Shannon's Daughter (44 page)

Their
lovemaking that night was unlike any in the past.
 
There was a new, feverish intensity in Peg, a
frenetic determination to pleasure and be pleasured.
 
She was at once demanding and vulnerable, as
though she half-expected him to refuse her.
 
He found himself distracted by the obvious loss of weight, as beneath
his hands he felt the outline of her spine and ribs.
 
Within the narrowed contours of her pale face,
her eyes appeared huge, a shadow of something pained and wary present even in
passion.
 
Peg, who had always been so
self-assured, appeared to watch him as they made love, seeking approval.
 

“You do
want me,” she breathed against his neck when they finally collapsed, sated and
drenched in sweat.
 

“Of
course I do.
 
I think I’ve made that
abundantly clear any number of times.”

“But
things change.
 
I was afraid. . .”

“Peg,
nothing has changed here.
 
What is it
that’s changed with you?”

She
sighed, turning her head away from him.
 
“I don’t want to talk about it now.
 
For tonight, just let me sleep in your arms.
 
Please?
 
I feel so safe when you’re holding me.”
 

He
gathered her closer, stroking her hair until she finally relaxed against
him.
 
If his heart hammered at the
questions she’d refused to answer, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing,
whatever she was running from,
she
had run to him.
 

Chapter
Forty-one

He woke
to roaming, insistent hands and the tingle of teeth on his earlobe.
 
Without opening his eyes, he smiled.
 
“You didn’t get enough of that last night?”

“That
was last night.”
 
When she would have
rolled on top of him, he held her off.

“Not so
fast.
 
I think we both need food, not to
mention a shower, before we start that again.”

She
fell back on the sheets with a groan.
 
“You’re no fun, you know that?”

“That’s
not what you said last night.
 
Let me
see, if my memory serves you said I was wonderful, amazing and what was that
other
thing.
. .insatiable?”

“No,
you said
I
was insatiable.”

“Ah,
well, it goes both ways.
 
You had me
responding in kind more times than I could count.”

“And
yet now you want food more than you want me?”
 
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in mocking consideration.
 
“Fine!
 
I get the shower first.”
 
Throwing aside the sheet, she got as far as
the edge of the bed before he hauled her back.
 
Arms wrapped tightly around her waist, he knelt behind her with his face
in the curve of her shoulder.
 

“I have
no idea what brought you here, brat.
 
But
I hope you know how happy I am to see you.
 
Life without you is not quite living, I’m afraid.”

She
sagged against him, humming softly.
 
“I
missed you so much, Kendall.
 
Please
don’t send me away.”

“Not a
chance.
 
I’m a selfish, greedy brute, and
now you’re here, I intend to take full advantage.”
 
He considered giving in to the moment’s
opportunity, but instead gave her a little shove.
 
“Shower while I find us something to eat.”
 

He
stepped into his wrinkled trousers and padded to the kitchen.
 
“I don’t suppose you’ve done any shopping
since you’ve been here?”

From
the bathroom, Peg responded, “No.
 
There’s not much here.
 
I ate the
last of the canned soup last night.”
 

A brief
futile search and he called back, “I’ll run out to the market.
 
Unless you’d like to go
somewhere for breakfast?”

“No.”
 
She reappeared in the door, a towel loosely
draped around her.
 
The only word to
describe the look in her eyes was fearful.
 
“I don’t want to go out.”

Unable
to resist, he crossed the room to her, laying a hand on her tangled hair.
 
“I won’t be long.
 
And after we’ve eaten, we have the whole day
here, nowhere to go,
no
one to see.
 
But we do need to talk, love.
 
All right?”

She
nodded solemnly, not quite meeting his eyes.
 
“All right.”

They ate
a leisurely if mostly silent breakfast.
 
Kendall
showered and unpacked his bags.
 
For much
of the time he was busy puttering around the flat, Peg sat on the couch staring
at a book but rarely turning a page.
 
Finally taking a seat beside her, he took the book from her hands and
set it aside.

“It’s
time to talk, sweetheart.”

“Is
it?”

“Yes.
 
You didn’t come all this way just to sit in
silence.
 
What are your plans?”

She
shrugged half-heartedly.
 
“I don’t have
any.”

“I
see.
 
You just threw some things in a
suitcase, hopped on a plane for England with nothing in mind.
 
Surely New York wasn’t that boring?”

“No.”
 
She finally looked up to meet his eyes,
clearly begging for a reprieve.

“What
happened?
 
Was it a man?”

She
blinked in surprise.
 
“No,
of course not.
 
Why would you ask
that?”

“You
haven’t written in over six weeks.
 
I
figured you’d met someone and just couldn’t bring yourself to tell me.”

“Oh,
Kendall, no!
 
That’s the farthest thing from the truth.”
 
A sad little laugh caught in her throat.
 
“The truth isn’t nearly so simple.”

“Then what
is the truth?”

“It’s
almost funny, really.
 
I used to take
such pleasure in pretending.”
 
When he
made no response, she sighed to fill the silence.
 
“Turns out I’ve been pretending all my life.
 
I just didn’t know it.”

She
looked away again, but this time he took her chin firmly, forcing her to meet
his eyes.
 
“I’ve never been very good at
riddles.
 
Why don’t you start at the beginning?
 
Just tell me what happened.”

“All
right.”
 
She drew a deep breath, blinking several
times.
 
“Remember I told you I was going
to redecorate the house this summer?”
 
He
nodded.
 
“Among other things, I was
determined to redo my mother’s rooms.
 
It
was long overdue, but I also wanted those rooms for myself, so I’d have more
space.
 
Mrs. Leary said she’d help me go
through everything, the clothes and books and all the things that hadn’t been
touched since she died.”

