A Precious Gift Page 19

  “Because there’s more.”

  “More than a woman surviving rape?” He started to reach for her. “So much makes sense now.”

  She wouldn’t let him embrace her and backed away. “Listen to me, Brian. Listen to everything.”

  When he raked his hand through his hair, she knew he was restraining every impulse inside of him to enfold her into his arms. But she couldn’t let him do that yet. When she was done, he might not want to.

  “I had just moved to Portland a couple of months before—after graduation. My career had really taken off. I had already done shoots in New York and London, and offers were coming in to my agent every day. I was sending money home, money like my family had never seen. We were able to move out of the poorest section of Windsor to an apartment that was clean and bright with a small garden. It was all like a dream come true, and none of us could believe it. I was just beginning to. Mom and Dad were dreaming about never using food stamps again. Mary and Brenda were dreaming about college. Foolish and naive as I was, I was dreaming about more magazine covers and traveling…visiting the French Riviera.”

  “Carrie,” he said softly.

  She shook her head. “But then I was walking home after a shoot one night. A few blocks from my apartment, he grabbed me. He was wearing a ski mask. I fought him but—” She stopped for a second then went on. “Somehow, I made it to my apartment, but then something happened to me. I spiraled down into a black hole. Mom came and got me and took me home, but we didn’t tell anyone—not Dad, not my sisters, not anyone. Dad knows now. Mom just told him recently, but—” She swallowed hard. “Once Mom took me home, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I just stayed in bed and cried. A few weeks afterward I missed my period.”

  Now Brian looked stunned. She realized she was delivering blow after blow, but it all had to come out, every single sordid bit of it.

  “You were pregnant,” he stated flatly.

  “Yes. And everything was on the line—my family’s life, my future and my career.”

  She could make excuses, but she wasn’t going to. This was her responsibility. “Through the grapevine, Mom had heard of a doctor who performed abortions. I went to him. A week later I had a fever of one hundred five and he put me on antibiotics. I didn’t know then—” Her voice caught and she stopped.

  “Didn’t know what?” Brian prodded.

  “I didn’t know the infection was more extensive than I’d ever dreamed. I didn’t know I’d never be able to have children—until we couldn’t get pregnant and I went to the specialist.”

  Shell-shocked. Brian looked absolutely shell-shocked.

  “When we got married, I wanted a baby as much as you did. I didn’t know, Brian. You’ve got to believe me.”

  He looked away, then his gaze returned to hers and seemed to pierce right through her. “But there was the medical report…about your tubes being blocked.”

  “That was accurate. There had been scarring—extensive scarring. That’s probably why in vitro didn’t work, either.”

  “The doctor knew about all of this?”

  “I had to tell him. I had to know for sure what our chances were. He said we had a chance, but then it didn’t work—”

  “And still you didn’t tell me.” Brian sounded so pained, so betrayed.

  He had a right to everything he was feeling. There was only one thing she could do. “You deserve to be married to a woman who can give you children. You didn’t sign on for this. If I had been truthful with you from the beginning, maybe we would have never gotten married. Maybe we would have considered adoption sooner if we had. This whole situation with Lisa never would have happened. I want to find Timothy Jacob with all my heart, and I still want to adopt him. But I can understand if you don’t want to be part of that. I understand that keeping all of this from you, and the abortion itself, might be too much to forgive.”

  Brian’s expression was absolutely unreadable. She wished he’d say something, anything, but he didn’t. She knew how he felt about right and wrong, black and white, taking the high road. She represented a blurring of everything he believed in. She wasn’t the woman she’d portrayed to him, and she’d been right to think their marriage could never recover from the truth of it all. Brian’s silence told her more than words. There was only one thing to do.

  “I’m going to pack a suitcase and go to a hotel tonight.”

  “It’s late,” he protested.

  “I know. I’ll go to the Ambassador. I’ll be fine. We both need time to think about everything.”

