Unbreak My Heart (29 page)

"I think, a long time ago, her name was Megan Lynn Bennett."

Stephen let out a breath in a dizzying rush, thinking it couldn't possibly be true. Megan was dead. She'd been dead for a very long time. He'd heard that she was pregnant when she left town, but then there had been all sorts of rumors. He hadn't heard anything about her being pregnant when she'd been found dead, so he'd assumed that she wasn't, although she'd been gone a long time before she died. He supposed it was possible she'd given birth before she died.

"When's your birthday?" Stephen said.

"March 6, 1986."

"Megan Bennett died February 15, 1986."

"Did she? Or did she just want everybody to think she died?"

Stephen took a step back, shaking his head, thinking it was something to be bested by a thirteen-year-old in verbal combat twice in one day. He was simply stunned. For a second, he couldn't think. Of all the ways to explain that little discrepancy...

He couldn't help but think of Allie's mysterious letter, of Mitch Wilson who claimed someone had threatened to kill him if he asked any more questions about Megan.

After talking to him, Stephen spent the morning having the man checked out as best he could. He found nothing to indicate Mitch Wilson was anything but what he seemed—a man who ran a successful restaurant and bar in Lexington after moving here years ago to work his way through school at UK. He hadn't been in any trouble since he was a juvenile, and even then it had been nothing serious. Stephen hadn't found any previous ties to Megan or Kentucky. Which had him wondering what in the world Mitch Wilson was doing here. Now he wondered... had the man come here asking questions about Megan's death or looking for her? Because he had reason to believe she wasn't dead?

Of course, that was a question for another moment. Right now he had one very upset teenage boy to deal with.

"Why would Megan want everyone to believe that?"

"You tell me," Casey said, as changeable as the wind and once again the fragile-looking teenager. "Why'd she leave in the first place?"

"She didn't tell you?"

"She didn't tell me much of anything."

"Wait a minute," Stephen said. "Let's back up here. What's your mother's name?"

"Margaret Addison," he said. "But everybody calls her Meggie."

Stephen nodded, feeling worse by the minute.
Meggie.
He'd heard people call Megan that. "How old is she?"

"Old," Casey insisted. "Thirtysomething?"

"That old, huh?" Stephen thought of one more possibility. "Casey, are you adopted?"

The boy paled. "What?"

"The woman who raised you. The woman you think of as your mother. Could she be your adoptive mother? Could Megan Bennett have been your birth mother?"

The boy turned the color of chalk. For a minute he looked like he was going to be sick. "I don't know."

"Okay." Stephen put his hand on the kid's shoulder, to steady him, to try to apologize for springing that question on him so abruptly. "It was just an idea. Don't worry about that part of it right now."

Still, Casey looked positively ill.

"Let's go back to what you do know, okay?" Stephen tried. "Your mother, Margaret Addison, one day she... What? Told you her real name was Megan Lynn Bennett?"

"She was dying," Casey blurted out. "She hadn't told me much of anything until then. She said we didn't have any family. But... she was dying, and I guess she wanted to clear her conscience first. People do that, right? When they're dying?"

"I suppose," Stephen conceded. But he didn't think this was the truth. He thought the kid was lying through his teeth now, and he wished he'd gotten some more information out of the deputy, who called to tell Stephen he might have ID'd the runaway boy. A kid named Casey Addison had been reported missing from Birmingham, Alabama, and matched the description they had of Allie's runaway boy.

"So," Stephen continued, "on her deathbed, this woman who'd raised you said her real name was Megan Bennett, and that she was from Dublin, Kentucky."

Casey nodded, unconvincingly.

"What else?"

"Not much. She was pretty messed up. She got shot." He shrugged again, as if to say it was just one of those things. "We didn't have much time to talk. She said if anything happened to her, I should come here."

"Here? To this town?"

"Dublin, Kentucky, 307 Willow Lane. She said I should find Janet Bennett, that she was my grandmother. I couldn't believe it. All this time I had a grandmother, and she didn't even tell me."

"And then what happened."

"She died. I got sent to a foster home, but I didn't like it there. I didn't see why I should stay there if I had a grandmother. So I took off to find her." The kid kicked at the dirt with his oversize shoes. "So... if that lady was my grandmother, that means Allie's my aunt, right?"

"She would be," Stephen conceded, even as he dismissed nearly everything the kid said. It had the feel of a lie that got bigger with every question Stephen asked him. Except for the part about the adoption. The kid's reaction had been frighteningly genuine on that question. He'd been so scared, it had nearly made him sick.

Could some part of his story be true? Could this boy be Megan's son? One born right before she died and adopted by a woman named Margaret Addison from Birmingham, Alabama?

Stephen would love to believe that—complicated as it would be. He would love to find out that Megan had a child who was standing here in front of him. Because he cared about Megan, and he felt something even bigger and stronger for Allie. He knew what it would mean to her to have part of her family back. Allie, who ran on emotion alone and would want to believe everything Casey had to say, without a shred of proof.

"So," Casey said. "What did they do to my mother? To make her run away, I mean. Was it 'cause of me? 'Cause she was pregnant?"

"I don't know," Stephen said.

Casey rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."

"She didn't tell me, okay? I don't think she told anybody."

Casey glared at him.

"I'm not lying to you," Stephen said. "I don't know."

The boy looked mad as hell. God, did he look a little bit like Megan, as well? Stephen ran a hand through his hair and tried to think. It was just as hard as it had been a minute ago when Casey dropped his bomb.

"You helped her get out of town," Casey argued. "And nobody saw her with anyone else that summer. I know because Allie's friend said so."

"What?" Stephen asked, thinking the situation couldn't possibly get any more complicated.

"I was at the house today. Allie's house... I went back to get my laptop. You found my laptop, right?"

