Another Woman's Son

Half an hour later, Ben turned into the brick-lined entrance of his neighborhood. Isabel’s car skidded as the tires lost traction in the snow.

He glanced at her, but her cynical smile, focused outside the vehicle, opened his eyes to the place where he lived.

Neat houses in neat rows, governed by rules and expectations that kept garbage cans and neighbors in their proper places. It looked pretty as long as no one peered inside.

He parked in front of the garage, and they both got out. Isabel’s smile had faded. She clung to the door, obviously in the grip of second thoughts.

A plan came to Ben, fully formed out of distrust. “Come see Tony. He’s still the baby you love.” The nearer he kept Isabel, the better he’d know what she was thinking. “The reception was difficult. This is going to be impossible.”

He opened the side door and waited. She stared at him and finally slogged through the snow, her head down, her breath coming so fast he could see her coat moving up and down with each respiration.

Faith’s spotless chrome-and-granite kitchen stood empty. Isabel peered, anxious as a hunted animal. He’d always hated the cold kitchen. One small frame in Faith’s picture of a perfect home.

He dropped his keys on the counter. “Wait here. I’ll let the sitter know I’ll take her home in a few minutes.”

“Okay.” But she glanced back at the door. She’d already proved her skills as a runaway.

He took a chance and left her there. He hoped she loved his son too much to leave. The sixteen-year-old girl from three streets over jumped off Faith’s white leather sofa as he entered the family room.

“Mr. Jordan.” She tended to watch adults like a spooked colt.

“We’re back, Patty.” He rarely understood adolescent girls, but he dealt with Patty by pretending it was normal for people to treat him like a burglar in the middle of a big job. “I brought Mrs. Barker to see Tony. Can you give us a few minutes and then I’ll drive you home?”

“He’s asleep.” She scooped up her coat and book bag. “I can walk.”

“Your parents would kill me.” He looked out the wide bay windows. “The snow’s getting heavier. I’ll be glad to take you.”

He headed back to the kitchen, more sure his jumpy sitter would remain than he was that he’d find Isabel where he’d left her. Miraculously, she’d waited.

His blood seemed to flow at light speed—a tremble in his fingers, a roar in his ears. Adrenaline. If he didn’t hit something soon, his head might explode.

“Tony’s napping.” He tried to sound natural, but he felt as if he were outside his body looking down. “He won’t wake up if we’re quiet.” He led Isabel to the stairs she’d climbed many times before.

At the top, his son’s door stood partially open. Patty had stacked the baby’s toys on a plain chest at the end of the too-ornate crib. Lamps that wouldn’t survive a boy’s first in-the-house football game lit the room with soft warmth.

Tony lay on his back, his arms and legs spread as if he were flying. Heat finally crept back into Ben’s body as he watched Tony sleep. He hadn’t lost everything in that accident. His son had survived. His son.

Isabel leaned on the crib’s raised rail. She’d been in this house, bent over this crib, taken care of Tony almost as much as Faith.

She reached for the baby’s hand but jerked her own back just before she touched him. Ben forgot for a moment that she’d let him believe in his fake life for three extra months. He started to remind her again she wouldn’t wake Tony, but the harsh need on her face cut him short.

Tears floated in her eyes. Tony meant everything to her. Ben covered her hand and touching her felt right again.

“I know how you feel,” he said. But you can’t have him.

“I shouldn’t have come. I thought I’d gotten used to not seeing him, but I was wrong.” She splayed her free hand over her breasts. “He kills me, your boy.”

Could he trust her? Until he was sure, he couldn’t let her leave. He imagined himself in her place, watching her mother fall apart, her father walk around like a monolith without emotion. Isabel knew exactly what Amelia and George needed to get all better. And that was Tony.

He slid Isabel’s hand off the crib and pulled her to the door. Without pausing, he took her to his room. Isabel caught the doorjamb, reluctant to enter Faith’s domain of chintz and fussy swags.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Asking you to stay here.”

“What?” She clenched her hands in the narrow skirt of her dress. “Just because Faith and Will slept together, you and I should try it? I don’t need that kind of revenge.”

