“So you want to get together for a game sometime?”
Gideon’s hesitation was long enough to make Nathan believe his brother was looking for a reasonably civil way to reject the offer. Instead he said, “Yeah, okay. We’ll do that sometime.”
It certainly wasn’t an enthusiastic response, nor had he made any specific plans, but he hadn’t closed the door Nathan had so tentatively opened. Nathan took some encouragement from that. “Great. Give me a call sometime.”
“Sure. Is there anything else, or can I get back to work now?”
“Go back to work. I just wanted to say hi.”
“Okay. See you around.” Just as Nathan was preparing to hang up, Gideon added gruffly, “Thanks for calling.”
A dial tone sounded in Nathan’s ear almost before Gideon finished speaking. Nathan stared for a moment at the receiver, disproportionately pleased by his brother’s parting words, yet wondering if they had really meant anything.
Was Gideon really glad that Nathan stubbornly kept in touch or was it just something he’d said automatically, trying to be polite? And yet, when had Gideon ever done anything just to be polite?
He punched in a new set of numbers before he had a chance to talk himself out of doing so. His sister was not an early riser, and the hoarseness of her voice let him know he had awakened her. “Hi, Deb, it’s me. Sorry if I called too early.”
He could envision her pushing her blond hair out of her face, frowning and struggling to sound awake and coherent. “I wasn’t asleep,” she lied blatantly. “What’s wrong, Nathan?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk to you a minute.”
“What about?”
“I just talked to Gideon. He said you’d been calling him about me.”
“I only called him twice,” she replied a bit defensively. “I wanted to know if he’d made an effort to talk you out of ruining our mother’s life, but he said it was none of his business what you do. I knew you wouldn’t listen to me, but I thought maybe you’d listen to Gideon if he would make the effort.”
“Deborah, I’m not doing anything to ruin Mother’s life. Stop being so melodramatic.”
Her indignant huff sounded clearly through the phone lines. “You’re wrong, of course. Mother is pretty much devastated by what you’ve done. She told me that every time she goes out in public she dreads the possibility of running into you. And she wonders if everyone who knows what you’ve done is staring at her and talking about her.”
“Deborah, all I’ve done is take in a little girl who had nowhere else to go. My own sister—and yours, I might add. I can understand Mom having a little trouble dealing with the circumstances of Isabelle’s conception, but I am having trouble understanding why you are taking such a hard line. You’ve always liked kids, Deborah. I can’t imagine that you would seriously advocate putting any little girl out on the streets, especially your own flesh and blood.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested, the quiver in her voice betraying that his criticism had hurt. “I’m hardly advocating any such thing. I wholeheartedly agree that a good home should be found for her—just not there, right under Mother’s nose.”
“So you’re saying I should move away? Just sell my firm and settle quietly somewhere else, where none of you will ever have to risk seeing me again?”
“Damn it, Nathan, you make it sound as if we’ve thrown you out of the family! You’re the one who initiated this situation. You’ve made your choice between your family and a new family, just like—”
Her words stopped abruptly, leaving a brittle, painful silence in their place.
“Just like Dad did?” Nathan leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. “That’s what you and Mom are thinking? That I’ve betrayed and abandoned the family, the same way Dad did?”
“You’ve made it quite clear that you’ve chosen Kimberly’s daughter over us,” his sister replied stiffly. “You just said that you’re willing to move away with her and never see the rest of us again.”
“Like Dad did.” Nathan shook his head in frustration. “De
borah, you can’t really believe the situation is the same. Dad was a married man who betrayed his family for another woman—a woman who knew he already had a family and fell in love with him, anyway. I’ve never said I approved of the choices they made, but they were adults. They had plenty of other options. Isabelle’s just a baby. She had absolutely no say in anything that happened to her.”
Trying to keep his voice low despite the intensity of his emotions, he straightened and began to pace with the phone. “Yeah, I could have given her up. That’s what I went to California to do. The only person I talked to who was interested in adopting her wanted my professional advice about how to get around the legal safeguards of a little girl’s trust fund.”
Deborah was silent for so long he wondered if she had thrown the phone aside. Was she even listening?
When she finally spoke, her tone was uncharacteristically subdued. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I know you believe you did the right thing, and I know it hurts you that your family hasn’t been more supportive. But, I need more time, okay? I just can’t deal with it right now. Especially not today.”
So she, too, was aware of the date. “I haven’t left the family, Deborah,” he said, his tone more gentle now. “I haven’t betrayed anyone, including Mom. And I haven’t chosen Isabelle over any of you. I just couldn’t abandon her—any more than I could any of the rest of you.”
“Maybe I’ll understand that someday. I don’t know if Mom ever will.”