Sins of the Father (7 page)

G
o to bed, Deborah,” Leah said.

Deborah had sprawled out on the lovingly worn sofa in the family room, and Leah sat
curled up in her favorite club chair. Had Michael been there lazing in the recliner
next to the sofa, the family picture would have been complete. The three of them had
spent many a night in this room watching television or engaged in some lively conversation.

“I’m exhausted, too tired to move.”

“I know you are, baby. You’ve had a rough day.”

Hearing the concern in her mother’s voice, Deborah reached for her hand. “So have
you. Thanks for going to the hospital with me, Mama.”

“No need to thank me. I didn’t want you to be there alone.”

“I know, but I didn’t anticipate the treatment you got from Saralyn.” She turned up
her nose and raised her voice an octave. “Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Martin.”

Leah chuckled. “Don’t let her get to you. You had a right to be there.”

“You’re my mother. You had a right to be there as well.”

Leah dropped her daughter’s hand and settled back in her chair. “I love you for saying
that, and on one level you’re right, but you can understand why Saralyn didn’t want
me there, can’t you?”

“Because of something that happened twenty-eight, thirty years ago?” Deborah shook
her head. “She needs to get over it.”

“The kind of betrayal she experienced has a long half-life. I’m a reminder of a time
in her marriage she’d rather forget. To be honest, I’d rather forget it, too.”

“Well, I think she was out of line. Dad is going to have to put her in check when
he gets out of the hospital. She’d better be glad—” Her mother’s broad smile made
her stop talking. “What?” she asked.

“You called Abraham ‘Dad.’”

“I know,” she said. “It just came out when I was talking to him in his hospital room.”

“How does it feel to say it?”

“Good,” she said. “Natural.” Deborah noticed tears streaming down her mother’s face.
She sat up and faced her. “What?”

“I’m so sorry, Deborah.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She wiped her tears. “Yes, I do, and you know it. It’s my fault—
partly
my fault—that Abraham hasn’t been in your life. What was I thinking to go along with
an agreement that kept him out of your lives? The little money they sent us was not
enough reason. You and Michael needed your father.”

Deborah had wondered at her mother’s decisions but had never been bold enough to ask
her about them. “What happened between you and Abraham, Mama? You’ve never really
told us, and I haven’t wanted to ask because it seemed painful for you to discuss.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’ve known you were curious. I just didn’t know how to talk
to you two about it. I wanted you and Michael to look up to me, and the story of my
relationship with Abraham hardly paints me as a woman worth looking up to.”

“Don’t think like that, Mama. There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me
love you or respect you less. Me or Michael. You played the cards you were dealt.
One thing I really appreciate is that you never painted Abraham as the bad guy, and
you could have. If you had, I probably wouldn’t be able to accept him now. You left
room in my heart for a relationship with him to grow. I thank you for that.”

Leah squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I’ve always hoped there’d come a time when you
could get to know him. You and Michael both. Things aren’t working like I’d hoped
with Michael, though.”

“I think it’s different for him because he’s a man. It’s been especially hard for
Michael to have had no relationship with Abraham, while Abraham has lavished everything
on Isaac. Maybe I’d feel the same if he had another daughter. I don’t know.”

“All I can say, Deborah, is I hope you make better choices in your life than I have,
that you keep your head when you fall in love. Don’t always trust your heart. It can
fool you sometimes.”

“Tell me, Mama. I want to know about you and Abraham. What happened?”

Leah gave a wry smile. “I fell in love with a man who wasn’t ready to be in love.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think Abraham loved me, in his way, but he loved other things more.”

“Saralyn?”

“And what she represented. Abraham was always a big dreamer. I saw myself working
side by side with him making those dreams come true. But Saralyn represented the dream.
She and her family
were much farther along the road to Abraham’s dream destination than either his family
or mine.”

“So you don’t think he married her for love?”

“I didn’t say that. Of course he loved her, loves her still. But back then I think
Abraham loved himself more than he loved anything or anyone else. How else could he
make the decisions he did where you and your brother were concerned? He’s a better
man today than he was then, I think. He’s learned something from life’s lessons.”

“I don’t know how to ask this…” Deborah murmured.

“Just ask, sweetie. We’ve started this. We may as well finish it.”

