The Wreck (29 page)

“I suspected.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Carly?”
he cried. “Why did you let me leave and
not tell me we might’ve made a baby? Did you think I wouldn’t care?”

“I knew you would. And I knew you’d give
up your scholarship, your chance to go to Michigan, and your dream of going to
law school. When you told me you were leaving and not coming back, I realized
that was what you needed to do to survive what’d happened to us. I couldn’t
saddle you with a child at the expense of everything else you wanted and
needed.”

“And it
never
occurred to you I
might want to make that decision for myself?” he asked, his voice growing
louder.

“It never occurred to me to give you the
chance. You’d made your choice to go, and at the time, I could see how it was
the best thing for you to make a clean break the way you did. It was what you
needed, Brian. Being stuck with a wife who couldn’t talk or leave her parents’
house and a baby who needed everything wasn’t the life I’d imagined for you.
You were destined for better things. It also never occurred to me to wonder if
you would’ve done the right thing by me—and Zoë—had you known.”

“I would have.”

“I know that. I’ve always known that. But
you might not have made it through college or become the great attorney you are
today. I couldn’t ask you to sacrifice your whole life, and because I was in no
condition to raise a child, that’s where Cate and Tom came into it.”

“We got married shortly after you left,”
Cate said. “We eloped, actually. Tom was going to graduate school in
California, and I wanted to go with him. We came home a year later and told our
extended family and friends we’d had a baby. Because Carly hadn’t left the
house since the accident, no one but us even knew she was pregnant. So no one
outside of our family ever questioned whether the baby was ours.”

“What your parents must’ve thought of
me,” Brian said, shaking his head. “To leave you alone and pregnant.”

“They never blamed you, Bri,” Carly said.
“They knew I hadn’t told you.”

“And you just stepped in willingly to
raise a child that wasn’t yours?” Brian asked Tom, trying hard not to resent
the man for something that wasn’t his fault. “How do you do that?”

“It was simple, really,” Tom said with a
shrug. “I love Cate, and she asked me to. And then when I saw Zoë for the first
time, any doubts I had just faded away. I’ve loved her from the first instant I
ever saw her.” Tom’s voice broke. “She’s my little girl. I can’t imagine how
you must feel right now, but I love her, and I’ve tried to be a good father to
her.”

Wiping at her own tears, Cate put her arm
around her husband.

Suddenly exhausted, Brian sat down on the
sofa. “When was she born?”

“April 5, 1996,” Carly said softly.

Brian looked up at her with a gasp. “On
Sam’s birthday?”

Tears rolled down Carly’s cheeks as she
nodded. “It was like a sign from above that he was watching over me. I can’t
even explain how that felt.”

Brian let his head fall into his hands as
he, too, was felled by tears. “Oh, God, Carly,” he said, his voice muffled by
his hands. “What that would’ve done for my parents. For me. To know that.”

Carly sat down next to him and put her
arm around him, drawing his head to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Bri. I tried to
do what was best for all of us, what was best for you and our baby. And I’m
sorry I lied to you about being on the pill, but I’m not sorry we got Zoë from
it. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You and Zoë are the best
of me, Brian.”

“You got to watch her grow up. You got to
be part of her life.”

“Yes, and I’m so sorry you didn’t. I’d
give anything to have been able to share her with you. I’ve always thought of
Zoë as one more thing we lost that night on Tucker Road.”

He raised his head and wiped his face. “I
want her to know where she came from—”

“No,” Tom said. “I won’t let you turn her
life upside down.”

“She’s my
daughter
. I have a right
to know her, and she has a right to the truth.”

Cate moved to sit on the coffee table and
took Brian’s hands. “You’re not a selfish person, Brian, so I’m asking you to
think long and hard about what you’d be doing to Zoë by telling her this.
Everything we did, everything we
all
did, was done out of love—not only
for Zoë but for you, too.”

Brian knew his skepticism showed on his
face and made no effort to hide it.

“When you told Carly you were leaving and
not coming back, she respected you enough and loved you enough to let you go,
even though losing you broke her heart,” Cate said. “I can see how you feel wronged
by what we did, and I understand that, but please don’t take it out on Zoë.
Don’t give her reason to question everything she knows to be true. I don’t
think she’d recover from that blow on top of the one she’s just suffered.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a
prosecutor, it’s that the truth comes out eventually, and when it’s controlled,
it does a hell of a lot less damage than when it happens by accident, like it
did today.”

“There’s no reason for her to ever know,”
Carly said. “She’s a happy, well-adjusted kid who would never, ever suspect
Cate and Tom aren’t her biological parents. I’m begging you, we all are, to put
what’s best for her ahead of what’s best for you.”

“If I hadn’t guessed, would you have ever
told me?”

“No.”

“And you could’ve married me with that
kind of secret between us?”

“Without hesitation. I love you more than
life itself, and I have since I was thirteen.”

“When we were in Newport and talked about
having a baby, why didn’t you tell me then?”

“Because the one thing Tom and Cate asked
of me when they did this incredible thing for me was that I never tell anyone,
including you, that she was mine. It was their only stipulation. But when you
asked me straight out today, I couldn’t lie to you.”

Trying desperately to absorb it all,
Brian took a deep breath. When he looked up, the three of them were watching
him, all of them rigid with anxiety. “I understand what you’re saying about not
telling Zoë. I hear you on that, Cate. I don’t want to upset her life any more
than you do. But I have a stipulation of my own.”

