Birthright (17 page)

Last night she’d suspected she was falling in love with Aaron Mazerik. This morning, after his rejection—and after talking to her mother—she’d more than suspected it. The worst part was that now, when she knew loving him was forbidden, she loved him even more. For his honesty, for his valiant attempts
to protect her from the appalling truth, for his own obvious anguish…God help her, she loved him.

He was her half brother.

She grieved over the loss of what had never been, what she could never have: his passion, the fierce physical connection she’d known for a few moments last night, when she’d kissed him. That grief mixed with an equally wrenching grief: her father’s infidelity. Had he had an affair with Evie Mazerik? Was he still having an affair with her? Had there been others? Was her mother right in believing he no longer loved her?

Outrage began to churn in Lily, flooding her with adrenaline that made her heart pound and her thoughts grow excruciatingly clear. She flicked on the windshield wipers, shifted the car into reverse and backed out of her parking space.

The drive into town took only a few minutes. She steered up the driveway that bordered the neat shingled building where her father had located his practice twenty years ago, when it became clear that even a small-town doctor needed partners, as well as an office staff to navigate his patients through the paperwork.

Lily parked behind the building, then got out of her car and darted through the rain into the building. A couple of people sat in the front room, thumbing through magazines as they waited for their appointments. If she’d bothered to look at them, she probably would have recognized them. But she was in no condition to exchange pleasantries with anyone, so she kept her gaze straight ahead as she marched to
the office manager’s desk. “Janet, I need to see my father.”

Janet looked up from her computer monitor with a smile, which faded rapidly when she read Lily’s expression. “He’s with a patient right now, Lily.”

“I have to see him.”

Apparently Janet recognized the unarguable truth in Lily’s claim. “Why don’t you go wait in his office?” she suggested gently. “When he’s done with his patient, I’ll send him in.”

Lily nodded and hurried through the doorway into the back hall that connected the waiting area with the examination rooms and offices. She raced down the hall to her father’s office and slipped inside.

She had always felt at home in this room. He’d decorated it to his taste, with warm paneling on the walls and built-in shelves on which he displayed family photos, including one dating back to her childhood and a formal portrait of her in her bridal gown, bowing her head to smell her bouquet.

She sat in one of the two upholstered armchairs that faced her father’s polished mahogany desk. Then, too edgy to sit, she sprang to her feet. She paced around the small room, blind to the array of medical texts and pharmaceutical reference books on the shelves, blind to the diplomas hanging in frames on one wall, blind to the diminishing rain on the other side of the window, which overlooked the parking lot. She sat again, rose, paced, sat—and stood when her father entered the office.

He closed the door behind him, his face creased with concern. “Lily, what’s wrong? Janet said you were upset.”

Upset? Lily almost laughed at the understatement. “Dad…” Her voice wobbled as a sob threatened. But she was too enraged to succumb to tears. If what Aaron had told her was true, she had no interest in weeping. Once this was done, once she’d heard the truth from her father’s mouth, she could fall apart. But not now. Not yet.

She trusted her anger to carry her through the next few minutes. “Are you Aaron Mazerik’s father?” she asked.

He looked startled. “No. Of course not.” Frowning, he maintained a safe distance from her, his hands tucked in the pockets of his white coat. “Why would you even ask me such a thing?”

“Aaron thinks you’re his father.”

He shook his head. “Is he…are you and he friends?”

“Dad.” She didn’t want to discuss her relationship with Aaron. The only reason it would even matter to her father was if she and Aaron were half siblings.

“He says you’re his father. He says that when he was a child, you visited him and his mother all the time. You brought them money.”

Her father’s frown relaxed slightly. He nodded, moved around her to his desk and stood leaning against it. “That much is true,” he said. “I did visit and bring his mother money.”

“Child-support money.”

“Yes.” He pulled his hands from his pockets as if he wanted to reach for her. “I did it for a friend.”

“A friend.” Did he actually expect her to believe that?

“Aaron’s father was someone who trusted me, and
I did it for him. He didn’t want his identity revealed. There were valid reasons, and while I can’t say I agreed with the decision he made, I accepted it. He wanted to make sure Aaron was being properly cared for as a child, so he asked me to bring money to Evie Mazerik and to make sure Aaron was healthy and well cared for.”

“So you were…what? This guy’s bag man?”

