Breath of Scandal

Once she had accepted his marriage proposal, Dillon allowed himself to believe that she might truly love him, though she had professed it countless times. It was too good a fortune to befall him. He didn’t deserve someone as beautiful and unspoiled as Debra Newberry. He hadn’t earned the unqualified acceptance of her family. His distress over it had eventually sparked an argument.

In the middle of the quarrel, Debra had demanded, “What terrible secret are you afraid I’ll discover that’ll make me stop loving you?”

“I’ve got a record,” he had blurted. “Do you think your parents will want a son-in-law who’s done time?”

“I won’t know what to think until you tell me about it, Dillon.”

His parents had been killed when he was eight years old. “They were on their way to pick me up from summer camp. It was one of those freak highway accidents. A trailer truck jackknifed. Their car ran under it.”

Because there was no one else to take him, he had been placed in the custody of his father’s mother. “Granny Burke did her best, but I was an angry kid. Up till the time my mom and dad were killed, everything was okay. Dad was a good provider. Mom was attentive and loving. It didn’t seem fair to them or to me that they should be killed.

“I started making trouble at school. My grades went to hell. I resented Granny for trying to take my parents’ place, although, in hindsight, I realize what a tremendous burden I was to her at that time in her life. Eventually, I realized that this was the fate I’d drawn and that I had just as well make the best of it. For a few years, everything was fine.

“Then, when I was fourteen, Granny got sick. She had to go to the hospital. When I asked how serious her illness was, the doctors gave me a lot of bullshit about trusting in God’s will. That’s when I realized that my grandmother was going to die, too. To her credit, she told it to me straight. ‘I’m sorry to leave you alone, Dillon,’ she said, ‘but it’s out of my hands.’

“After she died I was placed in a foster home. I hated it. There were five kids besides me. I kept hearing about a war in a place called Vietnam, but it couldn’t have been anything like the fighting that went on in that house, especially between the couple. I saw him hit her more than a few times.

“The day I turned sixteen, I split. I figured that living on my own would be better than staying in the foster home. There was supposed to be a trust fund waiting for me, but I was given the runaround about that until I figured that someone, probably the foster parents, had gotten hold of it. I considered that nothing more than a minor setback. I was certain I could make it on my own, bu

t of course I couldn’t—not without stealing to keep myself from starving.

“Eventually I got busted and was sent to a ‘farm for troubled boys,’ which is a euphemism for jail. From the day I got there, I devised plans to escape. I tried it twice. The second time, one of the guidance counselors beat the crap out of me.”

“How dreadful,” Debra murmured sympathetically.

Dillon gave her a grim, lopsided grin. “At first I thought so, too. Later, he explained that before anything he had to say could sink in, he had to get my undivided attention.

“He told me that I had been dealt a pretty shitty hand all right, but that how I played the cards was up to me. I could either continue getting into trouble until I ended up in prison for life, or I could turn things around and start making circumstances work in my favor.”

“Obviously you took his advice.”

“I earned my high school diploma in that place. When I got out, he arranged a job for me at the public utilities company, drafting schematics and such. It paid for my college tuition and lodging. You know the rest.”

Debra gazed at him with mild annoyance. “That’s it? That’s the extent of your sordid, secretive past?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Dillon, you were a child. You made a few mistakes.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I haven’t been a child since I was eight years old and learned that my parents had been decapitated. Since then I’ve been accountable for everything I’ve done.”

“Okay, so some of your mistakes were more serious than standard and the consequences of them more severe. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve risen above the errors of your youth. I’d like to meet that counselor and personally thank him for setting you straight.”

“I wish you could meet him, too. Unfortunately, shortly after I left, another kid knifed him during a counseling session, then stood by and watched while he bled to death. So,” he had summarized, “I don’t have anybody to invite to this fancy wedding your mother is planning.”

“You’ll be there,” Debra had said as she embraced him. “And since you make me so happy, that’s all that matters to my family.”

The Newberrys were old residents of an affluent community. Her parents came from large families. Debra had three brothers and two sisters. All but one of her sisters were married, so there was an army of aunts, uncles, and cousins at any family gathering.

Dillon had been welcomed into the fold by all of them. Initially, he had been aloof. It was a defense mechanism. He was afraid that if he acknowledged their acceptance, he would somehow jinx it, just as he had been afraid to accept Debra’s unqualified love.

But now, as they lay together in the peaceful aftermath of marital lovemaking, Dillon granted himself the luxury of basking in his good fortune. He had earned the college degree that was going to open doors of opportunity for him. He was part of a large and loving family, which was something he had never had before. His bride was smart and sweet, funny and sexy.

He clasped handfuls of her hair and lifted her head off his chest, turning her face up to his. “You’d better stop that nibbling.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“I like it so much you might get more than you bargained for.”