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“What?” The word erupted from him, like lava from a volcano. “My God, Diana. I was planning to fly to Nashville next week to talk some sense into you. You haven’t had any contact with her since you discarded her.”
Guilt, her constant companion, slithered through Diana before she reminded herself of her reasons. “I didn’t discard her. I left her with you.”
He shifted in his seat, turning more fully toward her. “A bachelor with no experience taking care of a child.”
“The best man I know. And I was right to do it. I saw her just now. She looks happy, Connor. You’ve done a wonderful job.” She dug into her purse and removed an envelope containing cash she’d managed to set aside from her two jobs. “I was going to mail this to you. It’s not much, certainly not enough, but I’ll never be able to repay you for all you’ve done.”
His lips thinned, a manifestation of the stubborn streak he’d developed way back in childhood. “I’m not taking your money, Diana. If you really want to repay me, come inside and talk to your daughter. Spend the weekend with us. We’re driving to the Maryland shore tomorrow.”
“You don’t know how much I’d like to but I can’t.” She swallowed, then stared at him, silently pleading for understanding. “But I will talk to her. Just as soon as I get my life organized.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past six months?”
“It’s what I’ve been trying to do.” After a brief stay at a detox center, she’d run short of cash to pay for treatment and stayed off the pills through sheer strength of will. The withdrawal symptoms had lingered for months, but she’d managed to secure a secretarial position and then work a second job as a waitress. “But I can’t see Jaye. Not yet.”
“Why?” His eyes seemed to bore into her, where her secrets lay buried. “What is it that you’re not telling me? Are you sick? On drugs? Is that what this is all about?”
Shame billowed inside Diana, the same humiliation that had engulfed her when she’d attended the Narcotics Anonymous meetings. She hadn’t been able to own up to her addiction in a room full of strangers. Admitting to her problem was downright impossible in front of her strong, self-assured brother.
“I’m not on drugs,” she said. Not now. And hopefully not ever again. “But this isn’t about me. It’s about Jaye. It’s a lot to ask, but I need you to keep her a while longer.”
She read resistance on his face, and the enormity of what she’d done struck her. “Oh, my Lord. It didn’t even occur to me that you might not want her.”
“Not want her?” He made a harsh sound. “I love her like she’s my own daughter. Abby loves her, too.”
Relief caused Diana’s limbs to feel boneless. “Abby? Is she the woman I saw with Jaye?”
He nodded. “Yeah. She’s Jaye’s violin teacher. We’re also getting married in October. I would have told you about her if I could ever get you on the phone.”
“Congratulations,” Diana said in a small voice, ashamed she hadn’t known about this major development in her brother’s life. She sensed he was about to say something else about his fiancée, then heard herself speaking her next thought aloud. “I didn’t know Jaye played the violin.”
“That’s my point, Diana. You’ve missed too much of Jaye’s life already. Abby and I are happy to take care of her, but she’s your daughter. You need to be in her life.”
“I can’t,” Diana said miserably. “Not yet.”
“You still haven’t given me a good reason why not.” He practically spit out the words.
Because I’m afraid.
The words imprinted themselves on Diana’s mind, but she felt too raw to admit her fear to Connor. He’d always been the strong one in their family, the one who followed the straight and narrow path and never disappointed anyone. He’d never find himself in her situation.
“I want her back so much it hurts. You’ve got to believe that. And I have a plan to get her back. But I can’t face her until I know everything will work out. I’ll call her. I will. Just as soon as I settle in.”
“Settle in where? What’s this plan you’re talking about?”
“I enrolled in a career training program in Gaithersburg. I’m going to study business administration. I also lined up a waitressing job. And I have a lead on an apartment, too.”
She deliberately left out the most difficult part of the plan, the piece that involved Tyler Benton.
“In Gaithersburg?” His eyebrows drew together. “I can’t figure you out, Diana. That’s not even twenty miles from here and only thirty from Bentonsville.”
“Thirty miles can be a long way.”
“So you’re not planning to visit Mom?”
Unwilling to confide she had a more important visit to make, she dodged the question. “I’m not moving to Gaithersburg because it’s close to Bentonsville. I’m moving there because it’s close to Jaye.”
He was quiet for long moments, then said, “You’ll call and leave a number where I can reach you?”
“I will.” She sensed that he didn’t believe her. “I promise.”
“What am I supposed to tell your daughter in the meantime?”
Making a snap decision, Diana again reached into her purse, this time pulling out a sealed envelope she’d planned to mail when she got to Gaithersburg.
She extended the envelope to him, her fingers shaking slightly. “Could you give this to Jaye? But don’t tell her you saw me. It already has a stamp, so she’ll assume I mailed it.”
He took her offering, his expression grave. “Are you sure about this, Diana?”
The lump that hadn’t been far from her throat since she pulled into the neighborhood formed with a vengeance. “I’m not sure of anything.”
