A Daughter's Trust Read online

  “She said that if she stayed, if she married me, she’d always be yearning for more. The first few months of her pregnancy, she really struggled with all of it. Trying to fit into the role of wife and mother. She helped me shop for the baby. Picked out furniture and every baby accessory she could find. Made a nursery out of the spare bedroom in the apartment we’d been sharing. But the closer we got to Hannah’s birth, the more panicky she became.”

  Sue chewed, but was having trouble swallowing.

  “I hoped that when Hannah was born, the miracle of her birth would convince Sheila that she wanted to stay with us. I counted on there being some kind of motherly instinct that would offset whatever else pulled at her.” Rick sat at the table but he wasn’t eating. “But I knew, ten minutes after Hannah was here, that Sheila had to go. She hardly looked at her. Didn’t want to hold her. At Sheila’s request I packed her stuff while she was in the hospital. Her sister came over to pick it up. When Sheila left the hospital, she left alone. And I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Not even when Hannah was killed?”

  “Not even then.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I sent a wire to an overseas address I had for her. She called, left a message. She was saddened, hurting for me, but couldn’t afford to get to the States. She didn’t leave a call-back number.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since?”

  “No.”

  Sue pushed back her not quite empty plate. Like Jo Fraser, these women had just walked away?

  Sue might not want a marriage and children of her own, but if she had a child…

  And she’d certainly never turn her back on family. Heck, she put up with Uncle Sam. Family was family. Even when they let you down. Hurt you. Lied to you…“I don’t get people.”

  “Yeah, me either. Don’t even try anymore. I gave that up when I was about ten.”

  “So was it hard, raising a little girl on your own?” Sue wanted to know everything about him. Not to commit herself to him. But to know. And that scared the hell out of her.

  “It was rough at first. I was twenty-four, in my first job, and learning about feedings and diaper rash all at once. But after those initial few months, it was surprisingly easy. Hannah was a happy baby, a great kid. Those years with her, they were the greatest. Every day, every hour, brought something new and good. Even if it was only sitting there on the couch at night with her head against me as she slept. I was happy. And if I never have another moment like that for the rest of my life, I’ll still die knowing I had the best life had to offer.”

  Sue could feel the strength of his passion.

  And could feel the emptiness of her own existence where those happy moments had never been.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PULLING THE BLACK, low-cut, long-sleeved T-shirt down over her one lacy bra on Thursday night, Sue reminded herself not to be a fool. Her jeans were low-cut, too, leaving a sliver of flat stomach showing. She thought about shoes, but couldn’t go that far out of her comfort zone. She stayed barefoot, as usual.

  And just before leaving her bedroom, she pulled the elastic band out of her hair, running a brush through the long blond strands to give them some semblance of life.

  No makeup. No perfume. With only babies to dress for, it had been so long since she’d bought cosmetics she wasn’t sure what she had was even good anymore.

  After dinner the night before, Sue had had to hurry home to get the children to bed. But she and Rick had talked on the phone long into the night. Mostly heavy talk. About life. And death. And what it might all mean. They hadn’t come up with anything definitive, no answers for the mysteries, but it had felt damn good having someone to talk about them with.

  Someone whose thoughts she found fascinating, and similar to hers at the same time.

  Before they’d finally hung up she’d invited him over for a couple of hours this evening. After the kids were in bed, so he wouldn’t run into Carrie. So Sue wouldn’t be playing favorites with him where the little girl was concerned. Yes, she was Carrie’s foster mother. She was William’s and Michael’s foster mother, too. She was also a woman.

  Sue checked on the kids one more time, adjusting the crib pad where Carrie’s foot had become lodged, and then went to make certain the rest of the house was in order.

  Ginger tea was steeping in the kitchen. Not because it was said to enhance sexual desire, but because she loved the stuff.

  Where Rick Kraynick was concerned, Sue didn’t need any help with desire enhancement.

  She fluffed the pillows on the couch, peeked under it for any stray toys she might have missed, and felt between the cushions to make certain she hadn’t lost a bottle or pacifier that might inadvertently reveal itself. She was a mother, and proud of it.

  But tonight, just for a few hours, she wanted to be a woman.

  He knocked precisely at eight—the time she’d told him to, because all three infants would be in their cribs, asleep. Just. Giving her, she hoped, two whole hours.

  “Wow. You look…wow.” He stared at her as he came inside.

  “You’re pretty wow yourself,” she said, giving his body, molded to perfection in skintight jeans and a three-quarter sleeve baseball jersey, a once-over.

  She offered him tea.

  Rick followed her to the kitchen. Watched as she took cups and saucers out of the cupboard.

  “I…don’t want to mislead you,” she said, suddenly pulling up short.

  He put up a hand. “I know, you aren’t going to help me with Carrie.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you with her, either,” she clarified. “But I won’t do any favors or pull any strings for you. I won’t doctor my report to the committee. I can’t, Rick. I’d quit my job first. I’m too black-and-white.”

  Cups in hand, she led the way to the living room.

