The Good Provider (13 page)

Daria hated the fear she saw in Miranda’s eyes. “He’s your father. He will always love you and want you in his life.
I
will never live with him again, Miranda. I can’t. But I promise you I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you and Hailey remain connected to your dad, and your grandma, and the whole family as much as possible.”

“Mommy?”

Daria looked over her shoulder to see a rosy-cheeked five-year-old standing a foot or so away. “What’s wrong, Miranda?” Hailey asked. “Why did you yell at Mommy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Miranda snarled. She leaped off the bed, giving her sister a small shove for good measure. A few seconds later, Daria heard the bathroom door slam shut.

“Why’d she push me, Mommy?”

Daria hugged Hailey close, smelling the fresh scent of snow on her hair. “Sorry, sweetness. Your sister is mad at me. Sometimes when people are mad, they take their anger out on other people. I’m sure she’ll tell you she’s sorry once she’s calmed down.”

“Like Daddy?” Hailey asked. “’Member when he yelled at you for not making us put away our bikes and then later he said he was sorry and you were a good mommy after all.”

Bruce might have told Hailey that, but he never apologized to Daria. Never. In fact, he once bragged that being married to Daria meant never having to say you’re sorry. He didn’t mean that in a cheesy
Love Story
way, either. She clearly wasn’t worthy of an apology—sincere or not.

Another reason the divorce was final—in her mind, at least.

“Mom,” he muttered under his breath as he walked around the van to climb into the driver’s seat. The colloquialism simply didn’t fit. Daria was a mom; Dr. Laurel Hughes-Smythe was dedicated physician first, parent, a very distant second.

No, even that wasn’t true, he realized. Dr. Lady, as she was called by staff and those she served, was also a selfless humanitarian, a crusader against greed and corruption. A noble heroine. Parent was way, way down on the list.

At least she hadn’t tried to guilt him into returning. That was more his uncle’s style. Notty had devoted several paragraphs to supporting his postulation that William was an ingrate.

As if thinking about the man could conjure him, William’s phone rang. He could ignore the call and carry on with his schedule, but postponing the inevitable rarely worked with Notty.

He opened the door of the van and got in. “Hello again, Uncle Naughton. What a surprise.”

“Don’t start, William. I’m not in the mood.”

“What are you in the mood for?” William asked, putting the key in the ignition. He didn’t turn on the engine. Although the temperature read a meager twenty-nine degrees, the sun had warmed the cab to a very comfortable setting.

“I forgot a couple of points in my e-mail and I didn’t feel like typing. Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, but can I ask you something first? Did you have my parents vet these complaints as well? Do they agree that I’m a worthless ingrate who mooched off them my entire childhood and never made any attempt to pay them back?”

Notty was silent for several seconds. William had surprised him with the question.
Good.
“No. Of course not. They would never expect anything from you. They love you. You are perfect—or fairly close to perfect—in their eyes.”

William slouched forward.
Bollocks.
He could take Notty’s contentiousness much easier than he could handle the man’s raw honesty. “Why do I have to come right this minute, Not? Why now? You said yourself Father is holding his own. He’s not getting worse. His mind is still sharp. Mother is there. Why is it so damn important that I drop everything to come now?”

Another long pause followed. Finally, Notty heaved a sigh and said, “I don’t know why, William. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe what bothers me is that I even have to pick up the phone to plead with you to do what most people would do spontaneously. ‘My father is ill. Oh, no, I’d better go home and visit him in his time of need,’” he said in a staged voice.

“So I’m a cad,” William muttered. “What can I say? I was never a priority in either of their lives, Notty, and damn it, I’m not going to drop everything to fly to England. I will come on my own terms. May we leave it at that?”

“William, do you remember when you were a lad and you told everyone you were going to be a doctor when you grew up?”

William shook his head. “I did not. I’ve never been interested in medicine.”

“You were. For a number of years. It’s all you’d talk about. When you were in the hospital camps with your mother, you’d even wear an old stethoscope and pretend to help.”

William closed his eyes but no such image came to mind. “I hate being around sick people. It’s one of the reasons I’m not rushing back to see Father. When I visited Mum in those camps, I’d volunteer in the supply shack or the office.”

