Lina sighed dramatically. “Look, Jett is waiting for me outside—”
“You’re dating a boy named Jet?”
“Are you gonna talk or not? Otherwise—”
“I met your … father when I was about your age.” Madelaine tried to smile. “It’s a story you’ve heard a million times before. I got pregnant and he … he couldn’t leave town fast enough.”
Lina’s blue eyes narrowed. “Did you ever hear from him again?”
Madelaine tried not to remember how long she’d waited for a phone call, a letter, an
ything. Tried to forget how she’d cried every Christmas for years afterward. “No.”
“What’s his name?”
Madelaine knew this was the question that would ruin it all. No matter how she answered, it would be wrong. If she lied, Lina would hate her, and if she answered truthfully, Lina would contact her father. Only he wasn’t the kind of man who’d welcome a midnight “Hi, I’m your daughter” call—if he’d wanted to know his child, he wouldn’t have left in the first place.
If Lina found him, he’d break her heart. A word, a gesture, a little laugh—anything that meant he didn’t care—would kill Lina.
“Well?” Lina demanded.
Madelaine knew she had no choice; this was something she should have done a long, long time ago. But she couldn’t just throw his name out there. Madelaine had to speak to him before Lina did. The thought of it—just the thought of picking up the phone and calling him after all these years—terrified her. It would change everything. God help us all. “I can’t tell you his name right now, but—”
“Don’t.” Lina jerked to her feet and kicked the chair away.
“Let me finish. I can’t tell you his name right now. But I’ll …” It took everything she had inside to form her next words. “I’ll contact him and tell him about you.”
Lina’s eyes widened. A tiny smile plucked at her mouth. “You mean he doesn’t know about me?”
Madelaine thought of all the ways she could answer that question—some angry, some bitter, some sad. In the end, she chose simple honesty. “As far as I know, he doesn’t know you were ever born.”
Lina bit down on her lower lip to stop a smile. Madelaine could see the excitement on her daughter’s face, shining in the bright blue eyes. Lina wanted so desperately to believe that her father was a good man, a loving father who’d been robbed of his chance to parent. “I knew it.”
Madelaine stared at her. Lina hadn’t considered what the words really meant, and Madelaine was glad.
“You promise you’ll tell him?”
“I’ve never lied to you, Lina.”
“Only by omission.”
Madelaine winced. “I’ll tell him.”
“He’ll want to see me,” Lina said, and Madelaine could hear the desire in her daughter’s voice, the need.
Madelaine got to her feet, moved cautiously toward her. When she was close enough to touch her, she stopped, and though she wanted to stroke her baby’s hacked-up hair, she didn’t move, didn’t lift a finger. “He might disappoint you, sweetheart.”
“He won’t,” Lina whispered.
Madelaine couldn’t help herself. She reached out. “Baby, you have to understand—”
“I’m not your baby! It’s you he doesn’t want. You. He won’t disappoint me. You’ll see.”
Lina turned and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her. Madelaine heard her footsteps thundering through the house, then the faraway click of the front door closing.
And she was left, all alone in the room, listening to Helen Reddy. You and me against the world.
Hillhaven Nursing Home lay stretched across the narrow suburban street like a half-toppled pile of children’s building blocks. On a low hill above the tree-lined road, it gazed serenely down on the quiet cul-de-sac. Cropped grass, burnished to an autumn brown by last night’s cold snap, rolled alongside the cement driveway. Behind the six-foot ironwork fence, a few elderly men and women wandered through the dying gardens, talking softly among themselves.