Their Secret Child

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.

Chapter Four

What do you wish? That I didn’t hate you for what you said and did?

Addie’s words were a battering ram on his heart as he watched her walk away. He knew what she was talking about; knew the time and place—that day in the rain—and he heard the words that were said, all over again….

He had gone to pick her up to take her to dinner, to the movie Seven. But from the moment she climbed into his old Chevy, she’d been quiet, not ecstatic, and hadn’t recognized the energy radiating off his body. She’d always been in tune to him. But not that night. That night she had slipped into the seat, buckled up and kept her face averted.

“Hey, honey. I missed you today.”

He’d tried to kiss her before starting the car and felt the change in her then, but he shrugged it off, too high with his own euphoria. The call from the NFL scout had come an hour before.

Her subtle withdrawal probably meant she’d had another fight with Cyril, which Skip didn’t want to discuss. Not when he was damn near jumping out of his skin with excitement. He wanted to take her to a place for a nice meal to tell her, then to celebrate he wanted to park in their favorite spot along the lake and make love with her.

“Where would you like to eat?” he asked, driving away from her house. Rain smudged the windshield and he turned on the wipers. He glanced across the seat; she stared out the side window into the darkness. “Addie?”

Her walnut-colored hair swung along her shoulders as she shook her head. “I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry.”

“Something wrong?” A small alarm bell rang when she remained silent. “You mad at me?”

“No,” she said, and he thought she murmured, I’m mad at myself, but he wasn’t sure because the radio was playing the oldies station she loved.

“Then where?” He was starving, but he’d grab a burger if she didn’t want to do the dinner scene.

“I don’t care.”

A streak of annoyance touched Skip. This was his big night. Couldn’t she sense his excitement?

He turned the wipers on high—like his inner alert signal. When he pulled into a burger joint, it was packed with people they’d known forever. Teenagers and college kids home for spring break. Skip killed the ignition and they listened to the rain drum on the hood.

And then she said the words, the ones that changed both their lives. “I’m late, Skip.”

Late. Oh, yeah. He knew exactly which late she meant.

Staring through the windshield he could see his life falling…falling into an abyss. His heart pounded, his palms grew clammy. “You sure?”

Still, she hadn’t looked at him, but stared instead through the rain-blurred glass. “I took the drugstore test this morning. Twice.”

No mistake. They’d made a baby, that’s what they’d done. Using condoms worked, but sometimes, sometimes things happened. Sometimes they broke, and sometimes they were forfeited for the real thing. Which they’d done once. Once—

He set his forehead on the steering wheel, tried to swallow while his mind spun with futuristic scenarios.

A cramped, dingy apartment. Construction work. Bills. Creditors.

“I’m keeping it,” she whispered, and he lifted his head. “You don’t need to stick around.” For the first time she looked at him.

“I won’t ruin your plans.”

In the darkness of night and rain, relief whirled through him, before shame settled and he took up her cold wringing hands. “Addie, we’ll work this out.”

“How?” The word was so full of hope he wanted to cry.

“I don’t know, but we will. I promise.” He pulled her into his arms, kissed her forehead. “It’ll be all right, honey. We’ll be okay.” He meant every word. The baby was his and he would be its daddy in a different way than his own father had been to him.

Three weeks later in the same spot, the same car, he’d told her, “This wasn’t my choice” and she’d leapt out and slammed the door before he could explain the power a father had over his son.

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