“You think she should be put up for adoption.”
“Of course. Face it, Nathan, it’s the best solution for everyone, the child included. In California she can be placed with a family who’ll raise her far away from the scandal here. People who might never know the circumstances of the child’s conception. You bring her here, where everyone knows what went on four years ago, and she’ll never live it down. Hell, it’s hard enough for us to deal with the looks we still get whenever that old gossip resurfaces.”
“I can’t imagine that anyone would hold the parents’ mistakes against an innocent child,” Nathan rebutted. He had never known Deborah to be deliberately cruel to anyone, but then again, none of the McClouds were rational when it came to the traumatic events of four years ago.
“It would kill Mother to have that kid shoved in her face every time she goes out in public in her own hometown. It would start the old gossip going again, have her friends tittering behind her back…”
“Some friends, if they would do that,” Nathan muttered.
Deborah ignored him. “If you were foolish enough to try to raise her, you would make it impossible for our family to get together for holidays or special occasions. You can’t seriously expect Mother to welcome her husband’s bastard into the home she shared with him for thirty years!”
“Dad and Kimberly were married by the time Isabelle arrived,” Nathan reminded her. “True, they had only been married a few weeks, but Isabelle was not born out of wedlock.”
“Surely you wouldn’t do this to Mother,” his sister insisted, her voice thick with the pain of a betrayal from which she had never fully recovered.
Drawing another deep breath, Nathan clung to his patience. He reminded himself that Deborah had been young, barely twenty-two, when she’d learned about her father’s affair and his young girlfriend’s pregnancy. A senior in a large university in another state, she’d had to face the media circus and the avid curiosity of her classmates on her own.
“I didn’t say I’m going to bring her here. It’s just hard for me to put her up for adoption without even considering all the other possibilities. She’s our sister, Deb.”
Deborah took a step backward, clearly rejecting that particular argument. “She’s the result of an affair between a middle-aged man and a twenty-five-year-old bimbo,” she stated angrily. “No one in this town would ever see her differently.”
She was probably right. Not only would it be unfair to bring the child into the household of a footloose bachelor who didn’t have a clue about raising kids, it would be wrong to subject her to the gossip that would probably always surround her here. “I guess I just needed confirmation that I’m doing the right thing.”
Deborah’s face softened, if only fractionally. “I know you’ve always had some misguided compulsion to take care of the family and to keep everyone happy and connected. Nathan the Peacemaker—you probably should have been a minister instead of a lawyer, but even when you went to law school it was to please Dad. You couldn’t even cut ties with him when he betrayed every value he’d ever stood for. I never agreed with you about that. I never believed he deserved to have even one of us in his life after he deserted us, but I knew you well enough to understand why you felt compelled to make the effort. Even though I still think you were wrong.”
She had never tried to hide her disapproval of Nathan’s visits with their father during the past four years. Like their mother, Deborah thought those visits were disloyal. They had wanted Nathan to choose a side—theirs—and never cross that line. “I didn’t approve of his choices any more than you did, Deb. But he was still our father.”
“He abdicated that position when he ran off with Kimberly.”
It was an old argument and a fruitless one. Even if he could change her mind, it was too late now. Stuart was dead.
She seemed to read his thoughts. “Dad’s gone now, and we’ve all managed to move on. Mother looked more content tonight than I’ve seen her in a long time. Don’t hurt her again, Nathan.”
His chest was starting to hurt—whether from heartburn or heartache, he couldn’t have said. He looked at Gideon, who had remained stoically silent throughout Nathan’s discussion with their sister. “I suppose you agree with everything Deborah said.”
Gideon shrugged. “You do whatever you want. Just leave me out of it.”
Nathan’s hand moved toward the inside pocket of his suit jacket, where his wallet now rested. “I don’t suppose you would like to see a photograph of little Isabelle. Neither of you has ever seen her.”
“No,” they said simultaneously—Gideon’s voice flat, Deborah’s more passionate.
He dropped his hand. “Fine. I just thought you had a right to know what’s going on with her.”
“You haven’t mentioned any of this to mother?”
He gave his sister a look. “I’m not a complete jerk, Deb.”
She merely shrugged.
“If the family meeting is over, I’m out of here,” Gideon said, pulling his keys from the pocket of the sport coat he’d worn as his only concession to the formality of the event.
“And I’m going back inside. I think I’d like a drink,” Deborah said, implicitly daring either of them to try and stop her.
Nathan moved out of her way. He would have offered to escort her back in, but he suspected she’d had enough of his company for now. She was safe enough in the parking lot. There wasn’t much crime in Honesty. And Officer Dylan Smith was still very much on duty at the entrance.
Nathan was watching Gideon’s truck leave the parking lot when he heard Caitlin’s voice behind him. “Are you all right?”
Deliberately blanking his expression, he turned to find her standing only a few feet away.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she assured him quickly. “I was on my way to my car and I saw the three of you parting. I thought I should check on you when I realized you look…well, you look so tired.”
Tired was exactly what he felt. And old, even though he was barely thirty-one. And sad. He’d lost his father. His brother and sister seemed to be drifting farther from him—and each other—all the time, and now he was about to sever all ties with his baby half sister.
What had Stuart done to this family? And could the damage ever really be repaired?
Caitlin took a step closer. “Nathan?”
“I’m fine. As you guessed, I’m tired. I told Gideon and Deborah about the decision I’m facing tonight.”
“I take it from your expression that they weren’t very supportive.”
As always, his first instinct was to defend his family. “You can’t really blame them. They’re both still getting past everything Dad put them through. And though neither of them is able to admit it yet, they’re still dealing with their grief over his death. This just brings everything back for them.”
She motioned toward her car, which was parked only a few spaces from the one Gideon had just vacated.
