Long-Lost Father

She’d expected a frontal attack, but at his words the world seemed to go elliptical, swaying around her in strange arcs. She reached out behind her to a chair, the closest thing she could find as an anchor. I can’t tell him, I can’t!

Silence seemed the only option. To vindicate herself at the cost of Brett’s family, his stability and security, was too selfish.

As selfish as you’ve been all these years in keeping Casey from all the rights and privileges of being a Glennon?

The pain was too great to bear. Every way she looked, her choices, both past and present, hurt someone she cared about.

But all those other people at least have someone else to love. Casey is all I have.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, praying he would leave it at that, knowing he wouldn’t.

He stared at her, frowning. “Even if you couldn’t handle living with Mum and Dad, why didn’t you at least stay in Melbourne? Then you’d have known I was alive the past two years.” His voice came out raw and scraped with intense emotion. “You’re my wife, Sam. I went through hell in Mbuka—but the real nightmare began when I came home and found out I could be a father to a child I’d never seen. I lay awake night after night, wondering if you were all right, if I had a son or daughter. Wondering why you’d run—and if you’d run from me.” His lips pressed together and she knew he was in pain that was as much physical as it was emotional. “I needed you, Sam,” he managed to get out through gritted teeth.

Her eyes closed as she prayed for strength. He was hitting her right in the heart with every word he spoke, because they came from his heart. “You needed me?” Her throat scratched on the words. “I was in hospital for weeks after you left, bleeding and in constant danger of miscarriage. I called you from the hospital, trying to talk as if nothing happened because I didn’t want to upset you when you couldn’t do anything about it! I needed you, Brett—”

“Is that where you were? When I called and my parents said you were out?” His voice was dark and strained. “And why you sounded so distracted when you called me.”

She drew a deep breath and nodded. “We all agreed to act like normal. We didn’t want to upset you when you had so many lives dependent on your skills and ability to concentrate. But I obviously failed. I’m sorry. It must have worried you.”

The silence was broken by a pounding boom of deep thunder, the wildness of a summer storm in Sydney. Lightning hit moments later, just to the right of the house. The lights flickered off and on, and in the flash of light she saw the stillness of remembered pain on his face and the deep relief of a worst fear unrealised.

“There was no one else, Brett,” she said quietly. “If I sounded strange, it was because I was alone and scared. I needed you with me, but you were off saving the world. I didn’t blame you, but abandonment goes both ways. You left for Mbuka within two months of our wedding—”

His voice was full of stress. “You knew I’d signed the contract with Doctors for Africa before we met. I was locked into two years’ service. The people at the refugee camp were relying on me for their lives. But if you wanted me home, all you had to do was tell me you were pregnant and bleeding. I’d have come home on the first flight.”

“But you’d have resented me for forcing you to turn your back on your lifelong dream,” she insisted wearily. “You were so passionate and eloquent about meeting the desperate need in Mbuka. Casey’s existence, then her blindness, would have kept you here. There are few good facilities for a blind child in a war zone, Brett.”

In the silence, a clock ticked…and the next rumble of thunder came.

“You didn’t give me the chance—or a choice, Sam. You didn’t tell me.” Brett’s voice was harsh. “You talked so movingly about the plight of the refugees when we met. You said you understood why I had to go…you said you’d come soon. Do you know how hard it was just being there, day after day? I lost more people than I saved and saw the most horrific injuries I’ll ever see, knowing they were inflicted by the guy in the next bed half the time. Desperate people poured in to the camp day and night. I worked around the clock without a break except to eat and snatch an hour’s sleep.” As if in agreement, lightning forked across the sky, almost right over the house. “Do you know how often I ached for my wife to be with me? If I’d have known why, I’d have felt less abandoned by the time I was kidnapped by the rebels.”

By the time I was out of hospital, I was on the run from your parents and their threats to take Casey from me, to have me proven an unfit mother by any means they could. “You never mentioned to me how bad it was there when we talked,” she said, giving him some sort of answer. “Would it have been a safe place for Casey to be born?”

“Maybe not—but you didn’t know that, so that can’t be the reason.”

