The Moment of Truth

She wasn’t selling her baby. Or taking any money to disappear, either. She had enough problems without creating more.

“I am understandably prejudiced, but my son is a good man, dear.” The woman sounded as though she thought she had to justify her actions.

“I agree,” Dana said. Because she did. She made another turn. Passed a dirt road she hadn’t seen before. Other than some run-down shacks and a dark hogan or two, she hadn’t seen any sign of life in miles. Every road in Indiana led someplace, eventually. These roads had to, as well.

“Yes, but the thing is, Joshua doesn’t agree,” Mrs. Redmond was saying. “His father drove him hard, you see. There were problems when Josh was born and we knew he was the only child we would ever have. From the time that boy came home from the hospital his father was determined that Josh was going to be the best at everything.”

The trouble with being the best was that you were setting an impossible goal. She’d tried it herself. For so many years. To be the best daughter. The best student. The best furniture store manager. It had never been enough for Daniel.

“I should have stepped in sooner, but J.P., that’s Joshua’s father, Joshua Phillip II, Joshua is III...”

Her head spinning, Dana looked at the long stretch of empty road in front of her, and out to the darkness on either side. She’d heard there were mountain lions and coyotes and javalina and rattlesnakes and all kinds of other things in the desert. All of which came out at night.

“As I was saying, J.P. is very good at knowing how to get people to do exactly what he wants them to do. He pushed Joshua, but he gave him a lot of freedom to do as he pleased, as well. I told myself that the two balanced each other out. And then Josh showed such a talent for the investment business his father had groomed him to take over. What was more, he loved the business as much or more than his father did. They had that in common and I thought it was good. Maybe it made matters worse.”

She liked Barbara Redmond’s voice. And couldn’t think about the fact that the refined woman on the other end of the line was grandmother to the baby inside her.

She also appreciated hearing the truth about the father of her baby. Finally.

“Things were fine until Josh asked Michelle Wellington to marry him.”

The Boston heiress. “I knew things weren’t right. Joshua didn’t act like a man in love. But I wasn’t privy to their...private life. J.P. isn’t a demonstrative man, either.”

“Mrs. Redmond, I—”

“I’m sorry, dear, I know I’m going on, but I must ask that you humor me just a minute or two longer. I am getting to my point.”

Dana wasn’t sure she could take much more hurt at the moment. At least not while she was in the desert. In the dark.

“Michelle always had a thing for Josh. Since they were kids. He’d never seemed to notice, and truth was, he hadn’t. He asked her to marry him because it was time. He was of an age when the business needed him to have a wife on his arm. A proper wife. Because Josh’s duty to his father and me, to the family, had been engrained since birth, he didn’t consider any other option.”

So he hadn’t loved her? Dana was confused now.

And then she wasn’t. Josh didn’t need to love his wife. He just needed to marry a woman who was “proper.”

And buy a house for the woman who wasn’t.

She thought she saw lights in the far distance. Another car? Hopefully a good Samaritan as opposed to someone up to no good.

Maybe she should instruct her baby’s grandmother to dial 9-1-1.

“Michelle misunderstood Josh’s proposal. She assumed he’d chosen her over all the other women because he was in love with her. No one but her sister knew how much Michelle loved him. But I should have known. Should have seen. The night of Josh and Michelle’s joint bachelor-bachelorette party, Josh made some comment that showed her how very little he really knew her, and she had a bit of a breakdown. She drank everything she could get her hands on, mixing alcohols and consuming far more than her body could handle.”

The lights were definitely coming toward her. It seemed like more than one car. After hours of seeing no vehicles at all.

“Sometime after midnight her sister found Josh, who’d been partying with some of his friends in another part of the suite, and told him he’d better take Michelle home. She expected Josh would know to stay with her. But as I guess was normal for them, Josh hadn’t seen Michelle all night. He had no idea the state she was in. He knew she was drunk, but didn’t think anything of it. He took her home, put her to bed and left her there to sleep it off, returning to the party. Her sister stopped by to see her the next morning and Michelle was unconscious.”