Her father grimaced. “As I said, I didn’t agree with his decision, Lily. I thought he should visit the boy himself and acknowledge him, and I told him so. But he made his choice. He trusted no one else to get money to Evie and to make sure Aaron was growing up all right.”

“Aaron
wasn’t
growing up all right,” Lily said.

“He was growing up to become a juvenile delinquent.”

“I know that.” Julian Bennett sighed. “I shared my concerns with Aaron’s father. Evie Mazerik was ill prepared to raise a child by herself. I’d talk to her about nutrition, about disciplining her son, structuring his time, reading to him. I honestly think he raised himself. It’s amazing that he’s turned out to be such a good man.”

“You’re proud of him,” she said, testing her father, still not persuaded.

“If he were my son, I’d be proud to say so, yes.” He raked a hand through his hair, evidently frustrated that he hadn’t yet convinced Lily. “If he were my son, I would have said so from the start. Even if it had cost me the love of your mother. It would have been the right thing to do.” He laughed and shook his head. “Of course, I can’t imagine ever doing any
thing that might cost me the love of your mother. The thought of even being with another woman…”

“You love Mom?”

He seemed taken aback. “Do you have to ask?”

Lily didn’t want to get sidetracked by a debate about the tenuous state of her parents’ marriage. But it was all related—Aaron’s claim and the insecurities her mother had confided to her that very morning.

“She thinks you’re bored with her. She thinks you’ve grown tired of her.”

“Your mother said this?”

“Yes.”

“How could she think such a thing?” He looked appalled.

That, more than anything, swayed her. That her father could be more disturbed by his wife’s doubts than by the allegation that he was Aaron’s father proved to Lily that his marriage was essential to him. If Lily’s mother wasn’t the center of his life, he’d still be talking about Aaron, defending himself, denying everything.

He didn’t even seem to care about Aaron. Only his wife mattered. “She thinks I’m bored with her? My God! My definition of hell would be to have to face a single day without her. She’s everything to me! She’s like the air I breathe.”

“Which you probably don’t pay much attention to, either,” Lily said.

He seemed on the verge of arguing, then relented with a deep sigh. “Damn,” he murmured. “You’re right.”

“Do something about it,” Lily ordered him.
“Don’t wait for her sixtieth birthday. Do something now. Pay attention to her.”

“I will.” He shoved a hand through his hair again, and she saw a sheen of tears in his eyes, just as her own eyes dried. She was feeling better. More certain. More hopeful.

“If you’re not Aaron’s father,” she asked, “who is?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“I was sworn to secrecy,” he explained. “I gave my word.”

“But—” frustration welled up inside her “—Aaron’s own mother won’t even tell him who his father is. Every child has a right to know his father. Why can’t someone tell him?”

“I wish I could. But I made a promise. I imagine Evie did, too. Beyond that, she understood that if she revealed Aaron’s father’s identity, she would no longer get any money from him. She needed that money. So I don’t suppose she would have risked it by telling anyone, even Aaron, who his father was.”

“He thinks she won’t tell because she’s still in love with the man.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Her father smiled wearily. He seemed battered, just as Lily had felt only minutes ago. “I can’t speak for Evie. I can’t begin to figure out what’s going on inside her head. I wish I could help Aaron out, but I won’t go back on my word. It’s really up to Evie to tell him.”

“Or his father,” Lily said wryly.

“His father should have stepped forward right from the start. It would have been the right thing.

Lily…” He sighed. “God knows, I may be an idiot, but I’m not a sinner. And I love your mother more than I can say.”

She felt all the tension drain from her. Her father loved her mother. Aaron wasn’t her half brother.

Which meant that all the years he’d wanted her, all the years he’d tormented himself over her, all the times he’d told himself he could never act on his attraction to her…it hadn’t had to be that way. Maybe he’d been a punk, maybe she’d been a River Rat, maybe they’d been far too different to connect. But he’d torn himself up inside over something that had never been true.

Turning toward the window, she noticed that the rain had stopped. A hint of late-day sunshine was fighting through the clouds, glazing the damp earth.

She remembered yesterday evening on her back porch. Before Aaron had pulled away, before he’d rebuffed her, before he’d said, “I can’t,” he had responded to her. Eagerly. Wildly. As overwhelmingly as she’d responded to him.

He might not love her. It didn’t matter. For now, what mattered was that they could take a chance on it. They could reach for each other without fear or shame.

They could try.

“I love you, Dad,” she murmured, giving his cheek a kiss.

