Beach Reads Boxed Set

by Marie Force

  “I can’t lose him again, Cate,” Carly whispered. “It’d be the end of me.”

  “You’re not going to lose him. Let’s get through Zoë’s game, and then we’ll go find him. Tom and I will go with you. We’ll find him, and we’ll explain it to him.”

  Wondering if there was any explanation Brian would accept, Carly let her sister lead her to the bleachers where Tom waited for them with a stricken expression on his face. “Cate?”

  She clutched her husband’s hand and kissed his cheek. “Everything’s fine. What’s the score?”

  Part IV

  August-September 2010

  A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and

  a time for peace.

  Ecclesiastes 3:8

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Brian walked for hours. His mind raced with questions, disbelief, anger, and sadness. The sadness was unbearable. All this time there had been a child, his child, his child with Carly. No wonder why she wants a baby so badly. She wants one she can keep. She’s had to watch her sister raise the one she did have.

  When he thought about the years he’d spent so completely alone only to find out he’d had a child! All that time! He had asked Carly if she’d known what having a grandchild would have meant to his parents. What about what it would’ve meant to him to have a daughter? Had she considered that?

  He walked the length of the beach at the lake and ended up at the willow. Studying the tree that had been their haven, he wondered if Zoë had been conceived there on the night of the accident. Or had it happened in Carly’s bedroom on the Fourth of July? He had no idea, but suddenly he wanted to know. He needed to know.

  Turning toward town, Brian had worked up quite a head of steam by the time he made it to downtown. He was cognizant enough to realize that charging into Carly’s apartment in his current state of mind wasn’t wise, so he crossed Main Street, cut across the town common, and went up the hill to the cemetery.

  The late afternoon sun was warm on his back as he stood at his brother’s grave. He sat down and rested against the large stone. “Hey, Sammy.” Brian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry it’s been a while. I was away for a long time.”

  Brian pulled absently at the grass around the base of the stone. “I found out today I have a daughter. Can you believe that? She’s fourteen and gorgeous. She looks so much like Carly. It’s unbelievable. And you should see her pitch! She’s got a smoking fastball, just like I used to have. Remember?

  “You just wouldn’t believe all the shit that’s happened since that last night. It’s like my whole life is divided squarely in half—before the wreck and after. And let me tell you, after has pretty much sucked. Until recently, that is. Things have been pretty good lately. Being back with Carly has been, just, well . . . amazing.” His eyes filled. “We’re supposed to finally get married in two weeks.” He closed his eyes and tipped his face into the sunshine. “I just can’t believe she kept this from me, Sammy. I feel so cheated. Zoë, my daughter’s name is Zoë, is almost grown, and I don’t even know her.”

  After sitting there a long while, Brian slowly rose to his feet, brushed off his shorts, and ran a hand over the stone that marked his brother’s grave. “I miss you, buddy. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed. I’ll be back soon.” He turned to leave and was surprised to see Luke McInnis on his way up the hill.

  “Hey, Brian. How’s it going?”

  Brian shook the hand Luke offered. “Pretty good. What brings you here?”

  “My grandfather is buried right over there.” Luke nodded to the row just past Sam. He fixed his eyes on Sam’s grave and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you ever really get over something like that, do you?”

  “No.” Brian was reluctant to discuss his late brother with someone he barely knew and hadn’t seen since high school. “Well, I’ve got to get going. See ya around.”

  “You’re probably headed to Carly’s. I just saw her.”

  Brian turned, studied him, wondered. “Where?”

  “She was with her sister and brother-in-law. I think they were headed up to her place.”

  “I’m meeting them there.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you. Good to have you back in town, Brian. I hope you and Carly will be sticking around for a while.”

  “Take care, Luke.” Brian walked down the hill and crossed the street to the town common. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Luke still watching him. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew his cell phone and punched number one on his speed dial. “Dad? Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Another frustrating day without an ounce of progress. That’s how it’s going.”

  “You aren’t getting stressed out again, are you?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “So listen, I just had an odd conversation with Luke McInnis. He didn’t do anything wrong, per se, but he showed up at the cemetery as I was leaving and said he’d just seen Carly. Something about the whole thing creeped me out.”

  “Why aren’t you with Carly?”

  “We had a, ah . . . a fight.”

  “You didn’t leave her alone somewhere, did you?” Michael asked with a frantic edge to his voice.

  “Please, Dad. Give me some credit, will you? She’s with her sister’s family.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t leave her. This whole thing is turning me into a paranoid freak. I’ll have someone take a look at Luke. I don’t really know him very well. What do you remember about him?”

  “Not much. He was always just kind of there. I didn’t know him well, either.”

  “Ask Carly what she remembers.”

  “I will. Eventually.”

  “So what in the world do you two have to fight about?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Brian mumbled.

  “You’ll be with her tonight, right?”