The first patter of rain on the roof was normally a sound she welcomed, but tonight she barely noticed. The bulldog in Brett hadn’t changed; he grabbed on to what he wanted to know and hung on with a tenacity that outlasted every other objection—and got him his way in the end.

“The doctors said I couldn’t stress myself in any way—I had to rest to keep Casey alive,” she said, knowing this much she could say. “Handling your upset and fear, frantically trying to get home because I was sick—” She left it there, knowing she’d said enough. “And then—”

“Yes, we keep coming back to it, don’t we?” His tone was grim, as dark as the eyes boring into hers. So sure he was right in his belief that she’d abandoned his family. Yes, he was the same old Brett. What he thought, wanted or believed had to be the best thing for everyone.

“And then, when it was time to tell you,” she went on inexorably, “the official at Doctors for Africa told us you were dead.” She forced the word out, dragging in a breath so harsh he could probably hear it over the sounds of the storm finally hitting above them. “They told us there was no room for hope. I—I had to get out. I couldn’t take all the memories.”

She gulped down the ball of burning pain in her throat.

She hadn’t heard him move, didn’t know he’d moved until she felt his hand on hers. “You could have stayed with the family. You wouldn’t have been alone then.”

You have no idea how alone I would have been.

She sighed and rubbed her aching forehead, feeling as if she had taken a sudden fever. “I feel like I’m stuck on a whirligig, just with you being here. I had to accept your death, to put you behind me. I had to forget to stay sane.”

“Did you manage it, Sam? Did you forget me?” His fingers moved up her wrist and arm, soft and slow, and she shuddered in longing. Oh, the heady delight, not just of sensuality but of touch. Not a child’s wonderful hugs but the touch of a man who understood that she couldn’t be perfect, couldn’t always be strong…

“There’s no point in sharing our memories. We both know the truth. I know you loved me. But you were my life. Your work was your true love, your passion. It was important. I always knew I came second.”

His hand stilled on her arm. “Is that the reason why you didn’t tell me about Casey?”

Half-shamed, she nodded. “I didn’t know whether you’d come home to us. I didn’t want to know if I was going to come second again.”

He winced, his eyes haunted. “You could have given me the chance. You could have trusted me.”

“I did…in your commitment, your belief that you were in the right place, doing the right thing for humanity. It was almost all you talked about while we were together. I was scared you’d tell me what the people of Mbuka were going through and they needed you more than I did.”

Having said so much, she felt drained, shaking with emotion. She’d wanted, needed this for so long? But now he was here, dreams had intertwined with her most vivid nightmares, and she couldn’t find a way to untangle them.

You were never good enough for my son. You know nothing about family life. What makes you think you could ever be a good mother? David Glennon’s words haunted her. Give my son back his life when he returns from Africa—and give us the child. We’ll raise it as a Glennon deserves. You can’t give any child what they need to be safe and happy.

Maybe she hadn’t been raised in a family, and she’d always known she wasn’t good enough for Brett. But David Glennon had been wrong about one thing. She’d turned herself into a good mother by constant work and determination. She’d never give Casey to the Glennons!

But she didn’t know yet what she was up against, and Brett’s silence wasn’t helping.

“What do you want, Brett?” she asked wearily. “It’s obvious you want something from me, not just Casey. Are you waiting to tell me that you want a divor—?”

He’d turned her into his arms, his mouth covering hers, before the word was complete. The kiss was frantic, full of a hunger so strong it knocked her off her emotional perch. She moaned into his mouth, alive for the first time in so long, aching and hungry. She gave kiss for kiss, knowing she’d have to pay for this weakness later, but finally, at last, she was a woman again…

Brett held her hard against him. “Does it feel like I want a divorce?” he demanded against her mouth. “Does it feel like I’ve forgotten you or replaced you?”

She couldn’t answer; she was shaking, not with fear, but with need, and he knew that as much as she did. Her sensuality was something she’d never been able to hide from him.

“This—” he kissed her again, deep, hot and hard “—is what kept me together through the years of torture and blackness. The hope of being near you. Touching you. Having you in my bed again.”

