by Sally John
There was a footstep behind him. “Mommy?”
He moved slightly, giving his girls enough space to hug each other but keeping them close.
“Oh, Mommy,” she whispered. “He’s nice, and he likes me!”
River scrapped his plan to ground Maiya for life. His little girl had sprouted wings. She needed to fly.
Chapter 53
Like a tottering elderly person, Teal clung to Maiya’s arm as they moved with River toward Lacey and Will and . . .
And Cody.
“Hey.” He grinned his trademark cheeky grin, still familiar after all these years.
She shook his outstretched hand. “Hi.”
“You never write; you never call.”
His smart remark transported her back to Cedar Pointe when they attended the combined middle–high school. He had been a mouthy upstart, four years behind her in class. Hadn’t he changed at all?
She gritted her teeth in a smile. “Did you want me to?”
He laughed. “No way, José.” He turned to Maiya and his thin lips settled into a gentle smile. “Seriously, I would have so messed you up in the early years.”
Teal had difficulty swallowing.
He said, “It’s best we start now. Whatever that means is up to your mom and stepdad.”
Inside Teal, some iron resolve went to mush. “I was going to call or write.”
Cody said, “Guess she beat you to it.” He shook his head. “Kids. Whaddya gonna do? But like I was telling Will and Lace, I might not have taken it from you, Teal. I sure wouldn’t have agreed to meet you all at Disneyland.” He smiled again at Maiya. He seemed to have a special one for her.
Will suggested they find somewhere to sit. River agreed. Lacey herded them toward a small round table outside the ice cream shop and Will went inside to buy ice cream for everyone. They borrowed chairs from other tables and eventually sat.
The whole scenario was bizarre and awkward, but Teal did not have a better idea. Until recently she had never imagined seeing Cody again face to face or even talking with him. She would have told Maiya about him first. Then she would have written a letter to him in Virginia, where he was supposed to be. If they heard back and if he was open to communicating with Maiya, she would have suggested letters and e-mails.
And maybe, just maybe, down the dark, murky road of the future, they would meet when Maiya was married with kids of her own and he happened to be in town.
She longed for her turtle shell.
She scooted her chair closer to River’s, leaning against his arm, feeling decidedly clingy. Maiya sat on his other side, between him and Cody. Between her two dads.
Awkward beyond belief. Way, way weird.
Next to her, Lacey squeezed Teal’s arm and gave her a small smile as if in agreement.
At least they were spared any ex-flame type of residue. Teal and Cody had never had a relationship. Theirs was such a small school that they knew each other, but he scarcely crossed her radar until Lacey’s crush. An independent college student by then, Teal had felt it her duty to inform her half sister that she was nuts.
Then that night . . . That night he was simply a means for Teal to hurt Lacey—to fulfill every prophecy Randi and Owen had ever declared over her.
No, there was no love lost here. No closure needed.
Which made Maiya’s story all the more sad.
“Mom, Riv?” There was an anxious crease between Maiya’s eyebrows, the one that begged for their approval.
Teal felt River bristle. Or was it her own nerve endings igniting his where their arms touched?
We cannot communicate that he is the enemy or that she is a mistake.
No, they did not want to do that.
Teal laid her hand on the bare skin of his forearm. She needed him to rub off on her. “What, hon?”
“I have two brothers and a sister. Well, half. Just like you and Aunt Lace, Mom.”
And you have another on the way! She wanted to shout, but smiled instead. “What you’ve always wanted. How old are they?” Lacey, of course, had mentioned them through the years, although Teal had not committed the information to memory.
“Dylan is ten, Evan is eight, and Hayley is six. Isn’t that cool?”
“Very cool. You can be as bossy as I was.”
Lacey laughed. “Knowing Maiya, she may pass you up in that department.”
“Hey!” Maiya protested.
“Funny.” Teal turned to Cody. “Did you tell your children yet?”
“Yeah. Too soon, I admit, since I didn’t know for sure. But that’s just me. Maiya got ahold of me while we were all in Texas. They’re still there, at my in-laws’, until tomorrow. They’re excited about having a big sister.”
Teal wondered how one told little kids about a one-night stand. “And, uh . . .” She had to ask him. She could not hear it from Maiya. Could not hear his wife’s name in the same sentence as stepmom. “Your wife? She, uh—?”
“Erica took the news in stride.” He chuckled. “I married a brick with a heart of gold. I did have to talk her out of tarring and feathering you, though, for not telling us sooner.”
Teal felt her eyebrows rise.
“I reminded her that we’ve been overseas most of our married life. We couldn’t have really gotten to know you.” He looked at Maiya. “Now we’ll be living just down the road. They can hardly wait to meet you. If you want.”
Maiya grinned.
“And then there are my parents.”
He had told them already? Teal felt ashamed and guilty and grateful all at once. Nora must be so angry with her.
Cody shook his head as if in amazement. “I’d call from Germany and it was ‘Maiya this’ and ‘Maiya that.’ So I know when we tell them, they’ll be on cloud nine. I think they already adopted you.”
Maiya’s grin stretched until her eyes nearly shut. “Really?”
He laughed.
