A Daughter's Trust

“Do you want Carrie going to my mother?” Rick asked.

“Come on, pumpkin, it’s time for you to eat,” Sue said, pulling the baby into her arms as she stood.

“I still have five minutes.”

“Do you have more to say?”

Rick didn’t stand. He wasn’t ready to leave. This woman. This home. And he hadn’t done what he’d come to do. “Do you want her going to my mother?”

“I take good care of my children,” Sue said, standing there with his niece cuddled securely in her arms. “And when they leave here, I have to let them go. I don’t think beyond that. If I worried about the future of every baby I care for, if I analyzed the statistics on happy placements, I’d lose my sanity.”

“But you have input before they go. You can influence where they go.”

Spinning around, she crossed the room, rewinding the swing. Checking on the baby still asleep in the carrier. And then she turned back to look at him.

“Your time’s up.”

Rick stood. Pissing her off wasn’t going to help anything. “My mother told me today that scheduled visitations here will be a part of her adoption process.”

Sue Bookman didn’t say anything. Her expression didn’t change, not in any perceptible way. But Rick knew he had her full attention.

She was a mama bear protecting her cubs. The quintessential mother. The kind of woman he’d fall for.

“I wanted you to know who she really is so she doesn’t fool you, too,” he said quietly. And at her continued silence, he added, “You’ll be giving reports to the committee and they’ll listen to you—”

“Get out, Mr. Kraynick.”

He did.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SHE THOUGHT ABOUT Rick Kraynick all through dinner with her parents—in spite of repeated remonstrations to herself to get the man out of her system. Carrie’s Uncle Rick, with his compelling combination of determination and vulnerability, would have stolen her heart—back when she’d thought she would marry and have children. Rick Kraynick, with his dark hair and serious eyes, was making her tense.

But that wasn’t all of it. As she sat there with her mother, she thought about Rick implying that he wanted her to fudge her reports on his mother, if she was favorably impressed by the woman. He wanted her to lie. To keep Carrie’s grandmother permanently out of the girl’s life. Like Grandma and Grandpa had lied to her? To everyone? To keep Grandma Jo away from her? Away from Jenny?

And why? The woman had been a wonderful mother to Joe. And by the sounds of things, to Adam and Daniel, too. According to Joe.

Why couldn’t Adam have known his father, as well? Maybe if Uncle Adam had grown up with a male influence, he’d have been better equipped to step up and take responsibility when his wife’s death left him with a son to raise. And maybe, if Jenny hadn’t always felt like she was second best, not quite as much a part of the family as her brother, she’d have been less apt to smother her own daughter….

Why couldn’t Sam have been told that Jenny was his half sister? Or Jenny that Robert was her real father? What right did Sarah and Robert and Jo Fraser have to perpetuate lies that affected the lives, the self-concepts, of so many people?

It was like they’d spent their entire lives playing the wrong roles.

And what right did Rick Kraynick have to do the same thing to Carrie—to make her into something she wasn’t? To prevent her from being as complete? To understand herself. To know what she came from? It was very clear he intended to keep the little girl from ever knowing her grandmother.

For that matter, was he hoping to keep the truth of Carrie’s mother from her, too? Was he just going to pretend that Christy hadn’t been a teen addict who’d struggled to get herself clean for the sake of the baby she’d adored?

And why, since he’d behaved inappropriately, did Sue feel guilty for kicking him out?

Yeah, the man had had it rough as a kid. He’d lost a sister he’d never met. He’d suffered. Didn’t everyone?

If his mother was as he said, he had valid points.

But he shouldn’t be airing them with Sue.

She passed the potatoes when her father asked. Cut her chicken. Pushed food around on her plate.

She’d never met a man she couldn’t stop thinking about.