The Mother Of His Child. Sandra Field

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      Bed? Don’t go there, Marnie. Not when Cal’s on your mind. Cal plus bed could be a combination several steps beyond dangerous. You swore off men years ago, and even thinking about Cal Huntingdon in a sexual context is lunacy. Kit’s the issue here, and only Kit.

      He hadn’t told her the truth. He’d allowed her to think that Kit had two parents, a mother as well as a father. That everything was normal and as it should be in the Huntingdon household. Mother, father, daughter—and no place for Marnie.

      Beneath a very real sorrow for an unknown woman who had died far too young, Marnie was aware of anger, red-hot and seething. Kit had been left, tragically, without a mother. And yet Cal had dared to warn off the woman who had borne Kit all those years ago, a woman who had, surely, some claim on his honesty.

      Some claim on Kit.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ON MONDAY morning, just before eight, Marnie arrived at the fork in the road that led out of Burnham. Moseley Street, the sign said. She flicked on her signal light and turned left. She was driving her best friend Christine’s small white Pontiac; she’d phoned Christine last night and asked if they could trade cars for the day.

      Cal Huntingdon wouldn’t even notice if a white Pontiac drove past his house.

      She checked the odometer, her heart hammering in her chest as loudly as a woodpecker on a tree. The Huntingdons lived about a kilometer down the road, according to the man at the gas station. It was a pretty road, following the curve of the bay and lush with evergreens. Point-seven kilometers, point-eight, point-nine. And then Marnie saw the cedar-shingled house on the cove, the mailbox neatly lettered “Huntingdon.”

      She braked. Although a dark green Cherokee was parked in front of the house, there was no one in sight, neither Cal nor a young girl hurrying up the driveway on her way to school.

      It was the house of her dreams.

      Marnie’s mouth twisted. She’d had a lot of dreams over the years, several of which she’d made real—by guts, determination and plain hard work. But she was a long way from realizing this particular one. For the house spelled money.

      It was a low bungalow, following the sloping contours of the land and taking full advantage of a spectacular view of a rocky cove. Pines and hemlocks shaded the roof; through the bare limbs of maples, sunlight glittered on the waves. The weathered cedar shingles blended perfectly with the surroundings. The chimney was built of chunks of native stone, while the slate pathways were the color of Cal’s eyes.

      It was perfect, Marnie thought. Utterly perfect.

      In terms of material goods, Kit was obviously in another league from Marnie. Discovering she didn’t like this thought one bit, Marnie put her foot to the accelerator and continued down the road, reluctantly noticing that the Huntingdon property extended several hundred feet farther along the cove. But why was she surprised that Kit had been adopted into money? She’d known all along that her mother worshiped money and even more the power it conferred; Charlotte wouldn’t have placed her grandchild with anyone who lived in poverty.

      In her will, Charlotte had left Marnie the sum of one hundred dollars. The rest of her estate had been allocated to build a town hall and a library in Conway Mills. The will had been dated the day of Kit’s birth; a matter of hours after the birth, when Marnie’s world was disintegrating around her, Charlotte had informed Marnie that she was disinherited.

      At the time, money had been the furthest thing from Marnie’s thoughts. But at the reading of the will, only a month ago, Charlotte’s unchanging bitterness toward her only daughter had had the power to wound deeply. Forgiveness, thought Marnie, was the most difficult of concepts. Had she herself ever really forgiven her mother?

      Irritably, she wriggled the tightness from her shoulders and turned around in the third driveway beyond the Huntingdon place. As she drove past the bungalow again, there still was no sign of any occupants. Time for phase two, she decided grimly, and headed back into town. Ten minutes later, she was tucked into a window booth in the coffee-and-doughnut shop on the corner of the street by the junior high school. If she was right, Kit would walk along this street.

      The sun, fortunately, was shining from a cloudless sky and again it was overly warm for late April. Marnie was wearing her largest pair of sunglasses and a big floppy hat under which she’d tucked most of her hair; it also hid her face. She’d taken the precaution of buying the daily paper in case she had to hide behind it.

      She felt excruciatingly nervous. It was one thing to drive past the house where Kit lived; quite another to actually see her daughter.

      Although she hated horror movies, Marnie loved James Bond. This morning, she was discovering she’d make a lousy espionage agent. She felt as though everyone in the place was staring at her and as though Kit, were she to go past the window, would pick her out unerringly.

      She couldn’t allow that to happen. Wouldn’t allow it. All she wanted was to see her daughter. For the very first time. See if she was happy.

      Was that too much to ask?

      Last night, she’d phoned the principal of her school to tell him some urgent family business had come up and she needed the next day off. So here she was on a Monday morning in a coffee shop in Burnham when she should have been in the school library sorting books and checking out the computers.

      Kids were now straggling past the coffee shop in loose groups, some with headsets, all in the regulation designer-label jeans and jackets with bright logos. Marnie sipped on coffee that could have been lye and unfolded the newspaper. Maybe Kit had a friend at the other end of town and walked to school a whole different way. Or else she might go by so fast Marnie wouldn’t have time to recognize her.

      She certainly couldn’t chase after her.

      A group of girls came around the corner of the building, their heads together, their laughter loud enough to be heard through the glass. One of them was tall with red hair, curly red hair that bounced in the sunlight.

      Turn around, Marnie prayed. So I can see your face. Oh, please, turn around.

      As though the girl had heard her, she pointed at the array of doughnuts in the showcase and said something Marnie couldn’t catch but that made all the other girls laugh. The girl’s face was almost a replica of Marnie’s, right down to the tilted nose and high cheekbones, except that her eyes were a warm brown. The color of Terry’s eyes.

      It was Kit. Unquestionably it was Kit.

      Then, to her horror, Marnie saw the whole group veer toward the door of the coffee shop. She grabbed her newspaper and lifted it, hiding her face, her fingers trembling. Although she braced her elbows on the table and willed her hands to steadiness, they wouldn’t obey her.

      The bottom of the door scraped on the black plastic floor mat. “What kind of doughnut, Kit?” one of the girls called out.

      “Double chocolate. Maybe that way I’ll stay awake in math class.”

      The others giggled. Another voice said, “Boston cream for me. Kit, did you study for the test?”

      “Yeah…my dad made me.”

      One of the others groaned in sympathy. “My mum did, too. I wanted to watch a MuchMusic video instead.” In a wicked parody of an adult’s voice, she СКАЧАТЬ