At first, he didn’t understand. “Are you nuts? I only brought you in here because I didn’t want the babysitter to overhear.” They’d been friends for most of their adult lives, and he was about to trick her into easing his paranoid fears. He couldn’t help it.

For Tony. He’d risk everything, destroy anyone.

“Stay with us,” he said. “Until you decide what you want to do next. The four of us were his family. As you said, he’s lost Will and Faith. George and Amelia didn’t get down here often enough for him to love them the way he does you.”

She didn’t even blink. It was as if she was saturated, had no more room to take in another shock. “You said you hated me.”

“I was angry.” Part of him did hate her. But would he have given up those three extra months for something as brutal as the truth? “Where else do you have to be?”

“In Middleburg. I have a job.”

“What about your house?”

She blushed. Was she lying again? “I asked for time off to get the house ready to sell.”

“Then stay here. You don’t want the memories over there.”

“No,” she said in a cutting voice he didn’t recognize. “I’d rather imagine Will and my sister here, in your bed.” She took one look at it and ran.

The bathroom door slammed. He slumped onto a chair, his hands hanging between his knees. That bed was going out of this house tomorrow if he had to pitch it through a window.

He could hear water running. Isabel had to come out sometime. Meaning, he’d have another chance to win her over.

Guilt almost held him back. Even blinded by love for Faith, he’d recognized Isabel’s softer heart. But distance might make her forget Tony wouldn’t care how he’d been conceived. Ben loved his son too much to trust Isabel’s good intentions.

The more she saw that he and Tony were the real father and son, the less willing she’d be to take him to court.

CHAPTER TWO

ISABEL LIFTED her head, saw herself in the mirror and jumped. Mascara-shadowed eyes, damp face, torment she couldn’t hide.

No marriage. No sister. No best friend. No home.

She squared her shoulders. She was also no victim. Her life had changed forever, but she didn’t have to hide in a bathroom, weeping over the past like a please-save-me heroine in a thirty-year-old paperback.

She yanked the door open. Ben, looking stunned, rose from one of Faith’s big chintz armchairs. Isabel tried to go back into the bedroom, but she almost thanked him for coming into the hall before she could.

“What do you say?” he asked.

“Why do you care if I stay? You said this was my fault, too.” He wanted something more from her than company for Tony. “What you’re saying and what you want are out of sync.”

“No marriage falls apart because of one person, and no relationship ends overnight.” Confusion and guilt drained the life from Ben’s face. “I worked too hard.” His research kept him in his lab for long hours.

“Who knew you were leaving your home undefended?” Or that her husband would fall for her sister? “I never had a clue. Did I close my eyes to the signs?”

“All the stages of being cheated on,” Ben said. “Bitterness and taking all the blame. But Tony doesn’t have to be part of this train wreck.”

“Why would you let me near him when you think I’m going to tell my parents we should take him away from you?”

His expression acknowledged the truth in her words, but the accusation quickly disappeared. Ben had learned to hide things, and his new talents made her uneasy. “The thought never crossed your mind?” he asked.

“I’m not like—” She stopped, lifting her hands to her unnaturally warm face.

“Like Faith?” he asked. “In what way? I’d like to know more about my wife.”

So would she, but they’d both lost any chance at knowing who she’d really been. “I want Tony to be safe and happy. Faith and Will just wanted each other, and to hell with the rest of us.”

Without touching her, he studied her face as if he were divining a mystery. “Stay with Tony until he gets used to being without his mom.”

“I can’t take her place.” She turned away.

“Why don’t you like people to see you cry?”

“Because I’m not weak.” She looked back as if he’d forced her to. “I loved my sister—and Will—but I’m sick of being their joke. I imagine them laughing….”

“And you still think you love them?” Surprise raised his voice.

They both glanced toward the stairs. The babysitter could bring down Ben’s shaky house of cards with one juicy conversation.

“You have to be more careful. Sixteen-year-old girls talk to their friends and their mothers. And her mother knows my mom from the parties you and Faith gave.”

Ben pulled her closer. “You’d mind if your parents tried to take my son?”

“Why won’t you trust me?”

“You had three months to tell me the truth.”

“I was wrong.”

He let her go, disillusioned. “At least you could have warned me they might take Tony and run. I almost lost my son.”

