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“Romeo and Juliet?” Deirdre gave a snort of disgust. “Is your teacher out of her mind? Stuffing hormone-crazed kids’ heads with romantic nonsense—glorifying sex, defying one’s parents and committing suicide. Teenagers generally screwing up their lives. That play should come with a warning from the surgeon general.”
“My mother, the last of the great romantics.” Emma rolled her eyes. “When was the last time you went on a date?”
“When was the last time Mel Gibson was in town? Oops, he’s married. Guess I’m out of luck. Besides, one die-hard romantic in the family is enough. You got your uncle Cade married off. Be happy with that.”
Happy? She’d never believed it possible for a McDaniel to be that happy. With his adoring wife, five-year-old twins and another baby on the way, Cade’s life was damned near perfect. At least until the patient from hell had moved into the spare bedroom. Their seventy-six-year-old father who’d broken his hip tackling some kid who’d snatched a teenage girl’s purse.
Damned embarrassing, the Captain had grumbled, to find out the kids involved were brother and sister, just horsing around. Deirdre almost managed to smile at the memory of the crotchety old buzzard blushing to the roots of his thick, iron-gray hair. And yet she couldn’t stop the ache in her chest. His injury had changed everything.
“Mom, don’t you ever get lonely?” Emma asked.
“With you around? Never.”
“But I won’t be around forever. After Christmas—”
Emma had been hovering over the mailbox for weeks now, waiting to see if she’d won early admission to the drama school she’d dreamed of since she’d gone to theater camp there last year. Truth was, Deirdre dreaded Emma leaving, yet was anxious to get her out of this dead-end town. High school and its dangers had terrified Deirdre, but Emma had a good head on her shoulders. She was way too smart to get trapped the way her mother had.
That said, maybe it still wasn’t such a bad thing that Brandi would be the one to do the whole balcony gig. “The nurse is a great character part,” Deirdre said, trying to sound sympathetic. “You’ll be brilliant.”
“I’ll be brilliant all right. But not as the nurse.” Emma shone and Deirdre’s heart tripped. “Miss Wittich says I’m the most perfect Juliet she’s seen in thirty years of teaching!”
Oh, God. A perfect Juliet? That’s exactly what Deirdre was afraid of. Emma glowed with innocent passion, stubbornly determined to race into the world with open arms, not knowing how badly life could hurt her.
“Aren’t you going to say something? Like congratulations?”
“I’m just…I thought Brandi…everyone was so sure she was going to get the lead.”
Emma grinned with pardonable triumph, considering all the times Brandi had lorded it over the less popular kids. “Man, is she ticked. Her boyfriend, Drew Lawson, is Romeo. And I get to kiss him on stage!”
Deirdre’s nerves tightened. “A little less enthusiasm, please.”
“Oh, Mom, it’s just acting. But he is gorgeous in a soulful, Orlando Bloom kind of way.”
“That’s just great.” Couldn’t Wittich have done something revolutionary? Like cast some shy, pimpled computer geek who wouldn’t make Emma’s cheeks turn pink with anticipation?
“Uncle Cade said it’s too bad Grandma isn’t around to hear my news. He says Romeo and Juliet was her very favorite play in the whole world. Is that true?”
Deirdre stifled a frown. “That sounds about right.”
Their mother had loved all that star-crossed lover junk, sobbing her way through movies like West Side Story time after time as if the tragic endings sneaked up on her totally unexpectedly to bite her in the butt.
“Mom, what was Grandma like?”
“Perfect.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. Emma shot her a puzzled frown. “I mean, she was one of those women who gardened in a house dress long after other moms had changed to jeans. She liked more…old-fashioned things. Like floppy straw hats and china teacups and frilly dresses on little girls.”
Deirdre remembered the look of horror on her mother’s face when Deirdre mutinied against Emmaline’s dress code. Deirdre had taken her mother’s sewing shears and dragged out a pair of Cade’s old jeans. Hacking the legs off so the frayed hem hit below her knee, Deirdre had threaded one of the Captain’s neckties through the belt loops, then tied it tight around her far-narrower waist. After all, she couldn’t climb up to the tree house in a stupid dress.
