Cox, Suzanne - Unexpected Daughter Read online

  “Dylan, please try to understand. I was young and confused.”

  Her mother pleaded with her, but Dylan didn’t care. She looked at Cade, who had come to stand by her, and she saw a tear at the corner of his eye. Did men cry? Was Cade, her dad, crying? She didn’t even try to stop the sob that came out. She threw her arms around his waist, knowing what she had to do. Pushing away from him, she went to her room and slammed the door.

  In the living room they were still talking, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Racing around her room, she threw open her dresser drawers. It only took about five minutes to get what she needed. She’d come back for more later. Wrenching the door open, she marched into the living room, suitcase in hand.

  Then the tears came rolling, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. Except, her mother’s face seemed to crumple like an empty candy wrapper, and her legs folded beneath her so she sat down in the middle of the floor. Dylan bit her lip. She wouldn’t change her mind. She was killing her mother, she could see that, but she couldn’t stay in the same house with her. Not right now, not after she’d lied to her. Cade was her dad, her real dad, and he’d never lied. As soon as he found out she was his daughter he’d come running to tell her. He wanted her, really wanted her to be his daughter. And she wanted him to be her dad.

  “I want to go live with Cade.”

  No one said a word. Cade opened his arms and she raced to him. Her mother never moved from the floor. Her dad—she liked saying that even if it was just to herself—took her suitcase and led her out the door to his truck. They’d left the door open, and she could see through it into the living room where her mother still sat in the middle of the floor. Dylan put her fist to her mouth to block the sob, but it echoed off the insides of Cade’s truck.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Dylan. We’re going to get through this, the three of us. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She didn’t answer but she believed him. If her dad said things were going to be fine, then they were, ’cause a dad would know.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE IDEA OF CALLING in and saying she wasn’t coming to work tempted her, but Brijette’s refusal to give in to misery kept her from doing it. After applying a few extra strokes of makeup that didn’t begin to cover her swollen eyes, she managed to arrive at the clinic only ten minutes late.

  Alicia met her as soon as she came in the staff door and caught her hand. “Cade called us all together this morning and told us about him and Dylan. He said he wanted us to know what was going on if things seemed a little strange the next few days. Are you okay?”

  Brijette nodded. She was beginning to wonder how she ever thought she could get through this day.

  “If you need to talk, let me know.” Alicia gave her a quick hug. “And remember, you did what you thought was right at the time.”

  “I only hope Dylan will be able to see that one day.”

  “That girl is smarter than most twenty-year-olds. She’s mad right now. Cade told us she’s staying with him, but she’ll get over it.”

  “I need to stay busy, or thinking will make me nuts.”

  Alicia snorted. “That won’t be a problem. Every room is full and so is the lobby.”

  Brijette sighed, taking a chart from the rack next to the exam-room door. “At least some things never change.”

  Alicia grinned. “Hey, change can be good, no matter how difficult it is at first.”

  Brijette stepped into the first exam room and forced a smile. “Mrs. Willis, how’s your blood sugar been?”

  TWO HOURS AND several patients later, Brijette had to admit coming to work had been much better than sitting at home, brooding over what had happened. After all, this was her life, too. Cade walked past her and she grabbed him by the arm, pulling him into the kitchen.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Surprisingly, he wouldn’t look at her. He hung his head, staring at the floor.

  “What’s the matter with you? Is Dylan all right?”

  “She’s fine. I… I hate what happened last night. At the time I felt like you deserved it and I guess I kind of still feel like that, but I know it was hard on you…and Dylan.”

  “You could have made her stay instead of taking her home to live with you.”

  “She’s not living with me, only staying until she can get adjusted. You’ve had her for years. I wouldn’t think you’d begrudge the two of us a little time now.”

  The feeling of being torn in half made Brijette want to scream. Part of her actually wanted to agree with Cade, that he and Dylan did deserve time together—but if it could only have been under different circumstances. A voice in her head that she would’ve preferred to ignore quietly reminded her that this situation was of her own making. She scrubbed a hand across her forehead, trying to gather her thoughts into a useful order.

  “I wanted to talk to you about getting Dylan into counseling. I think with everything that’s gone on, it would be good for her to have another person to talk to who will be unbiased and not tainted by emotions.”

  “For your information, I believe any advice or guidance I’ve given her hasn’t been ‘tainted’ with emotion. But I agree with you on the counseling. Where will we have to go for that?”

  “Emalea Cooper, Jackson Cooper’s wife, is a psychologist and she works with kids. If you want to set that up I’ll be glad to see that she gets there.” At the kitchen door he turned to her. “I wanted to tell you you’ve done a good job with her by yourself. She’s a good kid, smart. But I’m still mad as hell at how you lied to the two of us.”

  With that, he was gone.

  She leaned against the counter, trying not to cry. From here on she’d have to do better, make better decisions that weren’t based on fear, but on what was best for her and, most of all, what would be best for Dylan. Flipping through the phonebook on the counter, she found Emalea Cooper’s number.

  “MORE TEA?”

