Chapter 18
“Bryan has a daughter and you knew about it?” Moira was practically shouting in Kiera’s ear, her shock and dismay evident. “Yet you never said a word.”
“Because it wasn’t my news to share,” Kiera told her quietly. “And I really can’t discuss this now. I’m trying to get Deanna settled in the guest room. Luke’s given me the night off to help out. He would have given Bryan the night off, but we agreed that my offering to take over in the kitchen for him, even under these circumstances, wouldn’t help the situation given how touchy Bryan is about my invading his space.”
“Hold on!” Moira commanded. “She’s staying with you?”
“For tonight, anyway. She and Bryan need some time to figure things out.”
“Tell me this much at least, because my conversation with Luke was completely unsatisfactory. Unlike the other O’Briens, he doesn’t always get the details of the latest gossip straight.”
Kiera laughed despite herself. “Be thankful for that. It’s enough that Mick has a corner on spreading the gossip.”
“Did Bryan know he had a daughter, or did this come as a complete shock to him?” Moira asked. “And where’s the mother? Is he married?”
“He knew. It’s a very long story, but he’s been searching for her for years. He’d only recently given up hope of finding her. And, yes, he was married to her mother.”
“They’re divorced, then?”
“No, Moira, there was no divorce.” At her daughter’s dismayed gasp, she said, “I am not getting into this with you now. There’s a lot that’s yet to be sorted out.”
“I can’t believe you would do such a thing. You’ve been getting serious about a man who’s still married? You, who always gave us these long lectures about values and such.”
Kiera sighed. It was true that she’d tried to teach her children right from wrong, and dating someone married to someone else certainly fell into the forbidden category. None of her lectures had taken serious hold with her sons, but apparently Moira, at least, had heard them well enough to be throwing them back in her face now.
“Moira, not now. I really have to go. If things work out and Bryan can persuade his daughter to come here more often, then you’ll meet Deanna for yourself when you get home. At the least there will be answers to all your questions and explanations if you feel you’re owed those, too.”
Unfortunately, given the tension earlier in the day between Bryan and his daughter and the complexity of the situation, Kiera thought that was simply wishful thinking on her part.
* * *
Taking a page from Nell’s book, Kiera set about making tea and baking a batch of scones. They wouldn’t measure up to anything Nell might make, but the aroma would make the kitchen especially cozy and perhaps make Deanna feel a little more comfortable. She’d just pulled the scones from the oven, when Deanna came in looking refreshed after a shower and hopefully a bit of a nap.
“How are you feeling?” Kiera asked.
“As if I’ve been put through a wringer,” Deanna admitted. “I knew today wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be so emotional. I felt as if I was being torn between two people, two very different truths. Three, if I add Ash into the mix. Thank you for offering to let me stay here so I’ve time to sort them out.”
“Let that be a lesson, then,” Kiera told her gently, setting a steaming cup of tea before her, and then sitting herself. “Every story has two sides, perhaps more. You’d do well to listen to all of them with an open heart and reach your own conclusion about the truth. It’s often somewhere in the middle.”
“In the gray area,” Deanna suggested with a faint smile, “That’s what Ash is always telling me, when I’m looking for black-and-white truths.”
“He sounds like a wise man.”
“He’s great,” Deanna said enthusiastically. “He really is, but I’ve been awfully hard on him lately since some things about this situation have come to light. I’ve felt betrayed and taken it out on him, partly because it’s hard to blame my mom now that she’s gone.”
“And you adored her,” Kiera said, seeing it in Deanna’s eyes, hearing it in her voice. “You thought she could do no wrong.”
Deanne nodded, looking chagrined. “But, of course, everybody can make mistakes.”
“And still be a fine person,” Kiera suggested.
Deanna took a sip of her tea, her expression thoughtful. “You believe my dad’s version of what happened, don’t you?”
“I have no reason not to,” Kiera said, then felt compelled to add, “But I wasn’t there, Deanna, so I’m basing that on my experience with your father. He’s been honest with me. He told me all about your mother leaving, about his search for the two of you. He’s not spared himself in the telling, either, admitting to the mistakes he made.”
“And about never getting a divorce?” she asked skeptically. “I’ll bet he never mentioned that.”
“Actually he did.”
Deanna looked surprised. “That’s more than my mother and Ash ever told me. I was still very young when they got together. I thought they’d married, maybe eloped or something, and that I’d been adopted by Ash. Instead, they just had our names changed legally. Why do you suppose my mom let me believe such a huge lie?”
“Perhaps she didn’t know how to tell you the truth or were afraid you’d judge her for the decisions she’d made.”
“I suppose. Ash thought she was afraid my dad would find us if she went to court to file for divorce, but I don’t think it was because she was scared of him.”
