The Return of Brody McBride (21 page)

Brody actually took a step back, covered his mouth with his hand, and slid his fingers over his jaw before dropping his hand to his side again. “He said that?”

“Whatever else was between you, he was proud of his sons. In that small moment, I saw it in his eyes, Brody. He regretted not being a good father to you, but he knew you and Owen had taken what little he thought he’d given to you and made something of it.

“After Dawn was born, he came to see me again. He stared at her for the longest time. Barely said more than a few words to me. Then, he picked her up and held her in front of him. He apologized to her for playing a part in your leaving,” she said, her eyes never leaving his.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t believe what she was saying could really be real.

“He turned to me then, to let me know the apology was meant for me, too. He sang her a lullaby, said it was one he used to sing to you and Owen when you were small.”

Brody choked back the lump in his throat. “He liked to sing when he was drunk,” he said, filling up the awkward moment.

“He had a nice voice. Dawn fell asleep, content in his arms. He left after that. I didn’t see him again until the day after I brought Autumn home. He stared at her with this strange look on his face. When he spoke, it was with such reverence. He told me she looked just like your mother.”

“She does. When I saw her, I was taken back to my childhood when my mother was around.”

“He didn’t stay long. Before he left, he held her for a few minutes, then looked at me with so much sadness in his eyes. He said, ‘The worst thing a man can do is leave a good woman, or make her leave him. You’re a good woman, Rain. Brody left too much of himself behind. He’ll be back, or spend the rest of his days in misery as it should be for any man willing to let love go.’ I’ll never forget his words, or the way he said them.”

Brody turned away toward the dark, his back to the truth. He couldn’t believe his father had been so different with Rain from the man he knew.

“Brody, did you ever wonder why your father drank so much? Maybe it would help you to reconcile who your father was if you considered how he truly felt about your mother. I don’t know much about their relationship, but I gather he loved her very much and didn’t know how to show her, or tell her. It’s my impression she was very different from Owen’s mother, softer, sweeter of nature. Maybe a counterbalance to your father’s more gruff and hard personality. I think he regretted damaging her and driving her away. I think he lived in misery, trying to drink away his memory of her and what he’d done, because he’d let love go.”

“What does this have to do with anything between us?”

“I don’t want to see you make the same mistake your father made when he pushed your mother away and spent the rest of his life punishing himself for letting her go. I don’t want you to punish yourself for what happened, or take it out on the people around you. I don’t want to see you turn your back on us because you’re having a hard time right now.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing, punishing myself?”

“I think you believe you deserve to be punished, and for more than just what happened with us.”

She was talking about what happened while he was in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I haven’t been a very good man,” he said by way of an explanation and an excuse.

“I don’t believe that at all. You’ve made mistakes. Ones you’re willing to take responsibility for and try to make right.”

“I do want to make things right with you. I want that more than anything. And if you tell me how to do that, I’ll do it, anything to make you happy and love me again.”

“Again isn’t necessary. It’s always been, Brody. But Roxy is still standing between us, and I need to know if you’ll stand by my side when she comes back for Autumn.”

“What makes you think she will after all this time?”

Rain held up the check in her hand. “She’ll want you to give her one of these, too. She’ll take as much as you’ll allow her to take from you. Once she’s used it all up, she’ll be back for more.”

“How will she know about the money?”

“If I cash this check, everyone in town will know about it in a matter of days.” He frowned and she went on. “The teller will mention to someone I deposited a huge check drawn on your account back east. She won’t even have to say how much, it’ll just be out there. One of Roxy’s spies will hear about it and call her. They’ve already told her you’re here and about the article in the paper, listing all your accomplishments. She probably already knows about you fixing this place up and hiring a contractor to build an addition. This will only add to her curiosity and plotting to find out how she can get what she can from you and use Autumn to do it.”

“Now tell me what you’re avoiding saying and used that little story about my dad to delay telling me. Why did you give Roxy money?”

“I’d think that’s obvious. I paid her for Autumn.”

“She sold you Autumn, my daughter,” he said, not believing anyone could be so cruel and callous.