  “I have to call the private investigator and search for Timothy,” Brian said, as if the rest of it were secondary. She supposed it was just too much to take in. Searching for the baby they’d lost seemed simpler.

  “I won’t be here when you get back,” she said.

  Brian’s gaze swept over her. Then, as if he couldn’t stand to look at her another second, he left the kitchen and went to the garage. She heard his car door slam. She heard him start the engine. She heard him drive away.

  Finally letting all the emotion come to the surface, she felt a sob tear through her, and tears began falling down her cheeks. She had to leave. She wouldn’t be able to stay, living with the guilt of what she’d done, seeing recriminations in Brian’s eyes. Seeing hurt…and pain.

  Everett lay in bed with Nancy, curled spoon-fashion, his arm around her. She was warm, her skin was soft, and her hair smelled like strawberries. They had made love twice. The first time he’d felt like a fumbling idiot, and she’d made it easy. She’d even made putting on the condom a new adventure. The second time they’d made love, it had seemed natural. His climax had hit the same time as hers. Nothing had mattered except being inside of her, being with her.

  Still, it couldn’t last.

  Tightening his hold on Nancy, he let his thoughts drift as he dozed. They were a mixture of good and bad, past and present, but no future.

  Suddenly he went on alert. There was a noise. The glass doors opening?

  Slipping out of bed, he was glad to see Nancy was still asleep. She’d been exhausted after her double shift in the E.R. The parking lot’s light came through the edges of the blind. Everett scooped up the first solid heavy object he saw. It was a sculpture of a cat done in bronze. Hoisting it to his shoulder, he was ready to throw it at anything that moved. Going through the living room, he saw a figure dressed in black in the kitchen.

  He flattened himself against the inside wall and waited. There was one step, and then another. As he brought up the sculpture, he took a huge breath. When the figure stepped through the doorway, he brought it down solidly, clipping the man’s shoulder. There was a grunt, then a parry, as a gun fell out of the man’s hand and flew almost at Everett’s feet. He could see it in the light of the street lamp coming in the window.

  The man in black swore. “Hell, Baker, is that you?”

  Everett realized it was the Stork himself, and not some henchman he’d hired. His voice was a low threat. “Get out of here, Charlie. I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

  Charlie’s eyes darted to the gun, but Everett scooped it up before the man could even think about doing it. He pointed it at his once-friend. “You are not going to hurt her. Get out of here before she wakes up.”

  “What if she goes to the police?” Charlie hissed.

  “If she does, I’ll discredit her somehow. Trust me, Charlie. I’ll handle it. If you get any ideas about hurting me, as well as Nancy…” He hefted up the gun in his hand. “Well, I’ve got this now. And I’ll use it.”

  Charlie gazed at him with something Everett had never seen in his eyes before—respect.

  “Everett? Is that you? Is something wrong?” Nancy called from the bedroom.

  “Get out of here,” he ordered Charlie.

  Without his gun, all Charlie could do was snarl. “You’d better fix this, Baker. You’d better fix it right.” Then he scuttled to the kitchen.

  “It’s just me, Nancy,” Everett called int
o the bedroom. “I thought I heard something, but it must have been the rain and the wind.”

  Once Charlie was gone, Everett locked the door behind him, then he didn’t know why he bothered. Locked doors weren’t going to keep Charlie out—not if he really wanted to get in. But Everett had felt the balance of power shift a little bit tonight.

  After stowing the gun behind a large vase in the china cabinet, Everett carried the bronze cat back into the bedroom. He’d retrieve the gun in the morning while Nancy was taking her shower.

  “What were you doing with that?” Nancy asked, sitting up in bed.

  “I was going to use it on an intruder.” He managed a smile.

  She patted the bed beside her. “Come back to bed.”

  First he turned off the light, set down the cat, then he crawled into bed.

  When they faced each other, she declared, “I’m going to the police tomorrow, Everett. I have to. If I’m right about this, maybe we can save other couples heartache. I can only imagine what Brian and Carrie are going through tonight.”