Isabel had nothing to say. She couldn’t be grateful that her sister’s death had restored his child to Ben.

“Reading your mind is as easy as looking through a window,” he said. “Everything you think is right there to see. I’m not glad she’s dead, either.”

“I can’t believe it, even after today. My mom hasn’t even figured out what the bags in the car mean.”

“What?”

“She thinks Will must have been giving Tony and Faith a ride to their place in Pennsylvania.”

“He did that before when he had meetings in Pittsburgh,” Ben said, but anger turned him into a stranger with dead eyes and a slitted mouth. “They told us he was taking her to your parents those times, didn’t they? But they were together. Since cell phones, how would we have found out? I never called your parents’.”

“I did, once or twice.” She gave Faith and Will a grudging benefit of the doubt. “She must have gone home sometimes. She couldn’t risk having you or me say something about those trips to my parents.”

“Why do you make excuses for her?” His tone accused her of cheating, too.

“Faith was my sister.” Will, she could condemn with less conscience, if only she could stop thinking she’d pushed him at Faith. She hadn’t been able to tear down the wall she’d built after learning of his first affair, though she’d walked right through it into Will’s arms just to prove she could.

“You think it was your fault,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean. I’d like to forget either one of them ever existed, but I keep remembering the good times, too. Will was like my brother.” It was his turn to look away. “And Faith gave me my son.”

She hadn’t meant to open a discussion about auld lang syne. “I don’t want to talk about them.” She shook back her hair. “Look, my mother is Tony’s grandma. She’s the one who should help you take care of Tony.”

“They’ve been around for three days and he’s just starting to get used to them. He asks for his mom and you and Will. I don’t know if it’s because he only wants the three of you, or if he’s actually scared of strangers right now.”

“Strangers? I’ve never known you to be so dramatic, Ben. Tony’s spent a lot of time with my parents.”

“Apparently not as much as we thought.” Unfamiliar arrogance frosted his tone.

“I haven’t seen him for three months. He might not know me anymore.” She eased away from Ben, aware she was about to infuriate him. “And how can I look at him without searching for some sign of Will?”

He didn’t lose his temper. “Try to do what I do. Don’t let yourself look for Will in Tony. Signs of him might drive you crazy.” He rubbed his face. A five-o’clock shadow had begun to appear, right on time.

“I’m afraid.” She stared at the nursery door. “I need to start my own life.” She rubbed her hands together, cold and hot all at the same time. “What if I don’t love him anymore because of Will and Faith?”

“I’m furious with you, Isabel, and even I don’t think you’d blame an innocent child for Will’s adultery.”

And Faith’s. Her sister’s part in this filthy soap opera hurt almost more than Will’s. Men could fall out of love with their wives. But then the wife was supposed to be able to parade her grievances past her sister for sympathy.

Ben took both her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “You and I are all that’s left of the only family Tony’s ever known.”

“What do you mean you’re furious with me? You don’t act upset. Are you pretending?”

He let go too quickly. “I’m putting my son ahead of my feelings.”

“But you have a plan.” She saw him as she never had before. With that strange flat look in his eyes, his body strained to breaking point. “You let my parents drive you to the funerals. Would you have dragged them back here if I hadn’t shown up?”

“You honestly think I’m planning something?” He looked embarrassed. “I’m not Will,” he said, borrowing her earlier approach.

“I can’t tell what’s real.”

He pressed both her hands to his chest. The weave of his wool suit against her palms made her feel again. She heard the low whisper of heat in the vents, noticed the faint lighting that softened the walls and lit her way—to Tony’s room, or to the front door and freedom.

“I’m real. Tony’s real,” Ben said. “And you’re his aunt.”

“I can’t do what you want.” She wasn’t being selfish. She was looking for salvation. “I want to know how people live when they’re not surrounded by family and so-called best friends.” Faith and Will would always pervade any moment she spent with her family—including Ben and Tony. She had to put what had happened behind her. “I’ll send presents at Christmas and birthdays.” Despite her best effort not to cry, the tears started again.

Ben mistook them for weakness. “You can’t turn your back on Tony. He needs us.”

