A Secret Identity (33 page)

There was more than one way to be a troubled son.

Sorrow filled me as I turned into the front hall. These people were being torn apart by something they couldn’t or wouldn’t control.

I was reaching for the doorknob when Mick rushed into the hall.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I never meant—”

I didn’t know what to say in the face of his obvious pain.

He looked at me out of weary eyes. “I never should have—I didn’t think—I didn’t mean—” His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”

“Mick, it’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I tried to stay awake and watch him, but I fell asleep.” He said it as if sleeping were the equivalent of loading the gun for a killer.

“You have to sleep.”

“Don’t be nice. Please, don’t be nice. I should have seen. I should have stopped it.”

“You can’t see everything or stop everything. It’s not your responsibility. And it’s too great a burden to put on yourself.”

He shook his head. “He’s my brother. He is my responsibility. It’s for certain no one else around here is looking out for him.”

I thought of Ward, imperious, single-minded, kind and loving, as wonderful a brother as I could possibly want. What if he were a Pip? My heart broke for Mick, his hurt, and his noble intentions. A good kid, this one. I felt bad that I had ever suspected him.

“I do have a question,” I said. “Since you didn’t meet me until Saturday evening, perhaps Pip didn’t have anything to do with the mailbox?”

Mick sighed. “He did. He told me about it the next day. That’s when I knew I had to watch him every minute. But I fell asleep.” He studied the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Pip came flying into the hall in time to hear those last words. He punched Mick on the shoulder. “Don’t apologize to her! Why should you apologize? She should apologize to us!”

For what? For Pop being born more than ninety years ago?

“How did you know about me before we met, Pip?” I asked.

He grew cagey, his expression sly. “I heard Dad and Aunt Alma talking.”

“She came here and told about me?” I was surprised and a bit hurt that she rushed right to the relative she knew would dislike me.

Pip snorted. “Aunt Alma doesn’t come here if she can help it. Not that I blame her. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t have to either. I listened in on the extension.” His smile was full of congratulatory pride, like eavesdropping was something he’d invented.

“How long has he been sick?” I asked Mick while nodding toward Pip.

Pip’s perpetual smile and constant movement made so much sense now, as did the dark circles under his eyes. I wondered when his mania had last let him sleep.

“It’s been showing about three or four years, and it’s getting worse.”

“Who’s sick?” Pip’s voice became strident. “I’m not sick!
She’s
sick! Barging in here and claiming to be family so she can take Dad’s money. Well, she can’t have it! It’s ours!”

“No meds?” I asked Mick.

He shook his head, looking haunted. “I thought when the school authorities got involved, they’d listen.” He shrugged. “But Dad’s in denial. It would be a blot on the family. No Yost is allowed anything worse than strep throat.”

“So you’ve tried to take care of Pip in lieu of lithium or whatever new pharmaceutical they have now?”

Mick shrugged. “Someone has to.”

“No one has to take care of me! There’s nothing wrong with me! Dad says!” Gone completely was the charming young man who had welcomed me and conned his family into talking to me. “I’m not bi-polar! I’m not manic-depressive! Do you see a depressed person here? I’m healthier than all the rest of you put together!”

Amos came into the hallway. He hesitated when he heard his younger son ranting, but he turned on me. “Are you still here? I thought I told you to leave.”

“You tell her, Dad!” Pip punched Amos in the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger.

“Come on, Pip.” Mick threw his arm around his brother. “Let’s go back to the living room. Mom’s waiting.”

“Like I care.” But he let Mick lead him away. At the last moment, he looked back at me and grinned. “’Bye, Cousin Cara. So glad you came to visit.”

“’Bye, Pip.” My eyes teared.

A loud knock sounded just as I turned the doorknob. I opened the door to find a tall, unhappy man with a dripping umbrella furled in his hand.

I ran straight into his arms. “You came!”

“I had to.” He rested his cheek against my head.

“Reasoner. Just what I need.” Amos slammed the front door in our faces.

We stood on the porch watching the deluge.

“What about your clients?” I asked.

“I finished with one early and left before the other arrived. Mrs. Smiley will just have to keep them happy until I get back.”

“Poor Mrs. Smiley.”

