it him, he’d have pursued every avenue there was and any dirt lane, too. But this wasn’t about him. “I get what you mean about not being meant to be a parent,” he said before realizing that they’d ventured outside guest-welcoming territory.
“You and your wife don’t have children?” she asked. And he just stood there. Staring at her.
Eventually he shook his head.
And as though fate had stepped in to save him for once, footsteps bounded down the stairs. Mrs. McConnell took the interruption as an opportunity to move back to the food station that Margie, Eliza’s assistant for the past ten years, had laid out.
Maybe she thought he and Eliza had lost a child. He had, after all, told her he’d lost someone.
Lord knew why he’d said that. He’d never lost anyone he was close to.
His mother had taken off before he was old enough to remember her. His old man was gone, but since he’d been drunk so much of Pierce’s life, that hadn’t been a big surprise. At least he’d been a nice drunk.
Pierce had had no reason to commiserate with the woman’s loss as though he understood. Living without Eliza all those years—that had been his choice. He’d consciously opted not to contact her when he’d gotten back from the war in Iraq, a changed man. One who’d been hit by an explosive device that left him sterile.
After going by her place in Savannah, where they’d grown up, finding out that she’d moved to South Carolina the summer he left and that her folks were in Florida, he’d gotten on with his life. A life without her. Except for keeping tabs, just to make certain she was thriving. That’s how he’d known she was at Harvard while he finished his time in the marines as a cop at Quantico.
And known that she’d graduated and was running a bed-and-breakfast when he’d married a fellow marine shortly after getting out. And that she was still there three years later, when he married his second wife. A waitress from the coffee shop where he had breakfast every morning.
The woman had a young son. Pierce had fancied himself a father.
He just hadn’t been a good husband. Too distant. Too many nightmares. No desire to spend his off time with the woman he’d married.
Turned out, he hadn’t been a great father, either.
Nope, he hadn’t lost anyone. He’d made conscious choices.
And would probably make them again if he had a second go at it. Including the one that had resulted in an inability to father children. Some days he figured he’d deserved that. He’d still choose to join the army, too. If he was going to make anything of himself, get away from the reputation he’d earned as the son of the town drunk, get any kind of education, he’d have had to join up. He’d had no money for college. Nowhere to live, no way to support himself during the four years of attending classes to get a higher degree. No way to support the love of his life, or prove to her father that he was good enough for her, unless he joined the army, worked until every bone in his body ached, and earned not only money but also respect.
No, as hard as leaving Eliza had been, it was a choice he’d make again. For the same reasons.
Even the worst choice he’d ever made, given the same situation, the same intel, he’d make again, because when you made choices you got only the before, not the after. He hadn’t known that that one choice would irrevocably change his world. Change him.
One choice. A split second. The pull of a trigger.
And Pierce Westin had lost his soul.
* * *
“I’M SORRY FOR the long wait, Eliza. Thank you for your patience.”
Mrs. Carpenter came into the room quietly. Efficiently. All business.
From the chair she was clinging to like a life raft, Eliza nodded. Forced a smile. She didn’t do this whole fragile thing well. Her days didn’t require it.
Her life didn’t require it.
Because she’d kept her secret. Banished it to the past. Made a life without it, just as her parents had espoused.
She was beginning to see why they’d been so adamant. And figured they’d been right.
She watched the counselor take a seat. Fold her hands. And knew.
This wasn’t good news.
“I’ve looked through your file,” Mrs. Carpenter told her. “Your adoption was a bit...unique...” she said. “Private adoptions have more leeway as far as terms are concerned. According to your documents, your child is to be given any information we have about you, anytime he asks. But it was further agreed that even if you ask, you are not to be given information about him.”
She hadn’t known that.
“I’m assuming you knew that. Your signature was on every page.”
Okay, so maybe she had known. She hadn’t remembered. She’d been just shy of her seventeenth birthday. Scared to death. Heartbroken.
If only Pierce had contacted her. Even once...
If only she’d known then that her father had had a very firm talk with Pierce after he’d joined the army. Feeding Pierce’s fears that he wasn’t good enough for her. That she was destined for great things, a settled and successful society waiting for her, that nothing about her assets was suited to the moving around required by military life.
Pierce could have told her. Said now that maybe he should have told her that part. He’d still have joined up—and hadn’t wanted to bad-talk her father to her.
And what was done was done. They’d determined before they’d married seven years before that the only way for either of them to find happiness was to let go of the hurts they couldn’t change. And be thankful for all the great years they had left to share. To make the most of every minute of those years.
To realize that they, unlike so many others, had a special appreciation of their love that would prevent them from falling into the habit of taking that love, taking each other, for granted like they’d both seen happen with so many other couples.
“I can’t even know his name?” she asked, after taking as long as she could to assimilate her situation and pull herself together.
Clearly she hadn’t done either, yet.
Mrs. Carpenter shook her head. To give the woman her due, she didn’t seem in any kind of hurry to get Eliza out of there.
“You do have the right to stipulate if you’d rather we not give him any further information about you,” the woman said after another few minutes of standby.
Eliza knew Mrs. Carpenter was waiting for her to go. She just didn’t.
Thoughts of the gathering in the hotel lobby, due to start in less than two hours, skirted across her mind. She watched the other contestants flit about like in some kind of weird movie. A flash of the lobby. A group of strangers.
“Can he give his permission for me to know about him?”
“His parents were willing to give that information at the time of the adoption,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “This is a strange situation. Clearly you feared that at some point in your life you’d want to revisit this situation, but from what you knew at the time of the adoption, with everything still clear in your mind, you wanted to protect your future self from the eventuality.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You’d been counseled for months. And asked your father to sign the papers, as well.”
She kind of remembered that.
“You re-signed them when you turned eighteen,” Mrs. Carpenter said softly, as though not sure what she was dealing with, a rational human being or a crazy lady. Eliza didn’t blame her. She wasn’t sure herself.
“I