  “I heard you the first time, Sue, I swear. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want or need your help, but I know you aren’t going to give it to me.” He took his cup. Set it down. Sat himself down on the couch. “Now can you come here? I’ve been waiting all day to have you next to me.”

  She wanted to, but…

  She turned to the storage unit mounted above her television. “You want to watch a movie?”

  “We can.”

  “What do you want to watch?”

  “You.”

  Sue spun around. And then sat in the middle of the couch. Inches away from him. She only had two hours. No time to be coy. Or have second thoughts and doubts. She had to be close to this man….

  “I wasn’t referring to Carrie when I said that about misleading you.”

  “Oh? What then?”

  “I’m…this…I like you.”

  He grinned. “Well, thank you. I like you, too.”

  “But I’m…It’s not going to go any further than…What I mean is…”

  She waited for him to fill in the blanks. And to get it right this time. He watched her.

  “I can’t have a serious relationship.”

  He leaned back into the cushion, his arm along the back of the couch behind her. “I’m not sure what’s hit us here,” he said, his gaze steady. “But I’d say it’s already serious.”

  He was right. However…

  “What I mean is, it can’t go any further than…” What? How did you put boundaries on something you couldn’t define? “I don’t want to get married.”

  Face flaming, she realized how that sounded. “Ever. I don’t ever want to marry.”

  “You alluded to that before.”

  “I mean it, Rick. I can only do this if you understand that we’ll never be more than two people living separate lives. I don’t want to lead you on. Or someday have to look at you with a ring in your hand and tell you no.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  He didn’t appear fazed. At all. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I understand that you think you don’t ever want to marry, yes.”

  Eyes na
rrowed, Sue studied him a couple of minutes longer. He’d received her message. Whether or not he’d accepted it was something else entirely. But not her problem.

  Was it?

  It was just that the man had been hurt enough. Far too much. And she seemed to eventually hurt people. Her folks. Joe…She wasn’t going to think beyond that.

  “No one can predict what tomorrow will bring, right?” His soft words whispered across her skin like a breeze in the hot sun. “Isn’t that what we concluded last night? That ultimately, nothing is guaranteed?”

  His body wasn’t moving, but his gaze was pulling her closer. She nodded. Licked her lips.

  “I’ve been curious about something since the first day we met.” He just sat there, watching her.

  “What?”

  “What your lips taste like.”

  Oh, God. He was making her crazy. Just as he had the night she’d been talking to him in the bath. And every day since, pretty much every time she thought about Rick Kraynick.

  He leaned forward, holding her gaze, and eventually Sue leaned in, too.

  And when his lips met hers, she moaned with a longing she didn’t recognize, in a body she thought she’d known completely.

  HE HAD HER SHIRT OFF. With shaking hands, Rick studied the front closure on the piece of black lace that barely concealed an incredibly beautiful pair of breasts. “I have to see them,” he said.

  Her nod was all the incentive he needed, and with a flick, the lace was gone. Her nipples were hard. Darkened puckers in the middle of creamy white. He didn’t trust himself to touch her yet. He’d be done before he’d begun if he didn’t slow down.

  “I haven’t been with a woman in over a year,” he admitted. “I’m not usually so lacking in—”

  With a finger on his lips, Sue said, “Shh. You’re perfect. And it’s been longer than a year for me.” She lay beside him on the couch, her hand splayed beneath his shirt, fingers buried in the hair on his chest as she toyed with one of his nipples.

  A baby’s cry cracked through the room and Sue shot up, fumbling for her shirt, pulling it on over her unfastened bra as she hurried down the hall.

  Rick’s first instinct was to follow her. If Carrie, or any of the babies, was in trouble…

  He sat instead, adjusting his jeans around his engorged penis, and waited. Sue tended to her kids every single day. And night. It was her job. If she needed help she’d—

  “It was Michael,” she said, coming back in. “I’m not sure what it was. Maybe a stomach cramp. He was still sleeping. I rubbed his back for a second, but he seemed fine. I hope he’s not getting sick.” She was babbling.

  She sat down close to Rick, but her bra was fastened.

  He got the hint. Slow down, man. She’d said it had been a long time since she’d been with anyone. And he didn’t want their first time to be a rushed affair on her couch.

  “It’s gotta be difficult, getting infants like this, midstream, with no idea of their history,” he said, willing his body to relax. “You don’t know if he was colicky when he was born, or if crying out in his sleep is normal for him.” Rick paused, and when Sue just stared at him, longing and gratitude in her eyes, he kept talking. “Most parents get a sense of those things from the second a baby is born. Before even. Some are restless in the womb. Some aren’t. And with parents, even if they have a houseful of kids, there’s at least nine months between babies before they have to acclimate to a new arrival’s habits and schedule. You don’t have that luxury.”

  “I get health history and sometimes habits,” she said, relaxing her back. He’d been able to put her at ease. Good. “And William was only a day old when I got him.”

