Their Secret Child. Mary J. Forbes

first time, a tall, gangly girl with his dark hair and long, narrow feet.

      She flung around the doorjamb, her cheeks flushed. “I met the neighbors across the road. Ms. Malloy and her girl, Michaela.”

      Ah, hell. Skip crossed the room. “Becky, next time let me know before you leave the property, okay?”

      “Why? Is there something wrong with them?” She cut a glance toward the window.

      “No.” Only thirteen years of abandonment by him. “We live in the country and I’d rather you didn’t go somewhere without telling me.” He tried to soften his anxiety with a smile. “It’ll keep me from worrying.”

      “Jesse never cared where I went.”

      Jesse Farmer, her adopted dad. “I’m not Jesse, honey.” He brushed the too-long bangs from her eyes. “Look, I’m still learning the family thing, so bear with me, okay? If I’m a little paranoid it just means I need to know you’re okay.” That no one is hurting you anymore.

      With a shrug she wandered to his clothing boxes stacked near the closet’s open door. Peering inside, she said, “I don’t think we’ll be friends with them anyway.”

      “No?”

      “Ms. Malloy isn’t…very friendly.”

      “In what way?” Had Addie slammed the door in Becky’s face?

      Another shrug. “She seems…uptight. Maybe it’s because her daughter stutters and stuff.”

      He’d heard about Addie having another child, one from the man she divorced seven months ago.

      “How do you know she stutters?”

      “She was sitting on their front step when I went over, and we were chatting about her dolls when the mom came outside.”

      “Oh.”

      Becky looked over her shoulder. “The little girl’s really cute—and shy. And she has these big brown eyes. I think her mom is overprotective because of the way she talks.” Suddenly, her face brightened. “Hey, maybe we can ask them over for dinner in a couple days and—”

      “Whoa, whoa.” Skip brought up his hands. “Let’s take it one day at a time, Bean. We’ve got a lot to do around here first.” Primarily, he needed to get reacquainted with the lady in question.

      “How about we wait a few days, see where we’re at with the unpacking.” He inclined his head toward the door. “You haven’t even checked out your room yet.”

      Which told him how much neighbors and friends meant to his daughter. The “friends” she’d had in the trailer park in Lynnwood—where her family had lived—Skip wished she’d never met.

      Becky rushed into the hallway, bent on her assignment. “Which room is mine?”

      He leaned in the doorway. “There are four, so take your pick.”

      “I can? No way!”

      He watched her dash into each, listened to her “oohs” and “aahs” as she toured their confines, until in the last and farthest from his room, he heard, “This one! I’m picking this one.”

      He was grinning when she poked her head from the doorway. “Is that okay?”

      “Yup, it’s yours. And so are these boxes.” He walked to five piled in the corridor, hoisted two into his arms. When they had carried them in, he said, “Have at it, honey. Decorate it any way you want.”

      She flung her arms around him in a quick, rare hug. “Thanks, Dad.”

      “My pleasure.” He walked to the doorway. “You going to be okay for a bit? I’d like to wander over and introduce myself to Ms. Malloy and her daughter. Might as well find out now if I’ll need to plant a twenty-foot wall in front of my house.”

      Her eyes were apprehensive. “Really?”

      Skip laughed. “Just kidding, Bean.”

      “Oh. Want me to come?” She looked longingly around her room.

      “No. You have fun. I’ll be back in two shakes.” He started down the hallway.

      “Dad?” She peered around the doorjamb.

      “Yeah.”

      “Don’t let Ms. Malloy scare you.”

      “Why? Is she ugly?” From what he’d seen across the school gym last week, she looked as he remembered. Petite and pretty.

      Becky shook her head. “Her eyes are mean.”

      He couldn’t imagine it. Addie had the prettiest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. And they gazed at him every day from Becky’s dear face.

      All through lunch, the memory of Skip’s daughter smiling at Michaela dug like a sliver into Addie’s thoughts. He had a daughter who looked like him. Who was almost the age their child would have been. Wasting time had obviously not been a priority in Skip Dalton’s life. How incredibly dumb she’d been to presume he had mourned the loss of their child. Instead, he immediately found someone else and—She slammed the last rinsed lunch plate onto the drying rack and bit her tongue to keep from screaming.

      Some rich guy looking for a summer place. Too late she associated the chitchat in Burnt Bend regarding the house in the trees across Clover Road….

      He had been that guy.

      Such a fool she was, keeping her head in the sand, shunning gossip. She hated it at seventeen when she found herself pregnant, and she hated it today, but sometimes, dammit, she should listen. On rare occasions that grapevine fed vital information.

      A laugh welled in her throat—before anger, dislike and hurt surged forth. Damn him.

      He would have known she lived within shouting distance. He would have investigated his neighbors, the area surrounding his land. A successful and affluent man like Skip Dalton would have taken precautionary steps before moving into a community, especially a rural community where trees and three-hundred-yard driveways concealed houses from view. He was money now. Barrels of money.

      “Mommy?” Michaela spoke at her side.

      Cool head, Addie. Your daughter is all that matters. “What, angel?”

      “Can I lick s-s-some honey off a s-s-spoon after we check the b-b-bees?”

      “Oh, button.” Addie cupped her child’s face, kissed her silky hair. “You bet.” And just like that the hurt in her heart eased. “Go to the washroom, then we’ll head out.”

      “Yay!”

      Smiling, she watched the child run from the kitchen. Michaela loved honey—such a natural source of nourishment—and, amazingly, was not afraid of the hives.

      Michaela, she thought. Her baby, her reason for living.

      Two minutes later, she led the way down the path to the wooden honey shed where she kept their “spacemen” suits, as Michaela called the white coveralls they wore to attend the hives, and where, in an hour, she would be melting the wax off the honeycombs with a hot knife before running the honey.

      For years, Addie’s father operated eighty hives, but Addie’s main responsibility was Michaela. Added to that was the high school where she’d begun teaching again after her divorce. So last winter, she had reduced the apiary to twelve hives. Eight on a red clover field three miles down the road, and four on a neighboring cucumber-squash patch. Although she harvested the bulk of the honey the first week of August, the clover bees would continue to produce until Labor Day.

      She was stacking the fresh frames—combs in which bees produced harvestable honey—when Michaela darted for the shed door. “Mom! I f-f-forgot F-F-Felicity.”

      Chuckling, Addie handed her daughter the house key. “Can’t have that, button. Don’t forget to