“I love you, too, Lily. And I’m in your debt. I’m so glad your mother told you how she was feeling and that you told me. I only wish
she’d
told me.” His eyes still shimmered. “I’ll make sure she knows
I adore her. I’ll make sure she never spends a moment wondering how much.”

“Tell her you like her new hairdo.”

“Her new hairdo? Does she have…?” Realizing what he’d been about to say, he shook his head in disgust. “She has a new hairdo, huh?”

“Since last week. Pay attention, Dad.”

“I will. I swear.”

“I’ve got to go see Aaron,” she said, starting toward the door. “Thank you for telling me as much as you could.”

“Is there something going on between Aaron and you?” he asked as she turned the knob.

She thought about evading the question or blowing it off with a joke. But Aaron had inspired her to stop playing it safe, and so she had grown daring. Daring enough to have gone to see him that afternoon, in spite of his rejection of her. Daring enough to have confronted her father. Daring enough to speak the truth.

“Yes,” she said. “There’s something going on between Aaron and me.”

A
N EERIE TRANQUILLITY
had settled along the river. The rain had blown through quickly and now the air was warm and dry, sucking the moisture out of the evening, leaving everything clean and still.

Aaron felt cleansed, too. He’d told Lily. She knew. Just like the air in Riverbend, the air between them had been cleared.

He couldn’t exactly say he felt good. He’d inflicted pain on the one person in the world he had never wanted to hurt. It wasn’t his fault; all he’d done was speak the truth. But knowing how much that truth had wounded her tied his soul in knots.

He sat on his hammock, elbows resting on his knees, an unopened bottle of beer propped on the floorboards between his feet. He’d rummaged through the contents of his refrigerator and nothing had enticed him. He had no appetite.

He stared out through the trees at the river, smooth and silver in the calm after the storm. Sometimes, he thought, working with a client in counseling went like this. Sometimes he had to tear away a scab to treat the festering sore underneath. He hated doing it, but if it was the only way to heal a person, he did it.

He told himself Lily would feel better eventually.
He told himself he’d saved them both from disaster. He told himself that maybe in time they
would
be able to become friends, now that no more secrets stood between them.

Yet telling himself those things didn’t revive his appetite. He couldn’t even bring himself to drink his beer. The bottle was inches from his hand, the brown glass sweating, the cap sealing the liquid inside. Aaron’s throat was still tight. His stomach still clenched. Merely thinking about consuming anything made him queasy.

A crow cawed. He saw it break free from a tree limb and soar above the river, a slash of black in the sky. It sailed east and away.

Footsteps thumped on the stairs leading up to the deck. He spun around in the hammock so fast he almost capsized it. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see Lily standing on the top step.

Her dress was wrinkled, her hair mussed, her eyes unnervingly bright. “Maybe I should have called first,” she said, “but I don’t have your phone number.”

His pulse revved up, even though he knew nothing was going to happen between them, nothing more than talk. She wouldn’t tempt him now, wouldn’t press her lips to his the way she had last night. She wouldn’t dare. He was perfectly safe.

So why was his heart pounding in double time? Why were his muscles tensing, his blood heating?

Seeing her now was more difficult than before. He still responded to her, in spite of everything. Her cornsilk hair and dazzling smile and slim curves were so patently off-limits he shouldn’t have felt a thing
when he gazed at her. But the desire hung on like a lingering cough after the flu, a symptom he couldn’t seem to shake.

“I talked to my father,” she announced. “He said no.”

“He said no,” Aaron echoed, his voice flat.

“He’s not your father. He said he would have acknowledged you if he was. He would have done the honorable thing. He said he delivered the money to your mother from your father as a favor for a friend, and he was sworn to secrecy about who your father was, and—”

“Lily.” Aaron didn’t want to sit in the hammock on his deck, observing the sheer relief that animated her face while she repeated her father’s lies. “Of course he said he’s not my father. What else could he say? ‘Gosh darn it, you found me out’? ‘I was the one noodling around with old Evie Mazerik all those years ago’?”

“I believe him,” she insisted, crossing the deck to stand before Aaron, forcing him to crane his neck to look at her. “If he’d been your father and hadn’t wanted you to know about it, why would he have visited your home every month?”

“He wanted to see me.”

“If he was your father and trying to hide it, visiting you would have been just the sort of thing to arouse your suspicions. Think about it, Aaron. If he was your father and wanted you to know, he would have told you. If he was your father and didn’t want you to know, he wouldn’t have visited you all the time. He would have done what your father did—
find someone else to check up on you and get money to your mother.”