Least of all the portion of her plan that would enable her to set the rest in motion. Nobody knew better than Diana what a struggle raising a child alone could be, but there was no longer any reason for her to be solely responsible for Jaye.
She hadn’t returned to Bentonsville since she was a pregnant sixteen-year-old, but she needed to go back home now. Not to see her mother, but to tell Tyler Benton she’d lied ten years ago when she claimed she’d slept with half the guys at Bentonsville High.
In reality, she’d only had one lover—Tyler.
THE AIR-CONDITIONED COOL of the town house contrasted sharply with the oppressive heat inside Diana’s Chevy. So, too, did the cheerful chatter drifting into the foyer from the family room.
Connor hung his suit jacket on one of the brass hooks beside the front door and followed the noise, easily identifying Jaye’s girlish voice. “I like the folder with the Redskins on the cover the best, but the one with the pink unicorn isn’t bad.”
Then he heard Abby’s somewhat deeper voice, light and teasing: “I’m surprised a girl as musical as you pays any attention to football.”
“I like how the players crash into each other,” Jaye stated with enthusiasm. “It’s way cool.”
Connor rounded a corner and the two females came into view. His niece balanced on her knees beside a coffee table stacked with folders, packages of pens, pencils and binders. Abby, sitting on the love seat dressed in a yellow sundress, looked as pretty as a summer flower.
“Hey, Uncle Connor.” Jaye smiled at him with her eyes as well as her lips. “We went shopping for school supplies.”
“I can see that,” he said, moving deeper into the room.
“And I just discovered Jaye has a passion for football.” Abby rose to her feet and walked into his embrace, looping her arms around his neck.
He kissed her, his passion heading in a direction that had nothing to do with football, as it always did whenever he touched her. But he kept the kiss brief because Jaye was in the room.
“Jaye watched a Redskins preseason game with me the other night,” he remarked. “Now she’s hooked.”
“Oh, no,” Abby said dramatically. “That means I’m outnumbered. What am I to do?”
“Learn to like football,” Connor said. “Jaye has.”
“I’d do just about anything for you, Connor Smith.” Abby batted her long, dark eyelashes at him, then scrunched up her face. “But not that.”
He smiled at her antics, wishing he didn’t have to break the lighthearted mood. The envelope in his hand felt as though it was scorching his skin. He held it out to his niece. “I have something for you, Jaye.”
“Really?” Her eyes brightened with the excitement of somebody who never got mail. “Who from?”
“Your mother.”
The color visibly ebbed from her face, the pleasure in her expression gone. Connor glanced at Abby, whose anxiety came across as tangibly as the sick feeling in his gut.
He extended the envelope to Jaye, praying she didn’t possess enough knowledge of post office procedure to notice the stamp hadn’t been cancelled.
It appeared for tense moments as though Jaye would refuse his offering, but then she tore the envelope out of his hand, ripping the plain white paper open as though it contained a Christmas present.
She unfolded a single sheet of paper and read, the hope he’d briefly glimpsed on her young face vanishing. Her mouth formed the mutinous line he hadn’t seen in a very long time. In one swift motion, she ripped the letter in two, letting the pieces drift to the floor.
“I hate her,” she exclaimed before brushing by him and running up the stairs.
His heart dropping like a stone in his chest, Connor picked up the two parts of the letter and pieced them together. Abby came up beside him, touching his arm. “What does it say?”
“Only that she loves her and will make things up to her one day.”
Abby glanced at the now-empty path Jaye had taken when she’d sprinted from the room, then regarded Connor with worry etched into her features. Their minds often operated on similar wavelengths, but never more than now.
“I don’t think your sister realizes how difficult making things up to Jaye is going to be.”
WAY BACK in what seemed like another lifetime, Diana’s mother used to say there was no time like the present…to do her homework, to clean her room, to practice the piano.
The saying had been Diana’s first coherent thought upon awakening in her hotel bed. Possibly because Diana was geographically closer to her mother than she’d been since running away to her aunt’s house as a pregnant teenager.
Or maybe because there was no time like the present—to tell Tyler Benton about Jaye.
The realization that she had to come clean with Tyler had dawned on her slowly, the same way she’d accepted her need to rectify the mess she’d made of her life.
It had gradually become clear that the future she planned to build for her daughter should include more than a better-educated mother with a higher-paying job. Diana had never been close to her own father, but that didn’t justify her in keeping Tyler and Jaye apart. She supposed that, deep in her heart, she’d always recognized that father and daughter deserved to know each other.
Especially because the very valid reason she’d had for keeping Jaye a secret from Tyler no longer applied.
“No time like the present,” she said aloud in a scratchy morning voice that no one besides her could hear.
She had nothing else on her agenda. She couldn’t start her waitressing job at the Gaithersburg location of the national chain she’d worked for in Nashville until Tuesday, the same day classes began. The apartment building where she planned to live wouldn’t have a unit available until Friday.