“Yes, later on. When you were older. But as a very young child, you wanted to be a doctor.”

William scowled. “I don’t recall, but apparently I grew out of the notion. What is your point?”

“My point is, you stopped wanting to be a doctor for a reason, William. On the flight back from wherever we were—I’m not sure which trip this was, actually—you broke down and cried. You told me you’d accidentally seen your mummy kissing a man. Some visiting surgeon from Germany. I tried to explain that your mother was not infallible. She was a woman, and human.”

William felt an unpleasant tension pass through his body. “I have no memory of any of that,” he lied.

“I’m not surprised. Everything in your world, William, is black or white, including your memories. There’s no gray area. No room for mistakes.

“From that point on, you decided medicine wasn’t for you. Although I encouraged you to bring up the subject with your mother, you refused. Obviously, Laurel wasn’t madly in love with the man. She didn’t divorce your father to marry him. She might not have even kissed him passionately. You were a child. What did you know of passion? But you based a pivotal, life-altering choice on your assumption.” He paused to sigh. “That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

The line went dead.

William looked at his phone, stunned. That conversation had to be the strangest he’d ever had with his uncle. He closed his eyes and brought to mind the image that—his uncle was right—had left an impression on him. Not black and white at all. Blurry and completely out of focus. Was the man her lover? Or a friend?

He and Daria had kissed, too. With spectacular passion and possibility. But Daria was divorced. Even a child knew the difference—one was right, one wrong. So, he’d judged his mother’s actions and the experience changed him. How did that make everything his fault?

He cursed softly and turned the key in the ignition. The only person he planned to offer an apology was Daria. He’d been completely out of line kissing her last night. They were the proverbial two ships passing in the night, brushing a shade too close for a split second. His hull, he feared, would always carry the imprint of that kiss, but he didn’t intend to tell her that. She had enough to worry about without adding any more guilt.

“A quick, polite goodbye,” he said aloud, pulling into Cal’s driveway. The tires made a loud crunching sound against the hard-packed snow. His nervous buzz of anticipation began to ebb when he realized Cal’s car wasn’t there. Damn. Was the family gone? He thought about leaving a note but didn’t have the first clue about where to find a pen and paper.

He glanced toward the garden, recalling the fun he’d had playing with Daria’s children the day before, and spotted an odd bit of color. Someone was sitting on a bench in the garden. Daria. Even from a distance, he could tell she was upset about something.

He turned off the engine and got out. “Daria? Are you all right?” he asked, giving her plenty of warning of his presence. The sky was clear but the air had a decided nip in it made more biting by the gusty wind.

“I heard once that freezing to death is a fairly painless way to go,” she said, her tone flat, resigned.

“Compared to say, stepping on a land mine, you mean?”

The quip earned him a half smile. When she looked up, he saw her eyes were red and puffy. Guilt stabbed him mid-gut. “Please tell me you’re not tossing in the towel because of what happened between us last night. That was my fault. I’m an utter cad, who apparently has so little self-control, he takes advantage of a woman who is emotionally fragile and—”

She held up a hand. A bare hand. “No. That’s not why I’m upset. I wish you were my only unplanned problem. This is much, much worse.” The word
unplanned
set off his radar.

“I threw up this morning. My stomach has been a little off for a few days. I blamed it on the travel, strange water, nerves… Remember what I told you about trying every sort of tea on the market? And why?” He remembered.
Morning sickness.
“What about the flu? This is winter. Lots of germs around.”

“I don’t have a fever. In fact, my stomach is a lot better now. That’s how it was when I was pregnant with the girls. Nausea every morning but once I tossed my cookies, I’d be okay.”

“You think there’s a chance you might be pregnant,” he said, to be absolutely clear. “How?”

She gave him a “Well, duh” look.

“Wh-who?”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It was just the once. Over Christmas. He wanted to spend time with the girls. Brought them home from Midnight mass. We had a couple of glasses of wine.” She shook her head. “I knew it was a mistake when it happened.”

“Because you had unprotected sex?”

She shook her head. “No. God, no. We used a condom. He complained about it, but I said he was either safe or sorry.”

