“I discovered when I first moved to Charleston that being a military widow with a child made people more likely to give me a chance. Was it wrong?” She nodded emphatically. “Absolutely. But I don’t think I’d change what I did.”
“But why didn’t you come clean with me? I wouldn’t have judged you.”
“I wanted to.” Claire didn’t meet his eyes. “I should have.”
“I don’t understand what stopped you.”
“At first, it was because I needed the job as your housekeeper. Living here meant I could stay under the radar. Jasper’s parents would have a harder time finding me.”
“Why were you trying to avoid them?”
“Before Jasper went overseas the last time, he made me promise that I would keep our child away from his parents. Their relationship was strained and he was afraid they would treat his child the way they behaved toward him.”
“But you’re her mother, and you don’t have to give them access to her.”
“They made things very uncomfortable for me. Plus...”
She looked incredibly uncomfortable. What was she so reluctant to say? He couldn’t reconcile the woman he had come to care for this past year with this secretive individual who’d spun one lie after another.
“At the party, they said you’d stolen their granddaughter. What aren’t you telling me?”
“They were the reason I left California.”
“You moved all the way across the country to keep Honey away from her grandparents?”
Claire nodded. “They threatened to take her away from me.”
“You’re her mother,” Linc said. “There’s no way that could happen.”
“Unfortunately, if they decided to push the issue, there was a possibility that I could’ve been deemed an unfit mother and lost her.”
“An unfit mother?” Was this another lie? It seemed impossible that she could believe something so far-fetched. “You’re the furthest thing from it.”
“There was an incident back when I’d just turned twenty.” Her eyes darted in his direction and then away. She was obviously grappling with something. “I told you my father got remarried. It was pretty obvious from the start that Aubrey wanted my father to focus on her and their new family, and she got it into her head that I resented her.”
“Did you?” Linc recalled Claire telling him that her stepmother was only eight years older than her. “It seemed like your dad was all the family you had for most of your life.”
“I will admit that at sixteen I wasn’t thrilled when Aubrey moved in. She and my dad had been dating for about six months and she’d gotten pregnant. I never knew if they got married because he loved her or if he just felt responsible for the baby. Either way, once she came to live with us, everything changed. She had really strong opinions about everything and wasn’t shy about asserting herself.”
Linc recalled how Sawyer had been at sixteen and remembered epic battles with their mother over nothing. It wasn’t hard to imagine Claire and her stepmother locked in a power struggle. After all, Claire had been the only woman in her father’s life for nine years after her mother had left. No doubt, she’d taken care of him as much as she’d been taken care of. Giving that up couldn’t have been easy.
“I understand, but what does this have to do with your concern that Honey’s grandparents could interfere with your custody of her?”
“By the time I turned twenty, Aubrey had given birth to my half brother, Shane, and half sister, Grace. Shane was a total momma’s boy and a terror. I moved out right after high school because of how bad things were between Aubrey and me. She made sure I wasn’t welcome and I stopped visiting.”
Linc remembered how it had hurt when his father had left them after serving his five-year sentence. The betrayal Linc had felt after he, Sawyer and their mother had stuck by him during the trial and scandal, and made regular trips to visit him in prison.
At least he’d had his sister and mother. Who had supported Claire?
She lied to you.
While it was important to remind himself of that fact, Linc was starting to soften his stance toward Claire. Especially when what she’d done hadn’t actively hurt anyone. Could he really blame her for doing whatever it took to survive?
“My dad didn’t understand what was going on between us,” Claire continued, “and I knew it hurt him that I never came around anymore. So, on Grace’s second birthday, I went to her party. Shane was acting out worse than usual because his sister was getting all the attention.”
Linc had little trouble picturing the scene. Claire’s discomfort as she recounted the story was palpable. Obviously, whatever had happened continued to bother her.
“When it was time for cake and opening presents, Shane was nowhere to be found. Aubrey was making a big deal out of wanting him to be there when Grace blew out her candles, so I went to find him. He’d gone up into this little tree house my dad had built for him.”
With each sentence, Claire tensed. Her fingers tightened and straightened. Linc’s gut became a solid knot of discomfort as he suspected where the tale might lead.
“Was it high?”
“Not more than six feet off the ground, but high enough that a child falling out of it could get hurt.”
“And is that what happened?”
Claire nodded. She let loose a shaky breath and kept going. “I started out at the bottom, trying to coax him to come down, but he didn’t like me very much. I think he’d picked up on the antagonism between his mother and me. Anyway, I ended up climbing up into the tree house, hoping to talk some sense into him. But he started screaming at me and told me to go away, acting like I was scaring him half to death.” A mirthless smile twisted her lips. “The little brat was good at making scenes and knew exactly how to manipulate his mother. Anyway,
