As much as he wanted to remain indifferent, or silently curse the woman who’d allowed her children to live in such sordid conditions, he couldn’t bring himself to walk past the grave marker. Faith, Adam, and Cora loved her. Even their crazy aunts loved the woman. She must have had some saving graces.
With Cora tucked inside his coat, Duke knelt by the bush. “I’ll take care of your children for you,” he said, speaking his first words to his mother-in-law.
Cora reached out and plucked a dried, withered rose from a thorny stem. “Mama will like this,” she said, closing her fingers around the ugly brown flower.
It was nearly dark when Duke found the lawyer’s house. And not a minute too soon. His shoulder hurt like hell, the scratch marks on his cheek stung, and he was starving.
Cuvier opened the door before Duke could knock. “I was preparing to come look for you,” he said, hurrying them inside.
Faith rushed into the foyer, but when she saw Duke holding Cora, she burst into tears and threw her arms around them both.
“Thank God. Oh . . . thank you, Jesus.”
“Mama, I got my books!” Cora said, but Faith sobbed too hard to respond. She pulled Cora into her arms and rocked her.
“Oh, baby, I missed you.”
Cora buried her face in Faith’s neck. “Daddy says I won’t go back there no more.”
“You won’t, sweetie. Never again.”
“I got this for you.” Cora opened her hand to show her the crushed rose that was falling apart. “It was on Grandma’s rosebush.”
Faith frowned and raised wet eyes to Duke. He nodded to say that Cora wasn’t confused, that they had been to the brothel and he finally understood.
“Oh, no.” Her lashes swooped down to cover her eyes, but he’d seen the shame in them.
“Don’t you like it?” Cora asked.
“Yes, baby. I like it very much.”
As they clung to each other, Duke began to understand that they were never sisters. From the moment of Cora’s birth, this little girl had been Faith’s daughter.
And now she was Duke’s daughter.
He felt small for having judged Faith, for condemning her for keeping secrets and marrying him to secure Adam’s and Cora’s future. She’d chosen that path out of necessity. He couldn’t blame her for that. But still knowing she’dhadto marry him, left a hollow hole in his chest.
o0o
Faith gave Cora a bath, read her books to her and rocked her to sleep. She put her in bed, then went downstairs to her father’s study where he and Duke were talking. She accepted a glass of wine from the lawyer, then sat in a large leather chair.
Cuvier stood by the fireplace, deep in thought. Finally, he sighed and turned up his palms. “There’s no easy way to explain this, so I’m going to state the bald truth. I was a young man just out of law school when I first visited your mother’s brothel,” he said. “My flower of choice was Rose. Every time. She told me it was foolish to care about her, but that didn’t stop me from falling in love. I thought we could find a way to be together, but she insisted it was impossible . . . .”
His subsequent silence unnerved Faith. If he left the story unfinished, she would never feel settled. “Did you know about me?”
“Not right away,” he said, refilling his glass from the decanter on the wine cart. “My uncle offered me a job at his law firm in Chicago, and Rose insisted I take the opportunity to start my law career. I thought if I earned enough money, I could bring Rose to Chicago with me.” He rested his wineglass on the stone mantel. “I didn’t make it back to see her until the second year, and it was only twice, but each time I asked her to come to Chicago with me, she refused. By the third year, I was miserable. I quit the firm and moved back to Syracuse.” Sadness filled his eyes. “That’s when your mother finally told me she had a daughter. But she insisted you weren’t mine. I didn’t know what to believe because she was always twisting her words and changing her mind about seeing me.”
Faith nodded to let him know she understood, that his absence in her life wasn’t completely his fault.
“It didn’t matter to me. I wanted to marry your mother and move us to another city, but she refused. When I pushed, she called me a fool and said I was becoming bothersome, and that she didn’t want me to visit her anymore. I stormed out, feeling like the fool she called me. It took me ten years to discover that my father had paid her a visit. He’d told her about my successful family and my achievements in law school, and explained that I would forfeit everything and ruin my life if I continued to visit her. So she made sure I didn’t come back.”
Of all the possible scenarios Faith had imagined about the man who fathered her, this wasn’t one of them. He’d always been the one at fault. Her mother had always been the victim. But the truth was harsher, because they were all victims. Her mother had loved a man enough to save him from his own destructive love. Her father had loved a woman from the wrong side of town. And their children had suffered the shame of their sins.
“I loved Rose from the minute I first saw her, and I still wanted her, so I went to see her. She welcomed me as a lover, but refused to marry me. Being continually spurned and lied to finally wore me down, and one day I just decided not to go back.”
Which explained why he didn’t know about Adam. Because if he’d ever seen the boy, he would know Adam was his son.
“I thought by helping the judge push the theater project, it would raise property values and your mother could sell the brothel and buy that house she wanted.”