Deborah took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay, you had two babies with
Abraham. Michael and Isaac are about the same age and I’m two years younger. What
happened?”

Leah winced as if in pain. “It’s something straight out of the tabloids. Abraham was
dating both Saralyn and me at the same time, though neither of us knew, and he got
both of us pregnant. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t find out I was pregnant until
after Abraham told me he was going to marry Saralyn because she was pregnant. When
I found out about my condition, I had too much pride to tell him. Saralyn had beat
me to the pregnancy line by about four months.” She shrugged. “What could he do anyway?”

“So what did you do?”

“I spent a year with some relatives in Ohio. I had planned to live there, but my mother
got sick and I had to come back home. Abraham found out about the baby and we started
up again.”

“Even though you knew he was married?”

She nodded. “I told you the story doesn’t make me sound like a good person. I knew
he was married, but my heart was still his. It remained his until the day I found
out I was pregnant with you. Something happened to me that day, Deborah. It was as
though a lightbulb went off and I clearly saw who I was and what I was doing. I didn’t
like what I saw at all.”

“So you ended it?”

Leah gave a wry smile. “Relationships don’t end in such a clear-cut manner, sweetie.
I said the words but the relationship had been over since the day Abraham decided
to marry Saralyn. I just refused to accept it.”

“So what happened when you told him about me—being pregnant with me, I mean?”

“He was dumbfounded. Before you even ask, no, he didn’t ask me to terminate. He was
shell-shocked because Saralyn was pregnant again, too.” Leah lowered her eyes. “I
wouldn’t believe this if I hadn’t lived it, but sadly it’s true. Again, Abraham had
two women pregnant, the same two women.”

“Man,” Deborah said, “I had no idea.”

“It’s not something we talk about. Saralyn found out about my pregnancy and had a
miscarriage. Though neither of us spoke of it, I think both Abraham and I felt responsible.
Saralyn demanded that he cut all ties with us. I didn’t blame her. Abraham agreed,
but told her he had to support us financially as best he could. Saralyn didn’t like
it but she went along with it.”

Deborah thought about the harsh words Saralyn had spoken and felt a bit of compassion
for her. “No wonder she hates us—me, especially. Why didn’t you tell me, Mama?”

Leah studied her hands. “Because it’s hard to think about that time in my life, even
harder to talk about. I told you it wasn’t a pretty story.”

“No, it’s not,” Deborah agreed. She had a lot of new information to process. It would
take some time to make sense out of it all.

“Do you hate me?” Leah asked.

Deborah met her mother’s eyes, saw the fear there. “I could never hate you.”

“But what I’ve told you makes you think less of me. I know it does.”

Deborah thought about it before she answered. Her mother had
been honest with her, so Deborah felt she deserved honesty in return. “I’m glad you
waited to tell me the details. I don’t think I could have handled all this as a teenager.
I’m also glad you waited until after I had a chance to get to know Abraham some. I’m
not sure how knowing these details would have affected my reaction to his outreach.
I do know that I’m glad for the chance to get to know him. And I’m glad you’re my
mother. You made some bad decisions, Mama, but you made up for them. You went off
and made a career for yourself and you raised two good kids. Well, one good kid and
one great kid. I’m the great kid.”

Leah smiled, as Deborah had hoped she would. “I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you, too, Mama,” Deborah said, standing up to embrace her mother. Only now
did she realize the full gravity of Abraham’s request that she try to put the family
together. There was a lot of history and a lot of hurt on both sides. She didn’t know
if she was up to the task.

R
ebecca stood outside her father-in-law’s office on the twelfth floor of the MEEG Building
in downtown Atlanta. She braced herself to come face-to-face with her husband for
the first time since her confession last night. Isaac had become so angry with her
that he had left their bed and spent the night in one of their guest rooms. Then this
morning he’d left before she awakened. She knew she had work to do to repair his trust
in her. He was on the phone when she walked in, so she took a seat in front of the
massive mahogany desk with inlaid granite top that had Abraham’s masculine stamp all
over it.

“I’ve got it,” Isaac said into the phone. “We’ll have a companywide meeting at noon
to update everybody on Dad’s condition and to reassure them that the company will
operate as usual while he’s in the hospital. Thanks for getting on this so quickly,
Alan.”

