Their Secret Child

Across each metal side the name DALTON had been stenciled in black block lettering, and for a second, she couldn’t breathe.

A strong name for a headstrong man.

He’d always done what he wanted, what he deemed necessary for his profession. Once, she had loved his name. Written it a hundred times in her school notebooks and carved it into a tree along with her own in the woods behind her mother’s house.

A.W. + S.D. enclosed in a heart.

Stupid. A stupid girl with silly dreams and impractical hopes.

Today, she was a woman of independence, living under the rule of pragmatism and common sense—she hoped—and Skip Dalton had neither.

She walked down his graveled drive, her mind on retrieving her daughter, whose giggles erupted from behind the white-and-green house.

Michaela and Becky were attempting cartwheels on a grassy patch several yards from the wide-lipped back porch, while Skip read the instructions to what appeared to be the celebrated birdhouse. Pieces of cardboard lay scattered on a stone walkway in front of the porch stairs.

Addie stared. The scene appeared almost ruthless. Skip the family man—a father with two girls—working in the yard, fixing things. All they needed was a dog lying in the sun, thumping its tail.

And a woman—

Addie refused to let the thought gel. Refused to think of the woman connected to Skip through his child. Refused to wonder who and why—

“Mommy!” Spying her, Michaela ran forward. “Me ’n’ Becky can do cartwheels!” She grasped Addie’s hand. “Come watch, Mommy.”

At her child’s shouts Skip turned his head and his dark gaze streaked through her like a hot wind. She remained where she stood. “It’s time to go home, button. We have to check the bees.”

Michaela shook her head, her lips working her thoughts. “B-b-but I want to s-s-stay with B-B-Becky.”

“It’s all right, Ms. Malloy.” Becky walked over. “Mick can stay with us until you get back. Can’t she, Dad?”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “She’s welcome anytime.”

Mick. Hadn’t she told the girl a week ago Michaela hated the nickname? Dempsey used to call her Sticky Micky when she stuttered. Except today, her daughter seemed at ease and happy with the butchered version.

“Please, Mommy. I wanna s-s-stay with them. I wanna do m-m-more c-c-cartwheels. B-B-Becky’s t-t-teaching me.”

“Michaela.” Addie knelt on the grass in front of her child.

“You can come back another time, okay?”

Her daughter’s bottom lip poked out. She shook her head, swinging her long dark pigtails. Tears plumped in her brown eyes and clung to her lashes.

“P-p-please, Mommy,” she whispered. Her little arms wrapped Addie’s neck. “Becky’s my f-f-friend.”

Oh, God. How could she refuse? This preteen, this child of Skip’s, had offered something Michaela sorely lacked: camaraderie.

He walked over to where Addie knelt with Michaela in her lap.

“She’ll be safe with us, Addie.” His deep voice seeped into her pores. “Count on it.”

Count on it. The way she’d been able to count on him when he’d said, This was not my choice.

“I’m not counting on anything.”

Rising to her feet, she hoped her eyes conveyed exactly what she meant. She hadn’t depended on a man in a long, long while. She wasn’t about to start now. And definitely not with Skip Dalton.

“I understand,” he said, and she saw he’d connected the dots.

Becky interjected, “So can Mick stay, Ms. Malloy?”

“Please, Mommy.” Michaela leaned against Addie, tear-streaked face upturned.

Becky’s my friend. “Honeykins, I…” Would rather you find someone else. But who? Last year, some of the first-grade kids had teased her about stuttering. Becky was different. Kind and sweet and genuine. “All right.”

“Goody!” Michaela rushed to her newfound pal and grabbed her hand. “I get to stay, B-B-Becky.”

“Yep. Want to go in and get a Popsicle?”

“Mom,” Michaela yelled. “I get to have a P-P-Popsicle!”

“I heard, love. Only one, okay?”

“Uh-huh, or my tummy g-g-gets sick.” She skipped at Becky’s side as the pair went up the deck steps and into the house.

Addie glanced at Skip. “Do you have a pen? You’ll need my cell number in case something happens.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. The girls will be right here with me.”

She hoped her look was direct. “It’ll make me feel better if you had my number.” She frowned at the sound of “my number,” and added, “For safety reasons.”

“Fine.” He removed a small notebook and carpenter’s pencil from his hip pocket. Among ciphers and construction sketches, he wrote in his left-handed script, Addie-Cell and the number she recited.

“Thank you.” She turned toward the lane. “I won’t be long.”

“Addie.” Massaging his left shoulder, he walked with her around the side of his house. “It’s good the kids get along, don’t you think?”

She continued down his driveway. “It doesn’t mean we’ll be friends, Skip, so don’t read anything into it.”

“I’m not. I just wish…”

Halting midstride, she gazed up at him—at those honey eyes, that two-day beard, the too-long hair edging out from under his ballcap. “What? That we’ll be friends? That the past didn’t exist and I didn’t hate you for what you said and did?”

She saw him swallow before he looked away and wished she could recall her words. She hadn’t meant for him to know her grief, her hurt. And if she were honest with herself, neither had she meant to hurt him.

She resumed her mission, bent on her house, truck and bees. An hour and she’d return for Michaela, to have a chat with her daughter about crossing roads and going to the neighbor’s house without permission.

Michaela had to understand the gravity of her actions, of stranger-danger. One day her life could depend on it.

“Addie.” She heard his voice through a haze of worry and frustration.

With a sigh, she turned. He stood twenty feet up the driveway.

“Bee sting,” he said softly.

Bee sting. His code when they were teenagers, whenever she fought with her father and cried over his strict regimen, his harsh and opinionated philosophy. The words had helped her put things into perspective. Bee stings were ultimately worse than arguing with a parent.

As she gazed at Skip, she understood. Having him as her neighbor or having their children like each other was not as bad as an allergic reaction that squeezed air from windpipes—his windpipe.

Clamping her bottom lip at that memory, she turned for home, grateful he’d been a survivor that day. Because no matter what she believed about the past, nothing compared to seeing a twelve-year-old boy writhing on the ground, fighting for his next breath.

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