Carly's Gift (10 page)

Carly slid the
tray back into the dishwasher, closed the door, and wiped her hands on a dish towel. Seeking a way to escape the doubts and questions that had haunted her about what had happened that day, she'd spent the past hour cleaning counters that were spotless, a stove that had been wiped down after dinner, and a floor Andrea had swept only hours ago. Everyone else had gone to bed early, Ethan less than ten minutes after the kids. When she'd made a move to follow, he'd pointedly told her that he was going to bed to sleep, not talk. He was plainly relieved when she chose to stay downstairs.

The only thing she'd been able to get out of Ethan about his meeting with David was a cryptic, “We've worked things out.” When she'd pushed, he'd begged off, saying he needed time to think things through before he talked to her about it.

Twice, she'd slipped her cell phone in her pocket and headed outside to call David but had come to her senses before reaching the door. In time, Ethan would tell her what she wanted to know. It was going to be hard enough to put their lives back in order again when David left. Making contact with him again, no matter how valid the reason, would only make the process harder.

She had a sudden, overwhelming urge to be with Andrea, to sit beside her in the moonlit room, to look at her the way she had when Andrea was a baby, to be filled once again with wonder that something so beautiful could be the result of something so violent and ugly. Even more vital was the need to reassure herself that Andrea had been left unharmed by the turmoil that had just occurred in their lives.

On her way to her daughter's room, Carly paused at her own bedroom door to listen for Ethan's rhythmic breathing. The fact that he was asleep reassured her.

She was in Andrea's room and actually sitting on the corner of the bed before she realized it wasn't her daughter under the blankets, but several pillows artfully arranged to make it look like someone sleeping. Carly realized she should have known something was wrong the minute she came in the room and saw that Muffin was not curled up at Andrea's feet. Still, her mind balked at the evidence of her daughter's calculated deception. Sneaking out in the middle of the night was as alien to Andrea's personality as wearing cosmetics that had been tested on animals.

Where in the hell was she?

Carly moved one of the pillows out of the way so that she could see the glowing numbers on the clock radio. It was almost midnight.

How long should she wait before she called someone? Who should she call? Wally? If nothing else, he could phone the station and have the officers on patrol keep an eye out for Andrea. But the telephone was on her mother's side of the bed and there was no way to get to Wally without going through her. Carly wasn't ready to deal with anyone else's fears.

She went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. A deserted road greeted her. A soft rain was visible in the glare of the streetlight. The fear that had taken root in her grew like a living, breathing entity, feeding on her inability to make a decision. Carly had started to turn from the window when the headlights from a car turning the corner caught her attention. Her hand closed around the sheer lace curtain as she murmured, “Please God, let it be her.”

A half minute later, the car turned into the driveway. Two doors opened. Andrea got out and came around to the driver's side where a man waited for her.

David.

Carly's relief was buffeted in a sea of confusion as she hurried downstairs to meet them. She flung the door open and took a step toward Andrea but was brought up short by the look on her daughter's face.

“I see you already found out I was gone,” Andrea said, carefully avoiding contact as she moved into the house past her mother.

“I wanted to call,” David told Carly, stepping up to the landing. “But I was afraid you'd be in bed.”

Carly glared at him. “What's going on?” she said, her jaw rigid with anger. David was to have been out of their lives by now.

“I think we'd better go inside to talk about this.”

She turned to Andrea. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn't I be? What could possibly be bothering good old reliable Andrea?”

David took a step closer. “Could we please go inside?”

“I'll take over now,” Carly told him.

“I want him here,” Andrea said.

“What possible reason—”

“Because what I have to say to you involves him.”

“I don't see how David could be involved in anything—”

“I
know,
Mom.”

Carly stiffened. “You know what?”

“She overheard us last night,” David supplied.

Carly looked into Andrea's eyes for confirmation. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I'm so sorry,” was the only other thing she could think to say. Over and over again she spoke the words, and then, “You shouldn't have found out that way.”

“You're fuckin'-A right about that one, Mom. You should have told me about this a long time ago.”

“Don't talk to me like that,” Carly said automatically, more fear than anger in her voice.

David quickly stepped inside. He was angry when he took Andrea by the arm and turned her to face him. “Are you trying to wake up the whole neighborhood or just everyone in this house?”

“What difference does it make?” she asked, looking past him to fix her mother with a venomous stare. “They're all going to find out about it sooner or later.”

“I don't know about your mother, but I prefer later,” he said. He steered her down the hall to the family room. There would be time enough tomorrow to break the news to the rest of the family. Tonight, especially after Andrea fired her second salvo, Carly would have plenty to handle on her own.

Andrea sat on the sofa. Carly went over to sit down beside her. She reached for her daughter's hand, tightening her grip and holding on when Andrea tried to pull away. “I wish I knew what to say to you.”

“You don't have to say anything,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “David explained it all to me.”

“What did he tell you?” Carly asked, her resentment growing. If it was necessary for Andrea to find out that Ethan wasn't her father, it was Carly's job to do the explaining. How else could she be sure Andrea understood she wasn't some shameful secret Carly had tried to hide away?

Andrea glanced over to David as if seeking his approval. He nodded his encouragement. “He told me how much you loved each other and that when you learned you were pregnant with me, you didn't tell him because you were afraid he would quit school to take care of us.”

Carly cringed as the words she had spoken that morning echoed in her ears. She desperately wished David had taken the role Ethan had assigned to him and told Andrea that he'd walked out of their lives to pursue his career. The truth, or at least the slightly altered version David had agreed to go along with, was far too romantic and compelling to an impressionable fifteen-year-old. “What else did he tell you?”