  Brijette shoved her glass across the table in response and finished peeling a shrimp.

  “I had a good idea that girl was Cade’s, even though you tried to hide it.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to him?”

  Doc Wheeler bit into a spicy potato he’d cooked with the shrimp and chewed for a minute. “It wasn’t my place,” he said finally. “To be honest, I was angry at Cade and his mother when they left you here after you were arrested. I’d thought Cade would be different than my brother and his wife, but when he left here I felt like he had become them.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “That he made a mistake when he was younger, like you. Right now, all of you are paying for those mistakes.”

  “If his mother would have stayed out of it, none of this would have happened.”

  “You made your own decisions, you can’t blame her. Besides, I understand why she did what she did and why she is who she is.”

  “She did it because she loves money and thinks she’s better than everyone else unless they have as much or more money than she does.”

  The older man wiped his hands and leaned back in his chair. “There’s more to it than that. It’s true she was born to a rich family—her mother’s parents were wealthy. But her father died when she was young and her mother made very bad decisions. Her mother started going to nightclubs and meeting all sorts of men, and she drank a lot. She ended up marrying one of the most crooked ones because she claimed she’d fallen in love. The woman’s family disowned her and tried to take Cade’s mom, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. They both moved with this man to a small town in Texas in the middle of nowhere.”

  Brijette dropped the shrimp she’d been peeling. “So she really grew up in the country?”

  “For a while. Her stepfather had been living in the town for a long time. Everyone knew he was a thief and always up to no good. People there treated her like she wasn’t a bit better than him. She pleaded with her mother to leav
e, but she never would. Her mother always claimed that she loved this man and she couldn’t leave him. Pretty soon her mother began helping her new husband steal things. That went on for three years, then her mother and stepfather were killed in a robbery, and Cade’s mother was brought to live with her grandparents. I don’t think she ever got over hating that small town or the fact that her mother had been consumed by a kind of love that was destructive to both of them.” He tipped his chair forward and began eating again.

  “How do you know all this?”

  He remained quiet for a moment, staring at his plate. “There was a time when she and I were very close. I guess I’d have to say that my brother and I were both in love with her.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Brijette knew her face registered complete shock, but she couldn’t help it.

  “No, not at all. He and I both wanted to marry her. I was already setting up my clinic here and my brother was staying in Dallas, living the life our family always had. Making money, going to all the right parties, the country club, belonging to the right social clubs. She chose that life over one here in Cypress Landing. Can you see why, after all that, she and my brother would be upset that Cade would want to stay here or want to work with me?”

  Brijette nodded. “I guess so. Is that also the reason you didn’t keep in contact with Cade much after he left?”

  The older man nodded. “I was afraid it would cause problems in the family and the boy had to grow and decide for himself what kind of life he wanted.”

  She crumpled the napkin in her fist. “I wish I knew what he wanted. He’s going to be part of Dylan’s life from now on. What if he decides to go back to Dallas?”

  “He’ll definitely be going back to Dallas.”

  Brijette jumped from her chair to see Mrs. Wheeler standing in the doorway.

  “Now that you know my life history, I hope you’ll be satisfied. I don’t want my son or my granddaughter growing up in the conditions I grew up in.”

  “It’s not like that in Cypress Landing and I’m no criminal.”

  “Your past seems to indicate that you are, and lying to everyone all these years about your daughter is criminal in itself. Did you actually think she’d be better off struggling along here with you than living with us, where she could attend the best schools and have everything she needed?”

  Brijette’s fingers knotted around the chair she’d grabbed for support. “She has everything she needs now. Remember, you were the one who didn’t even want her to be born.”

  “I didn’t want you to use the child to try and tie yourself to Cade. I wanted to protect my son first and foremost.”

  Brijette stood, picking up her plate. “He didn’t need protecting from me.”

  “He could have ended up in jail with you if I hadn’t intervened.”

  Brijette carried her dishes to the sink. “I’m leaving. There’s no reasoning with this woman.” As she passed Mrs. Wheeler on her way to the door, she stopped, her hands balled into fists at her side.

  “Don’t think you’re going to come in here and throw money around and take my daughter away from me.”

  The older woman tugged at the prim collar on her blouse and Brijette could see the nervousness in her gesture. “It won’t be up to me. That will be for Cade and Dylan to decide.”

  “I worked my way out of the kind of life you were in for only a short while. You got out of that situation by the good fortune of being born to money. Does that make you a better person than me?” Brijette stalked away, not waiting for the answer she knew wouldn’t come. She’d had enough of the whole Wheeler family. Unfortunately, her daughter was a Wheeler, which tied Brijette to them, like it or not.

  CADE SMILED AS Dylan bounced into the car. Brijette had been right about Emalea Cooper being good with children. After only three or four visits he could see Dylan already becoming more at ease with this new situation.

  “So, how did it go with Mrs. Cooper?”

  “Okay.”

  “Anything you and I need to talk about?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  She shrugged again.

  He sighed. How one child could be so talkative one minute and so completely closemouthed the next he’d never understand.