Her eyes slowly closed, and for a moment she gave herself to the unbearable beauty of his words. Making love—having that touch that made her feel so complete, so loved…

She gulped down the pain of aching temptation. “It’s not enough.” Her voice was drenched with the frantic need she heard in his words, and she shivered in violent craving. She couldn’t…

“It feels like enough.” His voice was rough with sensuality. He brushed his mouth over hers again, his hand caressing her waist, and it was all she could do not to puddle in a melted heap at his feet. “It feels damn good. We were always magnificent together. You can’t hide from what we have—or from me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the vivid memories took over. Touching skin, mouths fused, caressing, whispering words of love…

She had to snap out of this, to face reality if he wouldn’t. “What we have, apart from mutual attraction, is shared memories—and a child. Circumstances forced us to change, to become different people.” She kept her gaze focused on his, watching his eyes darken in denial. “I’m not that adoring girl who needed you to fill her life. My life with Casey is busy and fulfilling.” Liar, a voice in her mind whispered. “I’m not your satellite now. I can’t be your one-person support-and-cheer squad. I can’t change my life—or more importantly Casey’s life—to make yours work for you. My first priority is Casey, and it will stay that way.”

Brett’s gaze darkened, his eyes almost black. She could see the intensity of suffering he’d been through in the years they’d been apart shining through in more than his damaged knee. He wanted more than her body—he needed her presence to give him strength to heal or at least drive away the anguish that obviously still hadn’t left after two years back home.

But her life had changed. All her strength, all her resources of giving and support, had to remain focused on meeting Casey’s needs. How could she give him what she no longer had?

The knowledge lay like lead over her heart and soul. Just being Casey’s mother took every scrap of strength she had every day. She had nothing to give him—

Except my heart. And how do I trust him to not take all I have, including my daughter, and leave for Melbourne on the first flight?

Melbourne was no longer home. It was where his parents waited with a court order to stop her from leaving again; where they’d use their influence to have her proven an unfit mother, simply because she wasn’t a Glennon, and didn’t have a family name or background to give them. Then they’d take Casey from her…the only worthwhile thing in her life.

She swallowed the ball of pain in her throat. “What we once had is gone. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

His hands landed on her shoulders, holding her with gentle strength—the inner strength of knowing who and what he was that she’d always loved about him. “I don’t believe it. Either you’re lying to me or to yourself. You want me as much as I want you.”

“That isn’t the point. It’s been a long time for me—but it’s not enough. The issue isn’t how we feel about each other.” Barely able to move, she pushed wayward strands of hair from her eyes. “What you or I want doesn’t matter. This isn’t about us. Casey is my first, last and every duty of care. You should understand that as a doctor, even if you don’t feel like her father yet—”

Before she could finish her words, a sleepy little voice came from the other end of the room. “Are you my father?”

CHAPTER THREE

SHE SOUNDS LIKE SAM in miniature…

Lost in a haze of passion, of need for Sam’s touch, Brett reacted with the instinct of a man who’d lived in a place where to move too slow could mean death. He slewed his gaze to the open door off the open-plan lounge, to where the lilting voice had asked the half-curious question.

And he saw a tiny, mussed angel in Winnie the Pooh pyjamas.

Feathery curls a touch brighter than Sam’s fell in tumbled disarray around little shoulders. A face as fine and spiritual as a Botticelli cherub was turned to him. Tiny features, a replica of her mother’s, in a pale heart-shaped face. A mouth of baby pink was unsmiling yet not angry.

This is my daughter.

A jolt of awareness filled him, a gentle awakening of some emotion he’d long buried beneath anger and denial. She was his daughter; he could see a pair of twitching dimples beside her mouth and the enormous golden-brown eyes gazing in his direction.

The photos he’d seen hadn’t done her beauty any justice at all. He couldn’t stop staring at this haunting, delicate, beautiful child.

My daughter.

“Hello?” Casey’s voice trembled with sudden uncertainty. “Mummy?”

He wanted to hit himself for being so stupid. Lesson number one in being a daddy to a special-needs child: always answer her when she talks to you.

“I’m here, sweetheart.” Sam’s voice was full of love.