At the word adopted, a knifelike sensation ripped through Teal. River had never adopted Maiya. He wanted to, but she could not allow it. Contacting Cody four years ago was out of the question. She wasn’t risking her newfound happiness by dragging her past into it.
Could it happen now?
River addressed Cody. “What do you propose to do from here?”
“Well, like I said, we’d all love to have Maiya come visit.” He shrugged. “For a weekend or whatever. I don’t want to disrupt your lives.” He gazed at River. “I’m not claiming any rights here, but it seems a good thing for a biological dad to get to know his daughter.” He turned to Maiya. “If she wants.”
Maiya looked a question at River and Teal.
Teal said, “It’s up to you, honey. We can make it work.”
“I could drive down to Pendleton.”
“Nah, I don’t think so.” Teal smiled. “Not yet, Miss Just-Got-Your-License. We’ll figure something out.”
Maiya grinned again. “Okay. I’d like that.”
Will walked up to the table carrying a container that held six huge waffle cones filled with ice cream. “Ta-da!” Ever the perfect host, he had remembered everyone’s favorite flavor and now served them.
Maiya and Cody discovered they each had caramel pecan.
She said, “That’s your favorite?”
“That’s yours? Get out of town.”
They laughed.
Teal kind of hoped they all could have gotten out of town right then and there. As it was, they would be eating ice cream until nightfall.
River leaned over to eye her cone. “Hm. Strawberry’s your favorite?”
His nearness calmed her. She smiled the special smile she had just for him. “Yours too?”
“Get out of town.”
Her stomach full of strawberry ice cream and settled for the moment, Teal knew now might be her only chance. “Cody, can we talk?” She glanced around the table. “Alone?”
“Sure.”
She squeezed River’s arm and he nodded in understanding.
Cody walked beside her through
the crowded Main Street. He said, “I apologized to River for meeting like this. I tried to talk Maiya out of it, but the truth is, I really wanted to meet her and find out the truth from you. It seemed like the best time. I was able to get today off. Tomorrow, when Erica and the kids get here, life will be crazy for a while, till we get settled in.”
“I apologize for not addressing things directly with you.”
He chuckled. “With Maiya in charge, you didn’t need to.”
“She’s just a kid. I shouldn’t have . . .”
“She looks like you, but at the same time she’s got my mother in her DNA. I mean, the way she moves her mouth, and there’s something about her walk. Do we need to do a paternity test?”
“No. You are her father. There is no other possibility, because I was not intimate with anyone else.”
He looked at her. “I thought Lacey was the squeaky-clean sister and you were the, um, opposite.”
“I didn’t sleep around. Do you remember that night, in the back room of your parents’ place?”
He worked his mouth as if unsure what to say. “Honestly, no.”
Teal believed him.
They continued in silence. He spotted a vacant bench off to the side and gestured toward it. They sat.
He said, “Look, it’s no secret I sowed a lot of wild oats during those years. Most of the details are lost in a purple haze. How did you and I hook up?”
“You took Lacey to a dance.”
“Yeah, that I vaguely remember. She wasn’t my typical date. I know she wasn’t my typical end-of-date conquest.”
“No, she wasn’t. But you tried, which is what angered me. Then somehow Owen . . . It doesn’t matter. The thing is, I tracked you down that night. One thing led to another.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Did I rape you?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “Have you . . . ?”
He lowered his hand and winced. “Like I said, purple haze. So far, no complaints. So far, no other offspring either. Thank goodness. Erica wasn’t exactly surprised at Maiya’s claim, but I don’t know how many more she could take.”
Teal tried to imagine what kind of woman would marry him. An independent saint?
He said, “You never told Maiya my name?”
“No. Then I would have had to tell Lacey and Will and my mom and your parents. It would hurt them so much. I couldn’t give Owen the satisfaction to gloat.” She cringed. Even Owen had factored into her lie?
“That guy was one mean dude.”
“The thing is, my sister was in love with you and she adored me. I basically did what I thought would hurt her the most and then I shoved it under the rug and moved on.”
“Kind of hard to hide the kid, though. You got pregnant by immaculate conception?”
She shook her head. How silly, but that was exactly the idea she had promoted.
He said, “What did you tell Maiya about me?”
“Nothing.” She paused. “I told her you weren’t ready to be a father, that you didn’t want to be with us.”
“Your run-of-the-mill tale of abandonment.” Cody’s voice and mannerisms remained polite, but he wasn’t letting her get away with a thing.
In the pit of her stomach, the ice cream rolled into a congealed lump. She wouldn’t want to face him on the stand. “Probably half the dads of her classmates are absentee. Abandonment was an easy explanation. It held her off until a couple months ago. Then I told her that right after she was born, you’d gone to jail.”
“Kind of picky about what parts of the truth you reveal, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. And I still am. What do I tell her about her conception?”
“Why not the whole truth?”
“It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Sordid?”
“Unloving.”
“And?”
She shrugged.
“That makes you look like what?” he said. “A flawed human being?”
She frowned.
He laughed, not unkindly. “Teal, you are. I am. The entire race is.”
“I know that. I just don’t want her to feel unwanted.”
