Whose Baby?. Janice Kay Johnson

she told her mother everything anyway, the way she always did.

      THIS WAS THE SECOND toughest phone call Adam had ever had to make. Both to his parents-in-law.

      He probably should have told them these past weeks what was going on, so that they could absorb the shock slowly, as he apparently had.

      But he hadn’t wanted to alarm them. It might all come to nothing. Jenny Rose was all they had left of their Jennifer. They always called her Jenny, and sometimes he was sorry he’d named his daughter after her mother. He’d turn, half-expecting to see Jennifer. Besides, Rosebud shouldn’t have to live up to such an intense emotional demand. She wasn’t her mother, and shouldn’t have to fill Jennifer’s shoes. Her own were enough, right?

      So he hadn’t told them. Unfortunately, the time had come. Some things couldn’t be avoided forever.

      “Mom,” he said carefully, when Angela McCloskey answered the phone.

      “Adam, dear! Oh, I was just thinking about you. And Jenny, of course.” She chuckled. “Christmas is coming, you know.”

      It was barely autumn. Adam was interested in how retailers did in November and December, but he didn’t do his own shopping until the last week or two before Christmas. How hard was it to take a day and fill the trunk of his car?

      He made a noncommittal sound. “Mom, something has happened.” At her intake of breath, he regretted his choice of words. “Rose is fine. Nothing like that. The thing is…” Oh, hell. He didn’t know how to be anything but blunt, but instinct told him he needed to edge into this.

      “What?” His tone had given something away. His mother-in-law sounded scared.

      “There was a mix-up at the hospital.”

      “Not Jenny’s…Jenny’s ashes.”

      “No,” he said hastily, then closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Not Jenny. Rose. We’ve, uh, had DNA testing done. Rose isn’t my biological daughter. Or Jennifer’s.”

      “Rose isn’t…I don’t understand.” She was pleading with him.

      How well he knew the feeling. He’d begged God himself. Some prayers weren’t answered.

      “The other mother and I met today. We…exchanged pictures.”

      “You’ve found her, then?” Angela latched on to the idea with frightening, pitiful eagerness. “Our Jenny’s little girl?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’ll be bringing her home, won’t you?”

      He pinched his nose again. “Mom, we’re taking it slowly. This mother…she loves Shelly. That’s the girl’s name. Shelly Schoening. And I love Rose.”

      “We do, too, of course,” she agreed, but he heard no conviction in her voice. “But…but Jenny’s daughter. You can’t leave her to be raised by someone else.”

      “How can I not?” he said brutally. “I wouldn’t trade Rose away, even if I could.”

      His mother-in-law was crying now, he could hear hitches of breath, the salty pain in her voice. “No…but our granddaughter…”

      “I hope you’ll still think of Rose that way.”

      “Jennifer was all we had.”

      How well he knew!

      Gently he said, “I’ll try to arrange for you to meet Shelly as soon as possible. The, uh, mother seems like a decent woman.” He still had his doubts, but he wasn’t sharing them with Angela, reeling from one blow already. “I can’t imagine that she won’t be willing to involve you in Shelly’s life.”

      “Shelly! That wasn’t even on Jenny’s list of possible names.”

      “No, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?” he soothed. Had she even heard him?

      “Yes, I suppose. Adam…”

      “We have to take it slow. For the girls’ sake.”

      “Does she know?”

      “She” wasn’t Rose, he guessed, anger stirring. “Neither Rose nor Shelly has been told. They’re really too young to understand. We’ve agreed to meet, get to know the other child, so it’s less frightening when they have to be told.”

      “You’re just going to leave her?” Fixated, his mother-in-law made it sound as if he was deserting his own flesh and blood.

      “I am not going to wrench her from the only home she’s ever known, if that’s what you mean,” Adam said evenly. “We’ll see what happens. You’ve got to be patient.”

      “We want to meet her.”

      He suppressed a profanity. “I’ll try.”

      But he saw suddenly that he couldn’t let them near Shelly too soon. They couldn’t be trusted not to tell her they were Grandma and Grandpa. And, God! When they saw her resemblance to Jennifer…

      He got off the phone after a dozen more promises he didn’t mean. He paced his office, anger and pity and intense frustration churning in his belly. Rose had just lost her grandparents, he knew. Angela and Rob McCloskey would say the right things, but without meaning them. He wondered about the other grandparents. Would they be as desperate to meet Rose?

      His own parents wouldn’t be, he knew. Not especially warm with him, they were pleasant and remote with Rose. One or the other might become interested when Rose reached school age if she displayed a real spark of artistic ability—Mom—or a powerful interest in anatomy or oceanography— Dad.

      Adam made the call nonetheless. For better or worse, they were his parents.

      His mother listened without interrupting.

      Only when he was done did she ask, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

      He couldn’t believe he’d hurt her feelings. “I wanted to be sure.”

      “Is going further with this a good idea?” she asked unexpectedly. “Rose is a sweet child. I don’t see how this can end happily for her.”

      Adam assured her that he wasn’t going to let anybody take his Rosebud from him. But she’d stirred a different kind of uneasiness that ate at him from the moment he set the phone down in its cradle again.

      Saturday seemed a century away and, at the same time, too close. What would he feel when he saw her, that little girl with his eyes and Jennifer’s face? Would there be some instant connection? In a way, he hoped not. He didn’t want anything to affect his love for Rose. To lessen it. Emotions shouldn’t be so insubstantial. They shouldn’t be dependent on blood tests or facial features.

      It had unnerved him, though, to see how much of Rose had come from her mother. That hair. On the ride down in the elevator, it had been all he could do not to touch it, see whether the texture was the same as Rose’s.

      The sweetness of her face had stunned him. He’d arrived certain he would hate her, but how could he hate someone who looked like his Rosebud?

      Now he didn’t know what to think of her. Her ex-husband had thought her capable of having an affair, which didn’t speak very well for her morals. And yet, she’d defended her Shelly as fiercely as he had his Rose. Whatever her other flaws, she seemed genuinely to love the little girl she’d raised.

      Or had it all been an act?

      He sank into the leather chair behind his wide bird’s-eye maple desk and cursed. How could he know? How could he trust her?

      Did he have any choice?