Today was Saturday, the official start of the Labor Day weekend.
Nothing was stopping her from getting in the car and making the short drive through the Maryland countryside to the town where she’d grown up and Tyler still lived.
Nothing except cowardice.
A memory of the unhappiness she’d glimpse on Jaye’s face in the last few months they’d spent together flashed in Diana’s mind. To be worthy of reuniting with her daughter, she needed to start somewhere.
She sat up and swung her legs off the bed.
As she drove over rolling hills and past lush, green fields inexorably closer to Bentonsville a short time later, she reassured herself that this was the right thing to do. Just as she’d been right years ago when she’d lied to Tyler about her sexual history and left town without telling him she was pregnant.
He’d been such a good friend, sticking steadfastly by her after her brother J.D. died—even after she’d sunk into a dark place where none of the other students at Bentonsville High had dared follow.
He’d kept her company on the black nights when the thought of going home to the house with the empty bedroom her brother would never occupy again had been too painful.
He’d rubbed her back the night she’d gotten so wasted she’d spent half of it emptying the contents of her stomach.
And he’d held her when she cried.
How could she have let him take responsibility for her pregnancy when it would have tarnished his excellent prospects for a bright future? Especially after he’d gushed about being accepted at Harvard?
He hadn’t been just any seventeen-year-old, but along with her brother J.D., he was one of the golden boys of Bentonsville High. Everybody knew Tyler Benton, honor student and all-around great guy, was destined for great things. The town had been named for his great-grandfather, his father was the Laurel County state’s attorney and the senior class had voted Tyler Most Likely to Succeed.
Everybody also knew Diana had gone off the deep end after her brother died: skipping school, shoplifting, drinking. Before Tyler, she’d also made out with a few boys who’d greatly embellished how far they’d gotten with her.
She still remembered the hurt in his eyes when she’d confirmed the false rumors about her loose reputation, the utter look of betrayal on his face the night before she’d left Bentonsville for good.
She blocked out the image, replacing it with the beauty of the countryside. The deep, rich green of the grass hinted at a summer generous with its rain. Wildflowers in purple and yellow added splashes of color. Horses grazed near white-framed homesteads and cool, blue ponds.
The transformation from rural to urban happened gradually, with a gas station and a convenience store announcing the small town ahead. She drove the lightly traveled street past the timeless brick beauty of the town hall, what looked like a newly built fire station and a quaint shopping area where not much had changed.
Cutaway, where her mother had taken her and her brothers for haircuts, still occupied a corner building. She also recognized Bentonsville Butchers, the local dry cleaner and the convenience store where she’d been caught shoplifting cigarettes and beer.
At a red light, she glanced down at the piece of paper lying on the passenger seat. The address she’d gotten from the white pages of an Internet search engine jumped out at her in black, bold letters: 276 Farragut Street.
She’d mapped the location, again on the computer, to help her remember how to get there. Tyler’s neighborhood was grander than the one where she’d grown up, but the suggested route took her through her old haunts.
The cut-through street was long and winding, the houses spaced a fair distance apart. If she turned right at the next corner, she’d reach the house where the mother she hadn’t seen in more than ten years still lived.
She braked at the stop sign, but then continued straight ahead on a road that transported her back in time. For there was the playground where she and her brother J.D. used to compete to see who could swing the highest. Heavy wooden equipment with plastic toddler swings had replaced the metal swing set, but the weeping willow nearby was the same.
Diana remembered sitting motionless on one of the swings after J.D. had been stabbed to death by another teen during his senior year of high school. She’d stared at the tree, wondering how she could feel so miserable without actually weeping. The playground had later become the place she met Tyler when she snuck out of her house.
Not that her parents, consumed by their own grief, would have noticed had she strolled out the front door. Later, her mother had all but pushed her out, screaming that she’d shamed the family instead of recognizing that what her pregnant daughter needed most was support.
She stepped on the gas pedal, driving faster than she should past the playground with its collection of memories, some sad, some merely bittersweet. Within moments, the tenor of the neighborhood changed. The yards became more spacious, the houses bigger, the very feel of her surroundings more exclusive.
She would have known Tyler had fulfilled his early promise even if she hadn’t researched him on the Internet. A third-generation graduate of Harvard Law, he worked as an assistant state’s attorney in the same Laurel County office as his father before him. Tyler had already distinguished himself by winning a number of high-profile cases.
She rolled her car to a stop in front of an impressive two-story Colonial she thought was his, except another man hosed down his golden BMW in the driveway.
Spotting her parked in front of his house, the man turned off his hose and approached her car. Trim, gray-haired and wearing tailored shorts and a polo shirt, he looked like someone who would have his car washed for him. She hit the automatic control that rolled down the window and breathed in the scent of freshly cut grass.
“Can I help you?” The man bent at the waist to peer into the car. “You look lost.”
