All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (59 page)

Dead silence for a second. Then Tom laughed.

“Oh, Lucy.” He was shaking his head indulgently. “Only you. He’s going to love this. First you make up a love affair in London, and now an illegitimate child—” He stacked the folders up near his computer. “Look, I know the guy, and he
wishes
he had the time and energy for all the activity you ascribe to him.”

“He had the time to spend last night away from home,” Lucy said flatly. “He had the energy to go jaunting off for the weekend. And I find your use of the word illegitimate interesting, because that’s not the first thought that came to my mind. If a girlfriend of his did turn up pregnant—”

“He’s a little old for that, don’t you think?”

“Well, it happens. Remember, the Jamisons got married in a hurry last year. Richard would want to put things right. He’d at least make sure Di couldn’t make hay of it. After all,” she stared him straight in the eye, “the thing we know about him, first and foremost, is that he will protect a child of his.”

Tom stared her back, but it was too late to stop her. She was right. She felt it in her blood.

“That’s it,” Lucy said. “There is a child, isn’t there? And I suspect this one is already born, because,” she was thinking her way through this, “you used that word as if it had some meaning, and a child isn’t technically illegitimate until it’s born. And for some reason, Richard thinks Di may find out – in fact, he’s acting as if he just found out himself—”

A horrible thought struck her.

“Oh, no,” she said. “That subpoena. Maybe it isn’t worthless after all—”

“Lucy,” her husband said, and she knew then.

Francie, and the disappearance that had never made any sense.

Laura, and all those stubborn years of silence.

Diana, with this dangerous subpoena, forming the third angle of the triangle of sisters.

A child with dark hair, whose mother had inexplicably left her behind on this journey home.

Cat Courtney, and the elaborate identity shell game.

Of course. Not to keep out the world, not to protect a singer, but to shelter a child from discovery.

“That’s it.” Her hand covered her mouth in shock. She felt great tears welling up in her eyes. “That’s why Richard wants this divorce so fast. He doesn’t want Di finding out about Meg.”

Tom rose and put his arms around her, and that one gesture of comfort confirmed everything. She clung to him, her steady rock in the turmoil of her family; he pressed her to him, warm and secure. And for a very small time, the world steadied.

“That’s why Francie left, isn’t it? She was pregnant. Did he know?” She looked up at him. “Tom, you must tell me.
Did he know?
”

Tom was silent for a moment, as if he intended to deny it, and then gave up and shook his head. “No,” he said, “he didn’t find out until Laura came back.”

“Well, he should have known!” She felt suddenly, deeply angry with her foster brother. Forget that they’d grown up together; forget that they’d been each other’s closest friends during their adult lives. “It’s bad enough that he got involved with Francie, but couldn’t he at least have been more careful!”

“Didn’t you just say these things happen?” Tom was trying to be reasonable, and that made her madder. “You weren’t this indignant a few minutes ago.”

How would he like it if someone had gotten
his
sister pregnant? “It wasn’t my sister then. It wasn’t my niece. I know he was young, and sure he was miserable – but Francie was younger – she was eighteen, Laurie wasn’t even that, and they were all alone, dealing with this—”

She drew a breath. Tom, wisely, didn’t interrupt her.

“And none of us
knew
. I would have helped. They could have come to me. If I’d had a clue, I would have done anything to help—”

“I haven’t gone into detail on this with Richard,” Tom said carefully, “but you know him, and I know him, and we both know he never would have thrown Francie to the wolves. We don’t have a copy of the birth certificate, but it’s a dead certainty that Francie didn’t name him.”

“She probably didn’t. Laurie must have adopted Meg. Tom, you tell him, he’d better not get any ideas about challenging Laurie for custody, or, client or not, I
will
fight him—”

“Calm down. He’s not challenging her for his rights. He hasn’t even told her that he knows. He hasn’t indicated in any way that he intends to interfere.”

“Well, that at least explains why Laurie married that man. This must have been the only way she could take care of Meg.” So many pieces were falling into place.

