Page 86 of This Heart Of Mine (Chicago Stars 5)

“You’re very astute.”

“You’ve taken a long time to come see him.”

“After abandoning him, you mean?” Her voice had a bitter edge.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it. What kind of woman abandons her child then tries to worm her way back into his life?”

Molly spoke carefully. “I doubt that you abandoned him. You seem to have found him a good home.”

She gazed at the garden, but Molly suspected the peace she’d felt here earlier had vanished. “Maida and John had always wanted a child, and they loved him from the day he was born. But as torturous as it was to make my decision, I still gave him up too easily.”

“Hey, Molly!”

Lilly tensed as Kevin came around the corner with Marmie lolling fat and happy in his arms. He stopped abruptly when he saw Lilly, and, as Molly watched, the charmer gave way to a hard-eyed man with a grudge.

He approached Molly as if she were alone in the garden. “Somebody let her out.”

“I did,” Lilly said. “She was with me until a few minutes ago. She must have heard you coming.”

“This is your cat?”

“Yes.”

He put her on the ground, almost as if she’d gone radioactive, then turned to walk away.

Lilly came up off the bench. Molly saw something both desperate and touching in her expression. “Do you want to know about your father?” Lilly blurted out.

Kevin stiffened. Molly’s heart went out to him as she thought of all the questions she’d had over the years about her own mother. Slowly he turned.

Lilly clutched her hands. She sounded breathless, as if she’d just run a long distance. “His name was Dooley Price. I don’t think that was his real first name, but it was all I knew. He was eighteen, a tall, skinny farm kid from Oklahoma. We met at the bus station the day we arrived in L.A.” She drank in Kevin’s face. “His hair was as light as yours, but his features were broader. You look more like me.” She dipped her head. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear that. Dooley was athletic. He’d ridden in rodeos—earned some prize money, I think—and he was convinced he could get rich doing stunts in the movies. I don’t remember any more about him—another black mark you can chalk up against me. I think he smoked Marlboros and loved candy bars, but it was a long time ago, and that could have been someone else. We’d broken up by the time I discovered I was pregnant, and I didn’t know how to find him.” She paused and seemed to brace herself. “A few years later I read in the paper that he’d been killed doing some kind of stunt with a car.”

Kevin’s expression remained stony. He wouldn’t let anyone see that this meant anything to him. Oh, Molly understood all about that.

Roo was sensitive to people’s distress. He got up and rubbed against Kevin’s ankles.

“Do you have a picture of him?” Molly asked because she knew Kevin wouldn’t. The only photograph she had of her mother was her most treasured possession.

Lilly made a helpless gesture and shook her head. “We were only kids—two screwed-up teenagers. Kevin, I’m sorry.”

He regarded her coldly. “There’s no place for you in my life. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer. I want you to leave.”

“I know you do.”

Both animals got up and followed him as he walked away.

Lilly’s eyes glistened with fierce tears as she spun on Molly. “I’m not leaving!”

“I don’t think you should,” Molly replied.

Their eyes locked, and Molly thought she saw a faint crack forming in the wall between them.

Half an hour later, as Molly slipped the last of her apricot scones into a wicker basket, Amy appeared to announce that she and Troy would be staying in the upstairs bedroom Kevin had abandoned when he’d moved into Molly’s cottage. “Somebody has to sleep here at night,” Amy explained, “and Kevin said he’d pay us extra to do it. Isn’t that cool?”

“That’s great.”

“I mean, we won’t be able to make noise, but—”

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