“Perhaps she was afraid she wasn’t immune to him and he’d try to persuade her to come home, back to a time when she’d been unhappy.”
Deanna nodded slowly. “Maybe. I wish I knew for sure what she was thinking.”
“Someday you’ll need to accept that you’ll never know. Even if she were right here in this room, she might not be able to explain it herself. People make rash decisions all the time based on reasons that aren’t totally clear, even to them. Then they try to justify them.”
Deanna gave her a weary look. “Life’s complicated, isn’t it?”
Kiera laughed. “You have no idea. It can take a lifetime to figure it out, and then you might only understand the half of it.”
Deanna focused on the scone that Kiera had put in front of her. She broke off a piece, tasted it, then took another bite. Eventually she asked, “How long have you known him? My father, I mean.”
“Only a few months really. I came here from Ireland to visit my daughter and my father, who are living here now. My daughter’s husband owns the pub where Bryan and I work.”
“He’s the O’Brien, then?”
“One of many of them. It’s his family that the pub is named for.”
“How on earth did my father wind up working in Chesapeake Shores? I always thought he was in New York.”
“Something for him to explain, if you’ll let him.”
“Do I have a choice? I’ve come this far. I can’t leave without knowing all of it.”
“That’s an open-minded way of looking at it,” Kiera told her. “Would you like another cup of tea and another of these scones, since you’ve mostly crumbled the first one to bits? I’m more of a cook than a baker, but the scones aren’t so terrible, are they?”
“It’s delicious, actually,” Deanna said with an apologetic shrug as she looked at the plate of mostly crumbs in front of her. “I just don’t have much of an appetite right now. But I will take more tea.”
Kiera poured the tea, then sat across from her once again.
“Who’s the better cook, you or my father?” Deanna asked. Her eyes suddenly lit up. “Wait! When Milos and I were here on the Fourth, we got a flier about a cooking competition. The two of you are going head-to-head with your Irish stew, aren’t you?”
“That’s the plan,” Kiera admitted. “It’s not a position either of us was eager to be in, but apparently our competitive spirit in the kitchen is well-known. There are some who’d take advantage of that to ensure a big crowd at the fall festival.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“Perhaps you can come back for it.”
“I’ll be back in Charlottesville in school by then,” she said.
She sounded a little bit disappointed by the thought of missing it. Another good sign, Kiera thought, along with all the questions she had for her father and her apparent willingness to listen to his answers.
“I’m not certain of the geography, but is it so far?” Kiera asked.
“Not really, come to think of it. I’ll mark my calendar.” She took out her cell phone, then looked at Kiera expectantly. Kiera gave her the October festival dates.
“And will you be on my side or your father’s?” Kiera teased. “Will family loyalty win out? Or can you be an impartial judge?”
“If your stew is the best, it will get my vote,” Deanna promised, just as Bryan tapped on the door, then walked into the kitchen carrying a cardboard box.
“Did I just hear that Kiera’s gotten you to take her side in that foolish contest?” he grumbled.
Deanna chuckled. “Kiera said you two were highly competitive. I think I see that. My mother always said I’d take any bet offered. I must have gotten that from you.”
“There are better traits you could have inherited,” Bryan said, placing the box on the table in front of her.
“What’s in here?” Deanna asked, studying it curiously.
“The photos I mentioned to you and the record of every step I took to track you down. I had to have my attorney bring it by the pub.”
She peeked inside the box. “There’s so much.”
“Every investigator report, every police report, the court documents and all of the checks paying for the search.”
She glanced at the file on top. “This was only a month ago.”
Bryan nodded. “I never gave up, Dee, not even after several investigators told me repeatedly that it was as if the two of you vanished.”
She frowned at that. “Are you saying that my mother took me and just left without a word?”
Bryan nodded, then sat. Kiera gave his shoulder a squeeze.
“Would you like me to leave the two of you alone?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“I’d like you to be here,” Deanna said. “Please.”
Kiera gave Bryan a questioning look, but he nodded readily.
“Okay, then,” she said, pulling her chair a bit away from the table in an attempt to be less intrusive.
“Why would she leave like that?” Deanna asked.
Bryan explained what their life had been like back then, the long hours at the restaurant, his wife’s growing restlessness. Being home alone most of the time with a newborn baby and no family nearby... “I had every intention of cutting back, spending more time at home, but I kept delaying it. One day she simply tired of our life, of fighting to make me see her point of view. In what may have been an act of spite, she took you and left. I don’t know if her intent was to punish me by never getting in touch, but that’s how it turned out. Maybe it was a test to see how hard I’d try to find you, but then she made it all but impossible.”