The image in William’s head was not flattering. Picturing this guy in bed, making love with the woman William had come to care for—oh, hell, admit it, had a major crush on—was disquieting, to say the least. “Then, how could you be pregnant?”

“Bad luck? Operator error? The worst timing in the world? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But I’m pretty sure I hate myself more than I thought possible.”

He dropped to a squat and removed his gloves. Her fingers were nearly blue they were so cold. He chafed them gently between his hands. “Where are Hailey and Miranda?”

“Cal took them to Rapid City for some kind of big celebration. I was thinking about walking into town to buy an over-the-counter test.”

He did a quick calculation in his head. “It’s probably too soon to know for sure, isn’t it?” he said, still a bit baffled that something like this could have happened. If her ex was such a jerk—the man had threatened to kill her, right?—how could she sleep with him?

“Sex was the one part of our marriage that worked pretty effortlessly,” she said, apparently hearing his unasked question. “But I was determined not to have any more children with Bruce. I’ve been on the pill since Hailey was a month old. Until my E.R. visit last summer. My primary care doctor suggested I go off it to rule out problems with my ovaries.”

With her husband out of the picture, she’d be safe. He got that. But she had condoms. She must have been planning to become sexually active at some point. He got that, too. But why with the bastard she was divorcing? That, he didn’t understand.

Daria took a deep breath, grateful beyond measure that the queasiness she’d experienced earlier was gone. She felt almost normal. Freezing cold, but… She suddenly gripped William’s hands fiercely. “I wonder if I’m losing my mind. When I was throwing up, the one clear thought going through my head was ‘Bruce won. I’ll have to go back to him now.’”

“No, Daria. Don’t say that. You can’t.”

“I lost a lot of blood when Hailey was born. Even with a transfusion, I was so exhausted I could barely sit up to nurse her. How could I handle two kids
and
an infant on my own?”

“You ask for help. But not from the person who wants to control you.” He spoke with such fierceness and conviction she had to look at him. “A baby only ups the stakes.”

She suddenly understood that he wasn’t talking about Bruce. “What do you mean?”

“The police never let this out, but Bianca was six months pregnant when she died. She kept it a secret from everyone, even me. I think she knew how vulnerable it would make her. In Ocho’s eyes, she became his possession times two.”

He looked her straight in the eyes. “You can’t go back to him. He threatened your life.”

She knew that. In fact, she’d been copying the voice message tape to give a copy to William when she’d become ill. Maybe her volatile stomach
was
the product of nerves, not pregnancy.

Before she could reassure him, he pushed to his feet and started pacing. “Your ex knows you’re a good mother. He wouldn’t hesitate to use your maternal devotion against you as leverage. Say you went back to him and managed to stick it out another five years until this new baby—if you’re even pregnant—” he added pointedly, “is Hailey’s age. What would you accomplish other than indoctrinating another kid to the sort of spousal abuse that might perpetuate into another generation?”

His words were tough, his tone bleak. She wondered if this was the sort of speech he regretted not giving Bianca. Such a good, good man. She jumped up and hugged him with all her strength, burying her face against his shoulder to breathe in the smell of him.

He wrapped his arms around her, too, and they stood there in the icy garden, like a modern-day Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. Until the sound of a car turning into Cal’s drive made them step apart.

Daria turned. She didn’t recognize the late model sedan creeping slowly ahead, but even in silhouette against the bright sunlight she could identify the driver. Bruce.

Her stomach clenched again as acid flooded the empty space. “Brace yourself,” she whispered, clutching the sleeve of William’s coat to keep her knees from buckling. “That devil you were alluding to has arrived.”

William glanced over his shoulder as Bruce got out of the car. He stepped around her so he would be the first person Bruce encountered.

Bruce advanced like a boxer prepping for a match, his bare hands tensing and releasing as if deciding whether or not to swing first and ask questions later. His suit and wool topcoat suggested he’d taken a plane straight from the capitol.

“So, there
is
a man,” he said, his hand flipping outward in a gesture of disdain. “I figured there had to be. You don’t have the balls to do this on your own, do you, Daria?”