My Baby, Your Son. Anne Peters
fatherhood combined with motherhood results in parenthood. And that since parenthood is the natural order of things, there can be no losses, only wins.
Fatherhood—I guess it made a man out of me.
Regards,
Jared O’Neal
New York City
“Excuse me, Miz Bingham…”
“Yes?” With a sigh, April turned her attention from the stunning view of Central Park in June to the shriveled- potato features of Spuds Miller, her twin brother Marcus’s portly factotum. “Is the limo here?”
“No, ma’am.” The old man extended a bulky manila envelope. “This just came for you by messenger.”
“Oh?” April accepted the package without enthusiasm. One of the drawbacks of being a renowned concert pianist was being inundated with a barrage of musical scores from struggling composers and wannabes. Usually, though, there were people around to intercept them. “Where’s my mother?”
“Miz Rhinegold and Mr. Marcus are in the den, having one of their…uh, discussions.”
“I see.” April grimaced. “And here I thought we’d for once be able to make an uneventful getaway.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
With an inward smile at the old man’s pointedly non- committal attitude, April glanced down at the envelope. “‘Harper and Tymes, Attorneys At Law,’” she read, and asked Spuds with a frown, “Isn’t that the firm that handled Aunt Marje’s will?”
“I believe so, yes.” Much more than a servant, Spuds Miller was up on everything that concerned the Bingham family, but believed in keeping a low profile. “A Mr. Cur- tis, I believe.”
“Exactly.” Puzzled, April tore open the envelope. Let- ting it drift to the floor, she stared at the leather-bound volume in her hands. The initials M.B.S. were stenciled on the front in faded gold.
“Marjorie Bingham Smythe.” A small catch roughened her voice. “Oh, Spuds, I can’t count the times I’ve watched my aunt write in this journal.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Spuds bent to retrieve the discarded en- velope, peered inside and extracted a folded sheet of vel- lum. “It appears there’s a letter to go with it.”
“Thank you.” One-handedly, April shook it open. In an undertone she read, “Darling April, by the time this reaches you, I’ll be dead and buried. Cliff House and the rest of my estate will have been settled, divided equally between Marcus and you. I’ve kept aside this diary for your eyes only….”
April’s voice faltered. In silence she rapidly scanned the few lines that followed and looked up. “I need to sit down.”
She groped for the nearest chair. Spuds rushed to pull it close. “Shall I—”
“No,” April interrupted with an emphatic shake of the head. “Just leave me. Please, I—”
“Of course.” Ever discreet, Spuds was already on his way. “Not to worry.”
Her gaze once again on the letter, April made no reply. From its pages, she read with eyes gone gritty and with the blood pounding in her ears, you will learn that a terrible secret has been kept from you, a secret I find I cannot bear to take with me to the grave. Darling April, your baby, your son, is alive….
Capstan, WA. One week later…
April hadn’t meant to stop at the school. She was on her way to Cliff House, which was to be her home for the next several months, at least. But driving by the school yard she’d noticed the Little League baseball game in progress and something had urged her to pull over and watch.
Nostalgia? Yes, but something else, too. Something less definable but more compelling. Something that had her threading her fingers through the chain-link fence and straining to see.
Just to the left of her, a scattering of spectating friends and family dotted the bleachers behind the backstop. Shouts of encouragement and advice for the batter blended with the twhack of the ball connecting with the catcher’s mitt and the umpire’s gravel-voiced call. “Steeerike!”
It was all so familiar, so very much like those other ball games during those other summers a decade and more ago, that April half expected to see her brother Mark in the dugout and Jared O’Neal winding up for the pitch. Why, even the blue-and-white uniforms of the Capstan Gulls hadn’t changed.
“Strike two!”
As jeers and cheers from the bleachers followed the um- pire’s cry, April stared transfixed at the young Capstan pitcher going through his spiel. Posturing and posing, look- ing this way and that before tucking his knee against his chest, he wound up for the next killer pitch. Watching, April experienced a sense of déjà vu so acute, she blinked to dispel the illusion that it was young Jared up there on the mound. The way the boy stood, moved, the way he tugged on the bill of his cap and cocked his head just that little bit…
Oh, God. Realization struck like a slap, making her body actually jerk away from the fence before her knees turned to mush and her fingers clung more tightly to the cutting cold wire for support. It was him, she thought wildly. It was Tyler. Her son. And Jared’s.
As if to confirm it, a raucous shout drew her attention to the left and she saw Jared O’Neal surge to his feet on the bleacher at the far side of the backstop. Cupping his mouth, he yelled something else to the boy, something April was too unnerved to try to decipher. Riveted, she watched him bend to the smiling woman next to him who had remained seated. He made some kind of comment and the woman nodded, smiling agreement.
Jared O’Neal. Betrayer of her love. Co-conspirator in the theft of her child. Still, seeing him unexpectedly like this, tanned and virile in frayed cutoffs and faded T-shirt with a Seattle Mariners’ cap covering most of his dark, wavy hair, April’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. He was grinning that crooked little grin that tugged one corner of his mouth up and the other down.
That grin, that she noticed with another painful tug on the heartstrings, was matched by an identical one from the boy on the field. Their son. Her baby…
The image blurred. April closed her eyes and willed back the tears. Pouring over Marje Bingham’s diary these past few days, she had done more crying than she’d known she had tears for.
The enormity of the crime that had been committed against her—for there could be no other way to describe it—had all but annihilated her emotionally. She had yet to deal with the ramifications, had yet to confront her mother and demand…what? To have the clock turned back? And herself made whole again?
It was the knowledge that it was too late, that something precious was irretrievably lost, that had had her crying all those tears until she was sick. But in the course of that grief she had come to realize that, for now, concerns of the pres- ent and the future—namely, getting her son back into her life—had to take precedence over those grievances of the past.
She had confided in no one but her attorney the real reason she would be staying at Cliff House. Let Grace think it was merely for the purpose of the good long rest Dr. Shimon had prescribed. Not even Marcus knew, for he would have felt compelled to come and take charge. And she was done with that, done with depending on anyone but herself. Done being a pawn of those who, for all their protests that