"I found it. Tell me about Allie's friend."

"Carolyn. I heard her and Allie talking on the porch. Carolyn said everybody was sure Megan was carrying your baby, 'cause you're the only one anybody saw her with that summer."

"Carolyn Simms told Allie that Megan was pregnant with my baby?"

"Yeah. Explain that."

"Shit." That was it. Things couldn't get much worse than that. He should have told Allie this morning, but it wasn't something a man said to a woman after he'd just made love to her for the first time.
By the way, half the town thinks I got your sister pregnant fifteen years ago.

"Shit," he said again.

"Yeah," Casey said. "She's probably dying to see you right now."

Stephen shook his head back and forth again. He had thought he could control this situation, like he controlled everything else. He had thought he could dish out the information a little at a time, all the while winning her friendship, her trust, and keeping his father and his brother the hell away from her.

He'd blown it all to hell instead.

"So," Casey said. "What do we do now,
Dad?"

Stephen looked up and saw one angry, confused teenager standing in front of him, one who was obviously in dire need of a little male guidance and some manners.

"You and I are going to have to cut a deal," he said.

* * *

Allie sat on the floor of her parents' bedroom, stuff strewn all around her, when she heard the car pull into the driveway.

Anybody but him, she prayed. Anybody but Stephen.

He rang the doorbell, called out her name. She thought childishly of hiding in the house, hoping he'd go away, but she knew he wouldn't. Her rental car was in the driveway. If she didn't let him in, he'd come inside himself and start looking for her. Which meant she had to deal with him. She had to calmly, firmly send him away.

Allie shoved open the window and called out, "I'm up here." She took her key ring from her pocket and threw it down to him, thinking she'd stay right here, keep the length of the room and all of this stuff between them. "Come on in. I couldn't get to the door right now if I had to."

She sat back down, all sorts of papers and clothes and jewelry in piles all around her, thinking she'd simply sit here and work like a woman possessed while he said whatever he wanted to say. She would be calm and cool and rational, when a part of her wanted to scream at him, wanted to drag him in here and make him look at this room, make him look at what it was doing to her to be here, to not know anything for sure. Let him watch her dig through her mother's papers like a madwoman, searching for some clue about her sister's life, when he probably knew everything and had simply chosen not to tell her.

Allie brushed an impatient hand across her cheeks, angrily swiping away tears. How dare he do this to her? How dare he make her care about a man she suspected must not even exist, a man he made up to put her at ease? To cast some sort of spell over her so he could control her, control what she found out about her own family and the things she believed and everything she felt.

Damn him.

"Allie?"

She looked up and found him standing in the doorway, trim and fit and so very handsome in a pair of tan slacks and a dark blue blazer. His gaze flickered from her to the destruction she'd wrought in the room, then came back to her again. He smiled, but she thought he looked a little sad, and she had the strangest feeling that he knew everything. Everything she'd heard that day, everything she felt about him. Somehow, he always knew.

"I brought you a surprise," he said quietly.

She frowned, wondering if he thought of her as a child he could win over with a trinket here and there. Then he stepped aside, and Casey filled the open doorway.

"Hi." Allie felt happy for the first time all day. She fought the urge to get up and run to the boy, to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight, to make him promise never to scare her again by running off.

"Hi." Casey scuffed the toe of his sneakers across the hardwood floor and wouldn't look at her.

"I'm so glad you're back," she said, hating that she automatically looked to Stephen for help. It seemed an ingrained response, from the first time she saw him six days ago. She was scared, and he was here. She needed to cry, he held her. She needed to feel safe and loved, he'd make love to her, lying to her the whole time.

"Casey tells me his mother died a few weeks ago," Stephen said, carefully keeping the distance of the room between them.

"Died?" Allie looked to Casey, who immediately looked away. He'd told her emphatically that he had a home to go to and a mother who loved him very, very much.

"He was in a foster home in Birmingham," Stephen continued, "and he doesn't want to go back. He'd like to stay here for a few days and try to sort out his problems. If that's okay with you."

Allie held her tongue about the contradictions between what Casey had told Stephen and what he'd told Allie. They could sort it out later. For now, she wanted Casey here with her.

Of course, that meant she had to deal with Stephen, too. She had to wonder—was this his true talent? That he could be anything a woman wanted? He could somehow figure out what a woman needed and mold and shape himself to fit her needs? There was nothing he could have given her at the moment that she truly would have appreciated, except bringing Casey to her. Nothing that would have made her even want to talk to him, except to find out what he knew about Casey.

Allie tried to wipe the anger from her expression, and when that didn't work, she settled for looking at Casey instead, who seemed upset and in great need of reassurance. He was only thirteen, just an overgrown boy. She knew because the deputy had called her. From the sketchy, initial report he had, it didn't seem like anyone had even been looking for him until today. And as worried as Stephen had been, Casey hadn't done anything bad at all, except run away.

"I'd like for you to stay," she said.

"You won't call the sheriff?" he asked.

"I wouldn't have called before if I'd known it was you up there." Allie frowned. "You could have told me, you know. I would have helped you."

He said nothing. Stephen glared at the boy a minute longer, and finally Casey said, "I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't mean to. At least not once I got to know you."

Allie laughed at the confession. "You were here all along? From the first night?"

Casey nodded.

"That's all right," Allie said. "I'm guessing you could use some food, a shower, and some clean clothes right about now."

He frowned. "I smell pretty bad, huh?"

"Come on." Allie got to her feet. "My father's clothes are still in the closet. I'm sure we can find something for you to wear."

He looked like a little boy then, and she remembered that he was only thirteen and all alone in the world, just like she was. She wondered what he'd do if she tried to hug him. He looked as if he expected her to reject his apology and send him back out onto the streets.

"Everything's going to be all right," she promised.

Chapter 15