A Daughter's Trust

In the end, the score was even. Rick was no more out of breath than his former employee as they headed into the locker room.

“I wish you’d reconsider this baby thing,” Mark said as they sat, a bench apart, untying the shoes that they left in the lockers behind them in between these Friday workouts.

Half an hour had passed since either man had said a word to each other.

“‘This baby thing,’ as you put it, isn’t negotiable,” Rick grunted.

“It’s ludicrous, man. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

Disappointment? That would be a step up from the hell that had been his constant companion since he’d lost Hannah the previous fall.

A darkness that had dissipated, for hours at a time, since he’d heard about the orphaned baby living half an hour away from him. He was meant to do this.

“You really think they’ll give a baby girl to a single guy? Come on, man, they don’t even like to give them to couples who are living together and not married, let alone to a man living alone.”

Rick didn’t bother to respond. He wasn’t just a man. He was Carrie’s uncle.

He stripped off his shirt and shorts, dropped them in a pile in front of his locker and strode to the shower.

The two men had just secured their lockers when Mark spoke again.

“It’s not fair to her, either, is it?” he asked, his chin jutting as he faced Rick across the bench. “To be a stand-in for what you lost?”

“No one, I repeat, no one, will ever replace Hannah.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Mark’s gaze was filled with an empathy the two men didn’t generally share with each other. “You think I don’t know that while you might be breathing and moving, you’re no longer alive? I watched you dust yourself off back in high school, each time you got moved to another family. And then again when Sheila took off. You’ve done it again. You go to work, you rule with your firm but fair hand, but you’ve got no heart.”

“Then you don’t need to worry about me using someone else’s baby to replace my own, do you?”

“I’m worried that you’re going to take a little girl from the chance of a loving, two-parent family, and bring her to a house of grief.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing you don’t think I’d stand a chance getting her, isn’t it?”

“Ah, Rick, come on. This is me. I’m worried about you.”

“Yeah.” Rick was the first to drop his gaze. “I’m kind of worried about me, too. But everything else aside, man, rest assured, I’m positive this is the right thing for me to do.”

Grabbing his keys, he headed for the door.

“MA, DO NOT LET Uncle Sam make you feel guilty about that necklace.” With Carrie on her hip, little newborn William sleeping in his car seat carrier on the floor, and three-month-old Michael napping in a swing, Sue used her free hand to straighten up the family room Saturday morning. Picking up toys. And talking into the Bluetooth her parents had bought her for Christmas the year before.

“That’s what your father says, too,” Jenny told her, “and I know you’re both right. But I’ve spent a good part of my life wishing Sam and I were closer. Looking for something I could do to show him how much I love him. And…”

“He had no business assuming that Grandma’s diamond necklace would go to him.”

Michael sighed, but didn’t wake up.

“Well, he did, actually,” Jenny said.

“We had dinner with your aunt Emily and uncle Sam last night,” Luke added. “He’s ordered Emily and Belle to have nothing to do with Adam and the rest of the Frasers, and wanted your mother to agree to stay away from him, as well—”

“Which, of course,” Jenny interrupted, “I didn’t agree to, but it turns out that our dad told him the diamond would be Sam’s when both he and mom were gone.”

Our dad. Those words took on a whole new world of meaning now that they knew Robert had been Jenny’s dad biologically as well as legally.

Her mother seemed to be taking the deceit a whole lot better than Sue was.

“But Grandma wanted you to have it,” she said now. “Just don’t do anything rash, Ma. Give yourself time to get used to the idea of not having been orphaned. And I’m glad you told him you weren’t going to obey him. You need to get to know Uncle Adam.”