“He needs you. And my mom and dad.” Too many pictures went through her mind. Will, cuddling Tony, giving him piggyback rides. Resting his chin on the child’s head while he’d smiled at her, always hiding the worst secret a man could keep from his wife.

Dying inside, she tried to push Ben away, but he took her hands again, and they stumbled inside his bedroom door. A whiff of Faith’s perfume hit Isabel. Probably a memory.

“Anyone in my family would do for you,” she said.

“Because they’re Tony’s blood relations? That’s the kind of thinking that makes me believe you’ll get over being angry with Will and Faith and then tell your mother and father about Tony.”

“If I couldn’t play God with you, how would I with them?”

“I’m your friend. They gave birth to you. They have nothing to do with the life you’ve led here. I’m a reminder.”

She left him and opened the door to Tony’s room. He followed. “Look at him,” she said. “Why would I want to take him away from you?”

Ben crossed to his son’s bedside. He pulled a blanket up to Tony’s waist and tucked a ragged toy kitten beside him.

Tony’s curly brown hair had grown longer. His sweet, plump hand curled in his sleep. Her feet moved of their own volition. She tripped on a stuffed hippo she’d never seen before. It squeaked and she glanced at the sleeping boy who owned her heart.

He was her flesh and blood, too. The thought—her need for him—frightened her. Just what Ben feared most.

Her nephew burrowed into his overstuffed comforter with a soft, sad sigh. “Mommy.” He pulled his arms together in an empty hug.

She gritted her teeth and wiped her face. Tony’s name screamed in her head. If she was ever good at being a mom, it would be because Tony had taught her to love like one.

Ben was right. How could her mother resist wanting to raise Faith’s child? Having Tony so close would be like having part of Faith back.

Across the crib, Ben made a sound. The fear on his face frightened her.

“What?” she whispered, but she knew he’d read her thoughts again.

“Let’s go.” He pressed one hand to his son’s back. “He needs to sleep, and I have to take Patty home.”

He urged her out, but she hung back, gazing at her nephew. She’d do anything to protect him, and one thing she knew for sure. No good could come of tearing him away from his father. He belonged with Ben.

All their lives had changed, but Tony was a child. Only unconditional love and reassurance could keep him safe. She’d promised to take care of him.

“Let me shut the door.” Ben nudged her out of the way and closed it, cutting off her view of Tony.

“What about Will’s mom?” She spoke without meaning to. Her parents were dangerous enough, but Leah Barker wouldn’t be able to stop herself from going after Tony if she discovered the truth.

“You’d tell her?” Ben obviously thought she’d lost her mind.

“Never.” After her husband’s early death from heart disease, Leah had raised Will as if he were her trophy. She wanted everything, but nothing ever filled her up. Nothing would ever be enough. “She’d take you to court if she even suspected Will was Tony’s—” Isabel broke off, unwilling to utter the word.

Leah Barker had collapsed the second Isabel had phoned her. Leah had been the worst kind of permissive, overprotective, overfond mother, raising a son who’d never questioned his sense of entitlement.

“We can’t let her find out.” Ben spoke her thoughts exactly. Sudden relief relaxed his mouth and seemed to travel through his body on a shudder. “So you can’t tell your mother and father.” He tugged her toward the stairs. “My God, I don’t understand the Barkers.”

“I was one of them,” she said. The name had filled her with pride on her wedding day. Leah had promised to be as much a mother as her own. Talk about a promise that couldn’t be kept. But Will had chosen her to be his wife. With her parents, she’d always come second to Faith. She’d loved her sister and tried not to mind, but much of her new-wedded bliss had been built on gratitude to Will for putting her first.

What a fool she’d been.

Abandonment wrapped Isabel like a fine layer of the falling snow. She shivered, cold all the way to her soul.

Ben opened the sides of his jacket and pulled her into his warmth. Isabel held still, unwilling to make herself vulnerable.

“It’s okay, Isabel. You can trust me.”

Longing to believe, she pressed her face against Ben’s shirt, reveling in his heat, in the comfort of her best friend’s arms.

“You understand why we have to keep this secret?”

“When you talk like that, I can’t trust you.” She’d faced too much truth in the past three months.

Ben’s heart thumped against her ear. “I can’t help it. I haven’t felt safe since I read that note.”