  Everett had fallen for Nancy Allen because she was the woman she was—caring, compassionate and much too good for him. “I’ll go with you,” he assured her, already planning damage control, already working out a strategy to keep both of them alive.

  Fourteen

  At 5:00 a.m. Brian entered the bedroom he’d shared with Carrie and sank down onto the chair in the sitting area. All night he’d driven the streets, as well as walked them in the rain, not even knowing what he was looking for. A baby carriage? Squad cars surrounding a row house, a policeman exiting with Timothy Jacob in his arms?

  As he dropped his head in his hands, he told himself the police were doing everything they could. Plus, his private investigator was on the case now.

  He’d turned on a small bedside lamp when he’d entered the room. Now the darkness and shadows, and especially the silence, surrounded him. There’d been a deep, yawning ache in his gut ever since Carrie had told him—

  Carrie.

  Why had everything gone so monumentally wrong? Why had she kept something so huge from him? The biggest question of all gnawed at him. Why hadn’t she trusted him enough to tell him?

  Rape. Abortion. Infertility. She’d kept it hidden so well, he hadn’t suspected. Or had he? Hadn’t he always known she was holding back? Hadn’t he always guessed there was a reason? Why hadn’t he pursued it? Why hadn’t he prodded her? Why hadn’t he gotten to the bottom of it?

  From the first night he’d laid eyes on Carrie, he’d known he’d wanted her as his. Their whirlwind courtship had led into marriage and a honeymoon and then—and then his push for a family.

  When had their marriage stopped being about them?

  Why hadn’t they continued to get to know each other and grow together?

  That answer was easy. Carrie had walls. He had walls. He’d let work be the balm, the basis and the ballast of his life. He’d thought he’d put Carrie in the center. In an odd way he had, but he’d never joined her there. He always orbited around her. Maybe he was as afraid as she was of what would happen if they became truly intimate…intimate in their hearts and emotions, not only with their bodies.

  He needed some answers, and he needed them from a different perspective than Carrie’s. He needed to talk to her mother.

  Without even thinking about a shower and ignoring the emptiness in his stomach, he hurried to his car once more and set off for Windsor.

  Less than ninety minutes later, he pulled up in front of the house where Paula and George Bradley lived, just now realizing they might not even be up.

  However, after he climbed the porch steps, he didn’t even have to ring the bell. The door opened and George stood there in a flannel shirt and jeans, without looking a bit surprised. “Carrie called her mama last night.”

  “I need some answers.”

  “Don’t know how I can help with that. You and Carrie have to find the answers together.”

  “If she called, then you know she left.”

  “She left because that’s what she thought you’d want her to do.”

  Brian swore and rubbed the back of his neck.

  George opened the door wider. “You look pretty rough. Come on in. I’ve already got the first pot of coffee on.”

  Although Brian had been in the Bradley house many times before, he looked at it with fresh eyes. It wasn’t extravagant by any means. But he could feel warmth in this home, as well as family connections—intangible bonds that he was finding out were so much more important than plush carpeting or the best furniture money could buy. He knew Carrie’s mom no longer cleaned houses. Carrie had put a sum of money aside for her parents, and they lived off of the investment income. Paula now worked as a cashier in the local drugstore. But she still cut coupons. The Bradleys might depend on their daughter, but they’d kept their self-respect.

  George poured two mugs of coffee. “Paula’s not up yet. She was talking to Carrie on the phone pretty late. Carrie told her about the kidnapping, too. You must feel like a freight train bowled you over.”

  Brian wasn’t sure what he thought or what he felt. “Carrie said she didn’t tell you about the rape at first.”

  George’s only reaction to Brian’s bluntness was an arched brow. He set one of the mugs of coffee before Brian on the table. “You take it black, right?”

  Brian nodded.

