Anna Adams - The Prodigal Cousin

Eliza’s mouth quivered, apprehension obviously chipping away at any joy. “I can’t explain about Molly until I talk to her.” She backed away from him. “And to my husband. I never told Patrick….”

With a muffled cry, she turned and left the room. Sam didn’t try to stop her. He just listened to her low heels thudding up the stairs.

As they faded, Tamsin appeared in the doorway.

“Well?” she said. “Are you happy now?”

“Where were you?”

“I bumped into her. I guess she wants us.”

He wasn’t so sure. “Are you angry?”

As she shook her head, tears filled her eyes, terrifying him. She’d cried for weeks after Fiona’s death, but her silence ever since had been harder to take. He steeled himself to tackle whatever Tamsin needed him to handle.

“Honey, we don’t have to stay.” He reached for her, and she didn’t fight for once. “If you want to leave, we’ll go.”

“I want my mom. I want my grandpa and grandma and my mom.”

She fell on him, and her sobs broke his heart. No fifteen-year-old girl should ever have to learn the true meaning of forever. His own loss lodged in his throat. No one should have to feel this way.

He stroked Tamsin’s head and held her, praying Nina wouldn’t walk in. Tamsin’s grief unsettled her sister almost more than their mother’s death. To Nina, Fiona’s absence was as confusing as it was painful, but her longing came in nightmares that worsened when she was afraid for her sister.

“Tamsin, I’ve been trying to make things better for you.”

“You think these people can take Mom’s place?”

“No one will ever replace your mom. Not for you and Nina. Not for me. I just wanted to give you family, but if you don’t want that, we’ll go. You and Nina matter most.”

“Then why did you drag us here?”

“If I’d realized you thought I was trying to replace your mother and grandparents, I wouldn’t have.”

“Daddy.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders the way she had when she was Nina’s age. “Sometimes I think I’m falling apart.”

Sometimes he feared he was, too. “You’re fine, Tamsin. You’ve had to face too much for a girl your age, and I’ve made you remember it again.”

IN HER ROOM, Eliza ran to the window on thick carpet that dragged at her feet. She bumped her head against a pane of wavy glass that distorted her view of Molly and Nina. Finally, another figure joined them. Sam.

He leaned down to speak to his daughter. His parents had taught him to be a good father. Forty years of living without her son filled Eliza’s eyes with hot tears of resentment toward that couple who hadn’t loved him the way they’d promised to.

She should have been the one to teach him everything. She should have changed his diapers and walked the floor with him when he was sick at night, and listened to his stories of school days and sports and whatever else boys shared with their mothers.

A sob threatened to escape. She’d never know those things—unless she found a way to include her son now. How many times had she daydreamed about contacting his adoptive parents, begging for news of him?

But she’d chained herself into a corner. Her parents had ousted her from their home when she’d asked for help with her pregnancy. She’d finished her GED while she was in a home for unwed mothers, waiting for Sam’s birth. From there, she’d worked her way through the University of Tennessee.

After she’d started teaching in Bardill’s Ridge, she’d met Patrick, an ambitious attorney on his way to being a judge, like his father. She’d believed he couldn’t love a woman like her, so she’d never told him about her past.

How could she tell Patrick the truth now? He valued his position, the respect people here held him in, the mornings he spent “jawing” with his friends about how to improve county government. She couldn’t admit she’d come here to pay penance in a needy school.

How could she explain to Molly, who’d worshipped her as though she were a saint?

Eliza pressed her fists to the chilled glass. She could not abandon her son—even grown—a second time.

She’d made the right decision for Sam. But what would her husband say when she told him she’d regretted letting someone else care for her baby? What she’d done had been right for Sam but wrong for her. She’d wanted him back every day since she’d placed him in a sweet-smelling nurse’s starchy-stiff arms.

She needed him far more than he needed her. She wanted to be his mother, to try to ease the pain that drove a young man to believe he needed backup in case his daughters lost him.

She had to tell Patrick first, and then Molly. Sam needed her, too, and she wasn’t capable of putting him out of her heart again.

For the first time since they’d opened the bed and breakfast, Eliza left dishes in the sink and snuck out the kitchen door.

She found her husband in his usual late-morning spot on the bench across the square from the courthouse. From there, he and Homer Tinsdale got a clear view of every miscreant—both the members of the legal profession and their clients—who set foot inside the building.

Patrick stood, alarmed the second he saw her. She’d never been good at hiding her emotions. He grabbed her by both arms, his fingers biting into her skin. “What’s wrong?”

She wanted to blurt “My son found me,” but she loved her husband and couldn’t bludgeon him with the truth in front of his friend.

ELIZA PUSHED ASIDE the orange-leafed branch of a maple.

“I need to talk to you.” She glanced at her husband’s friend, who’d also risen. “Alone, if you don’t mind, Homer.”

“Let’s get a coffee,” Patrick said.

He was still holding her too tightly, almost hurting her, but she said nothing. This might be the last time he would touch her. Grass whipped around their ankles like grasping fingers until they stepped onto the sidewalk. Dimly, she noted cars and people and the chirping of a few hardy birds that hadn’t fled with the approach of cool weather.

At the crosswalk she stepped in front of a slow-moving vehicle whose driver hit his horn and his brakes, shouting insults she couldn’t hear.

“Damn out-of-towner.” Patrick yanked her closer. “What’s wrong with you, Eliza?”

She memorized every beloved line on his face, the concern in his warm green eyes. “I’ll tell you when we sit.” Even God couldn’t begrudge her a few more moments of her husband’s love.

Patrick stared. “You’re worrying me. Are you ill?”

“No—nothing like that. I’m… Let me tell you inside.”

He waited for her to precede him through the doors of the Train Depot Café. Over the years, they’d divided the work at the B and B so that she did most of the morning shift and Patrick manned the evening desk. Patrick spent the cold mornings of winter at the café with Homer and sometimes with his father, Seth. Eliza often joined them for a late breakfast. The café’s owner waved at them now as a signal that she’d bring their usual orders.

“Just coffee,” Patrick said, and Becky Waters nodded.

Patrick pulled a vinyl-upholstered chair away from one of the Formica tables. Eliza sat, avoiding her husband’s gaze until Becky brought their coffee.

“Tell me,” Patrick said.

The truth trembled on the tip of her tongue, astounding her with the promise of unexpected relief. Sam had been a hard secret to keep for forty years. She looked at her husband, but his wary eyes made her hesitate. “You won’t like it.”

“After twenty-seven years of marriage, what are you afraid to tell me?”

“You’re an honest man, Patrick, a blunt man.” Another of his friends strolled past, clapping him on the shoulder and greeting Eliza. The second he saw her face, he cut his welcome short and sped to his own table. She leaned across the Formica, lowering her voice. If she didn’t get this out now, she’d never say it. “I haven’t been honest.”