The Secret Daughter

“You’re overtired,” she said, when Imogen tried to describe the foreboding gripping her. “It’s a long enough flight from Vancouver to Toronto, never mind the drive you had to face once you landed.”

But Imogen remained unconvinced. She was realizing too late that it wasn’t possible to dig up selective parts of the past. It was an all-or-nothing undertaking, and she hadn’t bargained on that, at all.

Patsy was stretched out on the couch, watching the eleven o’clock news, when Joe got home. “Hi,” she said, turning off the TV. “How was your evening?”

“Just peachy!” He flung himself down beside her and scowled at the blank screen. “Did you get the boys home okay?”

“Of course I got them home okay. What’s put you in such a lousy mood?”

“I’m not in a lousy mood.”

“You could have fooled me,” she said, subjecting him to uncomfortably close scrutiny.

He squirmed under her gaze. “For Pete’s sake, stop looking at me as if I’ve just broken out in spots! I’m not one of your patients.”

She let the silence spin out for a while, then said, “I gather your hot date with Imogen didn’t pan out.”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Gee, you could have fooled me. The way you went racing after her, anyone would think—”

“Can it, Patsy!”

Her voice softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was that important to you.”

“She’s not.” He slouched against the cushions and gazed at the ceiling. “It’s just that some things never change, no matter how much time goes by. I wasn’t good enough for Imogen Palmer in the old days and I should have known better than to think she’d spare me the time of day now. End of story.”

“I think you’re selling both yourself and Imogen short. She was never a snob.”

“Don’t give me that! You’ve only got to look at the way she was brought up by that mother of hers.”

“Dad drinks,” Patsy pointed out, “but that doesn’t make us alcoholics.”

“I know.” He blew out a sigh of frustration. “But let’s face it, Pats, the Imogen Palmers of this world stick to their own breed—corporate giants backed by old money.”

“From everything you’ve told me, you’re not exactly subsisting on a pittance, either, Joe, and women have been falling at your feet ever since you started shaving. So what’s this really all about?”

Guilt, that’s what. And shame. But he wasn’t about to open up that can of worms, not tonight and especially not with Patsy. “Damned if I know,” he said. “Could be that she’s involved with some other guy and not interested in shooting the breeze with—”

“She’s not involved with anyone else. I know that for a fact because she told me so.”

“Well, that proves my point then, doesn’t it? She’d rather be alone than spend any time with someone like me.”

Patsy gave him another of those annoyingly clinical looks. It stretched to a minute before, having finally arrived at some decision, she said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this and I wouldn’t if you weren’t the brother I adore despite his bullheadedness, but I happen to know that this ‘goddess’ of yours has feet of clay just like the rest of us. She didn’t leave town suddenly the summer after we graduated because the air didn’t agree with her—”

“I know,” he said, cutting her off. “She went to some fancy finishing school in Switzerland, which also goes to prove my point.”

“No, she didn’t. She was pregnant, and her mother sent her to live with relatives somewhere down near the U.S. border so no one here would find out.”

When he’d first begun working with horses, a young stallion had kicked him in the ribs, only a glancing blow, fortunately, but at the time Joe thought his chest had caved in. He felt the same way now. “It’s not like you to spread ugly rumors, Pats.”

“It’s no rumor, Joe. To make a bit of extra money, I worked part-time for Dr. Rush and Dr. Stevens all summer, filing medical records, and I saw her chart.”

Sweat prickled the pores of his skin. Patsy had never been a gossip. Was it likely she’d be passing on information if she wasn’t sure of her facts?

Still, he continued to deny it. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “Or else you’re mixing her up with someone else.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What makes you so sure? Plenty of girls get pregnant. Look at Liz.”

“But not girls like Imogen Palmer, Joe. I mean, think about it. She hardly ever even dated, and when she did, the family chauffeur used to drive her and the boy to and from wherever they were going. Ian Lang bragged to everybody that the only reason he asked her out in grade eleven was so he’d get to ride in the back of that big black Mercedes.”

“Ian Lang always was an ass.”

“Yes.” Patsy had that look again, and it was pointing straight at him—again. “I know you won’t repeat what I’ve told you to anybody, Joe.”

Wrong! There was one person he’d definitely be talking to.

“It’s ancient history, after all, and no one else’s business.”

Wrong again, Pats!

“I only told you to rid you of this ridiculous inferiority complex you seem to have developed where Imogen’s concerned.”

“Yeah. Sure. Who gives a damn, anyway?”

He did! But he wasn’t about to let Patsy know.

He made a big production of yawning. “I’m about ready to hit the sack.”

“Me, too. Want anything before we turn in?”

He wanted plenty—answers, mostly, but he’d make do with a stiff belt of bourbon for now. “I’ll pass, thanks. You go to bed, and I’ll let Taffy out for a run before I come up.”

The back porch lay deep in shadow. Moonlight glinted off the bottle of Jack Daniels perched on the railing. Leaning against one of the posts supporting the roof, with Taffy, the dog he’d found abandoned by the side of the road ten years ago, at his feet, Joe stared at the strip of garden and wondered how everything could possibly remain so utterly untouched by the turmoil raging inside him.

The sound of the courthouse clock striking midnight came faintly on the night air. Another nine hours at least before he could get any answers. How in hell was he supposed to fill the time between now and then?

Taffy stirred in her sleep, whimpered groggily and twitched her arthritic old legs at the phantom rabbits chasing through her dreams. He knew all about dreams. They were what had got him through the time he’d served in Pavillion Amargo, the jail he’d been sent to after Coburn’s death.

They’d met when he’d signed on with the crew of a sailboat being brought from Ecuador to San Diego. Like everyone else on board, Joe had recognized Coburn for the brute he was, but the trouble began on Ojo del Diablo, a Caribbean island where they dropped anchor to pick up fresh supplies.

Coburn got in a drunken brawl and just about beat one of the locals to death. Joe stepped in to break things up, and Coburn fell and split his skull. Within minutes, the police were on the scene, he had blood on his hands, and there were two men lying in the gutter, one of them dead.

Justice, he’d soon learned, was pretty basic in little banana republics, especially when one of their own was involved. Before he knew it, he was in the slammer and the rest of the crew had set sail.

He survived the next months on memories of Rosemont Lake’s clear, unpolluted water, on the smell of clean sheets dried in the sun on his mother’s washing line, the taste of her apple pie still warm from the oven. Clichés every one, but they kept him from going mad.