  Brian stood at the bottom of the stairs that led to the apartment where they’d spent so many blissful hours since they’d been back together. He looked up, knowing she was there with her sister and brother-in-law, waiting to tell him how he’d come to have a child he hadn’t known about for fourteen years. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be with her.”

  “Let me know what she says about Luke.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Are you all right, son? You sound odd. And you’ve been to the cemetery?”

  “I hadn’t been to see Sam since I got home. No biggie, Dad.” He had no idea what he would tell his parents about Zoë. He needed to hear what Carly had to say before he decided anything. “You’d better get home, or Mom will come and drag you out of there in front of all your people.”

  “I’m going. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  As he trudged up the stairs, Brian closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. By the time he reached the small deck where Carly’s flowers filled the air with sweet fragrance, his throat had constricted and his heart was pounding.

  He rested his hand on the doorknob for a long moment, working up the courage to take the next step. What would he hear? How would he feel about it? What would it mean for his future with Carly? Would there even be a future with her? Questions he thought had been answered were now back in play, and the stakes had never been higher for them.

  Carly opened the door.

  Despite his huge desire to be pissed with her, he was affected by her ravaged face. He hated that he wanted to take her in his arms and do whatever he could to make sure she never looked that way again, but he couldn’t seem to move.

  “I’m glad to see you.” She reached for his hand. “Come in.”

  He let her lead him inside.

  Tom and Cate, who didn’t look much better than Carly, jumped up from the sofa when they saw him.

  “Brian,” Cate said, taking a step toward him.

  “I was wondering,” Brian said in the low, controlled tone he had practiced on his way into town, “if the three of you could maybe tell me
how this happened.” He turned to Carly. “When did we, you know, make a baby?”

  “Fourth of July.” Carly linked and unlinked her fingers as she all but vibrated with tension.

  They were getting into personal terrain here, and Brian hated doing it with an audience, but that didn’t stop him. “And didn’t you tell me then you were still on the pill?”

  Carly looked down at the floor and then back at him, the sadness in her eyes so deep and so overwhelming that had he not needed the answers so badly, he would’ve stopped right there. It was just too much. “I hadn’t left the house in almost two months by then,” she said softly. “I couldn’t very well send my mother to Planned Parenthood to get my pills for me.”

  “You could’ve sent me.”

  “I never thought of it. I wasn’t expecting to have the . . . opportunity to make love with you again.”

  “So you lied.” Where there should have been anger, there was only hurt and confusion. “Why would you do that, Carly?”

  As if she couldn’t wait another moment to touch him, she went to him and rested her hands on his chest. “I knew by the Fourth of July that I wasn’t going to be able to go with you to Michigan. I was so afraid we wouldn’t get another chance to be . . . together . . . like that before you left. I knew I was taking a risk, but I needed you so badly, Brian. I needed us to be us again, even if just for a short time. We’d spent two endless weeks apart—other than the week of the accident, the worst two weeks of my life up to that point—because you were frustrated with me for not talking. Can you remember what it was like then? How awful everything was? And how badly we needed each other that night?”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely. Tom and Cate faded away, and there was only Carly. He looked down at her. “Did you know you were pregnant when I left for school?”

  “I suspected.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Carly?” he cried. “Why did you let me leave and not tell me we might’ve made a baby? Did you think I wouldn’t care?”

  “I knew you would. And I knew you’d give up your scholarship, your chance to go to Michigan, and your dream of going to law school. When you told me you were leaving and not coming back, I realized that was what you needed to do to survive what’d happened to us. I couldn’t saddle you with a child at the expense of everything else you wanted and needed.”

  “And it never occurred to you I might want to make that decision for myself?” he asked, his voice growing louder.

  “It never occurred to me to give you the chance. You’d made your choice to go, and at the time, I could see how it was the best thing for you to make a clean break the way you did. It was what you needed, Brian. Being stuck with a wife who couldn’t talk or leave her parents’ house and a baby who needed everything wasn’t the life I’d imagined for you. You were destined for better things. It also never occurred to me to wonder if you would’ve done the right thing by me—and Zoë—had you known.”

  “I would have.”

  “I know that. I’ve always known that. But you might not have made it through college or become the great attorney you are today. I couldn’t ask you to sacrifice your whole life, and because I was in no condition to raise a child, that’s where Cate and Tom came into it.”

  “We got married shortly after you left,” Cate said. “We eloped, actually. Tom was going to graduate school in California, and I wanted to go with him. We came home a year later and told our extended family and friends we’d had a baby. Because Carly hadn’t left the house since the accident, no one but us even knew she was pregnant. So no one outside of our family ever questioned whether the baby was ours.”

  “What your parents must’ve thought of me,” Brian said, shaking his head. “To leave you alone and pregnant.”

  “They never blamed you, Bri,” Carly said. “They knew I hadn’t told you.”

  “And you just stepped in willingly to raise a child that wasn’t yours?” Brian asked Tom, trying hard not to resent the man for something that wasn’t his fault. “How do you do that?”