“Do you think Grandma Emmaline would like me?” Emma asked, a wistful light in her eyes.
“Absolutely.” Deirdre tried to ignore the twist of pain in her chest. “She would have adored having someone to share teacups and poetry with.” Maybe the fact that Deirdre had produced such a granddaughter would have redeemed her a little in her mother’s eyes.
Deirdre felt a jab of envy, reluctant to share any of Emma’s love, even in her imagination.
“Am I like her?”
“No,” Deirdre said flatly. Then more softly, “Yes. In some ways. But you’re stronger than my mother was. She always seemed as if she were waiting for something bad to happen.”
“I wish I’d gotten a chance to know her. I asked the Captain about her. His face got all stiff and sad when I mentioned her, just like yours does. But Uncle Cade said everything there is to know about Grandma is in that wooden box upstairs. There’s even a copy of Romeo and Juliet she kept from when she played Juliet in tenth grade. Uncle Cade used to read it to cheer her up when she was sad.”
She’d been sad a lot. Even boisterous Deirdre had longed to be able to comfort her. But when the melancholy had stolen over Emmaline McDaniel’s face, the last thing she wanted was Deirdre racketing around.
Can’t you ever sit still? her mother would mourn. You’re just like your father.
Not that the Captain had approved of her wild side, either.
“I’m just dying to get my hands on that play,” Emma pleaded. “Can I come with you and look for it?”
Deirdre’s jaw clenched. Score another point for Cade. He’d not only made certain Emma would check on her in the house, he’d guaranteed the kid would shadow her every step of the way to the cedar chest.
“Emma, I’d…”
Rather not let you see how much it hurts me to sort through Mom’s things, see how badly everything in the chest suits me. What a disappointment I was to a mother I never really knew…
There had been an ocean of secrets between Deirdre and her mother. Deirdre had almost lost Emma’s trust, as well. She’d deserved to. Jesus, God, how she’d deserved to. But she’d fought to mend the wounds between them, swore she would never hide things from Emma again, never keep secrets that would fester, destroy.
She’d be the worst kind of hypocrite to change the rules now.
She forced herself to smile. “If you really want to come upstairs with me, it’s fine.”
Emma gave a skip of delight. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!”
Deirdre flinched inwardly. She knew better.
Emma grabbed Deirdre’s hand the way she had every Christmas morning before they headed downstairs to see what Santa Claus had left, never disappointed even those times when the man in the red hat had to scrape the very bottom of his sack for presents.
Half dragging Deirdre, Emma rushed up the stairs to the soft pink room that had been Emmaline’s own. Not that Deirdre had entered it willingly after shattering the china ladies. The afternoon sunlight showed the dust on the top of the chest, smeared with finger marks, as if Cade hadn’t been able to resist touching it. He should take the blasted thing, Deirdre thought. For him there would be warm memories as well as pinching ones.
“Oh, Mom!” Emma enthused. “Do you know how many times I wanted to open this thing? But the Captain would never let me.”
One thing Deirdre and her father had shared was a desperate need to forget. Deirdre knelt beside the chest, sucking in a steadying breath.
“How about we open it on three?” Emma said, curling her own fingers around the edge of the wooden lid. “One, two, three.”
The hinges creaked, the sweet smell of cedar filling Deirdre’s nose as she set the length of brass into place, to hold the trunk lid open. But the scent was the only thing familiar. Deirdre frowned, puzzled. Instead of precisely folded linens and silver lined up like soldiers on parade, the trunk’s contents were a jumble as if someone had dug frantically through the contents. Atop it all lay a worn copy of Romeo and Juliet, bits of its blue cardboard cover flaking off, a smear of blue dye staining the bridal veil beneath as if it had gotten wet somehow during the years.