“When we changed our name,” Deanna concluded. “You should probably know that she and Ash never actually married. I just found out that was a lie, too. She’d never divorced you. Ash knew, but somehow they got our last name legally changed to his. It seems most of my life was based on lies.”
“One thing wasn’t a lie,” Kiera said gently, trying to ease the pain she could hear in the girl’s voice. “You had people in your life who loved you unconditionally, even the father you hadn’t seen since you were a baby.”
Deanna’s expression brightened. “I need to focus on that, don’t I? And let the lies go. I think that’s what Ash wanted me to do, too.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Bryan said. “I’m glad you had him in your life.”
“Even though he was never legally my stepfather, I thought he was, and he was the best possible kind of stepfather. I think he’d like you. You’ve handled me turning up like this with real kindness, even when I was ranting at you.”
Bryan smiled. “You’re entitled to a good rant or two.”
“So are you,” she said. “I’m just starting to see that. You lost so much more than I did, didn’t you? A wife and a baby you loved, while I had a whole family.”
“But now you’re back in my life,” Bryan said. “I hope you’ll come back to visit so we can get to know each other. I really want that second chance for us.” When she was about to speak, he held up his hand. “Just think about it. I’m not going to push, at least not as long as you’ll tell me how to find you if you stay away too long.”
She smiled at that and reached for his cell phone. “There,” she said after a couple of minutes of concentration. “All of my information is in your contacts list.”
Kiera watched as relief spread across Bryan’s face.
“Now, why don’t I fix dinner at my place for all of us?” he suggested. “It’s late, so I’ll make something light.”
Deanna shook her head. “It’s been an emotional day and it is late. I need to get an early start back to Baltimore in the morning.” She lifted a hesitant gaze to his. “Next time? I tasted your food at the pub, but I’d love to have you cook just for me.”
Though there was disappointment in his expression, he nodded. “Next time,” he agreed. “You’ll come next door to say goodbye in the morning?”
“Absolutely. Now, though, I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Good night, Deanna. Sleep well,” Kiera said.
“Good night, Dee,” Bryan said, his voice choked.
When his daughter left the room, he reached for Kiera’s hand. She saw the sheen of tears in his eyes.
“I honestly never thought this day would come,” he said.
“And now it has, and with the promise of more,” Kiera told him.
“You think she’ll keep her promise, that she’ll come back?”
“I think she would never have said it if she didn’t mean it,” Kiera assured him. “Whatever else happened in the past, I think your wife raised a fine young woman. I think you should both be proud of how well she handled today. It couldn’t have been easy for her, coming here all on her own to confront you with the only truth she knew.”
Bryan smiled. “She held her ground, didn’t she?”
“But she also opened her heart, when facts were presented.”
“It’s only the beginning,” he said. “There’s so much more I want to know about her. If she has this summer internship at Johns Hopkins, she must be incredibly smart. I want to know about her other interests, too, if there are young men in her life, what her favorite foods are, all of it. I missed so much, Kiera.”
“And now you’ll have the time to discover every bit of it,” Kiera promised. Something told her that Deanna was not one to go back on her promises.
* * *
Bryan was on his deck at dawn, coffee made, a batch of chocolate chip muffins fresh from the oven on a plate beside him. He wasn’t taking any chances on Deanna leaving town without a goodbye.
He heard a car door open and close quietly in the driveway and held his breath until she came into view.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Soundly,” she said. “You?”
He laughed. “Not a wink. Too much to think about.”
“I know. My mind was whirling, too, but I managed to shut it off. Meditation helps.”
“I’ll have to try that. Would you like some coffee?”
“Of course,” she said. “Is there enough to put some in my travel mug for the drive?”
“There’s plenty.”
She poured the coffee, then peeked under the foil that covered the plate beside it. She turned her surprised gaze on him. “Chocolate chip muffins are my favorite. How on earth did you know?”
“I took a chance that they might be. I used to make them on Sunday mornings,” he said. “They were your mom’s favorite, too. She fed you bits of them when you were just starting to eat solid food. Of course, you couldn’t resist smushing the warm chocolate all over your face.”
She laughed. “I’m not so messy anymore, and I never waste chocolate.”
“I’ll pack these up so you can take them home with you,” he said.
“I really should hit the road.”
“Of course,” he said, though he wanted to beg her to stay and talk.
“May I come back?”
“Anytime you want to,” he said, relieved that she’d asked.
“That’s what Kiera said, too. She said the guest room was mine whenever I wanted it. I thought I might come back next weekend, if I can work it out.”
“Call me if you decide you can make it. I’ll try to take the day off. I can show you around Chesapeake Shores.”
