “You would have known that if you’d made any effort to find me.”

  “I’d relinquished my rights—along with my responsibilities—when I gave you up.”

  Jenny hesitated before asking, “If you really wished you could have kept me, why didn’t you ever have any more children?”

  “I wanted children,” Helen told her. “More than anything, I wanted a baby to hold in my arms, to fill the emptiness in my heart that had been there since the day I gave you up. And we tried. George had three sons and I’d had you, so there didn’t seem to be any reason we couldn’t have a child of our own.”

  She looked away. “We tried everything, until I finally accepted that not being able to have another baby was my punishment for letting go of the one I’d been given.”

  Jenny felt the sting of tears in her own eyes. Regardless of what she wanted to believe, there was no denying the emotion she heard in Helen’s voice.

  She swallowed around the tightness in her throat. “It was Brad Morgan who leaked the story to the press.”

  Helen frowned. “The reporter?”

  “And my ex-boyfriend,” she admitted.

  “Why did he do it?”

  “To get back at me for rejecting him. I think he knew I decided not to marry him because of Richard, and it would have been a way to get back at him, too. But his primary motive was probably financial. I heard he was paid well for the exclusive.”

  “What is the situation with you and Richard?” Helen asked gently.

  “There is no situation,” she said.

  “You’re still angry with him, too,” she guessed.

  “No. Maybe.” She sighed. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  Jenny shook her head.

  “He loves you, Jenny. And you wouldn’t still be hurting so much if you didn’t love him, too.”

  She felt a sharp pang of regret, but accepted that the end of their relationship had always been inevitable.

  “He called me yesterday,” Helen continued.

  Jenny didn’t ask why. She told herself she didn’t want to know. It still hurt too much to think about everything they might have had.

  “TAKA has agreed to resume negotiations,” she explained, “and Richard needed my consent to put another condition on the table.”

  Helen paused, as if waiting for some kind of response, but she remained silent.

  “He wants a position with Hanson in Tokyo when the merger goes through.”

  Jenny’s gaze flew to Helen’s; the other woman smiled.

  “I told him it seemed like a reasonable request,” she continued.

  “Why?” Jenny asked softly.

  “Obviously he wants to stay in Japan, and I can think of only one reason he would do that.”

  “He’s starting to like sushi?” she asked weakly.

  Helen laughed, then turned serious. “He loves you, Jenny, and he wants a chance to prove it.”

  Jenny tried to sort out her thoughts and feelings about Richard throughout the thirteen-hour flight back to Japan, but when the plane finally landed, she was still no closer to any answers. Despite Helen’s ass
ertion that Richard wanted to stay in Tokyo, she was afraid to let herself hope they could get past all the misunderstandings and build a future together.

  She’d called her mother from the airport to let her know she was coming home. Dana had told her that she and Harold were going up to the cabin for a few days but would make arrangements for a car to pick Jenny up and drive her there. She was already looking forward to the peace and serenity of the lake, hoping the answers that eluded her might be found there.

  It was almost nine p.m. when the car finally pulled into the narrow laneway that led to the cabin and Jenny was struggling to stay awake. Even though she’d only been gone a few days, her internal clock was having difficulty adjusting to the time difference, and she was looking forward to falling into bed and sleeping for twelve hours straight.

  She didn’t see him on the porch. She’d walked right past him, her hand reaching for the handle of the door, when the first notes of the music registered.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then began thudding frantically against her ribs when she turned and saw Richard.

  She swallowed, tried to speak, but her throat was tight. As the music played, memories of the night they’d sang this song together—the first night they’d made love—flooded over her, swamping her with emotion. It was the same night—though she wouldn’t admit it until a long time later—she’d fallen in love.

  Richard took a step toward her. “It’s about time you got here.”

  She couldn’t deny she was a little disappointed. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to say, but after everything they’d been through, after coming home and finding him here, she’d expected…more.

  “Have you been waiting long?” she asked, matching his casual tone.

  He smiled as he took her hand in his, linked their fingers together. “I’ve been waiting for you forever.”

  And with those words, her heart simply melted. It wasn’t just the incredibly romantic words, it was the sincerity in his voice and the love shining in his eyes. It was the “more” she’d been hoping for, and then some.