Brett put a hand on her arm, willing her to stay where she was. After a short, searching glance, Sam nodded but held her ground.

“Hello, Casey.” Brett’s heart was beating fast. What would she think of him? Would she like him? Or—

“Hello.” A tentative smile flitted across her face, lifting dimples, before she repeated her initial question. “Are you my father?”

Her face held only a polite smile. Impassivity in a five-year-old unnerved Brett. There was nothing in her face to read. She was curious as to whether he was her father, that was all.

“Yes, Casey,” he said softly. “My name’s Brett Glennon. I’m your father.”

She nodded, slow and cautious, not moving toward him or moving away. He realised she was keeping her distance, almost as if she was afraid…

Afraid of him?

Keeping his features schooled, he absorbed the pain. Casey saw more than he would have thought with those imperfect eyes. Had she seen past his gentle facade to the anger in his heart that his child, his daughter, should have such a terrible burden to bear? Did she wonder if her daddy wouldn’t like her because she was blind?

This was a fear his daughter should never have had to go through—

And she wouldn’t if I hadn’t left for Africa.

And like that, the truth pounced on him, like a lion long crouched nearby, waiting to attack. Maybe he’d known all along. But he’d concentrated so much on where Sam had been, he’d forgotten what she’d borne alone in the years he’d been gone. If she’d stayed with his parents, he’d have known Casey the past two years—but he’d still have three years of unintentional neglect to make up for.

Not for the first time, he felt the knife-pang of regret for leaving Sam behind in the first place, for charging ahead with a dream despite the cost to others, for cementing a love that happened in the wrong time and place. By living his dream, he’d left her alone with a hard pregnancy, a new state and a special-needs child, and his parents with the consequences of an assumed death and his father’s strokes.

He’d been so damn-fool arrogant to think he had to save the world instead of keeping his own world together. Been so sure his choice was right, cocky and confident that everything would fall into place for everyone he loved.

It hadn’t worked out for anyone. Not for the refugees he’d gone to help—he’d been kidnapped too soon to be of use. It hadn’t worked for his parents—his father had been wheelchair-bound for years from the shock of losing his son and grandchild at once.

It didn’t work out for Sam, either. Not even for me.

He’d thought he’d been the victim in this scenario. Events tonight had shown him that he hadn’t been the only one to make sacrifices.

It seemed he had a lot to make up for.

“I came to meet you, Casey,” he said, hoping to start bridging a gap that should never have existed…but it did, and he had to deal with the reality of that. “I would have come a long time ago, but—” after a glance at Sam, he went on “—but I was living far away and I didn’t know where you and Mummy had gone.”

“Okay,” Casey said, accepting his words at face value. She stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr.—” She groped for the name she’d already forgotten.

“My name’s Brett Glennon, Casey.” He limped forward and took her hand. Sam had trained their child in good manners—but then, blind children learned through hearing and touch, scent and instinct. Touching was Casey’s way of “seeing” him.

“I’m very glad to meet you,” he added, smiling at her even though he knew she couldn’t see it. Casey possessed her mother’s ability to send that piercing shaft of joy through him with the most simple of words and acts.

“You’re smiling,” Casey said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“Yes, I am,” he replied, taken aback. “I’m just so happy to meet you, Casey—and to discover that I have such a beautiful daughter.”

“My name’s Holloway,” Casey said gravely, releasing his hand. “At school, the other kids who got a daddy and a mummy all got the same name.”

“Have, Casey,” Sam put in, her voice restrained. “The kids have a daddy and have the same name.”

“Yeah, that,” Casey agreed, her smile growing. “So why’s your name different?”

Brett grinned. So she’d also inherited his tendency to tease…and his bulldog tenacity to get answers.

Cautiously he gave her an edited version of the truth. “Like I said, I was far away. I was living in a place called Africa when you were born. I’m a doctor and I wanted to help people who were hungry and suffering.” With a flickered look at a withdrawn Sam, he added, “I was working where it was hard to get to a phone. I wish I had known about you, Casey. I would have come home to look after you both.”

