Sealed with a promise (36 page)

  “Are you going to say something to Charlotte?”

  Caleb didn’t have to ask what Emmie was asking. The fact that Vicky might have a close relative who might not carry the gene had rumbled like a cart on the way to the guillotine since they had left the doctor’s office.

  They had driven Charlotte home, then stayed with her while she made calls to her mother and Calhoun. She had been given pamphlets on Fanconi anemia, but she wanted them there in case they could better explain what the doctor had said about Vicky.

  Vicky’s grandmother had been understandably upset. Charlotte had shed tears for the first time that Caleb had seen. He was beginning to know where Vicky came by some of her grit. After Charlotte hung up from talking to her mother, she called Calhoun. She seemed unsurprised that Calhoun couldn’t talk to her right then, and instead, described all that had transpired to an aide.

  “Not yet,” he finally answered Emmie’s question.

  “Are you ever going to?”

  “I don’t know how Calhoun would feel if he knew about me, but Charlotte has enough to deal with. She doesn’t need a long lost bastard stepson to show up right now. I’m already a registered marrow donor, and the first thing they’ll do is check the registry. You heard what the doctor said. Only thirty-five percent find matches among family. Why upset her if I don’t have to? I might be a gene carrier, but even if I’m not, since I’m a half-sibling, the chances are even less that I match.”

  “I guess you’re right. After all, you don’t know for sure that he is your father, and you are Vicky’s brother. But I wish you had a way to get closure-for your sake.”

  Caleb had never been so aware that he was lying by indirection.

  He couldn’t tell Emmie that even if he knew he was a perfect match, he couldn’t donate his bone marrow. He looked at himself through her eyes, and he didn’t like what he saw at all: a man who would let his agenda threaten a child. But
he
hadn’t. That’s what he had to keep reminding himself. By his own choice, he would never, ever have put Vicky in danger.

  When he’d gone looking for Calhoun’s vulnerabilities, he’d been thinking he’d find a scandal, some malfeasance. Maybe that the man looking to become a North Carolina “favorite son,” was getting some on the side, and if the universe was really benevolent, from a man.

  He had already stayed his hand because fellow SEALs would be threatened if he killed Calhoun. How many more perfect opportunities would the universe offer him? This, after all, was the most exquisite justice he could ever ask for. The perfect eye for an eye. He could do exactly what Calhoun had done-nothing- and Calhoun would get exactly the same results.

  No, he never, never would have chosen Vicky to be the instrument of his revenge, but the perfect symmetry of the situation was awe-inspiring in its destructive beauty.

  He could make it even more perfect by telling them now that he might be a match. He would be a gift-horse they couldn’t afford not to look in the mouth. And when they did? He would win either way.

  And yes. He
could
contemplate a course of action he would have found despicable at any other time. It was part of being the man he was. He’d done things and been part of things. There were terrible things that happened in war. Innocents lost their lives, were burned and maimed, in gruesome accidents and miscalculations.

  There were other horrible things-
not
accidents- that happened because the innocents simply weren’t as important as the objectives. You didn’t justify it. You accepted it. He accepted it. This was part of being the man he was.

  Caleb brought in a load of wood to replenish the family room fireplace at Aunt Lilly Hale’s. Pickett and Jax and Tyler had been able to come for Christmas, filling Pickett’s mother’s house to capacity. So Emmie and Caleb were spending the night with Aunt Lilly Hale. The family would come over tonight to have supper and open presents. In the morning, Emmie and Caleb would go to Pickett’s family’s house for more present opening and to have Christmas dinner.

  The next day, the day after Christmas, Caleb’s leave would be up. He had been so right that they didn’t have time to waste. Emmie was clinging to him a little, and she knew it. Every sight of him was precious. They had already talked about how they would adjust their schedules to have time together, but it wouldn’t be easy. It was too soon to talk about forever, yet Emmie knew she had found exactly what she had always dreamed of in Caleb.