“I was thinking it might be fun to hang out at the pub and watch you cook. Kiera said she thought it would be okay. I should learn how to make something in the kitchen besides soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. And it would be something we could do together.”
Bryan was more pleased than he wanted to admit that she wanted to be a part of his world. “That works, too. Grilled cheese was your mother’s specialty, too, as I recall.”
“She got better with other things over time,” Deanna told him. “But she obviously didn’t love cooking the way you do.”
He stood up, took the muffins into the kitchen and packed them in a container, then handed them to Deanna, who’d followed him inside and was looking around curiously.
“How long have you lived here?”
“A few years. Why?”
“Because it’s way too sterile. It looks like you just moved in. Even Kiera’s kitchen looks homier, and she’s only been there a couple of months.”
Bryan realized then that he’d never entirely thought of this or any other place as home. He shrugged. “I’m a man. It doesn’t take much for us to be comfortable.”
“Maybe so, but this is pitiful. I’ll work on it,” she told him matter-of-factly.
Bryan hid a smile. If it meant she’d be back, she could decorate the whole house in lace and crocheted doilies for all he cared.
* * *
Though she was dying to be a fly on the wall while Bryan was with his daughter this morning, Kiera waited patiently until she heard Deanna’s car drive off before walking across the lawn to his house. She found him standing at the end of the driveway, staring after the car that had long since left the lane and turned onto the main road.
“She’ll be back,” she said, slipping her hand into his.
“I know. I’m just standing here marveling at the fact that she was here at all.” He turned anxiously to Kiera. “It went well, didn’t it?”
“All things considered, I’d say it was a success.”
“She wants to decorate my house. She says it’s ‘pitiful.’”
Kiera laughed. “Are you complaining?”
“Not in the slightest,” he said happily. “I’ll hand over a fortune so she can do whatever she wants.”
“Leave her to do it her way. I don’t think she needs your money to make it cozy.”
“There’s coffee,” he told her. “And I saved you a muffin. It seems memory served me well. I baked her favorite and sent her off with most of them.”
“Do you feel like talking, then?”
“I want to go over every minute until I believe it truly happened,” he admitted.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she said readily.
He turned to her. “First, though, there’s this.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her slowly and thoroughly.
Kiera laughed when he released her. “That was lovely. What brought it on?”
“Knowing that I’m free to do it as often as I’d like and as often as you’ll let me.”
She lifted a hand to his cheek. “I thought perhaps the news that Deanna’s mother had died would affect you differently.”
Bryan climbed the steps to the deck slowly, his expression thoughtful. “It came as a shock,” he admitted. “And I’m truly sad for Deanna and for the man who loved the two of them and kept them safe all these years.” He met Kiera’s gaze. “But I stopped loving Melody a long time ago. My feelings were all twisted up with anger and resentment. When Deanna blurted out the news, all I felt was relief that there was finally an end to the wondering and waiting and praying.” His smile held just a hint of sorrow as he added, “It’s probably wrong of me, but it brought the clarity I needed, that we needed.”
“Bryan, even so, we don’t know what the future holds for us,” she cautioned him.
“No, but at least we’re free to discover where it might lead. I’m anxious to get started with that. Aren’t you?”
Kiera had mixed feelings, if she was being honest. It seemed he was ready to rush forward, while she preferred the snail’s pace they’d been taking. The roadblock of his marriage had been more of a convenience to her than she’d realized or dared to reveal to him now.
She caught him studying her, his expression confused. “You don’t seem nearly as happy about this turn of events as I am.”
“It’s hard to be happy about someone conveniently dying,” she said tartly.
He regarded her with shock. “That’s not it at all, Kiera. Surely you know I’m not that hard-hearted.”
She sighed. “I do know that. I just meant that the news is still fresh. I think you need to take a few minutes, at least, to grapple with it.”
“Something tells me you’re the one who wants the time,” he said slowly. “What I’m less sure of is why.”
“You’ve known from the beginning that I’m not the kind to rush into these things. I never expected to be in this position at all.”
“I see,” he said slowly.
“Bryan, I care for you. You know I do.”
“But now that there’s the possibility of it turning into something real, you’re scared,” he concluded.
“Terrified,” she admitted.
“So am I,” he told her. “I have even less experience with relationships than you do, but at least I’m willing to take a risk.”
“And I need time,” Kiera said. “Can’t you give me that?”
“If it’s what you need, then it seems I have little choice,” he told her. “But I’ve studied the calendar, Kiera. Time is the one thing we have very little of.”
Her heart sank at his words, because he was right. Time was not on their side. The fall festival would be here before either of them knew it. Her visa would expire and she would head back to Dublin.
And unless she found some way to be as courageous as Bryan, it was very likely she’d be going home with her heart broken. Again.