“Poor clients,” Todd said.

I tried to smile, and suddenly the emotions of the night caught up with me. I started to shake. Todd’s arms tightened about me, and I hung on for dear life.

“All I wanted was a body-and-bone family,” I blubbered into his chest.

“A reasonable thing to want, and a reasonable thing to grieve over when it doesn’t work out.”

I leaned back and looked up at him. His curls were a mass of ringlets in the damp. “No wonder you whopped Amos in court today. You know the right things to say.”

He smiled wryly and pulled me back against him. “Sometimes.”

“You were right when you told me I shouldn’t come here alone. I should have listened.”

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have tried to make you do what I wanted, right or not. You’re a smart woman. You can make your own decisions.”

Two sinfully strong-willed people apologizing? I felt buoyed by hope.

He released me and grabbed my hand. “Come on. I’ve got clients waiting.”

We huddled under his umbrella and ran for our cars. I followed him to his office, and we were both more than a little damp by the time we dashed inside. Mrs. Smiley sniffed disapprovingly at us.

“The Turleys got tired of waiting,” she announced with satisfaction.

Todd nodded, unperturbed. “Buzz when the Weisses get here.”

He dropped the umbrella in a ceramic stand and guided me into his
sanctum sanctorum
, his hand solicitously resting at the small of my back. He put me in the leather chair opposite his desk as he automatically took his seat behind. He eyed me with concern.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe. Someday. Never.”

Amos’s hostility and Pip’s cruelty slapped me again. Even though I understood that egoism and illness were behind their actions, I felt emotionally bruised.

“I’m too used to people being nice to me.” My chin wobbled. “Mom was always so kind, and Pop hugged us all the time. And Ward protected me. Everyone said I love you and meant it. I lived in a warm and wonderful cocoon, and I didn’t realize how blessed I was.” I clenched my hands in my lap and stared at my fists. “I miss it all so much.” I would not cry. I would not. I’d already cried too much. Besides I looked terrible when I cried. I got a red nose and dark circles under my eyes. I swallowed and straightened my shoulders, but it didn’t help much…or at least not enough.

I dropped my head to my hands and sobbed. “I’m s–s–sorry,” I managed and cried harder.

Suddenly Todd was on his knees in front of me, his warm hands covering my cold ones.

“Cara, sweetheart, don’t cry.” He reached out and pushed my hair back over my shoulder. “They don’t matter. You know that. The Yosts don’t matter.”

I nodded. “I kn–n–ow that here,” and lifted my hand to my head. “But—” A fresh season of tears took me. Somehow I managed to get out all that had happened at the Yosts’ house.

Todd spread his arms for me, and, desperate, I fell into them. Somehow, as we met, we lost our balance and ended up on the floor in an unexpected but most satisfying attorney–client huddle. We shifted, and soon he sat cross-legged with his back against his desk, and I sat sideways in the well between his knees. His arms were wrapped about me, and he held me and stroked my hair and whispered soothing noises to me as I sobbed against his starched shirt front and silk tie. He didn’t even try to move his tie out of harm’s way. I had never felt safer in my life.

Eventually my storm of tears wore itself out, and I rested, spent, my head cradled on his shoulder. That’s when I realized my arms were clutching him, one across his chest, the other his back. I prepared to force myself to release my death grip, but since I couldn’t figure out where else to put my arms and in truth didn’t want to put them anywhere else, I left them right where they were.

I felt Todd lower his head. “Feeling better?” he said to my cheek, and I felt the softest of kisses.

I nodded against his shoulder. For a bony surface, it cushioned me with amazing comfort. I gave a great sniff.

He jumped and I realized I had sniffed right in his ear. I sighed. My heroines would never have done such a gauche thing. I needed to take lessons from them.

“Let me get my handkerchief,” Todd said and leaned in my direction as he reached into his back pocket.

The physics of our new position was too much for gravity’s pull, and we lost our balance. I ended up on my back on the floor and he ended up leaning over me, his weight held on one elbow-stiffened arm. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his face.

“Sweetheart,” he said in a gruff voice, “don’t look at me like that.”

I blinked and nodded. I had no idea how I was looking at him, but if my emotions were as obvious on my face as his were, we were in dangerous territory.