“I seriously doubt she’d feel that. She’s such a good kid. I deal with eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds coming into the Corps. Some of them couldn’t hold a candle to her. The maturity and confidence she expressed when we first talked on the phone was unbelievable. She didn’t get that from my genes. Despite the fact that you’re a lawyer who knows just how much truth to hold back, I bet you’ve been Mother of the Year for sixteen years running, right? You’ve taken care of all her needs and then some. You even found a decent stepdad for her.”
“River was a surprise. But I have tried to do my best.”
“It seems to have worked. What else is there?”
Adoption. “River. Uh.” She swallowed. “River wants to adopt her. Maiya and I want that too.”
Cody sat back and gazed at her. “That means I give up my rights as her father?”
“It means you wouldn’t owe her anything. You wouldn’t be financially responsible for her. She would not inherit anything from you unless you were to stipulate that. She doesn’t take your name. She could still visit as often as she wants. You’d still have a relationship.”
He looked away. His jaw clenched. His lips pressed together. He made eye contact again. “I sign papers, giving up rights and responsibilities, and we base our relationship on abandonment.”
“Not exactly. At this age she wouldn’t see it that way.”
“But I would. I would, Teal. And that doesn’t sit well in my gut. Life is about loyalty. Now that I know I have another daughter, I refuse to abandon her. I won’t do it.”
She bit back a sarcastic retort. Not only had the guy grown up, he’d gone off the deep end. Had she asked for a stupid knight in shining armor to ride up on his white horse? No. She had River for that.
Disappointment washed through her. River would be crushed. Maiya would be . . .
She did not really know what her daughter would be. Especially once she heard the whole truth from her mother.
Funny. All the fearing about Cody fighting adoption had not helped. All the delaying had not helped. Here they were, exactly in the place she thought she had avoided.
She really had been a silly fool.
Chapter 54
After returning home from their long day and evening at Disneyland, Teal had hoped to tuck Maiya into bed and surprise her with the baby news. Instead she went right to bed herself, needing River to tuck her in. There hadn’t been a chance to tell him about her private talk with Cody. That would have to wait. Perhaps the baby news could wait as well.
She said, “Maybe we shouldn’t tell her tonight.”
He propped another pillow behind her back. “She’ll say it wasn’t fair to exclude her. How come we all knew and she didn’t?”
Teal did an eye roll. “You can be so annoyingly right on about her.”
He stretched to pat himself on the back. “Yes, I can.”
“I think we’ve maxed out on over-the-top emotions for one day.”
River sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re exhausted, but we have to bring her in. This is major family business.” He glanced at her midsection. “For us four.”
She sighed and whispered, “He showed her family pictures already! What if she refers to that woman as her stepmom? What if she says ‘Dad this’ and ‘Dad that’? What if—?”
He put a finger to her lips. “News flash, love. Cody is her dad. Erica is her stepmom. We have to accept these facts and get used to them. It doesn’t take anything away from us, from what we have together. It’s not like anyone is going through a nasty divorce and forcing her to take sides.”
She moved his hand away from her mouth. “Why couldn’t they have just stayed overseas? Or even on the East Coast?”
“Teal.” His low tone was San Sebastian style.
“What?” She snapped the word.
“I adore you. I adore that
we are having a baby together. But if pregnancy makes you this whiny, I’ll be spending more time at school, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Maiya moved down to Camp Pendleton.”
“Teasing is not going to help.”
“I’m only half teasing. I’ll cut you some slack for hormones and exhaustion, but this is off the charts. What else is going on here?”
She shuddered and a sob nearly closed up her throat. “She had to do this all by herself.”
“Yes, she did.”
“I messed up.”
“Big time.”
“How can I ever . . . ?”
“Make up for it? You can’t.”
“How can she ever forgive me?”
He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“How?”
“How do you think?”
“Ask for it? Apologize?”
His eyebrows rose.
She gritted her teeth and deleted the question marks. “I ask for it. I apologize.”
There was a brief knock on the open door and Maiya came into the room. “Apologize for what?”
“Oh, honey.”
Maiya plopped on the other side of the bed, her face scrunched. “My bad. I’m sorry, Mom and Riv. I never should have contacted Cody without telling you two.”
Teal exchanged a glance with River, who smiled.
She reached over and took Maiya’s hand. “Hon, you had every right to do that. I am proud of you for being brave and doing what had to be done when I dropped the ball. Maybe you should have told us, but I really didn’t let you. You knew my response would be what it’s always been: ‘I’ll tell you later.’ Thank you for figuring out that ‘later’ was now.”
“I just couldn’t wait any longer to find out.”
River said, “What made you change your mind? After the Dutch incident, you said you didn’t want to know him.”
Maiya shrugged. “I was missing Aunt Lacey and Uncle Will and Baker so much. And Nora. I e-mailed her and she e-mailed back. She reminds me of Gammy Jayne, you know, just down-to-earth and not judging me for being me. I guess it snuck up again, that wanting to fill up the empty place. No offense, Riv.”
“None taken.” He ruffled her hair. “How did our smart cookie put the pieces together? You were putting yourself out there to contact Cody, not knowing for sure it was him.”