Adam's Daughter Part 19

Marie.

p.s. I know what you're thinking but it really is your son.

Adam slowly folded the letter and put it inside his suit coat. He turned back to Sally. "This is preposterous," he said softly. He turned to leave.

"Adam, wait," Sally said. "You can't leave me with this mess to clean up."

"Call the cops."

"Yeah, right. And tell them to just come on over and pick up a little bundle at Sally's place. Adam, you owe me better than this."

"How do I know it's even mine?"

"You paid me a lot of money to make sure Marie saw no one else. I keep my promises to my clients."

Adam paused at the door. "Have it delivered to my house," he said.

Adam was never quite sure what it was that changed his mind about the baby. But once it was delivered to his home, he couldn't bring himself to make the call to the authorities. Perhaps it was because he knew the child would be placed in an orphanage. He reminded himself that he was nearly fifty-three years old, a widower with no intention of ever remarrying, a man whose obsession with his business had already bruised Ian and Kellen. But he knew also that the baby was his son and his responsibility. He knew, too, that Elizabeth would not have wanted him to turn his back on a child.

Adam turned to Hildie, who asked no questions, other than what the child's name was.

Adam stared at the woman blankly, realizing the child had no name. "It's Tyler," he said, suddenly remembering Marie's last name.

Explaining the baby to Kellen had been difficult. Adam finally told her only that they were going to take care of the baby for a while. Kellen's curiosity quickly developed into a playful almost maternal infatuation as she helped Hildie care for Tyler.

After a week, Josh convinced Adam he had to either give the baby up or legally adopt him. Adam told Josh he didn't care what people thought, but Josh reminded him he had Kellen to think about. Adam told him to go ahead with the adoption.

Adam had no contact with the child, entrusting Tyler's care to Hildie. On rare occasions, Adam would venture into the nursery, stare down at the pale blond sleeping baby and struggle to feel some sort of connection. But he felt only a sense of obligation.

Soon after Tyler's arrival, Ian graduated from Princeton and came home. Adam had waited to tell him about Tyler, guessing that Ian would be aghast. Ian didn't disappoint him.

"Good lord, Father," Ian said. "Are you crazy?"

They were sitting in the study, and Adam stared at his grown son, a handsome young man sprawled elegantly on a sofa, his long legs propped on a coffee table.

"A man must take responsibility for his actions, Ian," Adam said. "That is all I am doing."

"But how do you know it's really yours? All you have is this wh.o.r.e's word."

"He's mine," Adam said. "I know he is."

Ian shook his head derisively. "What a homecoming," he muttered. "I return ready to take my place in the business and now I have another scandal to deal with."

Ian's callous reference to Elizabeth's death left Adam speechless.

Ian rose. "Well, I'm going out for a while," he said. "I have some old friends to look up."

"Ian," Adam said sharply. "If you're going to live in this house again, you'll abide by my rules. The first one is that I want you to be discreet about the baby. I don't want anyone to know the truth about this yet."

"You can't keep something like this a secret," Ian said.

"I have to," Adam said, "until I can find a way to explain it to Kellen."

Two weeks later, Kellen came into Adam's study while he was working. She stood directly in front of his desk. He saw that she had been crying.

"Is it true that Tyler is my brother?" she asked.

Adam confronted the piercing stare of her green eyes. "Who told you that?" he asked softly.

"A boy at school. He called Tyler a bad word...a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Adam sighed. "Come here," he said.

Kellen came around and stood by his chair. He took her hand. "It's true, Tyler is your brother," he said. "I'm his father."

Kellen frowned slightly. Adam could see her mind working.

"Mother always wanted to have a baby boy...but she didn't," she said finally.

"No, she didn't."

Kellen stared at Adam for a long time.

"You're too young to understand," he said finally, unable to stand the accusatory look in her eyes. "Someday I'll explain it to you. But for now, I need you to do something. I need you to be good to your brother. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try," she murmured.

He tried to gather her in a hug but she pulled away. He released her and watched her walk slowly out of the study.

After that day, Kellen was never as affectionate to Tyler as she had been before. She tried to hide it, but Adam saw her indifference. He knew that Kellen was a loving child, but he sensed that the attention she gave Tyler came out of the promise between father and daughter, not from the heart.

Ian treated the baby the same as he always had Kellen, as if neither existed. Kellen had long ago transferred any affection she might have for an older brother over to Stephen. It seemed strange to Adam that the house, which had felt so deserted after Elizabeth's death, seemed at times just as empty now despite all its inhabitants.

Adam finally broke down and shared his thoughts with Josh one night in the study over brandies.

"It's like we're a family of strangers, Josh," Adam said. "We're connected to each other but we're strangers nonetheless."

"Give it time, Adam," Josh said.

Adam was quiet for a long time.

"Family," he said softly. "I never had one, you know."

Now it was Josh's turn to be quiet.

"Ian, Kellen, and Tyler," Adam said. "They have different mothers but they have my blood." He took a long drink of the brandy and set the gla.s.s down.