“Possibly. She married when Meg was four months old. Lucy,” he leaned back against his desk, “you
cannot
meddle in this. You know how he feels about his privacy, and he’ll shut you out if you confront him. This is delicate stuff here—”

“I know.” Lucy swallowed her anger. As much as Richard deserved it, she had to rally around and help. And she did feel a little sorry for him. He must feel terrible, knowing that he had fathered a child he could never claim. “But I can’t help him protect them unless I know the truth. Is that why he’s paying Di to behave for five years? Meg has to be thirteen, not twelve. It’s not Julie’s twenty-first birthday he’s concerned about. It’s Meg’s eighteenth.”

“I guess. I didn’t ask him.” Tom fell quiet in thought. “Now that I know about him and Laura—”

Lucy interrupted, “There is no him and Laura. They’re just attracted to each other, that’s all. And it’s more her than him.”

“Sure about that? She’s legally his daughter’s mother, and we know how he feels about Julie. If Diana weren’t such a damn fool, he’d take her back in a heartbeat just to give Julie a mother. That’s why he stayed with her as long as he did.” That insight startled her. “In my opinion, Laura can be one ruthless character, and if she wants to play the motherhood card—”

“No.” Lucy sighed against his shoulder. She was beginning to find her equilibrium again. The world had shifted, but she was learning this altered family landscape. “She won’t. Now I am amazed that Francie didn’t try to use Meg to her advantage.”

And there was a thought to ponder later: Why
hadn’t
Francie used Meg to win her way back into Richard’s life? It wasn’t like her not to use such an obvious trump card over Diana.

She said finally, “The one thing we can be sure of is that Laura won’t use Meg.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

“I am,” Lucy said with certainty. “Laura stayed away to keep Meg a secret. She’s gone to great lengths to make sure we believe Meg is her child. I know my sister. Subpoena or not, she will never admit that Richard is Meg’s real father, because that’s tantamount to saying that she isn’t Meg’s mother.”

“Well,” said Tom, “for his sake, and for an easy resolution of this divorce, I hope they stay away from each other. The last thing he needs right now is to get involved with another one of your sisters.”

~•~

Out in their small reception area, Julie stood stock-still.

Chapter 19: Diana, Treading Water

SO I MOVED BACK WITH RICHARD, and it was like going to prison!

For a man only biding his time until he could get a divorce, he behaved as if he actually had a stake in this child. The first night I was back, he ferreted out my stash of weed and made a big production of pouring our small wine cellar down the drain. Despite my protests, he insisted on going with me to the OB, although I refused to let him hear a single detail of what the doctor and I discussed. I was past the stage of feeling sick (actually, I’d hardly felt that way; for someone who hates pregnancy as much as I do, it doesn’t bother me one iota), but I started showing almost right away. When I complained about not having anything to wear, he handed over our one credit card without any of the usual caveats about a budget.

On the surface, Richard was the perfect husband for a pregnant college student.

He even spent one whole weekend painting the spare bedroom in our little apartment, and he took it upon himself to scour the garage sales for a crib. I was shocked when he brought it in, actually; I’d forgotten that eventually this child was going to need somewhere besides me to sleep.

But – he never really looked at me, at least not below my head (well, being Richard, occasionally he looked at my breasts), he told me nothing of what was going on in his mind and his life (and I missed that, I truly missed hearing all his plans and dreams), and he never touched me.

Two months before the baby was due, he grew even quieter, and I noticed that he avoided looking at me altogether. Okay, I looked terrible, I knew that, I had eyes, but I’d looked terrible for months. So I snooped around his desk and found the letter from the lawyer at Student Aid advising that a divorce would be difficult to get. He had made the unpardonable error, in the eyes of the law, of letting me move back. (I could have told him that, from my research.) Even worse, he could not keep his name off the birth certificate; we were married, he’d had access to me around the time of conception…. (“Had access”! What a way to put it! But a few times, lying there in the dark by myself in our old bed, I wished he would abandon the too-short sofa, come back in there with me, and let the Standing Stone of Ireland take access again.)

