Anna Adams - The Prodigal Cousin

“Can I go out, Daddy?”

“I’ll come with you.” She might try to climb into one of the bags. Holding her hand, he led her through the garden door.

Outside, Molly looked up, flustered, her skin pink from battling the slippery balloons.

He liked her happy smile for Nina. He couldn’t look away from the faint sheen of moisture on her cheekbones and throat. Sixteen months alone, and his mother’s daughter had to be the one woman who reminded him he was a man.

“Hi, Nina.” Finally, Molly looked at Sam, who wished he could backpedal to the house. “Children can’t resist these things.” She tied a knot in a bright yellow one. “The machine broke two balloons ago, and I still have to blow up a few more.”

“I’ll help.”

“I’ll manage.” She peered through the window at his full plate. He hadn’t finished a meal since the day he’d become a single parent. “Eat,” Molly said. “If Nina blows one of these up, she can keep it.”

Nina clapped her hands. “Daddy?”

He stared, speechless with guilt. If Molly looked after Nina, he’d be free to explain everything to Eliza. The plan might stink for Molly, but it helped him.

“She’s fine.” Molly’s too-neutral tone betrayed her wish that he leave. He didn’t have time to diagnose her motives. She’d offered him a better opportunity to talk to Eliza than he could have hoped for. No one else ever had to know anything if Eliza rejected him.

“Thanks.” He knelt beside Nina on the damp grass. “Don’t get in Miss Calvert’s way, and if she leaves, come back inside.” With a lick of his finger, he rubbed a smudge of cheese off his daughter’s nose while she wrestled for freedom.

“I’m all right, Daddy.”

He hoped she would be—that Eliza and her family would accept Nina and Tamsin even if they resented him. His own parents had loved him, but they hadn’t been good at the expansive, arms-wide affection the Calverts offered even to guests.

Standing, he brushed grass off his knees. “Thanks again, Molly.” Emotion unexpectedly deepened his voice, making her curious and him uncomfortable.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He found Eliza alone in the dining room, standing beside his plate. “You’re not hungry?”

“I am.” He couldn’t choke down even a swallow of coffee, but he sat, hoping to make her stay. She eased around the table to watch the woman and girl outside.

“Nina’s a lovely child. You’re obviously doing a good job with her.”

Neither of them mentioned Tamsin, his greater worry.

He filled up his coffee cup from the carafe on his table. “She’s latched on to Molly. She might be a nuisance.”

Eliza shook her head. “Molly’s wonderful with children.” How could she remain blind to his rising tension? “She’s a patient teacher, creative, eager to get involved. Her students feel how much she cares for them.” Eliza broke off with a nervous laugh. “I’m proud of her.”

“Naturally.” He left the table to stand beside her at the window. “You have no other children?”

“No.” Her lack of hesitation slashed like a knife.

A nice, clean wound. It would heal.

“I’m afraid I have to disagree with you, Mrs. Calvert.”

She didn’t answer. Her silence lasted so long Sam finally checked to see if she’d fainted. She was rooted at his side on the patterned rug of her cozy dining room.

He would remember this moment for the rest of his life—the smell of fried bacon and rich coffee, the tick of a grandfather clock that guarded the far corner, the slight tang of a fire that had burned to ashes the night before.

And Eliza Calvert, trapped in stillness like a photo of herself. His wound might take a little longer to heal than he’d estimated.

“Who are you?” She closed her eyes for the briefest moment. “Don’t answer. I know. Since last night, I’ve tried to remember who you remind me of, but now I know. I’ve wondered about you for so long—wondered if you’d show up, if you hated me, if you were happy.” She jerked her head toward the window, and he followed her gaze, watching Molly hand Nina a fat green balloon. “I wondered if you had children of your own.”

“I don’t know what to say.” He couldn’t tell from her delicate, frozen features what she felt. “I couldn’t locate my birth father.”

She took a deep breath. “Neither could I. He told me he wanted to help, that he wanted you even if he couldn’t marry me. He came along to my first doctor’s appointment—the day before he and his family left town in the middle of the night. He wanted to be a lawyer—kind of ironic when you consider I eventually married a judge. His mother wanted a good career for him and his father refused to let him pay for my sins. I guess they didn’t think I was the proper appendage for him…. But I shouldn’t tell you this.” She looked horrified. “You don’t want to know about—”

“I want the truth.” He pivoted toward the window, ashamed that his birth father had discarded her. Nina and Molly were drawing on the green balloon with a dark blue marker. “I came because of the girls.” He took a deep breath, hiding grief that still squeezed his heart. “When my wife and parents died, I realized Tamsin and Nina would have no one else if I…weren’t around.”

“So you want me to…”

She stopped, and Sam turned his head to look at her, tempted to take the trembling hand she’d raised to her mouth the way he would comfort a patient to whom he’d given bad news. But she wasn’t a patient.

He dropped his hands. He was a stranger. He couldn’t comfort her. She felt no attachment to him.

“I won’t ask for anything. I’m offering you the chance to know Nina and Tamsin.”

“And you.” Joy flashed in her eyes, giving him a second’s astounding relief. In the time it took him to feel disloyal to his adoptive parents, Eliza’s joy changed to panic. “Do the girls know?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Does it matter?” At her openmouthed groan, he relented. “Tamsin knows. She found the file.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.” She pressed her hand to her throat, staring over his shoulder. “Or my husband. Molly…”

He empathized, though sudden anger shook him. Even at his age he wanted Tamsin and Nina and him to matter most. But he was no child. Eliza’s concern for her present family meant she was a loving woman. She had the right to turn him away. She’d arranged for him to have a healthy, happy life. She’d done all a sixteen-year-old girl could do.

“Were you happy?” she asked.

Meeting her tumultuous gaze, he considered lying. He couldn’t. He’d lied enough to last a lifetime. “Happy, yes, but my parents had tried to have their own child for years. My mother told me once that she’d heard a lot of people had babies after they adopted. She expected to get pregnant as soon as they took me. Naturally, she was disappointed when she didn’t, but I think they were afraid to give everything to me. They wanted something left over for their real child.”

Eliza frowned. “Adoption is a strange fertility treatment.”

He wasn’t capable of saying anything else against his adoptive mother. “Being infertile wasn’t just a medical condition for her.” Her restraint had colored his father’s feelings for him. Sam couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t been as grateful as most adoptive parents to have a baby.

He nodded toward the garden. “You must have wanted a child, too.”

“You know we adopted her?”

“I hired a detective.”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

Not the wholehearted effort to help that he’d hoped for. If he was going to stay in touch with this family for the sake of his daughters, he had to know they could love Tamsin and Nina with a generosity his adoptive parents had never achieved.