“Yes. The scene in the grocery store, her breaking down under the stress of being pregnant and realizing you weren’t coming back. Also the fact I told her I had no idea where you were and didn’t care.”

“Is that how you really felt?” he asked, afraid she did and might still.

“I think you know it’s not, but I needed her and everyone else to see I was okay on my own.”

“Eighteen, alone, and pregnant. Yeah, I can see why you’d want to convince them and yourself you could do it.”

“I did do it, but it wasn’t easy. Anyway, she cornered me and after a few choice words, she told me she wanted to get rid of the baby. She made it plain she’d do anything to be rid of it. I had a life inside of me, could feel our child growing and moving. One look at her round stomach and I knew just how precious that life was, it was my child’s sibling.”

“You couldn’t have known that for sure,” he bluntly pointed out, hating the fact he’d slept with Roxy along with a horde of others. None of them meaning more to her than the pleasure of the moment, or a means to an end.

“I couldn’t take the chance the baby wasn’t yours, so I made her an offer. I told her if she kept the baby, I’d pay her. Since we were in the store, she agreed to meet me later and discuss the details. We met privately and discussed terms.”

“Terms. Like it was nothing more than a contract to be negotiated, not an unborn child. Disgusting.” The thought so foul, he actually tasted his bitter revulsion. “It cost you everything you had.” The hate he held for Roxy spilled out with his every word.

“Twenty-five thousand to get her to carry out the pregnancy,” Rain confirmed. “Dawn came two weeks early. I like to think she wanted to be your first, even though you’d gotten Roxy pregnant before me,” she said.

He didn’t know how she could look back on this mess with any kind of humor.

“Roxy went into labor fifteen days later. Pop watched Dawn while I went to see Roxy and the baby at the hospital the next morning. I took one look at Autumn in the nursery and I knew she was Dawn’s sister.”

“They don’t look exactly alike,” he pointed out.

“Not exactly, but there was no doubt she was yours. So I went into Roxy’s room and negotiated.” Rain’s voice turned hard, which meant Roxy had really stuck it to her, made it impossible for Rain to do anything but give in to her demands. Roxy probably made sure if Rain didn’t take the deal, she’d do something to Autumn, like put her up for adoption or sell her to some desperate couple. Worse, Roxy might have kept Autumn for spite. He had no doubt his daughter wouldn’t have been safe and loved in Roxy’s care. A chill went up his back just thinking about it.

“Roxy wanted out of this town. She owned the bar, every dime she had invested in the business. Whatever else she’d made, she’d squandered away. So I paid her for Autumn and gave her a way out.”

“She hated knowing you had plans to leave for college. I’ll bet she gloated about you having to stay here.”

“And a lot of other things,” Rain confirmed.

He just bet Roxy had really gone after Rain, embellishing what happened between the two of them. He wanted to hit something.

“I paid her the money she needed to get the hell out of town. I wanted her gone from my sight for good.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand for the pregnancy. Thirty-five thousand for her to give me Autumn.”

“She sold my child for sixty thousand dollars.” Disgusted with himself for ever laying a hand on the woman, or letting her get under his skin and using him.

“Yes,” Rain began, only he cut her off.

“How the hell have you been making ends meet?”

“It’s not easy. I do okay at the shop, but there have been a few times Owen bailed me out of a tight spot. I owe him about three thousand dollars. Pop helped me pay for the private detective I hired to track you down. So thanks for the check, that’ll go a long way to paying Owen and my father back for their help.”

“I’ll pay them whatever you owe.”

“I feel strange taking your money as it is. I’ll pay them.”

“This is my fault, my mess to clean up,” he told her, and meant it.

“There’s more, Brody. Roxy came back to town when the girls were three. She’d gone through all the money I’d given her. She came back, thinking you owed her, blaming you for all the bad in her life. This time, she went to your father to find you. Your father could be nasty and meaner than a rattlesnake when he wanted to be.”

“Truer words,” he said, agreeing with her.

“She told me later he laughed at her and told her if you wouldn’t come back for me and your children, you certainly wouldn’t come back for her. It’s all she needed to turn her cruelty on your father.”