There was something to what Lily was saying. He wasn’t convinced, but…

She hunkered down in front of him, gazing directly into his face. “Three people know who your father is,” she said. “My father, your mother and your father. My father can’t tell you who your father is because he made a promise. Your father isn’t going to tell you, because if he were, he would have done it by now. Your mother is the only person who can tell you.”

“She won’t,” he said, wishing Lily’s eyes weren’t so luminous, her smile so beautiful, wishing she didn’t believe so strongly in what she was saying. He still refused to believe it, because if he let himself believe it, he would kiss her. He’d hold her and touch her and make love to her, the way he’d wanted to right from the start. And then, if it turned out she was wrong about Dr. Bennett, he’d be doomed. He would never be able to live with himself after that.

“He’s your father,” he said. “You want to think the best of him, Lily. I don’t blame you for believing what he told you.”

“Your mother could confirm it.” She rested her hands on the edge of the hammock near his legs and scrutinized him. She was so earnest, so ingenuous.

“I know she’s refused to tell you who your father is, but she could tell you it’s not Julian Bennett.”

No doubt Lily wanted to hear his mother exonerate her father. The trouble was, his mother might say what Lily
didn’t
want to hear. Lily was prepared for
only one answer. She could handle a no, but not a yes.

Not that she would ever need to handle anything. “My mother won’t tell,” Aaron said.

“Let’s go ask her.”

Aaron sighed. He didn’t want to ask his mother. If she’d cared enough to make his life even the slightest bit easier for him, she would have told him the truth a long time ago. She hadn’t. She wouldn’t.

Lily had already straightened, captured his hands and hauled him out of the hammock. “Come on, Aaron. Let’s go and ask your mother. What do we have to lose?”

“Plenty,” he warned. “If she says your father is my father…”

“Then I’ll be back where I was this afternoon. It can’t get any worse than that. Nothing your mother says could shock me more than what I’ve been through today.” Still holding his hands, she urged him toward the stairs.

He halted, freed his hands from hers and turned around to lift his beer from the floorboards. He wasn’t going to let her drag him off—at least not until he’d grabbed his keys and put the beer back in the refrigerator. He might need it when he got home, and he’d want it cold.

He was worried about Lily, but he was more worried about himself. He’d endured nasty, futile, frustrating conversations with his mother many times before. Every time he’d attempted to open the door and peek inside, she’d slammed it in his face. He’d heard the key click, shooting the bolt into place, locking
him out. His mother had made it quite clear that she would never let him in.

But Lily hadn’t gone through what Aaron had with his mother. She was pushing for it. Fine. Let her have her way. His mother would say nothing, and Lily would be able to spend the rest of her life believing her father was innocent. And Aaron would be stuck where he’d always been—locked out.

As long as there was plenty of cold beer waiting for him when it was done, he supposed he could endure it one more time. For Lily.

T
HE DUPLEX ON
T
HIRD
S
TREET
off West Hickory was pathetic. Lily wished she could think of a kinder word, but Evie Mazerik’s home had a mean look about it. The shingles were cracked and crooked, the paint peeling, the concrete front steps crumbling. An old car scabbed with rust sat in the driveway. Tufts of uncut grass sprouted through crevices in the front walk.

This was where Aaron had grown up, Lily realized. Not just on the “poor” side of town, but in a drab dreary house with filthy windows, a broken couch on the sagging porch and a netless basketball hoop nailed to a tree in front. She bit her lip to keep from blurting out how bleak the house seemed, how sorry she was that he’d had to grow up there. Aaron was strung so taut the merest hint of pity might be enough to make him snap.

“I don’t even know if she’s home,” he muttered, although lights shone through several of the windows, both upstairs and down. He climbed the porch steps, pressed the doorbell beside one of the two
doors, then stood back and watched one of the upstairs windows.

After a minute Evie Mazerik appeared at the window. “Who’s there?” she shouted through the screen.

“It’s Aaron. I’ve got my key.”

“All right. Come on up.”

He crossed the porch to the door. “It’s hard for her to get up and down the stairs,” he explained to Lily as he unlocked the door and held it open for her.

She entered a narrow hallway that led directly to a steep, dark staircase. Aaron flicked a switch near the door, turning on a ceiling fixture at the top of the stairs that spilled an uneven light on them. The air smelled musty.