  A future together shone with bright promise.

  Caleb hunkered down in front of the fire, arranging the split logs with the same attention to excellence that he paid every job. His open-weave sweater revealed the play of muscles in his back, and the light of the fire burnished his golden skin.

  He’d been a little quiet for the last hour, but so had she. There was still much to say. And the knowledge that their time was almost up made the smallest observation about the weather or what they wanted to snack on, unbearably poignant. It was easier to remain silent.

  When the log had caught, Caleb added another. One-handed, he checked the number on his cell phone without removing it from his belt. He frowned and went back to his fire tending.

  “Do you have to return that?” Emmie asked.

  “No.”

  It was the second or third time in the last couple of hours that there had been a call he hadn’t taken. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. The phone. His solemn silence.

  “Caleb? That’s the donor registry calling, isn’t it? Oh, my Lord, and I mean that in the fullest and most reverent sense. That means Teague Calhoun
is
your father. And you
are
a donor match for Vicky!”

  She knew she was right-she never been more sure of anything-but a cold hand touched her heart. He was so… still.

  “Caleb. What’s going on?”

  He dusted his hands and replaced the fire screen. “You remember when I told you about the portrait of my grandfather?”

  “Oh, yes, the portrait in the library.”

  “I didn’t need this,” he said as he tapped the phone at his waist, “to confirm that Calhoun really is my father.”

  “What? I thought you said-”

  “I
know
he’s my father. I palmed a glass he had used at the wedding reception. I sent it to a DNA lab for a paternity test. He passed. Or failed, depending on how you look at it.”

  “What do you mean, failed?”

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you.” His hazel eyes sought hers. “When I saw the portrait of Calhoun’s father and I realized my mother’s stories might be true, I didn’t research him out of curiosity.”

  Her stomach dropped. “You went looking for him.”

  Caleb unhooked the brass-handled hearth broom and dust pan from the fire tool set. He stood there holding them in his hands. “My mother caught the flu. A couple of weeks passed. Then a month, and she didn’t bounce back. One day her lips were blue. They said she had myocarditis, caused by a virus. Many people recover, and for a long time we thought she would.”

  Slowly, starting on the left, he swept bits of bark and ash from the green glazed tiles of the hearth. “We went back and forth to the hospital. At a hospital, they don’t refuse to treat you if it’s an emergency. But their only objective is to get you well enough to walk back out the door. They’d run more tests and give her a different medication. She’d be better for a while. An emergency room doc finally sat me down and told me she wasn’t going to get well. She needed a heart transplant. And if I wanted her to live long enough to see a transplant, her case needed to be managed. She needed regular appointments with a cardiologist, not crisis-to-crisis care in an emergency room. We didn’t have insurance. Do you have any idea how expensive heart medications are? It was taking everything to keep her prescriptions filled.” He carefully swept a gray piece of bark into the dustpan. “It was the first time I ever thought I needed him.”

  “Needed your father,” Emmie clarified.

  “When I walked into that library, I had an hour to kill before I could complete my deliveries. When I finished them, I’d have enough money to keep the company that supplied the oxygen off our backs for a few weeks.”

  “How old were you?”

  He took his eyes from his sweeping long enough to throw her a surprised glance. “Sixteen.”

  Emmie’s face burned to think she had once told him he didn’t know what it felt like to be helpless. “Okay. What’s the rest of the story?”

  “I saw the portrait of Calhoun’s father, and I realized my mother’s stories might have basis in fact. It might have really happened like she said. My father might have been a good man who had loved her. A man who would help her if he knew.

  “It
is
true that I did some research. I found the address of his law firm in North Carolina. I bought some good paper, the kind that comes from an office supply store, not a tablet from the grocery store-‘white wove’ it said on the box.” His lips twisted at his naivet?. “I wanted to make the right impression, you see.