She
paused, her eyes shifting to a spot over his shoulder, as though she were
envisioning the scene.
 
When she didn’t
go on, he prompted gently, “I remember the day you showed me those rooms.”

With
another sigh, she went on, “I didn’t want to keep much of what was in there,
but there was a French writing desk I’ve always loved.
 
I must have looked in the drawers a hundred
times, but I guess I’d never noticed the little book tucked at the very back of
one of them.”
 
Holding out her hands, she
seemed to be weighing some invisible object.
 
“It was one of those cheap leatherette diaries, the kind with a locking
clasp.
 
I couldn’t find the key, so I
used a hairpin to open it.
 
It was so
innocent, really.
 
Just a young woman
writing about her adventures in New York City, her ambitions and her disappointments.
 
I was fascinated with the details and I took
it to my room to read it all the way through.”
 

When
she paused, swallowing back what he suspected were tears, he rubbed a hand
across her shoulders.
 
“It seemed sort of
mystical that it had been there all my life, and I’d never found it until
now.
 
I didn’t tell Mrs. Leary about
it.
 
I wanted it to be our little secret,
my mother’s and mine.”
 
Losing the battle,
she wiped at the tears that pooled and flowed down her cheeks.
 
“She wrote about being in love, but she never
used the man’s name.
 
She wrote about
making love with him, about being a little bit ashamed, but how it would be all
right, because they were going to get married as soon as he’d made enough money
with some mysterious business deal in Chicago.
 
Then there were a lot of blank pages, over three weeks without any
entries.
 
I thought at first she’d just
stopped writing and I almost put the book back.
 
But then I leafed to the back.
 
She’d written one last time, several pages.
 
The man she’d loved had been killed in an
accident, she didn’t say how, and she was going to marry another man, a man she
described as kind and understanding, a man who could give her everything a
woman could dream of.
 
A
man who would be a good father to her child.”

While
he tried to piece together what she was saying, he waited, laying a hand over
hers where she’d clenched them so tightly in her lap that the knuckles were
white.
 

“I was
so confused.
 
I read it through again,
thinking I’d missed something that would explain it all.
 
But I knew the man she was in love with was
not.
. .Michael Shannon.
 
I finally went to Mrs. Leary.
 
At
first, she wouldn’t tell me anything, but when I threatened to go to him, she
gave in.”
 
Her eyes drifted to meet his
and she shook her head slowly.
 
“Isn’t it
ironic that the things I was so sure of, the things that dictated the way I’d planned
to live my life, were all a lie?
 
It
turns out I’m not Michael Shannon’s daughter after all.”

He’d
guessed, but hearing her say the words was nonetheless shocking.
 
The first thing to come to mind was to
irrationally argue against what must be the truth.
 
“But you even look like a Shannon.
 
You and Agnes could pass for sisters.”

She
smiled,
a bitter little twitch of her lips.
 
“Oh, I’m still a Shannon.
 
My father was a man named Joseph Shannon, a
cousin from Dublin who came to New York to work for the bank.
 
Mrs. Leary said he was a nice enough young
man, but he was restless, ambitious.
 
He
left the bank and went to Chicago, some get-rich-quick scheme, she said.
 
He was killed in a bus crash coming back to
New York.
 
In her hour of need, my mother
turned to his wealthy cousin for help, and the rest is history.”

He
tightened the arm around her shoulders, noting that her hands were trembling
and she’d lost what little color there’d been in her face.
 
“It must have been a terrible shock.”

She
nodded sadly.
 
“It was all so strange.
 
You see, at first, I asked Mrs. Leary if she
knew he wasn’t my father, without mentioning the diary.
 
She got so angry, asking me who told me.
 
Adamson got in on the conversation and before
I knew what was happening, they were telling me that I couldn’t believe what some
man named O’Hara said.
 
That he was a
liar and a blackmailer.
 
I was so
overwhelmed with what they were saying, it took me a while to explain that I’d
found her diary.
 
But by then I knew
there was more to the story.”

A chill
shot down his spine.
 
“Brendan
O’Hara.”
 

Her
eyes widened in horrified accusation.
 
“You knew?”

He
shook his head violently.
 
“No!
 
Not about your father.
 
Remember when I was in New York, a man came
up to you in the theater that night?”
 
She nodded slowly, her eyes narrowing.
 
“I told Adamson because I knew he’d upset you.
 
He and Mrs. Leary both implied he was someone
who might know something about your mother’s past, but they never told me
what.
 
Adamson seemed to be accustomed to
people trying to blackmail your father, which I admit I found disturbing, but
for all I knew, it was simply because he was wealthy.
 
My only concern at the time was looking out
for you.”

“It
turns out he’s been extorting money for years.
 
He and Joseph Shannon were friends, or business partners, or
something.
 
This O’Hara had pictures and
letters he’d gotten when Joseph died.
 
I
guess every time he got low on cash, he’d pull out something new and threaten
to show it to me unless my father paid him for it.”
 
She dropped her head in her hands.
 
“I can’t believe he was foolish enough to pay
this man rather than just tell me the truth.
 
I can’t understand how he could live a
lie,
let
me live a lie, all this time.”

“He was
trying to protect you.
 
And the memory of your mother.”

“But in
the end, I found out straight from her, didn’t I?”

“I take
it Michael knows everything now?”

“Adamson
told him.
 
I think he was afraid I’d be
too emotional if I tried.
 
He was worried
that it would make him sick, but he really took it pretty well.
 
He tried to explain it all to me.
 
He even apologized for not telling me sooner
himself.
 
He says he loved my mother and
had she lived, they would have raised me just the same way he’s tried to
do.
 
Mrs. Leary even says my mother fell
in love with him before she died.
 
But
none of that changes the fact that I’m not his daughter, that he let me believe
I was something I’m not.”