“It is when a gubernatorial candidate leaves his wife and family for a pregnant campaign volunteer half his age.”
“Good lord.” She stared at him. “Your father was a candidate for governor?”
He nodded grimly. “Probably would have won, if he’d have kept his pants zipped for a few more months. He was ahead in the polls, a real favorite of the media.”
“You father was almost governor of Mississippi.” She was stunned that she hadn’t heard about this before, but then, she hadn’t really talked to many locals during her time here. She had been focused almost entirely on Gideon and Isabelle.
He massaged the back of his neck. “Needless to say, the people who had donated countless hours of their time and generous chunks of their paychecks to support his campaign were not happy with him for throwing it all away so late in the game. His party had to scramble to find a replacement candidate—who lost, by the way—and the media had a field day with the gossip. My mother was humiliated, my sister was devastated and many of the locals acted as betrayed as his family felt. It was fairly ugly.”
He had never sounded more lazily Southern, which meant, she decided, that he was hiding a great deal of emotion behind that detached drawl. “I’m sorry, Gideon. That must have been a horrible time for all of you.”
Looking away, he shrugged one shoulder. “We got through it. It wasn’t as hard for me as it was the others, I think, because I was already estranged from my father. And already accustomed to being the subject of local gossip.”
She didn’t entirely believe him. His father’s defection had probably been just as hard for Gideon. He had spent all those years struggling in vain to fit an image of perfection outlined by a man who had been revealed to have major weaknesses of his own. And then Stuart had died before Gideon could resolve any of the issues between them.
How many times had he mentally said goodbye to his father prior to that last, final farewell? And had he grieved each time or had the estrangement been a series of blows that had left permanent scars on his heart?
Because she knew he would resist any offers of sympathy concerning his father, she concentrated on Isabelle instead. “There are people
in this town who still harbor so much resentment against Isabelle’s parents that they would reject an innocent child?”
“Frankly, I was concerned about that when Nathan brought her here. I knew she would hear the gossip eventually, though I never thought it would come this soon. Most of the townspeople took their cues from my mother. At first she was violently opposed to Nathan taking Isabelle in. I think she saw it as a betrayal of his loyalty to her—a painful reminder that he hadn’t cut Dad off after the divorce, the way the rest of us had. She worried that Nathan was making too great a sacrifice by taking responsibility for Isabelle. At the time, Nathan and Caitlin hadn’t become an item yet, and Mom thought Nathan would be raising Isabelle on his own, which he seemed perfectly willing to do.”
“I don’t suppose he felt as though he had any other choice.”
“Actually, he gave some thought to putting her up for adoption when her guardian in California was no longer able to care for her. At the time there seemed to be few other options, and Nathan wasn’t sure he was qualified to take her. But when it came right down to decision time, he couldn’t give her up.”
Just the thought of little Isabelle being turned over to strangers made Adrienne’s stomach clench. “Of course he couldn’t. You would have made the same decision.”
Gideon looked a bit surprised. “I don’t know about that.”
Glancing toward the empty doorway, Adrienne lowered her voice. “Be honest, Gideon. If you had to make a choice right now of taking full responsibility for your sister or giving her up to strangers, never to see her again, you would make the same choice your brother made.”
Obviously, his first instinct was to disagree. She watched as the realization slowly hit him that she was probably right. Now that he had spent time with Isabelle, had grown to know her and care about her, he wouldn’t find it easy to walk away from her.
He wouldn’t like admitting—even to himself—that he’d let his little sister become that important to him. Gideon seemed to view love as a bond and he allowed very few people to have that sort of tie to him. Maybe that was why he’d backed off so quickly after kissing her—not that the kiss had had anything to do with love, she added quickly. He simply didn’t welcome any emotional entanglements, even…well, whatever had spurred that kiss.
“Go talk to her,” she urged, concentrating once more on the problem at hand. “Tell her she is wanted here. You don’t have to go into details if you think that should be left to Nathan, but at least make her feel like she belongs.”
Looking as though he would rather endure a root canal, he shoved a hand through his hair. “Go with me.”
“Wouldn’t you rather talk to her in private? This is family business, after all.”
“It’s not as if there are any secrets left,” he said impatiently. “Come talk to her with me. She’s attached to you, and I don’t always make myself clear.”
If her presence would make this difficult conversation easier for him, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt for her to sit quietly in the background.
Isabelle was curled on the couch when they entered the den, but she wasn’t watching television. She held a book instead. Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, Adrienne noted. She had already learned that it was Isabelle’s favorite book. Adrienne fully identified with turning to a favorite book for comfort during times of stress. She had been doing so for most of her life.
She took the chair farthest from the couch, settling silently into it while Gideon perched awkwardly next to Isabelle. “About what those jerk kids said to you—”
“You mean Danny and Bryson?” she asked.
“Yeah. Danny and Bryson.” He practically spat the names.
“What about them?”
“They’re full of beans.”