Yeah, he knew all about it. “She got him drunk,” he said. “Well, more drunk than usual and sent him home. He hit a deer and the tree and died.”

“After, she worked herself into a rage and came to my house.”

“The cops were called.” Small towns, word got around quickly.

“A neighbor overheard us fighting. She tried to take Autumn. When I wouldn’t let her, she asked for more money.”

“Money you didn’t have,” he guessed.

“Not the kind of money she was asking for, and I didn’t have any idea how to contact you. Both those things really pissed her off, but not as much as Autumn coming down the stairs and calling me Mommy.”

“Like she cared,” he spat out. “She sold you her child.”

“I got her out of the house with a promise to scrape together whatever I could.”

“Why would you pay her more?”

“I had no choice. All she had to do was take Autumn. Legally, she’s her mother and has every right to her child.”

“Any judge would have given you custody after they found out you’d paid Roxy for Autumn.”

“How could I prove it? I paid her cash. She never signed anything giving me legal custody, or allowing me to adopt her. All she’d have to do is tell the judge she asked me to care for Autumn, but wanted her back now.”

“What a mess.”

“It gets even worse. The next day, she snuck into the house and took Autumn. I’m telling you, Brody, there is nothing scarier than having your child go missing. I was frantic. Dawn saw Roxy take her, so I called the police. They sent an officer to the house, but once I explained who Roxy was to Autumn, they shut me down. I didn’t have any legal right to keep Roxy from taking Autumn. I was able to get them to agree to find her and make sure Autumn was safe. Not any great comfort, because it would be a low priority since there was no reason to believe Roxy would harm her own child.”

His heart slammed into his chest and thrashed against his ribs. The thought of Autumn at Roxy’s mercy made him sick. He could only imagine the pain and anxiety and fear Rain must have felt not knowing where her daughter was or if she’d ever get her back.

“How did you get Autumn back?”

“Roxy waited three days to call me. It was agony not knowing anything about Autumn, or if I’d ever see her again. Dawn was a mess without her sister. She stopped talking the second day, and on day three she stopped eating. Brody, I’m telling you, I’ve never felt fear like I did watching my child living in misery, knowing my other child was out there with that selfish, conniving bitch.”

“There’s no end to the amount of pain I’ve caused you.”

“Brody, stop doing that. Stop taking everything that’s happened onto your shoulders when Roxy has a lot of the weight to carry all on her own.”

He dismissed her words all together. “How did you get Autumn back?”

“Roxy asked me to meet her at a fleabag motel outside Solomon. If you think the cabin looked like a dump, it had nothing on this place.”

“This is where she had our daughter?”

Rain put her hand on his chest over his heart. “Thank you for that, for believing she’s mine and yours.”

He took her hand and kissed her palm. “There’s no getting around the truth. Is there, Rain?”

“No. I guess not.”

Rain sucked in a shuddering breath and spilled the rest. “Roxy was there with some seedy-looking guy. The room . . . Oh, Brody, just the thought of Autumn being stuck there for three days in all that smoke and filth and seeing and listening to Roxy and that guy smoke and drink themselves into oblivion. Roxy was a complete stranger to her. She was so scared.”

He lost Rain to her memories and the emotions she couldn’t hide from her expressive eyes. Offering what little comfort he could now, he kissed her palm again and held her hand to his heart, waiting for her to go on.

“Long story short, I paid Roxy another eight thousand dollars. It wasn’t as much as she wanted, but it was all I could come up with, everything I’d saved for the girls to go to school someday.”

Still holding her hand, he gave it a squeeze to let her know he understood how important that money was for their future. Pennies scraped together by Rain to make sure the girls had every opportunity.

“The whole time, I was frantic. I didn’t see Autumn anywhere in the room. I thought maybe they’d made her wait in the bathroom. Then Roxy went to the closet door and opened it. Autumn was curled up in the corner in the dark.”

Tears streamed down Rain’s face, every one of them tore his heart to shreds. “She’s just a little girl, afraid of the dark and monsters. I can’t imagine how terrifying it was for her to be locked in there for three days.”