Not My Daughter

If Susan had wanted her mother to see that she and Lily had a rich life with friends who loved them, she couldn't have asked for a better homecoming.

Chapter 28

Susan settled Lily in the den. When Rick disappeared soon after, she found him upstairs packing his things.

'What are you doing?' she asked in alarm.

He shifted socks from drawer to duffel. 'I'll stay at the inn in town with my dad. You need the bed.'

'I don't,' Susan argued. 'Ellen can stay at the inn.'

'She's your mother. She's come a long way, and she should stay here.' He opened the next drawer.

'Don't leave me alone with her.' He smiled chidingly, but she was serious. He was a buffer-between her and the town, the media, and now Ellen. 'I want you to stay. You can sleep in my room.'

His smile turned wry. 'Now there's an interesting proposition. What was it, less than two days ago that you dodged the morals bullet?' Dropping shirts in the duffel, suddenly unsmiling, he straightened. 'We need a bigger house.'

'We?'

'You and me. It's time, don't you think?'

'For what?'

He put his hands on his hips. 'Us. Let's pool resources. Get a bigger house. Maybe even get married.'

Married? Married? 'You don't want to get married.'

'How do you know?'

'You love your freedom.'

He stared at her. 'I think you love yours more.'

'Not true. I just don't want to be hurt.'

'Me, neither, which is probably why I've never said the m-word before. Only this is ridiculous.' His eyes softened. 'Hell, Susie, I've always loved you.'

Her heart tripped. They had never used the l-word either. Oh, she had said it to friends over the years, as in Rick is a love, or I just love Rick, but never aloud and face-to-face. 'You loved me even when you were twenty-two?' she asked skeptically, because the declaration was too neat. One intimate summer; that was it. They had been young and unformed, certainly different from the adults they were today.

'Smitten,' he said without blinking. 'There was never a doubt. Do you not love me?'

She barely had to think. 'Of course I love you.'

'So what's the problem?'

Susan tried to think of one. Yes, love was a given, she realized. She and Rick got along too well for it not to be. Formalizing their relationship was something else. Somewhere around the time she left home, pregnant with Lily, she had crossed marriage off her list of dreams. She had her daughter; that was enough.

'See?' he argued. 'You always push me away.'

'No. You always leave.'

'And you let me go, like I'm not worth keeping.'

'Are you kidding?' she cried. 'Why do you think I've never looked at anyone else? No one ever came close.'

'Okay,' he said, amending the charge, 'then you let me go like you're not worth keeping. Is that your father's legacy? That you aren't good enough to keep?'

Susan thought of recent weeks, when everything she had worked so hard to achieve had been questioned. Yes, this was what she brought from the past, and it haunted her still. She was a good educator. She was a good mother. But good enough? 'I'm flawed.'

He made a frustrated sound. 'We're all flawed. So we can either be flawed separately or together. There's your choice.'

'It's not that simple.'

'It is. None of us is perfect. God knows I'm not, or I would have pushed this issue a long time ago.'

She studied his handsome face. He had lost some of his tan to the New England winter, and his hair was longer than usual, but his eyes were as blue, his voice as rich. She couldn't imagine his not having shared that with people all over the world. Marriage meant giving it up.

'You wouldn't have,' she said.

'You're right. Because I got a rush being in war zones or running alongside trucks bringing rice to the starving poor. My high was being recognized, adulated, which makes my point. I am totally flawed. So we make mistakes. So we're sometimes slow to see them. Slow doesn't mean never.'

'But what if I can't be a good wife?'

'What if I can't be a good husband? C'mon, hon. We'll do our best.'

She rubbed her forehead. 'This is a big step.'

He came closer. Framing her face with his hands, his mesmerizing blue eyes steady, he asked so gently that her heart melted, 'What scares you most?'

'You,' she whispered. 'Me. Change. I'm used to controlling my life.'

Slipping his fingers into her hair, he lifted her face and gave her one of those kisses that tasted of longing, the kind of kiss that made her mindless, the kind she remembered most when he was gone.

Clutching his wrists, she drew back. 'Oh-ho, no. That will not work. This has to be a rational discussion.'

'About control,' he conceded. 'Would it be so awful to share it?'

Terrifying, she thought. I'd be hurt.

Granted, Rick had never hurt her. What he promised, he gave. But then, she had never asked for much.

You let me go, he said, and he was right. Like you're not worth keeping, he said. Right again. But how does one get rid of old baggage?

She felt the loss of his warmth when he stepped back. 'Lots to think about,' he said and returned to his packing.

Susan couldn't think about much else, what with a houseful of friends who were happy to wait on Lily, cook dinner, and occupy Ellen. Once Rick left, she took refuge in his room. It always smelled woodsy when he was around. She breathed it in for a bit before reluctantly stripping the bed.

She had just unfolded fresh sheets when her mother appeared and went to the far side of the bed. Catching a fitted corner, Ellen stretched it over the mattress. 'It's good of you to have me here.' She smoothed the sheet with a hand.

'I wouldn't have you any other place.'

'I'm displacing Rick.'

Who wanted a bigger house. Who wanted marriage. 'That's okay.' Susan needed to think. She whipped the top sheet out over the bed. 'How long will you and Big Rick stay?'

Ellen brought the sheet down on her side. 'I can't speak for him. We're just friends who happen to share a granddaughter.' Susan was thinking that Ellen was finally out from under her husband's thumb and could do whatever she wanted with any man, when Ellen added, 'He can either drop me off in Oklahoma on his way back west. Or I can stay. I don't want to put you out.'

'I invited you.'

'I'll only stay as long as I can help.'

Help? Susan eyed her blankly.

Ellen spoke quickly. 'The doctor wants Lily off her feet for a few days, and you have to get back to work. And they want to keep checking on the baby, so Lily will have to go for tests. And once he's born he'll need extra care.'

The implication was that she might stay awhile. Rick. And Ellen? And a baby? If change was an issue, this was a triple whammy, and that was totally apart from the history Susan had with her