She hesitated. “That Daddy loves me.”

Carly grabbed hold of the thought. “He's loved you from the first moment he felt you kicking inside my stomach. A moment's passion doesn't make a man a father, Andrea. It's the years of caring and being there for a child that matter.”

“Daddy has never felt the same way about me that he does about Eric and Shawn. He talks to them—he lectures me.” Andrea pulled her hand free and hugged herself.

“You're wrong, Andrea.” Her words were met with a deafening silence. “It's just that no father feels about a daughter the way he feels about a son.”

“Mom, it's more than that, and you know it. You can tell he likes them better than me every time he looks at one of them. He never gets that crinkly smile in his eyes when he's around me.”

“What can I say to convince you that you're wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Needing the reassurance of physical contact, Carly reached out and ran her hand over Andrea's hair. “So much has happened in the last couple of days. You'll feel differently when David is gone and our lives are back to normal.”

Andrea pushed Carly's hand away. “You don't understand anything about how I feel. If you did, you could never say something like that. My life will never be the same again.”

Carly felt as though she were trying to crawl out of a hole dug in the sand. “It just seems that way now. Once you've had time to get used to the idea, you'll feel differently.” She was doing this all wrong, saying all the wrong things. Andrea had every right to be angry, to question, to believe her life was forever changed.

“Do Eric and Shawn know?” Andrea asked.

“Of course not.”

“Does Grandma Barbara?”

Carly hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

“How could you tell her and not me?” Andrea demanded.

“No one had to tell her. She figured it out for herself.”

“How?”

David stepped in. “Your grandmother knew how much your mother and I loved each other.”

Andrea thought a minute. “How come she could figure out what really happened and you couldn't?” she said to David.

“I was too caught up in feeling sorry for myself to see much of anything else,” he said with brutal honesty.

“Who else knows?” Andrea asked, turning her attention back to Carly.

“Grandpa Wally.”

A low moan escaped Andrea. “Who else?”

“No one,” Carly said.

“I feel like a joke—like you've all been laughing at me behind my back.”

“Stop that,” Carly said with as much sternness as she could muster. “I'm not going to let you make this worse than it is.”

“You weren't ever going to tell me, were you?” Andrea asked, as if the idea had just occurred to her. “Not even when I was old enough to move out.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because too many people would be hurt and it would all be for nothing. You already have a father who loves you and wants you and would do anything to make you happy.”

“I have a right to know what my real father is like.”

“Damn it, Andrea, Ethan
is
your real father. He's the one who—”

“But he doesn't look like me, David does.”

“That's a genetic fluke,” Carly snapped, her frustration getting in the way of caution. Sick to her stomach at the mistake she'd almost made, she quickly added, “You could just as easily have wound up looking like me.”

David got up from the chair where he'd been sitting. “Andrea, I think you should go to bed. It's been a long day. You and your mom are tired and there's nothing you have to say that won't keep until tomorrow.”

Carly's gaze moved from Andrea to David. Something was going on between them that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Andrea lifted her head to look at David. “I can't wait until tomorrow,” she said, a silent plea in her voice.

“It would be better if you did,” he told her.

“Please?”

He shrugged and then sat back down. “All right.”

Andrea turned back to Carly. “I want to live with my real father from now on.”

Carly was too stunned to answer immediately. “You can't be serious,” she finally managed to say, a hundred disconnected thoughts racing through her mind trying to form a cohesive whole.

“Why not? Just because you didn't have the guts to go after something you really wanted doesn't mean I don't.” As if suddenly realizing she was not going to get what she wanted the way she was going, she continued in a more reasonable tone. “I've thought about this a lot and living with David is something I really want to do.”

“Well, I won't let you. It's out of the question.” Carly could feel the walls of her hole in the sand collapsing on her.

“I have a right to know my real father,” Andrea insisted.

Carly did not look at David, afraid she would use him as a target and alienate Andrea even more. “What does David have to say about this?”

“He told me I had to talk to you.”

“And now you have, and the answer is no,” Carly said. Why in the hell hadn't he just told her that he wouldn't take her with him, that she didn't fit into his life? The whole thing would have ended there. Andrea wasn't the type to force herself on anyone, not even the man she believed was her father. “I want you to go to bed, and let me talk to David alone.”

“Why can't you see how important this is to me?” Andrea asked, tears welling in her eyes.

“It's a whim,” Carly said. “You've had a terrible shock and you aren't thinking rationally.”

“I'm sick of hearing things like that. You think you know me so well, but you don't. I'm not your little girl anymore, Mother. I'm my own person. I belong to me, not you. I have a right to make my own decisions.”

“I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say,” Carly told her. “But no one, I don't care how old they are, would be thinking clearly after going through what you just have. Give yourself some time—that's all I'm asking.”

“I'm not going to change my mind.”

Carly pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “Could we please discuss this in the morning?”

Andrea got up and started toward the door. When she was beside David, she paused for several seconds as if deciding what to do. Finally, impulsively, she threw her arms around him. “Talk her into letting me go,” she begged.

David awkwardly returned Andrea's embrace. Over her shoulder, he met Carly's frightened stare. “Your mother loves you very much,” he said. “Why don't you let it go for tonight? We could all use some time to think.”

She looked up at him. “You're not going to change your mind about letting me come, are you?”

“I wouldn't do that to you.”