  “You’ll have to talk to me because I don’t know what all that shoulder-wiggling means.”

  “Mom always did.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “Well, your mom has known you longer, and she is your mom. I think they know stuff that other people can’t figure out.”

  “Is that true?” Dylan twisted to look at him and he moved his shoulders up and down. She stared at him for a minute, then burst out laughing and he laughed with her.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes and he saw her staring out the window as they passed Brijette’s house.

  “Would you like to go see your mom?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Dylan.”

  “I don’t know, all right? I’m still mad, aren’t you? What she did was wrong.”

  He pulled into his driveway, their driveway now, without answering. Inside his head multiple responses to that question battled for a chance to be heard. In the end, he had to go with his heart and what he knew was right. Shutting off the engine, he turned in the seat of the truck to face his daughter.

  “Yes, in some ways I’m still mad. You and I can hang on to that for as long as we want. Months, years even. It’s already been nearly two weeks now. Or, we can try to see your mom’s side and try to understand why she kept that secret. What does Mrs. Cooper say?”

  Dylan studied him closely. “She says about the same thing you did.”

  “We could call your mom and have her come over and make pizza with us.”

  She didn’t answer right away but glanced at the groceries on the back seat of his truck. “Maybe she could come after we eat, for dessert or something.”

  “That sounds good. I’ll call her.”

  Dylan got out and grabbed a few bags of groceries, then shuffled inside while he dialed Brijette’s number on his cell phone. The girl was right. Pizza took a while to make and none of them might feel much like eating at the end of this.

  THIS WAS HER TRIAL. Brijette knew it, and as she picked at the crust of the blueberry pie with her fork, she wondered what her sentence might be. They didn’t really expect her to feel like eating, did they? So far she’d asked Dylan a few questions that the girl had answered with a few words.

  “I need to call Andy and ask him something. I’m going to let you and your mother talk.”

  The look of panic on Dylan’s face when Cade got up brought tears to her eyes. For years it had been the two of them and they’d faced everything together. Now the child didn’t even want to be left alone with her. Cade disappeared inside the house and they sat in silence.

  “Dylan, I’m sorry. I know I’ve said it before, but I mean it. I made a big mistake.”

  Her daughter spun her saucer around several times, then looked up. “You lied to me a lot. Why did you do that?”

  Brijette hung her head. “I thought I was doing the right thing. It’s complicated. I was young and I did fall in love with Cade. Then I got pregnant with you. Remember, we talked about how that happens back when your friend Katie’s sister got pregnant and had a baby.”

  Dylan rolled her eyes. “I know where babies come from, Mom.”

  At last, a glimpse of normalcy. She’d never have thought she’d be glad to see Dylan giving her that particular look, but she was. Now things were going to get harder. Once again, the time had come that she’d either have to conceal the full truth from Dylan or tell her exactly how things had been. Only this time the truth didn’t really have to be known. If she told Dylan her newly found grandmother had tried to pay Brijette to not have Dylan, it could ruin that relationship forever. Mrs. Wheeler had caused a lot of heartache for Brijette and for Cade. She deserved to never have a close relationship with
her granddaughter.

  “I was pregnant when I got in trouble for carrying the drugs in my backpack, but I hadn’t told anyone, not even Cade. Mrs. Wheeler really wanted him to go to medical school and she was afraid if Cade and I stayed together he would never get to be a doctor. So she offered me money to stay away from him. Only she told me he wanted that, and she told him I wanted it. Does that make sense?”

  “She tricked both of you.”

  Brijette nodded.

  “But she thought she was doing what was best, huh?”

  A bug landed on her pie but Brijette didn’t care because she wasn’t going to eat it, anyway. She watched it crawl around, then slowly looked at Dylan. “That’s right. She was trying to protect Cade, just like I was trying to protect you. I took the money because I knew I’d need it to make a better life for you and me. She offered it because she knew Cade would be a great doctor and she wanted him to get the chance.”

  Dylan nodded but didn’t say anything, and they sat in silence for a few minutes until Cade stepped back onto the patio. He sat in the chair and glanced between them.

  “Would you like to go spend the night with your mom?”

  Brijette’s heart leaped to her throat, though she didn’t miss the quick flash of panic in her daughter’s eyes.

  “Umm…I’m really tired. I think I’d rather go to bed now.” She pushed back her chair, walking around the table to hug Cade.

  Brijette held her breath. She tried to keep the disappointment from her face, tried not to expect anything right now. The first verdict was coming. Dylan paused, then came to her side and hugged her.

  “Night, Mom.”

  “Night, Dyl.” The words nearly stuck in her throat, then she was gone. Her daughter disappeared into the house and Brijette folded her arms and dropped her head onto them. Her shoulders shivered slightly with the tears she couldn’t stop. Damn, this was hard. She deserved it, but she didn’t want to have to get her just desserts this one time.

  On the back of her head Cade’s hand smoothed her hair and she felt a paper towel being rubbed against her arm. She raised up from the table but kept her head bowed.