Would she ever feel safe? “Do you trust me, Ben?”

“I saw what you looked like when you realized what you’d give up if you kept my secret. I can’t trust you.”

“Too bad for you if everyone can see straight through me.” She didn’t like her own bitterness.

“Would Amelia be able to put Tony first?” Ben tucked her head against him, and she suspected he didn’t want to see her emotions. “Or would she tell herself Tony could learn to be happy with her and George? He might even forget me.”

“Forget you?” Even to her, that image of the future was unbearable. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

Ben kissed the top of her head, his gratitude more real than either of their marriages had been. “Thank you, Isabel.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m sure lying is wrong. Look how it’s already destroyed us.”

FINALLY IN BED in the guest room, Isabel tossed and turned under crisp sheets and a down comforter. In darkness relieved only by an outside streetlight, she tried to shut off the accusations racing around her mind. There was no one left to accuse. Ben couldn’t have kept Faith at home any more than she had Will.

Pounding her pillow, she lifted her head to stare at the clock—2:17.

Second, third and hundredth thoughts pulled her upright. She still wondered why Ben really wanted her to stay. She couldn’t live with him and Tony forever.

He’d brought her bag upstairs before he’d taken the sitter home. After he’d left she’d returned to the baby’s side, her heart melting into her shoes. Even knowing Will had been his birth father, she still loved Tony.

Why hadn’t Will divorced her? She’d have given up rights to the business—any stake in his blessed bank account—to avoid a sentence in the hell he’d left behind.

Isabel jerked the bedding aside and turned on the lamp. Her sneakers lay on their sides by the closet. She stepped into them without bothering to tie the laces. Then she pulled a sweatshirt over her pajamas and opened the door.

Silence blanketed the dark hall. Ben and Tony needed sleep. After waiting a few seconds to make sure she hadn’t disturbed them, she hurried down the curving stairs, snatched her coat out of the closet and then reached for the front door, her only thought, escape.

She glanced down at her clothing. The knife her husband and sister had slipped into her back was no one else’s business. Wandering the neighborhood in her jammies would expose her and Ben, maybe even her parents, to ridicule and questions.

She turned, instead, toward the kitchen. When she opened the back door, the cold sucked the breath out of her lungs, but it felt better than smothering in her sister’s home. If she didn’t get fresh air, she’d need CPR.

Isabel stepped onto the deck and sank in snow that crept around the edges of her shoes. It felt good. She was alive if the cold could hurt.

But it really hurt. Damn. Suddenly she was also swearing at Will and Faith. And then at Ben for convincing her to stay.

Snowflakes wet her cheeks. She ran down the deck stairs and trekked through drifts to the gazebo where she and her sister had shared coffee, tea, secrets and each important milestone in Tony’s life.

Last winter Faith had danced with her son in his first snow. He’d laughed as bits of ice bounced off his soft skin, and Faith had kissed each wet spot. Isabel gritted her teeth. Tony had lost a loving mother.

Faith’s happiness that day had pricked at all Isabel’s doubts. She’d trusted her sister enough to confide her worst fear—that Will might have found another woman.

Isabel hunched into her coat on the swing Will and Ben had hung from the ceiling. Her breath painted the air in front of her face. She exhaled again and watched the mist widen and then dissipate.

Faith had said she was being foolish. Her less-than-comforting response had hurt, but Faith had been right. No woman could have been more foolish or gullible.

“You’ll freeze.”

She jumped. “I didn’t hear you, Ben.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’d take a lot more than a guy in the dark to scare me tonight.” She pulled one knee to her chest. “I’m spoiling for a fight.”

“Yeah.” He sat beside her, jostling the swing. “I’d like to punch someone, too.” He’d positioned spotlights around the yard, and their dim light colored his face pale blue.

“I’m sorry you had to find out with a note,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d ever have found the courage to tell you, but I’m sorry you had to read about it.”

“I knew something was wrong, but I never guessed anything about Will.” He shrugged and the whole swing rocked. “I was lucky. Faith left the note in her makeup drawer. Amelia and George might have found it. They arrived the night of the accident.” He pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “Fortunately, I answered the phone when the mortician called about bringing her stuff.”