The Secret Daughter. Catherine Spencer

      The back porch lay deep in shadow. Moonlight glinted off the bottle of Jack Daniels perched on the railing. Leaning against one of the posts supporting the roof, with Taffy, the dog he’d found abandoned by the side of the road ten years ago, at his feet, Joe stared at the strip of garden and wondered how everything could possibly remain so utterly untouched by the turmoil raging inside him.

      The sound of the courthouse clock striking midnight came faintly on the night air. Another nine hours at least before he could get any answers. How in hell was he supposed to fill the time between now and then?

      Taffy stirred in her sleep, whimpered groggily and twitched her arthritic old legs at the phantom rabbits chasing through her dreams. He knew all about dreams. They were what had got him through the time he’d served in Pavillion Amargo, the jail he’d been sent to after Coburn’s death.

      They’d met when he’d signed on with the crew of a sailboat being brought from Ecuador to San Diego. Like everyone else on board, Joe had recognized Coburn for the brute he was, but the trouble began on Ojo del Diablo, a Caribbean island where they dropped anchor to pick up fresh supplies.

      Coburn got in a drunken brawl and just about beat one of the locals to death. Joe stepped in to break things up, and Coburn fell and split his skull. Within minutes, the police were on the scene, he had blood on his hands, and there were two men lying in the gutter, one of them dead.

      Justice, he’d soon learned, was pretty basic in little banana republics, especially when one of their own was involved. Before he knew it, he was in the slammer and the rest of the crew had set sail.

      He survived the next months on memories of Rosemont Lake’s clear, unpolluted water, on the smell of clean sheets dried in the sun on his mother’s washing line, the taste of her apple pie still warm from the oven. Clichés every one, but they kept him from going mad.

      And sometimes, when the moans of other prisoners filled the night, he dreamed of Imogen in a long white dress, and how she clung to him and wept in his arms, and how he’d made her smile again. He’d wondered if she remembered him, if he’d live to see her again, if there would ever be another time when she’d turn to him. But never, in his wildest imaginings, had he thought he might have left her pregnant.

      Was that what he’d done? And if so, what had happened to the child?

      He drained his glass, grabbed the bottle and stepped quietly to the end of the porch where the old hammock hung. It was going to be a long night. He might as well make himself comfortable.

      

      Imogen was up and on the road by eight, her mind refreshed by sleep, her fears of the previous night washed away. It was seeing Joe Donnelly again that had done it. Being close enough to touch him. Of course she’d been shaken up. Who wouldn’t be?

      Still, she wasn’t about to take a chance on running into him again. She read in the local paper of an estate auction at a farm near Baysfield, a small market town about two hours’ drive away, and planned her escape.

      She arrived in Rosemont just after four, half a dozen gorgeous quilts on the seat next to her, and went straight to Deepdene. Her mother answered the door. And even after all those years apart, the best she could come up with by way of welcome was to say plaintively, “Oh, it’s you, Imogen.”

      Deciding such a tepid reception hardly warranted an offer to kiss her mother’s delicately rouged cheek, Imogen said, “Yes, Mother. How are you?”

      “Well, I’m...surprised. When Molly gave me your note, I hardly knew what to think.”

      Imogen suppressed a sigh. What had she expected? That the leading light of Rosemont society might have undergone a transformation and become suffused with such an uprush of maternal feeling she’d fling her arms around her only child and call for the fatted calf to be served for dinner? Hardly! On the other hand, the air of poised self-confidence that had been Suzanne’s trademark was missing. She seemed diffident, nervous almost.

      “Is it so surprising that, since I’m in town anyway, I should want to see you?” Imogen asked gently.

      “But why now, after so many years?”

      “Because there are matters to put right between us, Mother, and I’ve...missed you.”

      “Well,” Suzanne said doubtfully, “I suppose you’d better come in, then.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      IMOGEN followed her into the formal drawing room, where Suzanne always received visitors.

      “Would you care for some tea, Imogen?”

      “I’d love some. Do you still have it served in the sunroom?”

      “My daily ritual.” A small smile touched her mother’s face. “How nice that you remember.”

      “Of course I do. It was quite a shock yesterday to find you’d broken the habit.”

      Suzanne got up and fidgeted with the triple string of pearls around her neck. “Yesterday I had...an appointment.”

      Imogen saw suddenly that the years had not been kind to her mother. In fact, she looked positively unwell. “Have you been ill, Mother?”

      Affronted, Suzanne straightened her spine and cast Imogen a glare. “Certainly not. Why would you suppose such a thing?”

      “You seem a little tired.”

      “I have been busy as, I am sure, have you.” She tagged the bellpull hanging beside the fireplace. “I’ll order tea, and you can tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself since you moved to the west coast. Are you still an interior decorator?”

      “Yes,” Imogen said, following her across the hall and into the huge solarium.

      “I’d have thought,” her mother said, perching on the edge of one of the sofas and crossing her still-elegant ankles, “that the trust fund from your father would have precluded the need for you to go out to work.”

      Her tone suggested that earning a living ranked only slightly above picking pockets.

      “I like to be busy, Mother, and I enjoy the work.”

      “Do you own the company, dear?”

      “No.”

      “How odd. I don’t believe a Palmer has ever worked for someone else. But then, you’ve never behaved quite as I expected.”

      “Especially not the summer I graduated from high school.”

      The maid wheeled in a brass tea trolley just then, and Imogen knew from Suzanne’s flared nostrils and raised brows that this particular topic of conversation was temporarily off-limits.

      She waited until they were alone again before pursuing the one subject she was determined to discuss. “I’m sure you’d prefer that I not bring this up, Mother, but I think you and I need to talk about that time.”

      “Why would you want to dig up history best forgotten?”

      “Because I lost more than a baby. I lost a mother, too. And you lost a daughter. And it strikes me as a terrible waste that we’ve let so much time go by without repairing the damage to our relationship.” She looked around the vast room. “This used to be my home. It’s part of me, of who I am. But this is the first time I’ve been back since you sent me to live with your cousin Amy.”

      “You could have come home again.” Suzanne hesitated before adding, “Afterward.”

      “But I stayed away to punish you, Mother, because for a long time I felt you had abandoned me when I needed you the most.”

      “I did what I thought was best for you. What would you have had me do? Keep you here, where everyone knew you, and so make it impossible for you to go forward with your life without your past following wherever you went?”

      “It