Climbing the stairs, Lily wondered whether she’d made a mistake in forcing Aaron to confront his mother the way she’d confronted her father. But she wanted him to take a chance. Thanks to him, she’d been taking chances ever since his first visit to her house, and taking those chances had opened up new worlds to her. She’d stopped feeling paralyzed by guilt, blaming herself for everything that had gone wrong in her marriage. She’d discovered a perilous flaw in her parents’ relationship and forced them to attempt to repair it. She’d found the courage to invite a few friends to her house—even though most of them hadn’t been able to come—and to think big with her painting. She’d broken through, broken out. Come alive.

She’d opened her heart to the possibility of love. Love for the man who had brought her back to life.

Now she had to do this for him. Even if the possibility of love was never realized, she had to give Aaron something as valuable as what he’d given her. Not money for his summer program but something far more essential: himself.

By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Evie Mazerik had opened the door to her flat. She seemed surprised to see Lily, but her fleeting scowl gave way to a gracious smile. “Hello,” she said, peering past Lily at Aaron. “You didn’t tell me you had someone with you.”

“I have someone with me,” he said belatedly, flicking a humorless smile at Lily. “Can we come in?”

“Of course. I only meant, if I’d known you were bringing a friend, I would’ve straightened the place up a bit.” She led them into the cramped living room of her apartment. Lily took in the yellowed walls, the faded curtains at the open windows, the brown carpet’s pile flattened in places, bald in others. Metal wall brackets held adjustable shelves filled with clutter—vases, figurines, magazines, souvenir ashtrays. A small TV on a stand in a corner broadcast the fabricated frenzy of a game show, cheers and whoops and flashing dollar signs on the screen. The stale scent of cigarettes hovered in the air.

“You’re Lily Bennett,” Evie said when Aaron failed to introduce them. “I guess I know just about everyone in this town. You work at the Sunnyside Café long enough, you get to know everyone.” Clad in a plain T-shirt and slacks, her reddish hair slightly disheveled, gaudy paste-and-glass earrings adorning her ears and traces of pink lipstick trapped in the tiny
creases in her lips, she had the same slightly faded, slightly cluttered look as her living room.

“Thanks for letting us stop by, Mrs. Mazerik,” Lily said, then realized “Mrs.” wasn’t right.

“Would you like a cold drink? I’m sure I’ve got lemonade or iced tea or something.” She made her way to the kitchen. Aaron followed her, and Lily followed him.

This room was smaller and smokier, thanks to the cigarette still burning in a glass ashtray on the circular table near the window. Used dishes were stacked in the sink, but the countertops were clean. The appliances were almost old enough to be vintage, except for a relatively new microwave oven. Despite the open window, the air in the room was stagnant, tinged blue from the smoke.

Evie inspected the contents of her refrigerator, then closed the door and spun around, a smile stretching her mouth. “I could fix some lemonade, no problem. Or would you like me to make some coffee? I know it’s hot, but—”

“No, really, that’s all right,” Lily said. Coming here had seemed like a terrific idea when she’d been at Aaron’s house. But now, trapped in the stuffy kitchen with his mother, Lily was having second thoughts.

Evie was trying so hard to be a generous hostess, offering things Lily and Aaron didn’t want. What they wanted she wouldn’t easily give. Lily might have made as big a mistake tonight as she’d made yesterday, when she’d assumed Evie and Aaron had a loving relationship.

He crossed to the table and stubbed out his
mother’s cigarette, smashing it until smoke stopped curling from the ashtray. Lily chose to view that as a loving act, or at least a caring one.

“I’ve got some cookies,” Evie continued, moving in a lopsided gait to one of the cabinets and swinging the door open.

“We didn’t come here for food,” Aaron said, placing a hand on her shoulder and drawing her away from the cabinet. “We came because Lily wants to ask you about my father.”

Evie’s smile vanished. Her eyes narrowed and her brows angled into a frown as she glared at Lily.

“Sit down, Mom.” His hand still on her shoulder, Aaron guided her to one of the chairs by the kitchen table and gently pushed her into it. She reached past the napkin holder, a plastic wedge shaped like a butterfly, for the pack of cigarettes lying there. Her hand shook slightly as she lit a cigarette, but that could have been a result of her stroke rather than anger or apprehension.

She inhaled, then blew out a stream of smoke. “I’m not going to talk about that, Aaron,” she announced.

Aaron shot Lily an I-told-you-so look.