The Secret Heir

Because her words so closely echoed his own concerns, he pulled into his parents’ driveway with a tight knot of dread in his stomach. Maybe it was nothing, he tried to convince himself. Maybe they just wanted to see him.

Knowing his dad, they were probably going to offer money for medical bills or something.

That sort of thing would embarrass all of them, and Jackson wouldn’t even consider accepting, but it would be typical of Carl to make the attempt.

That had to be what it was about, he decided as he loped up their front steps. Money had always been an awkward subject between them. Donna said it was because both her men had so much stiff-necked pride.

But when Donna let him in, it turned out Carl wasn’t even home. “He’s at his shop,” Donna explained, her face pale, her movements unmistakably jittery. “We both thought it would be better if I talked to you alone.”

The knot in his stomach twisted tighter. He was surprised that his voice sounded so calm when he asked, “What’s going on, Mom?”

“Come into the den and let’s sit down. It will be easier to talk if we’re comfortable.”

Though Jackson didn’t think he was going to get comfortable in any way until he knew what this was all about, he followed her into the wood-paneled family room. A sense of familiarity immediately flooded through him. This was home. The place where he’d grown up. Where he’d crashed on the floor to watch TV or piled on the sofas with his friends or wrestled on the rug with his dogs.

The décor hadn’t changed much since he’d moved out. The same slightly dented oak tables. The same prints of landscapes and wildlife. The same framed photographs of him in boyhood uniforms and cap and gown. The lopsided ceramic vase he’d made his mother in a required junior-high art class, and which she still kept in a place of honor on the oak mantel. The upholstered furniture had been replaced through the years, but even the new pieces were covered in the same earthy colors as before.

Home.

Donna settled on one end of the big, deeply cushioned brown couch, and he sat beside her, half turned to face her. His eyes focused on her drawn face, he said, “All right, Mom, out with it. What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

“No.” She reached out to cover his clenched fist with her hand, which felt icy against his skin. “I’m not sick. I’ve just— Well, I have something to tell you, darling. And it’s hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to face.”

His throat clenched. “Dad? Is he—”

“He’s fine,” she said quickly. “This has nothing to do with our health.”

“Then what is it?” It was all he could do not to snap. The tension was getting to be too much for him.

She drew a deep breath that ended in what might have been a choked sob. “You’re going to hate me.”

“Mom.” He caught her hands between both of his, squeezing them firmly enough to make her wince a little. Easing up, he said, “Nothing you could say—nothing—would make me hate you. Got that?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.

A dozen potential explanations had been swirling through his mind, some of them crazy, some more possible. One of them suddenly seemed to make sense in context with what she’d just said. “Are you leaving Dad?”

“Leave Carl?” It was obvious that she was shocked at the very suggestion. “Of course not. I could never leave Carl. I love him. And I owe him everything—my very life, for that matter. If it hadn’t been for him—” She choked again.

Okay, so that was one scenario he could quit worrying about.

“Look, I could sit here all day trying to guess what you need to tell me, but it would save us both a lot of time and trouble if you’d just blurt it out.”

Donna drew a deep breath that must have burned a path all the way down to her lungs, judging from her pained expression. “I guess I’ve told you that I had kind of a hard-knock life growing up. I was a vain, rebellious teenager who didn’t get along well with my mother or stepfather or my two younger half-brothers. I ran with the wrong crowd, did plenty of things I shouldn’t have, got in trouble at school and even with the law at times. I came very close to going to jail on a couple of occasions.”

She’d told him she had been an undisciplined teen, more as a warning to him than for any other reason, but he hadn’t realized quite how far she had gone in her rebellion. This was the first he’d heard of any real trouble.

“I’ve got to admit it’s hard for me to imagine you being a wild teenager, but that certainly doesn’t change the way I feel about you now, except to make me admire you even more for turning your life around the way you did.”

Donna looked down at their joined hands. “The credit for that goes to Carl. He rescued me from a situation that seemed so hopeless that I was considering suicide.”

That shocked him. “Good God, Mom, what happened to you?”

“I was stupid. And naive. And so very blind.” She drew another shuddering breath. “It started when I was barely nineteen. I’d gotten a job working in a rather seedy diner downtown. I blew every penny I earned on clothes and partying—and I made good tips because I was a pretty young blond who didn’t mind flirting with leering old men.”

Jackson didn’t want to know if she’d gone beyond flirting with those old men for extra tips. Instead, he said, “You told me you met Dad when you were working as a waitress and he was a customer.”

She nodded. “Your dad was a regular in the diner before I even started there. He worked in someone else’s mechanic shop then, and all I saw when I looked at him was a shy, blue-collar worker almost ten years older than me. He wasn’t movie-screen handsome, and he didn’t make much more than I did, so I have to confess I wasn’t romantically interested in him, even though I knew he had a crush on me almost from the start.”