Emma cried out, snatching the script up, clutching it to her chest as zealously as Juliet had clutched the dagger. But it was Deirdre who felt the piercing of old pain, old grief.
“I just…I can’t believe I’m actually holding a play she loved as much as…as I love it.”
Deirdre’s throat felt so tight it hurt to squeeze words through it, but she wouldn’t have spoiled Emma’s pleasure for anything in the world. The child was far too intuitive as it was, always picking up on the hurts and secret sorrows of everyone around her. “Then keep it.”
“Uncle Cade says Grandma’s stuff is all yours. You don’t have to give this to me.”
“I want you to have it.” Maybe Emmaline McDaniel was looking down from heaven, delighted, too. Her beloved play script was going to someone who wouldn’t regard it with cynical distaste.
Reverently Emma cradled it in her hands. “Listen! I’ll read the part I used for the audition!” She started to open the script, but it fell open in the middle, a yellowed envelope seeming to mark a place. “What’s this?” Emma said, slipping the envelope free. Deirdre recognized her mother’s elegantly swirled handwriting.
“It must be a letter your grandmother wrote to somebody.”
“But it’s stamped ‘return to sender.’ I wonder why she kept it. It must have been important. This is the place she kept all her most precious stuff. Maybe it’s something wonderful! Mysterious! Like something in an old Nancy Drew book.”
“Or maybe she was reading the play and had to stop to cook dinner or answer the phone so she just stuffed a stray letter in to mark her place. Go ahead and open it. I can see the suspense is killing you. Just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be no big deal.”
Emma folded herself down to the floor, crosslegged, and pillowed the script on her lap, carefully loosening the flap of the letter. She withdrew folded sheets of stationery embossed with a graceful bunch of lilies of the valley.
She cleared her throat, beginning in her most theatrical way.
“Dear Jimmy,
After so many years, I hardly know how to begin. Three nights ago there was a horrible accident. My daughter, Deirdre, fell off the wing of a plane in the local hangar, damaging her kidneys. She nearly died, and the doctor says it’s so serious she may need an organ donor.”
“That’s why you’ve got those scars on your back, right?” Emma glanced up at Deirdre through her lashes.
“Not one of my finer moments. I was climbing around on the plane, trying to get your uncle’s attention and—well, it was a really bad idea.” Bad? How about catastrophic? The guilt had all but destroyed Cade. She’d come out of the anesthetic to find that the bright, laughing older brother she’d adored had vanished forever.
She’d tried to prove to him she wasn’t worth all the misery in his eyes. She was so wild, so reckless, it was no one’s fault but her own when life steamrolled her.
But what the heck was Mom writing to this Jimmy guy about the accident for? One of the few things Deirdre could remember from the fog of pain that had engulfed her as she drifted in and out of consciousness was the Captain’s gruff voice, telling the doctor to cut him open right then and there, give his daughter his kidney, hell, his goddamned heart if the girl needed it.
She’d felt so loved for that short space of time. Her mother’s tear-streaked face desperate, her father so fierce, as if he could hold back death. And Cade…he’d looked as if the sky had fallen on his head. But there had never been any question her big brother loved her. She’d never doubted it for a moment, even years later when she’d gambled everything on his love, taken advantage of his generous heart.
The memory still brought tears to Deirdre’s eyes. Why hadn’t her family been able to hold on to that far-too-brief closeness? How could it have slipped away?
Emma cleared her throat, began reading.
“They tested my husband and me to see if either of us is a suitable donor. The tests showed the unthinkable. My husband can’t help my baby girl. Neither can I. There is only one person who can. Her real…”
Emma stumbled to a halt, hurt welling up as she raised her gaze to Deirdre. “I thought we told each other everything. Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not.” Deirdre took the letter out of Emma’s hands, scanned to where her daughter had stopped reading. Her real father…
Deirdre reeled, struggling to grasp the unthinkable. “I didn’t know…” she breathed, her knees starting to shake. Deirdre began to scan the writing silently, but Emma put a pleading hand on her arm.
