A Daughter's Trust

As she hung up, Daniel came back into the room. Joe didn’t.

AN HOUR LATER, Sue was still sitting in the room with her family, waiting to hear anything at all about Adam. The longer he was unresponsive, the more grim the room became.

She’d tried to speak with Daniel, had introduced herself, but he’d been more reticent than Joe.

So the family trait must have come from Jo, not Robert.

And was still in Sue’s blood.

Sam certainly didn’t suffer from any such dysfunction. He’d talked to everyone. Including every doctor and nurse who had the misfortune to cross his path. He wanted answers, and he wanted them immediately.

That was his half brother in there. He had to know if he was going to make it.

“Yeah, wouldn’t that just work out fine for him if Uncle Adam dies?” Belle whispered to Sue as they shared a small couch after Joe’s latest return to tell them there’d been no change. “He could save himself attorney’s fees.”

Because then he’d be the only Carson son.

Like that was going to get him something he didn’t already have.

With her uncle Sam reminding her of a vulture circling, waiting for death, and Joe either pacing the hall or sitting in with his unconscious father, Sue was tempted to call her dad to delay her mother’s arrival at the hospital. Jenny wasn’t as good at dealing with tension as Sue was.

And she thought about calling Rick. Except that there was no reason to. It seemed as though he should be made aware that she was there, sitting in vigil for the uncle she barely knew, but she couldn’t come up with a logical reason for calling him. He’d made his feelings for her clear three nights before.

Either she married him or he was through. She hadn’t heard from him since.

Joe was out in the hall again, speaking with an older doctor. His face grew more and more sober as he listened to something the man said. He nodded. Nodded again. And without a smile, went back toward his father’s room.

And it hit her: Joe was really scared he was going to lose his father. He might think he couldn’t stand the man, but he was staying right by his side as though he could somehow pull him through this crisis. Or wanted to be present in case there were going to be any lucid moments left in Adam’s life.

Joe might be distant. He might be independent and reticent. But he cared.

Waiting to hear from her parents that they’d landed, and later as she sat with them in the quiet waiting room, Sue thought about her grandfather. By birth as well as by adoption. He’d brought them all there together. Her and Belle. And Adam and Sam. And Joe. He hadn’t fathered Daniel, but the woman who’d had two of his children had.

He’d fathered his children in an untraditional way. He’d been unable to raise them as a family—or incapable of doing so? But here they were, all together.

She thought of the choices he’d made and hoped they were sacrifices, even if that meant the decisions had led to agony for the father of three children who had only raised one as his own. And one as his adopted child.

How he had felt about sleeping with two women at the same time, she couldn’t even fathom.

Not just any two women, but his wife and his best friend’s widow.

He’d lost his innocence in the war. His best friend right afterward. Had it unhinged him? Was that why he’d been so distant?

As she pulled into Barb’s drive later that afternoon, with still no word about Adam, Sue had a feeling she was never going to know the answers to the questions that haunted her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RICK SAT WITH HIS MOTHER in Sonia’s office Monday morning, ready to accept whatever decision the agency had reached.

“How you doing?” he asked Nancy, giving her hand on the arm of the chair next to him a squeeze.

“I’m good.” She smiled at him, squeezed back. “I’m the best I’ve ever been, Ricky. Yesterday, having you in my home, meeting the Franks, I didn’t think that day would ever happen.”

“I liked them,” he told her, referring to the pastor and his wife, who rented to Nancy. “They seem genuinely kind.”

“They are. Christy was about ten when I met them. Bonnie Frank is the friend who sat with me du

ring the worst of the withdrawals.”