The Gazebo. Kimberly Cates

defying the high school pecking order and earning the chance to prove to everyone that she was the finest actress Whitewater High had ever seen.

      “Come in already,” Deirdre urged with tender impatience. “What are you waiting for?”

      “I keep hoping someday I’ll knock and you’ll surprise me.” Emma gave a wan smile. “You’ll get all embarrassed and say, ‘Just a minute, sweetheart, let Mel Gibson here get on his clothes.’”

      “Emmaline!”

      “I can’t help it. I won’t be around forever, Mom. I…worry about you.”

      Deirdre surrendered any effort to keep her game face on. “Children aren’t supposed to worry about their parents. It’s meant to be the other way around.”

      “Tell that to Uncle Cade.”

      “That’s exactly what I mean. I’m an adult. I’ll be fine.”

      “I don’t think so. Especially after…well, after today. That letter.” Emma fretted her lower lip. “You looked like—like it was the end of the world when you read it. I called Uncle Cade on my break, to warn him, you know…about what you read. So he could fix it.”

      “Oh, Emma!”

      “You should have heard him, Mom. He said you’d already been there. He sounded like…I hadn’t heard him sound like that since the morning when I was ten and we woke up and you were gone.”

      Deirdre tensed. Imagining that morning had become the stuff of her worst nightmares. “The information in the letter wasn’t exactly news to your uncle,” Deirdre said, feeling defensive.

      “It was to Grandpa. He’s really upset, Mom.”

      Deirdre’s heart sank. Sometimes she almost felt jealous over the relationship between her daughter and Martin McDaniel. Envied their easy camaraderie. Who ever would have believed two people as night-and-day different from each other as Emma and her grandfather could understand each other perfectly? “You saw the Captain?” Deirdre said, already guessing the answer.

      “I took off a little early.” Emma blushed—and no wonder, Deirdre thought. She’d broken McDaniel rule number 563—never take off work unless you’re in the hospital, a car accident or dead.

      “Miss Madison said I looked sick.” Emma’s eyes turned pleading. “It wasn’t a lie. I felt like I was going to throw up.”

      “Oh, sweetheart.” Deirdre threw back part of the covers and opened her arms. Emma crossed to the bed and climbed stiffly in beside her. It had been too long since Emma had done this, Deirdre thought with a tug of regret.

      Once this had been an every-night treat, Emma snuggling up in her mother’s bed before she’d toddled off to her own. Emma had talked and talked in her adorable, ohso-serious way, confident her mother could explain all the mysteries of the universe. But once she’d turned thirteen, Emma had guarded her new dignity so fiercely the nighttime ritual had all but vanished.

      Deirdre wished that she could just relax and enjoy this night and the closeness she’d once taken for granted, Emma warm beside her, baring the secrets of her heart. But what had happened today had changed everything. There was no going back. Even Emma would have to understand that.

      “Mom, everybody’s a mess over at the cabin,” Emma confided. “Aunt Finn’s been crying until her eyes are all swollen. And Uncle Cade’s gritting his teeth so hard his jaw looks like it’s going to crack. And the Captain, he wouldn’t even let me talk to him about—well, about the letter. But I wouldn’t go away. I cornered him and I told him not to worry. You always told me it didn’t matter who my father was. What mattered was who I was.”

      Deirdre flinched, Emma’s words digging deep. She cuddled Emma close, burying her nose in the crown of her head. A sweet, fruity scent filled Deirdre’s nose—no simple baby shampoo for Emma anymore. She’d changed to something that promised to tame the wild curl in her hair. Thank God it hadn’t really worked.

      Deirdre closed her eyes, thinking about how many times she had told her baby how wonderful she was, had said her father didn’t matter. Deirdre had tried to shield Emma, protect her, give her armor against inevitable gossip, even though she knew plenty of nasty jabs would slip through. Everyone in Whitewater was aware that Emma had never known her father. And she never would.

      Deirdre started, realizing Emma had kept on talking, certain her mother was hanging on every word. “That’s why I had to see Grandpa and tell him that as soon as you cooled off, you’d know it doesn’t matter who your birth father is, either. Because that’s what you told me.”

      “Oh, Emma.”

      “I hate that tone of voice. It’s your ‘poor little Emma can’t understand something so grown-up’ voice. But nobody in the whole world understands better than I do about this. Wondering who your father is. Wondering if he’d love you or if he’d turn away, trying to pretend you didn’t know each other.”

      Deirdre swallowed hard, tried to grasp the least painful way to tell her daughter the truth. “Emma, I know this is hard.”

      “Yeah, well, hard is starting over at new schools so often you don’t even bother trying to make friends anymore. Hard is getting stuck in fifth grade with kids who’d known each other since kindergarten. It’s not like I don’t know what ‘hard’ means.”

      Deirdre’s eyes stung. “Emma, you’re a smart girl. You have to know things have never been great between the Captain and me.”

      “It’s because you’re too much alike. You just keep butting heads and no one will say they’re sorry, even when you both are.”

      “This is my decision. Can you understand that? Trust me to know—know what I need to do?”

      “You can do whatever you want. But I’m keeping the family I’ve got. I’m not calling anyone but the Captain Grandpa. It would break his heart.”

      And I always thought he was more concerned about his pride. Deirdre bit her lip until it stung to keep from saying the words aloud. Her daughter didn’t need to hear them.

      “What are you going to do?” Emma asked. “How are you going to…well, how does a person look for their father if they don’t know him?”

      “I’m not sure,” she said, thinking of Jake Stone, a knot of helplessness and frustration balling up under her ribs. “But I intend to find out.”

      “Mom?” Emma hung on to Deirdre, tight.

      “What, angel girl?”

      “I’m scared.”

      “I am, too. But we’ll…we’ll get through this together, okay? Nothing can come between the two of us, right?”

      Emma gazed up at her, doubtful.

      “Enough of all this gloom and doom. I want to hear about you. Tell me about the play. About rehearsals and running lines and all those things you love.”

      A shadow of a smile curved Emma’s lips, and Deirdre burned at the injustice that the disastrous letter and Emma’s triumph had surfaced on the same day.

      “Mom, we can talk about all that later. I know you don’t feel like—”

      “Hearing how my baby turned the whole drama department on its ear? Oh, yes, I do. Come on,” Deirdre encouraged, forcing a smile of her own. “You must be excited.”

      “Yeah. Most of the time. But sometimes, well, it’s scary, too.”

      “You’ve never had stage fright in your life!” Deirdre said, surprised.

      “All the popular kids in school want me to fall flat on my face,” Emma confided. “They say Juliet was Brandi’s part. She was so sure she was going to get it that her mom volunteered to donate costumes for the play. She had this place in the Quad Cities sew a velvet Juliet