“Read it out loud. Don’t…shut me out.”
If there was any place on God’s earth Deirdre understood the pain of being shut out, it was here. Swallowing hard, she started over in a wavering voice.
“I knew in my heart God would find a way to punish me for loving you.”
Loving who? This stranger? This Jimmy?
“What happened between us fifteen years ago was wrong. My husband will never forgive me. And my son—oh, God, Jimmy, he knows all about us.”
Deirdre fought to breathe. Her mother…her mother had cheated on the Captain, gotten pregnant…
No! Icy hooks tore at Deirdre’s stomach. She wished she could shove the letter back into the chest and burn it. Wished she’d never seen the envelope tucked in the play script. Wished Emma were anywhere on earth but here, peering at her with dark, stricken eyes.
Deirdre pressed her hand to her mouth. This was impossible. She couldn’t believe it. But suddenly a life-time’s worth of pain and rejection made horrible sense.
They’d known she wasn’t a McDaniel at all! Her mother and the Captain and Cade. Did they talk about the dirty little secret when she wasn’t around? Shake their heads and say it was no wonder she’d been such a disaster as a kid? She’d been a mistake from the moment she’d been born.
She closed her eyes, remembering every time she’d found the three of them around the dinner table, whispering, going silent when she walked in the room. And yet, her parents had hurt her before, hadn’t they? It was Cade who stunned her now. Cade’s silence that cut the deepest.
“Mama?” Emma hadn’t called Deirdre that since she was so tiny Deirdre could pick her up in her arms. Deirdre struggled to control her own reaction, felt as if she were about to shatter. “Did Grandma have an affair?”
Deirdre’s head swam with betrayal. She’d been born out of some sleazy affair. No wonder the Captain couldn’t be in the same room with her for five minutes without exploding. No wonder Cade had run away to the air force and tried to leave her behind. She was the living evidence of how his mother had betrayed him. Of all the McDaniels’ secrets, Deirdre’s mere existence was the dirtiest, the ugliest.
“I’m sorry,” Emma quavered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to…”
Dig up the rotten truth after so many lies? Emma blamed herself. Deirdre could see it in her daughter’s anguished face.
Deirdre tried to keep her voice calm, even. “You didn’t write that letter, Emma. You didn’t lie or cheat or bury things so deep I never understood…until I thought…”
There was something horrific about me, some flaw so ugly, so unforgivable neither of my parents could love me the way they loved Cade.
Deirdre unfastened the brace and closed the lid of the trunk, the edge of the letter crushed in her hand. “Emma, you head on in to work. Okay, honey? I need a little time alone.” Wasn’t that what she’d told Cade what seemed a lifetime ago? Why the hell hadn’t he listened? Was that why the stuff in the trunk was a mess? Had he been looking for that letter? Anything that could sully the image of his precious, perfect mother?
“Time for what?” Emma asked, as Deirdre scooped up her keys. “Where are you going?”
“To find out the truth. The Captain and Cade owe me that much at least.” Deirdre started down the stairs.
“But, Mom…I want to come with you. I—”
“No!” Deirdre snapped. Emma flinched back, tears spilling over her dark lashes. “No.” Deirdre repeated more softly. She cupped Emma’s cheek in her hand. “You head on over to the library. They’re expecting you to show up for work, and you’re going to need time off for play practice starting next week.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“Please. Just…go. Try to understand.” She felt flayed wide-open inside, bleeding. Didn’t want her baby to see her like this.
“What’s going to happen now?” Tears ran down Emma’s face. “You’re all upset with Grandpa and Uncle Cade.
I just got my family back. I’m scared everything will be all ugly like it was before. Mom, promise me…you won’t…”
Run away again? Turn her back on Cade and the Captain? Pretend away her pain? It had been six years since Deirdre felt such an urge to leave Whitewater behind her.
“Promise me you won’t let this change everything.”
Oh, God. Emma was so young. So innocent. She couldn’t possibly know that the letter already had.