  “I wrote a letter. I got no answer, so I found another address and wrote another letter. And another. Almost a year passed, while my mother got sicker. I called his law office. I could do a better job locating someone now, but back then it was the only phone number I knew how to find.

  “‘Mr. Calhoun cannot be reached. Can someone else help you?’” Caleb singsonged. “I became a little obsessed with finding a way to reach him. By then, I didn’t hope he would do anything. I had figured out that he probably wasn’t going to come through. I just wanted to find him. You know?”

  Emmie nodded her understanding. “You must have felt so powerless to do anything that made a difference, but that was
one
goal where success was measurable.”

  “I saw an article announcing that he was running for the senate and had opened a campaign office. I called that number. I told the man who answered I thought Calhoun knew my mother. He asked questions-my mother’s name, where I was calling from-like he was interested. He said he’d be sure to give Calhoun the message, and I’d hear something soon.”

  “Oh, God. Did you start to have hope again?”

  Caleb opened the fire screen and threw the tiny pile of debris he’d collected into the fire. He shook his head. “I had never heard of
denial,
but I think I had been in denial and was coming out of it. I was facing reality. There wasn’t any hope. She wasn’t going to get better, no matter what I did-no matter what anyone did.”

  Emmie hated the grimness in his tone, the harsh judgment of himself for not accepting reality sooner. “You know,” she put in, “it might not have been denial. It might have been ignorance. You were smart and extremely competent for your age, but you hadn’t had much life experience. Even if you knew the words, I’m sure you needed time to understand emotionally what it meant for your mother to be dying.”

  Caleb gave her one of those sympathetic looks people give those who have just revealed themselves deficient in the most basic understanding.

  Emmie refused to be intimidated. “Don’t give me that look. You couldn’t possibly have known how bitter being helpless in that situation would feel. If you had known, you would have crumpled under the load.”

  The stubborn man shook his head again, refusing her comfort, refusing to acknowledge that maybe a little comfort would have been good for him. She threw up her hands. “Okay, you
didn’t
get your hopes up, you
weren’t
angry about what you had gone through, and there was
no
reason
that a seventeen-year-old trying to shoulder a load like that,
by himself,
would become bitter!”

  She stopped to take a deep breath. She was angry for him, but it wouldn’t help for sympathy to turn into being angry
at
him. “Sorry I went off on you. I guess you never heard from him.”

  “Well, actually, I did. Four or five weeks later, there was a letter in the mail from a law firm-not his. Heavy cream-colored envelope.” He huffed a sound that could have been a grunt of pain or a mirthless chuckle. “That envelope taught me the difference between white wove and vellum. And there must have been fifteen names on it.” He quirked a sardonic eyebrow. “Do you want to know what the letter said? I can still quote every word.”

  
Now
the anger was there in his voice, cold and grinding forward with relentless, measured tread, like a doomsday machine freezing and killing all in its path.
No,
she didn’t want to hear what the letter said! It was a bullet she would have happily taken for him, but she could not stand to know the pain he had felt when it hit
him.

  His question was rhetorical. He continued, still cold and relentless.

  
“Dear Mr. Dulaude,

  
“Be advised this firm represents Teague Calhoun. Mr. Calhoun has forwarded your letters to us.

  
“Mr. Calhoun categorically denies any improper relation
ship with your mother or even any knowledge of her existence.

  
“While Mr. Calhoun is sympathetic to your predicament, his sympathy does not extend to allowing himself to be blackmailed and defamed. This is your one notice to cease and desist such false and defamatory statements. Failure to comply will result in immediate action against you on both civil and criminal levels.”

  A threat added to an insult. Emmie could feel the lash of the injustice Caleb had endured as if it had landed on her own flesh. She slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle an outcry. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  For someone like Caleb who so generously shouldered others’ burdens, to have admitted his need and then been attacked-it would inflict a wound that would bleed from his very soul. It was a betrayal of every principle on which civilization and all social cohesions stand. It was the law of the jungle shined up in stainless steel.