Chapter 1
Lucas watched the feelings of confusion cross over his daughter’s face. Standing in front of her in her kitchen he braced himself for whatever would be coming at him, and knowing Lorna even as little as he did, he knew it wasn’t going to be nice.
At the sound of a child’s fussing, he watched as her gaze left his and went to a baby monitor perched on the counter. Within a matter of seconds she turned from it to her husband, poker face on: “I need to get the baby,” she informed him as if her whole world hadn’t just been upended.
“Lorna,” Gabe started as he pushed himself away from the counter and reached for his cane, knowing the tone all too well.
“I. Said. I’ll. Get. The. Baby,” she managed to spit out as she started to stalk out of the room, keeping her eyes purposely diverted from her father.
“Well, that went better than I anticipated,” Lucas remarked with a touch of humor in his voice.
“Oh, you really do, do you?” Gabe asked as he rounded the counter and started to lower the burners on the dinner his wife was cooking.
“I can finish that,” Lucas offered.
“She uses Paulina’s recipe. Won’t share it and gets annoyed when anyone tries to take over,” Gabe informed his father-in-law with barely concealed annoyance, still trying to figure out what had possessed the man to just show up on their doorstep unannounced earlier today.
“Paullina? Paulina Corey cooks?” Lucas asked surprised.
Gabe shrugged: “Paulina Carlino, now. Her husband, Joe and his father taught her. She not only cooks, she owns and runs a restaurant. Then again, I don’t see how that’s anymore surprising than Lorna cooking.”
“You have a point there,” Lucas remarked as he crossed the room. “This whole domestic routine you two have. . . Its not. . . well, it’s definitely not what I expected of her. Jenna sure. This was the type of life she always talked about. But not Lorna.”
Turning away from the man, Gabe moved to the refrigerator: “you really have no idea about who your daughter is, do you?” he asked as he reached in and pulled out two beers.
“Not who she is now,” Lucas answered truthfully. “But I know who she was back in Bay City. This” he said indicating the room and beyond with a way of his hand: “was never something she had wanted back then.”
“This,” Gabe corrected the older man as he handed him a beer: “was all she ever really wanted.”
“Now you’re the one who sounds like he doesn’t know her.”
“You might be surprised. I mean, from what I heard you didn’t exactly take the time to get to know her. Didn’t even acknowledge her as your daughter till you were on your deathbed. Not a whole lot of time for you to get to know her now, was there? Especially not when you were taking your adoptive daughter’s side in their arguments.”
“You weren’t there at the time. You don’t know what actually happened.”
“Maybe not,” Gabe conceded. “But I do know how it affected her. How it still does.”
“She seems fine to me.”
“Like I said, you don’t know your daughter as well as you think you do.”
<hr>
Lorna half staggered into the nursery, trying to regain some semblance of calm. Even in the emotional state she was in she knew that she had to calm herself down or she would upset her daughter.
Exhaling, she crossed to the nightstand and flipped off the baby monitor, wanting a few moments of privacy before she went back downstairs. Closing her eyes, for a second, she wondered if she was going to wake up from whatever this was.
Until Gabe’s call earlier--- hell, a few moments ago--- she would have thought it was a dream.
After all, from the moment her mother had told her tearfully over the phone that her fiancé had been shot down and killed on Center Street, till she had seen him again while she gave birth to their son she had prayed for just that.
“A phone call, that was all you were worth, Lorna. A goddamned phone call to let you know he was dead,” she said angrily as she picked up a stuffed animal and threw it across the room, fighting back tears. “Felicia couldn’t even let Jenna tell you. Had to do it herself. Even let you know that Joe had been the one to close his eyes. The last with him. . .” she continued coldly. “Then six months of unknowns. . . Jenna and her pleading and know it all. ‘Listen to the doctors, Lorna.’ ‘Don’t risk your life, Lorna.’ ‘You’ll have a chance for another baby, Lorna,’ of course she always left out that it wouldn’t be Gabe’s. And I know for damned sure little Miss Priss definitely didn’t know he’d be rolling into that delivery room.
Those last months I was alone.
Because I couldn’t count on her.
Because I couldn’t let Felicia know and have her worry. . .Only. . . Son of a. . . I wonder if he. . . no, he might have done it to me, but not to Felicia,” she said swallowing and swiping back tears as she turned to see her daughter watching her with all too knowing eyes, waiting to be picked up. “And look at you, watching me like that. Like you have all the answers. Just like she did, huh?” she asked picking the baby up. “Lord knows, I don’t. Didn’t when your Daddy showed up when I was having your big brother. . .” she continued, swallowing over the lump that had developed in her throat as she carried the baby to the changing table and laid her on it and started to change her as she spoke. “Didn’t later when I realized that his being there wasn’t a figment of my imagination from the drugs they gave me. When I saw him holding Lucas. . . when he offered to leave if I wanted him to. . . when he gave me the chance to leave and go back to Bay City. . . to your Grandma, and all of our friends. . . but I couldn’t, now could I?
And now look at the mess we’re in? Huh? Not just Daddy who shouldn’t be in the kitchen, but my daddy too. Only, I don’t know why he stayed away, and although you and your big brother know your daddy loves you to bits, I don’t know if my Daddy does or ever did,” Lorna admitted as she lifted her daughter up and stared into her eyes: “but I will tell you one thing, Franny, I will never believe John Hudson when he declares someone dead again!” |