  And Carrie? he wanted to ask. How old was she when she came here? He needed to know every single one of the infant’s habits. Was she a happy baby, overall? When had she started sleeping through the night? And how old was she the first time she’d turned over? For that matter, where had she been, and did Sue actually see her do it, or just turn around and find her on her back?

  Luckily, he managed to keep the questions to himself.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” he said, referring to far more than adjusting to multitudes of babies and schedules. How did she care for these children, experience their “firsts” and then give them away?

  Sue shrugged. “After a while you learn to go with the flow. You also learn pretty quickly how to pick up on babies’ oral communications. Most of them are much the same. A certain tone means hunger, another means pain….”

  Something he wouldn’t notice, having raised only one child.

  “What I struggle with most is knowing that, for many of them, the fact that they’re here with me instead of with the people who created them is going to cause them unrest at some point.” Sue shot him a sad grin. “I want life to be perfect. I want every single baby born on this earth to have an idyllic childhood.”

  Aware of the depths in the woman, depths she seemed determined to keep to herself, Rick took Sue’s hand, rubbing his thumb along the smooth skin, saying nothing. There were no guarantees. Life was hard sometimes. Unfair.

  “That’s part of the reason I can’t seem to get past my mom’s mother just giving her away.”

  “From what you’ve said, I’d say your mom had a great childhood.”

  “Grandma and Grandpa were wonderful parents. But there was always Sam in the background, making certain she knew she wasn’t the real deal. He was. Only him.”

  “Siblings can be cruel. Fully biological ones, too.”

  “I’m sure they are. But at least if you’re fully biological, you have a sense of self that competes equally. Not everyone gets that, I understand. Sometimes the best chance a child has is to be adopted out to a loving family. But in my mom’s case, she could have had it all. She always wondered who her real mother was. She used to tell me she was sure the woman died in childbirth. That if she hadn’t, she’d have never given my mom away. And now, to find out that Jo was just a few miles away the entire time she was growing up…It’s despicable.”

  Rick might have said nothing, if Sue had been anyone else. But she had a way of making him engage, good or bad. “I think what she did was remarkable,” he said honestly. “Rather than raising your mom alone, making her the second of two children she had to provide for—an illegitimate second, from what you’ve said, because Adam was thought to be the son of her dead husband—she loved her enough, was selfless enough to give your mom to her father. To be raised as the only daughter of a financially solid family.”

  “So you think the picture of Mom, Dad and the kids—the money—replaces the sense of being fully aware of who you are, where you came from?”

  “Depending on what it was you came from, absolutely. I certainly would have preferred it.”

  “You say that now, looking back, but you can’t know how much of your success today is because deep down, no matter what your mother was or did, she loved you so much she couldn’t give you up. You were that special. That important in one person’s life. My mom didn’t have that, and has to cling to my dad every minute of every day, and try to cling to me, too, to get that sense of security.”

  “Or maybe she’s just an all-in type of person. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as your father wants that, too.” Rick held Sue’s hand, but he’d stopped caressing it. “And I’ll tell you something else,” he added, speaking for Carrie more than himself. If Sue got nothing else, did nothing else to help him, she had to understand this much. “I am what I am today because of the love and example I received from a couple of the foster families I was lucky enough to live with until my mother would come along and haul me back again.”

  Even if it put a rift between them, he couldn’t let what Sue had to say go unanswered. Not about his mother’s love.

  He’d played that game too many times.

  And lost each and every one of them.

  Sue’s fingers curled more firmly around his. “You were older, Rick. You knew the scor
e. You already knew your mother loved you. We were talking about babies who wouldn’t remember, wouldn’t have that sense. I’m just saying that if a child can be safely placed with the person who birthed them, or in Carrie’s case, the person closest to who birthed her, it’s the best opportunity for inner peace.”

  He should stop. Squeeze her hand. Kiss her. Or talk to her about California’s educational system. “And I can tell you, from firsthand experience, that’s just not the case. I did not grow up with a sense of inner peace.”

  Rather he’d grown up with the bone-deep knowledge that all he really wanted was exactly what his so-called mother hadn’t given him—a loving family of his own. A complete family. Where he was a full-fledged member.

  “And you think Carrie is going to get a sense of peace from you?” The softness in Sue’s voice, the concerned look in her eyes should have warned him.

  “I was a good father.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second. I’d guess you were right up there with father of the year material. But you’re still grieving, understandably so, for your own daughter. Carrie deserves to be in someone’s heart of her own right, not as a replacement for the child you lost.”

  What was it with people? “No one could ever replace Hannah.” He gave her the same answer he’d given Mark.

  Sue dropped his hand. “And no one will ever live up to her, either.”

  He had to go. Found himself at her front door without any clear memory of getting there.

  “Thank you for having me over,” he said, feeling like an interloper in someone else’s household. A familiar feeling, yet not one he’d experienced anytime in the past fifteen years. Or had ever expected to feel again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He was out the door, heading down the walk, not really sure where he’d go from there.

  “Rick?” Sue called out to him.

  He turned, but didn’t go back. “Yeah?”

  “Can we…is this it already? Are we done being friends?”