He was at an engineering seminar when I went into labor, so he wasn’t present at Julie’s birth, but then I tried not to be, either. None of that earth mother, back-to-nature, drug-free martyrdom nonsense for me! I’d told my doctor that from the very beginning. Like everything else about pregnancy for me (unlike poor Lucy – what irony, when she wants a baby worse than anything), labor was not a big deal. I delivered Julie easily and in short order. By the time Richard found my message –
Gone to hospital to have baby, see you later, Di
– and came to the hospital, I was in recovery, looking down at Julie and wondering just who this stranger was in my arms.

I can’t imagine what the recovery room nurses thought of our conversation.

Richard, stilted, awkward: “How are you feeling?”

Me, sore and just relieved it was over: “Have you called the family yet?”

One of the nurses, bustling over to scoop Julie up and hold her out for Richard’s inspection: “So, Dad, do you want to hold your little girl?”

Richard, backing away, for once at a loss for words: “No!” And then, when he heard himself, covering up with “I don’t want to drop her.”

Well, to be honest, I didn’t blame him. I didn’t know what to do with Julie, either! Who in the world ever said motherhood comes naturally must have been a man. At first, I was so thankful not to be pregnant anymore that Julie held no reality for me. But then that blasted lactation consultant put Julie into my arms, and the poor child tried to nurse, and it was a disaster. I never could get her to latch on, and she cried non-stop. I gave up and went to the bottle right away. I’d failed my first task as a mother, and Julie and I both knew it. She seemed no happier to have me as a mother than I was to have a helpless infant on my hands.

Her name was another problem. The one thing Richard told me before he left the hospital that day sticks forever in my mind. “I don’t care what you call her – just don’t use my mother’s name.”

As it happened, I didn’t care for Margaret Ashmore, the name or the person. “Fine,” I said, and cast my mind back to the fabled Great Lakes shipping heiress. “How about Julia?”

He opened his mouth to protest; I could see it coming. “Hey,” I said sharply, before it became necessary to remind him just who had given birth that day and who had been goofing off in an engineering seminar, “you said I could name her what I want. I want Julia.”

That round went to me.

I could sleep on my stomach again, and when I wasn’t sleeping, I entertained my visitors and enjoyed the limelight of new motherhood. I even had my own labor war story to tell now. The families, of course, all gathered around. Philip and Peggy adored Julie on sight and even went so far as to tell me what a good job I had done. Daddy said he was proud of me; at long last, I had done something right. Lucy begged to be named godmother. Laurie, poor, sad little Laurie who hardly ever smiled, turned into a different person when she picked Julie up. Even Francie seemed to accept this decisive defeat, although, as usual, stupid bitch, she couldn’t resist getting her dig in: “Doesn’t look much like Richard, does she?”

But
everyone
noticed that the new father was less than deliriously happy.

They made excuses, of course. They put it down to his sobering new responsibilities and his crushing class load, and even Daddy forgot he hated Richard long enough to offer him a congratulatory cigar. For a moment, I thought Richard was going to stub it out in his face. Julie and I came home from the hospital, with all the clan in attendance, and the only time I saw him smile was when Laurie talked to him. She even brought Julie to him, and he couldn’t pull that afraid-to-hold-the-baby nonsense with the family’s veteran babysitter. She just said, “Oh, you do it like this,” and, lo and behold, he was holding the baby I knew he’d sworn never to touch. And everyone oohed and aahed.

Only Francie had the nerve to say, “Well, I guess he hasn’t had much of a wife for the last few months.”

I couldn’t let that pass, even if it was true. “Francie,” I said in my most cheerful, adult tone, “don’t you know better than that? Don’t they teach you anything in sex ed?”

“You can’t have sex when you’re pregnant,” said Francie, fount of all wisdom. “It’s disgusting.”

“
Au contraire
,” I couldn’t resist bursting her balloon, even if I had to lie through my teeth, “what do you think made labor start?”

She looked at me and then at Richard, and the sheer horror on her face was worth the lie.

I turned down Peggy’s offer to stay for a few weeks and help with Julie. No way could I endure having her around, cuddling Julie, cooking for Richard, showing me up for the bad wife I’d turned out to be! I felt fine, I said, everything was under control, and I really appreciated her offer, but….

She looked dubious. “Richard says you’re not nursing.”