Then I couldn’t help it. I sniffed. Again. And again.

He grinned and shook his head. “And you’re a romance writer.”

He took the handkerchief he’d finally retrieved and wiped my eyes. He handed it to me.

I stared at it. “It’s ironed. How can I dirty your ironed handkerchief?”

“The cleaners did it once, they can do it again.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said. “I don’t do handkerchiefs.”

With barely a blink or a missed beat, Todd spoke. “Then we’ll have to keep sending them to the cleaners, won’t we?”

Nodding, I took the handkerchief and blew my nose, not an easy thing to do on your back.

He reached out his free hand to trace my eyebrows, my nose, my lips. “You are beautiful, absolutely beautiful.”

I closed my eyes at his feather touch, knowing nothing I’d ever written came close to the sensation of someone you loved loving you back. I ached all over with the sweetness of it.

Vaguely I heard a buzzer somewhere in the real world, and then a quick knock and an opening of a door. Mrs. Smiley gasped and my eyes flew open.

“I—I knocked,” she sputtered.

“I know.” Todd didn’t move. His fingers were on my mouth. I wanted to nibble them.

Mrs. Smiley swallowed. “Your next client is here.”

Todd nodded. “Give me five minutes.”

The door closed.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “She’ll never respect you again.” I took his hand and pressed it against my cheek. “Your image is forever tarnished.”

“At least I’m not lying on the floor like some people I know.” He took both my hands and pulled me back into the circle of his knees. Our faces were so close I couldn’t focus. His hand gripped the back of my neck, his thumb caressed my cheek.

“Cara, my beautiful Cara, what are you doing to me? I used to be so organized, so predictable. Now I don’t know anything except I’m crazy about you.” And he kissed me. That’s when I knew that the heart-stopping, toe-curling kiss on his father’s porch had been no aberration.

I drew back first, though reluctantly. My nose was still stopped up from crying, and I desperately needed to breathe. While I gasped, Todd kissed away any remaining traces of my tears.

“I’d better go,” I said. “Clients.”

He nodded, and we picked ourselves up. Arms around each other’s waists, we walked toward the door. We saw ourselves in the mirror on the side wall at the same time and gasped.

I had great dark circles from crying, my nose was still red, and my hair flew about my face as if I’d just stuck my finger in an outlet.

“You need glasses,” I blurted.

“What?” He ran his hand madly over his curls, seeking order.

“You told me I was beautiful. Attorneys aren’t supposed to lie.”

His hands dropped from his hair to rest on my shoulders.

“Cara, tonight when you went off to Amos’s alone and I was trapped here with clients, I regretted what I’d said so much. Especially how I’d left you. I knew I had to get there to be with you, to stand by you. My heart broke for you. And I knew I loved you.”

He slid his hand beneath my hair, grasping my neck. “I knew I loved your courage, your passion for things that matter to you, even your philosophical discussion of body-and-bone versus heart. I knew I’d love you forever.”

I started to cry again.

“Sweetheart?” he asked, concern in his voice.

“Good crying,” I said quickly. “Good crying.”

He looked at me like I was crazy but he nodded.

“I love you too,” I told him. “You are the only sure thing in my life apart from the Lord. And Ward and Marnie and Johnny, but that’s way different.” I waved them away, my hand almost clipping Todd’s strong jaw.

He smiled as he ducked, his brown eyes warm, pleased.

“You are the one who has been here for me, Todd. The one who helped me when everyone else, including my brother, thought I should let well enough alone. You stood by me. You are my rock.”

He appeared to like that analogy. I smiled. “And I love you. Always. Forever.”

Epilogue

Two years later

I
lay in my hospital bed, bruised and broken, but happier than I’d ever been in my life. I looked down at Madeleine Elizabeth Reasoner held snug against my breast. A little knitted cap covered her newborn head, and her red, wrinkled face was beautiful.

Bone of my bone, born of my body, child of my heart…our hearts.

I rested against her father, who sat on the bed beside me, my back against his strong side and my head against his shoulder. One of his hands lay gently on my shoulder and the other cupped our baby’s head. His look of utter infatuation as he stared at his daughter made me smile.