He searched Casey’s face, wondering if she’d noticed his avoidance of her real question, but she’d veiled her reaction. Another wall of anguish slammed into him. That any five-year-old child, let alone his daughter, should know how to hide her emotions, struck his soul with a chilling feeling of wrongness.

Casey asked slowly, “Can I look at you?”

Sam said, “She means she’d like to—”

“I know, Sam.” With a difficulty so strong it was pitiful, he managed to bend his knee. Balancing with a hand on the chair, then the coffee table beside it, he lowered himself to the floor before the little girl. Again he took Casey’s hand—such a fragile thing—and lifted it to his face. “Go for it, kid,” he said in a gentle voice.

Casey’s fingers explored his face, walking along his skin in delicate pulses and strokes. She felt his closed eyes, tested the shape of his less-than-classic nose, his strongly defined cheekbones, the line of his brow. She learned the shape of his ears. Her fingers probed his mouth, feeling the indents of his dimples beside it.

Question number one answered: she wasn’t legally blind but profoundly blind. Legally blind children could see through thick glasses, make out blurry images by peering close enough. Casey must have no sight at all. What accident of birth or fate had caused it? Had the stress of her mother’s pregnancy all alone caused this?

Could he have prevented Casey’s disability if he’d been home and seen the signs of trouble before her optic nerve had become irreparably damaged?

“You have dimples, like me,” Casey commented, jerking him from his reverie.

“And we have the same colour eyes,” he added, without mentioning the actual shade. She wouldn’t understand, he thought, and the pang of wistfulness hit him harder than he believed it could. He’d thought he’d accepted this…

But that was before he’d met her, this lovely child with the woman’s mind.

Casey nodded thoughtfully. “Do I look like you?”

“A little bit,” he said, feeling a strong sense of pride. This tiny angel, so haunting and almost perfect, had sprung from his loins, his blood, his love for Sam. “You look more like your mummy, which means you’re very pretty.”

A tiny hand fell onto his chest—and a frown marred her translucent face. “Why are you sad?” she asked. Either she knew she was pretty or such things didn’t bother her.

Does she know what “pretty” is? She’s never seen one beautiful thing in her life…

And again that hurt far more than he’d thought it would.

Then her words penetrated and he blinked. “What?”

“You walked funny and have a stick to balance. You have a sore leg. And you have sad lines,” Casey said softly, “here—” she touched his mouth “—and here,” touching his forehead.

“I might be old,” he replied to gain time, stunned by what she’d said and how she’d reached her conclusions—and by the fact that she was right every time.

Casey’s mouth turned down. “Your hand hasn’t got any wrinkly bits. Your voice isn’t old.” She moved back, severing the fragile connection they’d been making.

Lesson number two: don’t underestimate her because she can’t see.

“Why were you fighting with Mummy?”

The way she put it wasn’t a question; she was stating a fact and demanding answers. No, Casey wasn’t a child to underestimate.

Sam jumped in before he could answer the child. “Casey—” she ordered in a no-nonsense, go-to-bed tone.

Brett frowned, surprising himself by siding with Casey. “She deserves to know, Sam.”

Sam glared at him. “She’s only five! She doesn’t need to—”

“She’s part of us,” he said, again surprising himself, and turned back to Casey. “I sort of startled Mummy. She wasn’t expecting me to come here. She thought I was still far away.”

“You were yelling at her,” Casey pointed out. “Don’t you like Mummy?”

He twisted around, looking at his wife with a serious, intent expression. “Yes, Casey, I like your mummy. I always have, from the moment I met her.”

He could see the rosy outline of Sam’s cheek as she turned away. But the denial implicit in her stiff back slammed into his gut—then he saw that she was shaking. This night, this reunion, was taking a higher toll on Sam than he’d believed it could.

And behind his wife’s turned back, on the sideboard, he saw it. A series of framed photos: a picture of them on their first date, holding hands and smiling, taken by a roving photographer; their engagement celebration, done at a professional studio, him seated, with Sam’s arms wrapped around him from behind; and their favourite wedding shot, a candid one taken by a friend, where Sam had tripped over something—he couldn’t remember what—and he’d grabbed her around the waist to steady her. Both of them were laughing with the joy of the day, her veil billowing around them like a benediction.