  George hobbled to the table, his stiff leg making his gait uneven. After he eased himself into the chair, he took the warm coffee mug into his hands. “Nope. Carrie never told me. I didn’t know about it officially until about a week ago. Paula filled me in. Said she couldn’t keep it a secret from me anymore.”

  “After all these years.” Brian shook his head.

  “Fear’s a great motivator, boy. Fear can keep a man or woman silent for almost a decade. It can make them do things they wouldn’t ever do otherwise.”

  “You mean the abortion?”

  “I mean all of it. Did Carrie tell you her mama made all the arrangements? Her mama told her over and over again it was the best thing to do. Her mama told her it was the only way she would have a future, the only way we’d survive.”

  “No.” Brian felt the word echo through his whole being. Carrie had taken full responsibility, and he suspected why.

  “Carrie was a mess that summer,” George went on. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t poke around. Her mom said she was sick from exhaustion, but I was too deep into painkillers back then, too deep into feeling sorry for myself. Paula was desperate. Do you understand she gave Carrie the only option she thought we had?”

  “Take me through it, will you?” Brian asked, still attempting to piece it together. “Give me as much as you know.”

  George related everything Paula had told him about the rape, and how she’d arranged the abortion. Then he said, “And even after the doctor gave Carrie medicine and her fever broke, she wasn’t the same. She wouldn’t leave her bedroom. She wouldn’t even talk to Whitney or Brenda or Mary. She lost ten pounds. Paula took her back to Portland and found her a counselor. After she went to sessions every day with her for a week, Carrie began to come around. But even after Paula came home, she called her two, three times a day to make sure she was okay. I remember when Carrie came here for Thanksgiving that year. She’d put some weight back on and was beginning to look like her old self. By then she’d told her agent the basics and he eased her back into working with safe assignments. Then she got that Modern Woman Cosmetics contract, and she seemed to be okay.”

  When Brian heard a noise in the doorway, he looked over his shoulder. Paula Bradley was standing there in a gray sweatsuit. She didn’t look surprised to see him, either.

  “Hello, Brian.”

  “Paula.” He’d always been on the fringes of Carrie’s family. Why hadn’t he gotten to know them better? Why hadn’t he become really integrated into their lives? He didn’t like the picture forming of the man he’d been.

  Paula brushed
her hair away from her face, a gesture similar to one of Carrie’s.

  Opening the refrigerator, she took out a pitcher of orange juice and poured herself a glass. “Carrie was in counseling for over two years,” she said, picking up the conversation she’d obviously been listening to.

  “It apparently helped,” Brian said. “I never guessed something so traumatic had happened to her.”

  “She worked hard at overcoming it all. The anger. The pain. The violation. Probably a lot of resentment toward me.”

  “She doesn’t resent you,” he said automatically.

  “She did. What I made her do came between us until just recently. I think that’s because of adopting the baby.”

  After Paula sat at the table with them, silence filled every corner of the kitchen.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Brian asked, knowing most of the answer, but trying to discover if there was more.

  “Did she ever mention Foster Garrett?” Paula asked him.

  “No. Who was that?”

  “He was the first man she dated when she was ready to date again.”

  Brian hated the thought of Carrie being connected to another man. “Was it serious?”

  “Carrie was serious,” Paula admitted. “But when she told Foster about the rape and the abortion, he decided he didn’t want to see her anymore. She’d come home one weekend after the breakup, and I could see something was troubling her. She said the tone of his voice after she explained all of it told her she was damaged goods, not fit for someone like him. Was that the impression you gave her last night? Is that why she left?”

  There was anger in Paula’s tone, and Brian knew if he had been Carrie’s parent, he’d be angry, too. “I honestly don’t know what impression I gave her. We’d just gotten home after talking to the detective. She just let it all spill out. I was angry, hurt, feeling betrayed.”

  “Betrayed?” Paula’s voice was harsher now. “Carrie never did anything to betray you. She was trying to protect you. Granted, she was trying to protect herself, too, and her marriage.”