The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams. Kathleen O'Brien

bullet? Seventeen years ago?” She smiled. “Yesterday?”

       “It happened gradually,” he said, trying to be as honest as possible. But there was no easy answer. At first, he’d been in deep denial, joining a fraternity and partying like a madman, collecting great-looking coeds the way little boys collected baseball cards. He hadn’t let his grades slip, either. Straight A’s all the way, right through Stanford Law. It was as if he had to do everything, have everything, be everything—to justify not being the father of Hayley’s baby.

       “I think it really started when I got out of law school. Before that, I kept so busy, and I was focused on that grand prize, the big law career. When I got a job at my first-choice firm, I expected to be completely happy. But I wasn’t. I started trying to figure out why.”

       She made a dismissive sound. “The quarter-life crisis. Everybody has one. I think it’s rather classic, when you first start spending all day behind a desk, to wax sentimental about the carefree days of youth.”

       “That’s fair,” he said, determined not to argue. “I’m sure there was some of that.”

       He’d thought exactly the same thing, at first. Quarter-life crisis. The “is that all there is?” moment. He’d started playing handball on his lunch break, sailing the MacGregor, the family sailboat, every weekend, and finding even more beautiful women to date. He’d cut back on sleep, so that there could still be plenty of time for fun.

       He got exhausted. But he didn’t get happy.

       “Anyhow, that was when it started.” He wondered if he should tell her about the private investigator, but immediately decided against it. This was an uphill battle already. “But it was more than that. Finally, I just stopped kidding myself. I had been a selfish bastard, and I was going to have to pay for it the rest of my life. I was never going to forget about the baby you were carrying when you left that night. I was always going to be haunted by the knowledge that, somewhere, someone was raising a child who should have been ours.”

       For the first time, she looked confused. “Someone? What do you mean ‘someone’?”

       “The…people, the family…” he said, stumbling in the face of her transparent bewilderment. What did that mean? Was she shocked that he knew? “The people who adopted the baby.”

       She drew her head back. “What makes you think I gave the baby up for adoption?”

       “Because—your father said…” He couldn’t seem to form words correctly. “Your father said you did.”

       “Ah.” She smiled coldly. “My vicious, drunken father? And you believed him?”

       “Yes.”

       “I see,” she said. “Did this piece of information by any chance come with a price tag?”

       He shook his head. “He told me that much for free. If I wanted to know how to find the adoptive family, though, he said that was going to cost me five thousand dollars. But I never got the information, and he never got the money. He died before I got the chance.”

       “Well, that’s a bit of good luck. Because you would have paid all that money for nothing. He might have given you a name, maybe even an address. But it would have been bogus. You should have known that. Like so many alcoholics, the man was a consummate liar.”

       He frowned. “How can you be so sure it would have been bogus? Are you saying you didn’t give the baby up for adoption?”

       His mind was reeling. When his investigator found Hayley, he had reported that she was single, living with her mother and sister and no one else. Eventually, when Colby finally stopped kidding himself that the pregnancy had been fictional, he’d assumed she’d decided on adoption. It had made a cruel sense. Alone, on the run, three women supporting themselves with menial jobs that required little documentation… How could Hayley have done right by a child in that scenario?

       Besides, in his heart of hearts, he couldn’t believe that she would have raised their child, year after year, milestone after milestone, birthdays, and Christmases and acne and math, without ever sending Colby so much as a photo. Her heart couldn’t have been that hard, no matter how reprehensible his actions had been.

       “Hayley, answer me. Is that what you’re saying? You didn’t give the baby up?”

       “No,” she said flatly. “I didn’t give the baby up.”

       He couldn’t take it in. “But—then—where is he?”

       “He’s nowhere,” she said dully. “There is no baby.”

       “I don’t believe it.” He shook his head stubbornly, not caring how stupid it sounded. “I don’t believe it. You weren’t lying to me that night.”

       “No. I wasn’t lying. When I left here seventeen years ago, I was pregnant, and you were the father. But you’ve tortured yourself all these years for nothing. There is no baby.”

       He took in a breath, trying to fill his lungs, though no matter how hard he tried, they continued to burn from lack of air.

       “Why?” His mind suddenly latched on to an unthinkable answer. “Oh, my God, Hayley, surely you didn’t—”

       “Damn it. No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Look, I don’t talk about that night, Colby. Not ever, not to anyone. But—because—well, let’s just say for old times’ sake, I’m going to tell you this. Though, as far as I’m concerned, you have no right to know. There is no baby, because that night—”

       Her eyes sparkled where the moonlight touched them, though her face was still as hard as if she were a mannequin, made of plastic. “That night, before we even reached the California state line, I lost him.”

       He was still shaking his head. He felt as if she spoke in some language he had never heard before. “Lost him?”

       “Yes,” she said. “In the backseat of my mother’s car, surrounded by our suitcases and everything we could get out of the house without waking my father, I miscarried.”

       She put out her hand. For a confused second, he thought she might be reaching for him, and he started to extend his own. But then he saw a key glint. She placed it neatly, deftly, in the lock and turned it. The front door opened with the squeak he’d last heard seventeen years ago.

       “Go home, Colby,” she said, her tones frighteningly detached, though he suddenly saw that her face ran with tears. “There is no child, and there’s nothing more for us to say.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      HAYLEY WAS TREMBLING when she shut the door behind her. She pressed her back against the wood, flattening her shoulder blades, as if she thought Colby might try to batter it down. Her breath came quickly, like a heroine in a horror movie who had escaped just in the nick of time.

       She scoffed at herself for being so melodramatic, hoping she could force herself to calm down. But as she surveyed the room in which she’d taken refuge, she didn’t feel much better.

       The foyer was dimly lit by a fake chandelier. Its dangling pieces of plastic, which had been cut to look like crystals, were furred with dust.

       The entry area had seemed sad, pale and oddly smaller when she and Roland had dropped by this afternoon. It looked much different now that it was night, now that she was alone.

       And it teemed with memories. She glanced toward the far end of the hall, where it led to the kitchen, half expecting to see her father stalking through the opening, a beer in his hand and fury in his face.

       For several long seconds, she stood there, heart racing, caught between two unbearable memories. Colby hadn’t left the porch, she knew that from the utter silence behind her. But inside… She shut her eyes, as if that would keep her father’s ghost from materializing.

       Oh, God, she shouldn’t have come back to Sonoma. She shouldn’t