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“I want my parents to know she’s mine. I
want them to know she was born on Sam’s birthday, the first birthday after he
died.”

“They’ll want to be involved in her life,”
Tom said, the fear written all over his face.

“They’ll do—or not do—whatever I ask them
to. You have my word on that.”

Cate and Tom exchanged glances.

“I guess we could live with that,” Cate
said.

“There’s one other thing,” Brian said. “I
want to spend some time with her. I want to get to know her. Carly and I could
take her away for a few days under the pretense that we understand what she’s
going through since we lost our friends, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cate said,
glancing at Carly.

“You’re close to her, right?” Brian asked
Carly.

“Yes.”

“So why would she think it odd to be
spending a few days with you and your fiancé?”

“She wouldn’t, I guess.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s up to Tom and Cate,” Carly said.
“They’re her parents.”

“Can we sleep on it?” Cate asked. “We
need to talk about it.”

“Of course,” Brian said.

Cate hugged her sister and then surprised
Brian by hugging him, too.

“We’ll talk to you in the morning,” Cate
said as she and Tom moved toward the door.

“Cate?” Brian said.

They turned back.

Brian went over to them. “I don’t like
that this was kept from me, but that has nothing to do with you two, and it
doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the enormity of what you guys did for Carly and
Zoë and for me, too, I guess. So, um, thank you.”

Tom shook his hand. “It’s been our
pleasure,” he said in a hushed tone. “Entirely our pleasure.”

Brian saw them out the door, and when he
turned back to face Carly, he had absolutely no idea what to say to her.

B
rian wandered over to the antique armoire
that held Carly’s television. On the shelf above the TV was a cluster of framed
family photos. He picked up one of Zoë and studied it.

“How old was she here?”

“I think maybe eleven.”

“Do you have other photos? From when she
was little?”

Carly went into her bedroom and came back
with a thick photo album, which she handed to him.

His expression tight and unreadable, he
sat on the sofa and flipped the book open to find Zoë as an infant, squalling
with outrage during her first bath.

“She lifted her head off my chest on the
fourth day and looked me right in the eye, as if to say, ‘Bring it on, world.’
She’s been going full tilt ever since.”

Brian ran a finger over a picture of Zoë,
bright-eyed and alert. “I want to know everything—how you felt when you were
pregnant, what the delivery was like, whether you breastfed her, how old she
was when she went to live with Cate and Tom, what schools she’s gone to, who
her teachers were. Everything.”

Overwhelmed by his intensity, Carly
rested against the back of the sofa. “I was sick as a dog for the first three
months of the pregnancy. That was actually the first sign I was pregnant. I was
so sick.”

Brian winced. “I can’t imagine anything
worse.”

“Oh, I can,” Carly said with a chuckle.
“Labor was no picnic, let me tell you.”

For the first time since Cate and Tom had
left, he looked right at her. “It was bad?”

“Horrible. Twenty-four hours of hard
labor. The doctor wanted to take me to the hospital for a C-section, but the
idea of them taking me from the house petrified me. So I summoned the energy
from God knows where, and she was born a short time later, at seven in the
morning, screaming her head off.” She smiled at the memory. “In the fifteen
years we were apart, I never wanted you more than I did in that moment. I
wanted so badly to share her with you. I was overjoyed and heartbroken at the
same time. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”

As she watched him study every photo,
Carly’s stomach tightened with anxiety. He was sitting right next to her, but
there were miles between them. The distance frightened her.
What will I do
if he can’t forgive me?

“How much did she weigh?”

“Eight pounds, nine ounces, twenty inches
long.”

“What’s her middle name?”

“Ann.”

“Shit, I don’t even know what her last
name is.”

“Murphy. Zoë Ann Murphy.”

“You always said you’d name your daughter
Jordan.”

Surprised he remembered, Carly said, “I
found I couldn’t use that name under these circumstances.”

“Did you name her Zoë? Or did Cate and
Tom?”

“I did.”

“I like that name. It’s unique.” Brian
flipped to photos of Zoë as a toddler, her face covered in spaghetti sauce,
surrounded by bubbles in the tub, and dancing in high heels and a pink tutu.
“God, she was just so adorable,” he whispered.

Carly nodded in agreement. “She came out
with the bright, sunny disposition she still has, although she’s been giving
Cate fits the last year or so with her teenager attitude.”

“How long did you have her? After she was
born?”

“Almost two months, and yes, I breastfed
her. I loved that.”

“I wondered why you seemed, you know,
bigger there.”

“I got to keep them,” Carly said with a
laugh.

“But there’re no other signs you had a
baby.”

“Probably because I was so young. I
bounced back fast.” She fiddled with the fringe on the blanket that hung over
the back of the sofa. “Faster than I did from giving her up.”

“It was hard.”

A statement, not a question
, Carly thought.
He knows me well
enough to imagine what it was like
. “Yes,” she whispered, traveling back in
time to the very darkest days of her life.

“Carly?”

Pulling herself out of the past, she
glanced at him. “It’s difficult to talk about, even after all this time.”

“You don’t have to. Not now if you’re not
up to it.”

“Do you hate me for this?” Her eyes filled,
but she made no move to wipe away her tears. “Because I wouldn’t blame you if
you did.”

“I don’t hate you. I hate that I never
knew I had a daughter. I hate that I was with your mother the other day, and
the whole time she and I were talking, she knew I have a daughter, but I
didn’t. I hate that, Carly.”