McKettrick's Heart. Linda Miller Lael

Psyche drew back the chair next to Molly’s and sat down with a little sigh and a gingerly wince. “Thank you for coming,” she said, offering a hand. “I’m Psyche Ryan.”

       Molly shook the hand, found it weightless as a wad of tracing paper. “Molly Shields,” she replied. Her gaze drifted to Psyche’s cap, back to the pair of enormous violet eyes beneath it.

       Psyche smiled slightly. “Yes,” she said. “I have cancer.”

       A chasm opened in the bottom of Molly’s heart. “I’m sorry,” she said. About so much more than the cancer. “Is it…?”

       “Terminal,” Psyche confirmed with a nod.

       Tears of sympathy stung behind Molly’s eyes, but she didn’t allow herself to shed them. She didn’t know Psyche well enough for that.

       Inevitably her mind fastened on Lucas.

       Dear God, if Psyche was dying, what would happen to him? Having lost her own mother when she was fifteen, Molly knew the emptiness and constant undercurrent of fruitless searching that could result.

       Psyche seemed to be tracking Molly’s unspoken thoughts—at least, some of them. She smiled again, reached across the tabletop to squeeze Molly’s hand. “As you know,” she said, “my husband is dead. Neither of us have any family. Since you’re Lucas’s biological mother, I hope…”

       Molly’s heart leaped over the logical next conclusion, but she reined it in, back over the jump, afraid to risk the shattering disappointment that would follow if she was wrong.

       “I’ve hoped you’ll care for him after I’m gone,” Psyche said. “Be his mother, not just on some paper in some file—but for real.”

       Molly opened her mouth, closed it again, too shaken to trust her voice.

       Psyche drew back a little, huddling in her exquisite peach robe, studying Molly with a worried expression. “Maybe I presumed too much, sending for you the way I did,” she said, very softly. “If you’d wanted to raise Lucas, you wouldn’t have given him up.”

       Desperation, sorrow and hope swelled within Molly, a tangle of emotions she’d probably never be able to separate. “Of course I want him,” she blurted, lest Psyche reconsider and withdraw the offer.

       Psyche looked relieved—and exhausted. “There are a few strings attached,” she warned quietly.

       Molly’s heart scrambled up into the back of her throat. She waited, still terrified of tipping the balance the wrong way.

       “Lucas must be raised in or around Indian Rock,” Psyche said. “Preferably in this house. I grew up here, and I want my son to do the same.”

       Molly blinked. She owned a thriving literary agency in L.A., along with a house in Pacific Palisades. She had friends, an aging father, a life. Could she give all that up to live in a small, remote town in northern Arizona?

       “Lucas will inherit a considerable estate,” Psyche went on. She took in Molly’s clothes and the worn backpack on the floor next to her chair. “I have no idea what your financial situation is, but I’m prepared to provide generously for you, until Lucas is of age, of course. You could turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast, if you wanted.”

       “That won’t be necessary,” Molly said. “For you to give me money, I mean.” It was strange how quickly a life-changing decision could be made, if the stakes were high enough. Several of her clients, if not all, would balk when she told them she’d be operating out of Indian Rock from now on. Some would want out of their contracts, but it didn’t matter. Her bank accounts bulged, despite her lifestyle, and as agent of record she would collect commissions in perpetuity on the many works she’d already sold.

       “Good,” Psyche said. She sniffled, took a tissue from the pocket of her robe and dabbed at her eyes.

       For a few moments the two women sat in silence.

       “Why did you give Lucas up?” Psyche asked. “Didn’t you want him?”

      Didn’t you want him? The words blew through the bleak, weathered canyons of Molly’s soul like a harsh and bitter wind. She could have kept Lucas—she had the resources and certainly the desire—but she supposed that, like taking the bus from L.A., surrendering her son had been a way of punishing herself. “I thought he’d be better off with two parents,” she finally replied. It wasn’t the whole answer, but at the moment it was all she had to offer.

       “I would have divorced Thayer,” Psyche said, “if it hadn’t been for Lucas.”

       “I didn’t know—” Molly began, but she strangled on the rest of the sentence, couldn’t get it out.

       “That Thayer was married?” Psyche prompted, not unkindly.

       Molly nodded.

       “I believe you,” Psyche said, surprising her. “Were you in love with my husband, Molly Shields?”

       “I thought I was,” Molly replied. She’d met Thayer at a party in L.A., and immediately been swept away by his good looks, his charm and that sharp, albeit devious, mind of his. The pregnancy had been an accident, but she’d been happy about it, overjoyed, in fact—until she’d told Thayer.

       After all this time, the memory of that day was still so painful that Molly turned away from it, pushed it to a back corner of her brain.

       “My lawyer has already drafted the papers,” Psyche said, trying to rise from her chair, finding she was too weak and sinking into it again. “You may want to have them reviewed by counsel of your own before they’re finalized.”

       Molly merely nodded, still absorbing the implications of Psyche’s words. Instinctively she got to her feet, helped Psyche to stand.

       Almost as though she had radar, Florence reappeared, elbowed Molly aside and wrapped one strong arm around Psyche’s waist to support her. “You’d better lie down again,” the older woman said. “I’ll just get you upstairs.”

       “Molly,” Psyche put in quickly, almost breathlessly, as though she were afraid of being swept away before her son’s fate was settled, “you come, too. It’s time you got to know Lucas. Florence, you’ll show Molly to her room, won’t you? Help her get settled?”

       Florence passed Molly a poisonous glance. “Whatever you want, Miss Psyche,” she said, “that’s what I’ll do.”

       Molly trailed after the two women, down a hallway, into an elevator with an old-fashioned grate door. The little box lurched, like Molly’s heart, as it sprang upward, shuddered its way past the second floor to the third.

       Psyche slept in a suite of rooms boasting a marble fireplace, antique furniture, probably French, and elegantly faded rugs. A bank of windows overlooked the street on one side and the backyard on the other, and stacks of books teetered everywhere.

       Distracted, yearning to see Lucas, Molly nonetheless spotted the names of several of her authors on the spines of those books.

       “Through that doorway,” Psyche said, pointing, as Florence steered her toward the bed.

       Once again Molly called upon every bit of self-restraint she possessed to keep from running in that direction. Running to Lucas, her son, her baby.

       The nursery, a sizable room in its own right, adjoined Psyche’s. There was a rocking chair over by the windows, shelves jammed with storybooks, an overflowing toy box.

       Molly took all that in peripherally, focused on the crib and the chubby toddler standing up in it, gripping the rails and eyeing her with charitable trepidation.

       He seemed golden, a fairy child bathed in afternoon sunlight, his light hair gleaming and gossamer.

       Molly, who wanted to race across the room and crush him to her, did neither. She stood still, just inside the doorway, letting the boy take her measure with solemn eyes.