Isaac hung up the phone and jotted something on the calendar in front of him before
looking at her. “You should be at the
companywide meeting,” he said. “It’s important that we present a unified front.”

“I’ll be there.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Was there something you wanted?”

She leaned forward. “I wanted to talk to you about last night.”

He flipped through his dad’s desk calendar, refusing to look at her. “I think you
said enough last night.”

She shook her head. “We didn’t talk,” she said. “You stormed out of our bed and our
bedroom and refused to speak to me.”

He finally lifted his eyes to hers. Her heart ached at the weariness she saw there.
He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, either. “I didn’t trust myself to talk to
you,” he told her. “I still don’t. The thoughts I’m thinking, believe me, you don’t
want to hear.”

“I know you’re hurt, Isaac, but believe me, if I had known Michael was your half brother,
I would have told you. This whole thing is only an issue because we both found out
about your relationship to Michael. Otherwise, he’d just be some old boyfriend who
didn’t matter to either of us.”

“Well, he’s not just some old boyfriend.” He pressed his hands, palms down, on the
desk and leaned toward her. “And all this time he’s been thumbing his nose at me and
I had no idea.”

“I’m sorry, Isaac, but I didn’t know.”

He leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath. “But if you had told me about the
gifts, I would have looked into it and maybe learned about my dear brother long before
now.”

“We’re going to get past this, right?” she asked, praying for an affirmative answer.

“I don’t know.” Isaac steepled his fingers across the bridge of his nose. “I know
it shouldn’t matter, but it does. One of the downsides of being born into a family
with money is that you always wonder about the motives of the people you meet. I never
had those questions with you, but I do now. When you tell me that
your relationship with Michael was based on what you thought he could do to advance
your career, I have to wonder if our relationship is any different. Being married
to me has certainly helped your career.”

Rebecca felt like a battered boxer in the ring with a much more talented opponent.
“How can you even say that to me?” she asked. “I love you, Isaac. I’ve always loved
you. You have to know that.”

He shook his head. “Let’s not get into it now. There’s too much going on with Dad.
We’ll get through this storm and then we’ll deal with our marriage. In the meantime,
in public we’ll act as if everything is all right. I don’t want to add to my mother’s
stress. She’d be in a bed beside Dad if she knew about your history with Michael and
those gifts he’s been sending. I can’t do that to her.”

Rebecca accepted this punishment, though she didn’t think it was fair. “I understand.
I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Thanks. Right now what I need is for you to cover for Mom, take over her PR responsibilities
so she can focus on Dad. You should probably head over to the hospital after the companywide
meeting and talk with her.”

“Aren’t you going too?”

He rubbed his temples as if he had a headache. “I stopped by to check on her and Dad
on the way over this morning.”

“How is he?”

“The injuries from the accident aren’t serious, but they’re worried about his heart.
They want to run more tests. He’s in a lot of pain and they can’t figure out the cause.”

“So we probably won’t see each other until dinner. I’ll pick up something and we’ll
eat with your mother at the hospital. I’m sure she won’t want to leave.”

He shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I told Mom you had to work tonight, so
she isn’t expecting you for dinner. You can see her and Dad when you meet her to discuss
work.”

Her heart ached. “So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? You’re shutting me out.”

He met her gaze. “I’m doing the best I can, Rebecca. I can put on a front for a few
hours at work but I can’t do it for an extended time around my mother. She’s not stupid.
She would know something wasn’t right between us and she would worry. I don’t want
that.”

“I don’t want it either, Isaac, but surely your mother will realize that we’re rarely
together.”

“We’ll just attribute it to work. I’ll be busy here at the office trying to catch
up anyway, so we won’t really be lying to her.”

“Yes, we will. We won’t be telling her the full truth.”

He met her eyes, his full of accusation. “Well, then that shouldn’t be a problem for
you, should it? You’ve had a lot of practice at it.”

Those words stung and she had no comeback. The ringing phone saved her from having
to respond. What had she done to her marriage? What would she have to do to save it?
The questions filled her mind and she had no answers.

“Calm down, Mom,” Isaac said as he stood, the phone to his ear. “We’re on our way
to the hospital now.”

“What is it?” she asked when he hung up.

“They’ve put Dad into a coma,” he said, rushing for the door.

“Oh no!” Rebecca said, running to catch up.