"They will learn to be a family," he said. "We all will."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

The sun was hot, and Kellen shut her eyes in pleasure, feeling its warmth on her face. The gra.s.s was soft and fragrant, and it tickled her neck. She felt lazy and inexplicably happy.

"You're going to get freckles if you stay in the sun," Stephen said.

She glanced over at him, sitting against a tree with a book in his lap. They had come down to the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts to study but the magnificent spring day made it difficult to concentrate.

"I don't care," she said. "It feels so good to be away from the house. Tyler was driving me crazy."

"He's only four. All kids are like that at four."

Kellen stretched languidly, and Stephen's eyes were drawn to the outline of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pressing against the black leotard she wore under her skirt. Kellen was now almost eighteen and though she was apparently oblivious to her own body, Stephen was not. It seemed to him at times that she had grown up so fast. One day she had been climbing trees with him. And now, suddenly, she was...almost a woman. It was disconcerting. He had fantasies about her now that left him excited and frustrated. It was more than disconcerting. It was agonizing.

"You'll flunk if you don't study," he said.

"No, I won't. I have a B going into the final." She smiled. "And old man Isaacs has a crush on me."

"Everything comes so easy to you."

Kellen rolled over onto her stomach. "That's not true. I worked hard all year. Now, I just want to finish school and get away."

"You can't. You're going to college. If you study."

"Big deal, across the bay to Berkeley. I want to go to Paris and really study."

"Study what?"

"Life and people." She smiled. "'The only people for me are the mad ones, who burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.'"

"Is that more of your poetry?"

"It's from On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Didn't you read the copy I gave you?"

"No."

"G.o.d, Stephen, sometimes you are so --"

"What? Dull, boring?" He smiled. "One of us has to be."

"You're not dull," she said. "But you are too serious sometimes. You need to loosen up and not think so much."

"Like you?"

She sat up suddenly and grabbed a book. "I'm going to read you something," she said. "It's a poem called 'Marriage.' Maybe you'll understand what I'm talking about."

She opened the book and began to read. "'Should I get married? Should I be good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and Faustus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries, tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel.'"

She set the book down. "Isn't that great?"

"Is that another one of those beatnik things?" he asked. "You've been hanging around that dump down on Columbus again, haven't you?"

"City Lights isn't a dump, it's a bookstore," she said. "And this is a great poem by a great artist."

Stephen grabbed the book and stared at the picture on the back of a tousled-haired young man. "You like it because you think he's cute," he said. "Well, maybe I do think too much. But sometimes you don't think at all."

She smiled. "Know what I think right now? I think you're afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of doing what you really feel like doing."

Stephen stared at her. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, hands on her hips. The sun filtered through the trees, dappling her skin and red hair with light. He leaned over suddenly and kissed her. Her lips were soft and yielding, and after a second, she returned his kiss. Then she slowly pulled away and smiled.

"See, it's beautiful not to think," she said.

He laughed to cover his nervousness. "You are a brat."

She stood up, gathering her books. "Yeah, that's what Daddy tells me. And speaking of Daddy, we're having lunch together and I'm late. Will you drop me off?"

As they drove toward downtown, Stephen found himself stealing glances at Kellen. She was wearing sungla.s.ses, her hair streaming behind her in the wind. Her bohemian dress was only her latest fas.h.i.+on affectation. Usually, she wore something old and bizarre, gleaned from her excursions to thrift stores. One day it was a Victorian petticoat, the next day a man's bowler hat. But at least this outfit seemed to suit her somehow. It made her look older, a little enigmatic, which was, he knew, precisely the effect she wanted.

He had known her all her life yet now he felt off balance with her. He was not inexperienced with girls; he had slept with several at college. But he had been unprepared for the way her kiss had stirred him.

He let her off at Union Square and she blew him a kiss. He drove slowly away, watching her in his rearview mirror until she disappeared into the Times building.

Kellen took the elevator to the top floor, greeted Adam's secretary Adele with a smile and swept into his office. Adam was on the phone and motioned for her to sit down. Kellen sank into an armchair and half listened to his conversation.

"I told you last week how I felt about that guy, Ted."

Kellen recognized the tone in Adam's voice. It was deliberate and subtly patronizing. It was how he sounded when he was sick of dealing with a dull-witted person or someone who had made the mistake of testing his patience.

A door near Adam's desk opened and Ian came in with a folder in his hand. He stared at Kellen's black leotard, tights, and skirt.

"Nice outfit," he said. "Who died?"

She ignored him.

"You'd think with the allowance you get you'd dress like a lady instead of running around like one of those pseudo-intellectual creeps," Ian said.

"What would you know about intellect?" Kellen said. "Those country club twits you hang around with have the collective I.Q. of a box of rocks."

Adam hung up the phone before Ian could reply. "G.o.dd.a.m.n that Whittaker," he said. "I've had it with him."