Chapter Six #3
Max took a seat across from her with his pie and his glass of milk. “Wilder told me that he made an appointment at the clinic for a paternity test.”
She nodded as she dunked her tea bag in the hot water. “Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Waste of time if you ask me,” he said.
“I’d never heard your son’s name before I saw it written on a sticky note in my sister’s apartment.” Beth admitted. “So when I did, I googled it.”
“And?” Max prompted.
“And I’d think, considering your family’s vast wealth, you’d want DNA proof before welcoming a random child into your home.”
“Cody isn’t a random child,” Max said. “He’s a Crawford.”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like proof of that before I leave my nephew here.”
“Ahh,” Max said, and nodded. “This isn’t really about Cody, it’s about you.”
She sipped her tea, perhaps considering his remark, before she responded. “I made a promise to my sister to always be there for him.”
“And yet, she brought him here,” he pointed out. “Abandoning him and abdicating her own responsibilities.”
“She didn’t abandon him,” Beth denied. “She left Cody with the man she believes is his father.”
Though Max could appreciate her wanting to defend her sister, facts were facts.
“She left him on the doorstep,” he pointed out. “And I’m sorry if it seems as if I’m judging her too harshly, but I’d argue that a woman who can walk away from her children doesn’t deserve to have them.”
“Them?” Beth echoed.
“Him.” Max cleared his throat. “She doesn’t deserve him.”
She nodded slowly, as if she understood that they were no longer talking about her sister—or not just her sister.
He scowled, none too pleased to realize that his son had spoken to this woman—a virtual stranger—about their painful family history. But of course he had. There was no other reason for her to have picked up on the slip of his tongue except if she knew about Sheila’s defection.
And though Beth had admitted to googling Wilder’s name, Max wasn’t worried that a cursory online search might turn up details of his marriage or divorce. Especially when he’d paid good money to ensure they stayed buried.
“Leighton made a mistake,” Beth said now, as she put her empty mug in the dishwasher. “But she’ll come back for Cody. You’ll see.”
Max hoped she was right.
But he sat at the kitchen table with only his disquieting thoughts for company for a long time after Beth had gone upstairs to bed.
He should hit the sack, too. Morning came early and there was a lot of work to be done—especially as he’d directed Wilder to take a break from his usual chores to spend time with Cody.
Of course, now that Beth was staying at the Ambling A, Max suspected that she’d assumed primary responsibility for her nephew.
But it was good for Wilder to watch and learn, even if he was still in denial about his relationship to the child.
A certain amount of denial was to be expected under the circumstances, but Max anticipated that it would be followed soon by a whole gamut of other emotions.
He hoped one of those emotions was anger.
Because Wilder should be mad. He should feel ripped off of all the experiences he’d missed because Cody’s mother hadn’t bothered to tell him that she was going to have his child.
He should be furious he’d missed the first four months of the little boy’s life.
That Leighton had deprived him of the opportunity to be there for his son from the beginning.
Just as Max had deprived Sheila of the opportunity to be there for her children.
He remembered the night of their final confrontation as clearly as if it had just happened.
“I could never love anyone more than I love my children,” she insisted, when he accused her of choosing her lover over her family.
“And yet you left here and went to him,” he pointed out, his tone dripping with anger and bitterness—but not hurt. He wouldn’t let her see the hurt. He would never admit how her betrayal had gutted him.
“You told me to leave. I had nowhere else to go.”
He had told her to leave—to get out. But only after she’d confessed that she’d fallen in love with another man.
“You chose him,” he said again, confident that he was on the moral high ground. Maybe he hadn’t been the perfect husband, but he hadn’t cheated.
“No,” she protested. “I didn’t choose him. Not over my children. I couldn’t. Please, Max, try to understand—”
But Max had been too hurt and angry to understand.
Maybe there had been a tiny part of him that wondered if he was making a mistake, but he didn’t allow himself to show any hesitation or doubt.
It wasn’t in his nature to back down. And it sure as hell wasn’t in his nature to give a second chance to the woman who’d betrayed not just him but their family.
But in the end, he was the one who’d been deprived of a second chance to make things right. Because Sheila had signed the divorce papers he sent to her, then died of a broken heart.
A myocardial infarction, actually.
The autopsy would later reveal a previously undiagnosed condition that explained how a thirty-two-year-old woman in otherwise good health could suffer such a tragic event.
But Max knew the truth—he’d killed her.