  “It was simple, really,” Tom said with a shrug. “I love Cate, and she asked me to. And then when I saw Zoë for the first time, any doubts I had just faded away. I’ve loved her from the first instant I ever saw her.” Tom’s voice broke. “She’s my little girl. I can’t imagine how you must feel right now, but I love her, and I’ve tried to be a good father to her.”

  Wiping at her own tears, Cate put her arm around her husband.

  Suddenly exhausted, Brian sat down on the sofa. “When was she born?”

  “April 5, 1996,” Carly said softly.

  Brian looked up at her with a gasp. “On Sam’s birthday?”

  Tears rolled down Carly’s cheeks as she nodded. “It was like a sign from above that he was watching over me. I can’t even explain how that felt.”

  Brian let his head fall into his hands as he, too, was felled by tears. “Oh, God, Carly,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands. “What that would’ve done for my parents. For me. To know that.”

  Carly sat down next to him and put her arm around him, drawing his head to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Bri. I tried to do what was best for all of us, what was best for you and our baby. And I’m sorry I lied to you about being on the pill, but I’m not sorry we got Zoë from it. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You and Zoë are the best of me, Brian.”

  “You got to watch her grow up. You got to be part of her life.”

  “Yes, and I’m so sorry you didn’t. I’d give anything to have been able to share her with you. I’ve always thought of Zoë as one more thing we lost that night on Tucker Road.”

  He raised his head and wiped his face. “I want her to know where she came from—”

  “No,” Tom said. “I won’t let you turn her life upside down.”

  “She’s my daughter. I have a right to know her, and she has a right to the truth.”

  Cate moved to sit on the coffee table and took Brian’s hands. “You’re not a selfish person, Brian, so I’m asking you to think long and hard about what you’d be doing to Zoë by telling her this. Everything we did, everything we all did, was done out of love—not only for Zoë but for you, too.”

  Brian knew his skepticism showed on his face and made no effort to hide it.

  “When you told Carly you were leaving and not coming back, she respected you enough and loved you enough to let you go, even though losing you broke her heart,” Cate said. “I can see how you feel wronged by what we did, and I understand that, but please don’t take it out on Zoë. Don’t give her reason to question everything she knows to be true. I don’t think she’d recover from that blow on top of the one she’s just suffered.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a prosecutor, it’s that the truth comes out eventually, and when it’s controlled, it does a hell of a lot less damage than when it happens by accident, like it did today.”

  “There’s no reason for her to ever know,” Carly said. “She’s a happy, well-adjusted kid who would never, ever suspect Cate and Tom aren’t her biological parents. I’m begging you, we all are, to put what’s best for her ahead of what’s best for you.”

  “If I hadn’t guessed, would you have ever told me?”

  “No.”

  “And you could’ve married me with that kind of secret between us?”

  “Without hesitation. I love you more than life itself, and I have since I was thirteen.”

  “When we were in Newport and talked about having a baby, why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “Because the one thing Tom and Cate asked of me when they did this incredible thing for me was that I never tell anyone, including you, that she was mine. It was their only stipulation. But when you asked me straight out today, I couldn’t lie to you.”

  Trying desperately to absorb it all, Brian took a deep breath. When he looked up, the three of them were watching him, all of them rigid with anxiety. “I understand what you’re saying about not telling Zo
ë. I hear you on that, Cate. I don’t want to upset her life any more than you do. But I have a stipulation of my own.”

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  “I want my parents to know she’s mine. I want them to know she was born on Sam’s birthday, the first birthday after he died.”

  “They’ll want to be involved in her life,” Tom said, the fear written all over his face.

  “They’ll do—or not do—whatever I ask them to. You have my word on that.”

  Cate and Tom exchanged glances.

  “I guess we could live with that,” Cate said.

  “There’s one other thing,” Brian said. “I want to spend some time with her. I want to get to know her. Carly and I could take her away for a few days under the pretense that we understand what she’s going through since we lost our friends, too.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Cate said, glancing at Carly.

  “You’re close to her, right?” Brian asked Carly.

  “Yes.”

  “So why would she think it odd to be spending a few days with you and your fiancé?”

  “She wouldn’t, I guess.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s up to Tom and Cate,” Carly said. “They’re her parents.”

  “Can we sleep on it?” Cate asked. “We need to talk about it.”

  “Of course,” Brian said.

  Cate hugged her sister and then surprised Brian by hugging him, too.

  “We’ll talk to you in the morning,” Cate said as she and Tom moved toward the door.

  “Cate?” Brian said.

  They turned back.

  Brian went over to them. “I don’t like that this was kept from me, but that has nothing to do with you two, and it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the enormity of what you guys did for Carly and Zoë and for me, too, I guess. So, um, thank you.”

  Tom shook his hand. “It’s been our pleasure,” he said in a hushed tone. “Entirely our pleasure.”

  Brian saw them out the door, and when he turned back to face Carly, he had absolutely no idea what to say to her.