A Hickory Ridge Christmas. Dana Corbit

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СКАЧАТЬ and then in Kranji. His mother had a talent for pulling heartstrings.

      Todd flipped through images of himself eating his first birthday cake, standing proudly on the first day of kindergarten and marching in the high school band. Then came photos of his friends in Singapore and even a few of Todd and Hannah hanging out at the Milford Memories festival. Because those last shots tempted him to feel sorry for himself, he turned the page.

      The next pictures made him smile: first the wedding portrait of Roy McBride and the former Sharon Quinn and then a few other black-and-white snapshots of the two of them as children.

      When Todd reached the last yellowing image at the bottom right, he stopped. He stared at the little girl looking out at him from the paper. In the white trim at the photo’s bottom edge, someone had written in a slanted script, “Sharon, age four,” but the picture could just as easily have been of Hannah’s child. Not subtle like the similarity his daughter had to him, the resemblance between his mother and Rebecca was so obvious that at the same age they could have been twins.

      Why that was the trigger—this mirror image— Todd couldn’t explain, and yet he was suddenly furious. His hands clasped the edge of the table so hard he could feel the glass side imprinting on his palm. His jaw flexed, and he could feel his pulse beating at his temple.

      How could Hannah not have told him? No matter what he’d done, no matter how angry she was with him or how much she wanted to cast him as the villain who deserved all the blame, he still had the right to know he’d fathered a child. The chance to be a father to his child.

      He’d deserved the truth.

      Would he have been a great father at seventeen? It was hard to say, but he’d deserved the chance to try. So much time had already passed. Rebecca was four years old. Whether she’d done it consciously or not, Hannah had stolen that time from them, time they could never get back.

      The whole situation just didn’t make sense. The Hannah he’d known could never have been so cruel as to keep this monumental secret from him. Then a thought struck him at his foundation. Maybe he hadn’t known her at all. Maybe the girl he’d fallen in love with had only existed in his mind, and the future he’d planned for them was just as much of an illusion.

      None of what he thought before could matter. Everything was different now that he knew about Rebecca. He still wanted to apologize to Hannah for past events, but the present was much more important. They needed to discuss Rebecca’s care and to work out a plan for him to get to know his daughter.

      Hannah would fight him on that, he was sure, but she didn’t know him, either, if she thought that battle would be an easy one. Maybe he hadn’t fought hard enough when Hannah had decided to eliminate him from her life five years ago, but he’d done a lot of growing up since then—physically and spiritually. Hannah had just better get it through her mind that he was here and he wasn’t going away.

      Chapter Four

      “I’m hungry,” Rebecca announced as she raced through the front door her mother had just unlocked. “When are we going to eat dinner?”

      Hannah somehow managed to keep her sigh a silent one as she followed behind her with several plastic grocery bags draped over each arm. It wasn’t Rebecca’s fault that Hannah’s day had been lousy, or even that they’d had to stop at the grocery store on the way home from Mrs. Nelson’s because there wasn’t any food in the house.

      Hannah had no one to blame for either of those things but herself. When Todd had finally left Sunday, she’d been too exhausted to even think about grocery shopping for the week. She’d barely been able to just keep her promise and play dolls with Rebecca.

      As they’d sat together on the floor, diapering, swaddling and feeding two hairless baby dolls with plastic milk and juice bottles, her thoughts kept returning to another baby and the father who’d just been blindsided by her existence. Would Hannah ever be able to forget the look of bewilderment that had strained his features? Even the fresh ache she felt every time she remembered that Todd hadn’t immediately recognized Rebecca as his child couldn’t compete with that. Still, it hurt her that he’d assumed she’d been intimate with someone other than him.

      I won’t stay gone. As they had several times in the twenty-four hours since he’d spoken them, his words echoed in her thoughts. Until the evening service and after it, she’d sat anxious and alert, waiting for him to make good on his promise.

      All she’d gotten for her trouble was a sleepless night and a drowsy day at work when she needed to be sharp while doing year-end accounting for several small businesses. Too many more days like that and she could add joblessness to her list of problems.

      “Mommy, didn’t you hear me? I’m hungry.” This time Rebecca said it in the woeful tone of the starving. She still hadn’t learned that mothers often heard even when they didn’t answer.

      “Have patience, sweetie. Your chicken nuggets are coming right up.”

      At least they would come up as soon as Hannah preheated the oven and baked them for twenty to twenty-five minutes, but she didn’t want to give Rebecca that bad news and risk a meltdown. That was the last thing she needed when her friend, Grant Sumner, would arrive at any time for the home-cooked meal Hannah had promised him weeks ago. She didn’t even have the pork chops defrosted.

      A bachelor who claimed an allergy to anything domestic, Grant already could recite every take-out menu in Milford verbatim. He didn’t need her ordering a pizza on the one night when he could have been enjoying home cooking.

      “But I’m hungry now,” Rebecca whined. “Can I have a cookie?”

      Irritation welled in her, but Hannah forced it back. “Maybe after dinner.”

      Already, Rebecca was cuing up the waterworks, so Hannah grabbed the first distraction that came to mind. “Why don’t you watch your video until dinner’s ready?”

      “Yay, TV!”

      Her daughter’s glee came with its own sting of reproach. Hannah was convinced she was a bad mother now. She’d even started using “Aunt TV” as a nanny. “Just for a few minutes. Mr. Grant should be here soon for dinner.”

      Rebecca hurried off before the offer of the rare visual treat evaporated with the arrival of company.

      As if he recognized his cue, Grant rang the bell, pushed the unlocked door wide and stepped inside.

      “Hannah, you know better than to leave your door unlocked like that. Anyone can walk right in off the street and—”

      “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Hannah interrupted, smirking at her friend over the fact that he’d done just that.

      Grant flushed in a way his fair skin failed to hide and shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the coat tree next to the door. “You know what I mean.”

      “Of course I do. And thanks for worrying about me.”

      “Somebody’s got to do it.” As Grant started pushing the door closed, another pair of hands on the other side stopped it.

      “Hannah, it’s me.” Todd’s voice slipped through the crack.

      “Me?” Grant yanked the door back open and came face-to-face with the man a few years younger and a couple of inches taller. СКАЧАТЬ