Chapter 37 #2
Shock rolled through Adeline. Jesus Christ. She’d had no idea. Something else her mother had never told her. Adeline couldn’t imagine the old bastard really loving anyone, except his own evil spawn. But now that she thought about it, she’d never seen Cyrus look at his own wife the way he had Irene.
“My God,” Adeline muttered. How could she have missed so much? Had she been that self-centered? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to see.
“Shortly after your father and mother married, Irene discovered she was expecting their first child.”
The news rocked Adeline back on her heels all over again. She needed body armor here; the bullets just kept coming. “I thought—”
“Irene lost that child.” Cyrus’s tone had turned dull and listless.
“She was about four months along and your father was away on business. She had an appointment with the obstetrician and I offered to take her. I was driving too fast the way I always did and there was an accident. Your mother wasn’t visibly injured. She seemed fine.”
Her mother had told Adeline that Cyrus had been in an accident and that was the reason he’d ended up on crutches and then in a wheelchair. Only Irene had left out the part about being in the car with him.
“You said,” Adeline prodded, “that Mother wasn’t visibly injured. What happened to the baby?” She hadn’t heard anything about a miscarriage, either. As far as Adeline had known, she’d been the one and only child. The one and only pregnancy. Of course that had proven wrong.
Just another indication of how little she actually knew about her parents.
“You know they didn’t have the tests back then that they have now,” Cyrus explained.
“At least not around here. There was damage they didn’t catch.
Later that night she had to be rushed to the hospital, right here in Singing River.
By then the internal hemorrhaging was so severe, it’s a miracle she survived at all.
She was airlifted to Hattiesburg for emergency surgery.
The only way to save her life at that point was a total hysterectomy. ”
“Oh my God.” Adeline turned to where her mother lay, studied the sweet face that had hidden so much pain. Why hadn’t her mother ever told Adeline any of this?
I didn’t want you to know that you weren’t my little girl.
More of that misery twisted Adeline’s insides.
The door opened and Wyatt stuck his head into the room. “Everything okay in here?”
Adeline wanted to run into his arms. To feel his heart beating against her breast. But right now she had to do the right thing . . . she had to hear her mother’s story. “Give us another minute.”
Wyatt held her gaze a moment, then drew back, pulling the door closed once more.
When she settled her attention on Cyrus, he continued.
“Both your mother and father were devastated.” That same monotone that sounded nothing at all like the old bastard she knew echoed softly in the room.
“I took full responsibility.” His shoulders sagged wearily.
“It was my fault. Your mother couldn’t deal with any of it.
She wouldn’t even talk about it. She left the hospital with your great-aunt Joan.
Went straight to Cincinnati. Your father couldn’t talk her into coming home.
He’d lost his child and, from every appearance, was about to lose his wife.
He tried not to hold it against me, but I saw it in his eyes.
He wanted to hate me . . . but he couldn’t. ”
Adeline could only stare at the man she’d thought she knew. But like everything else about her past, she hadn’t known half the story. “My father didn’t possess the capacity to hate.” That she knew for a certainty.
Cyrus moved his head in agreement. “I didn’t deserve his compassion. I hated myself enough for the both of us. Your father was worried sick about your mother. Months passed. Joan told him that Irene stayed in bed all the time. Wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Joan. We were losing her.”
We? Adeline couldn’t deny that Cyrus’s feelings for her mother appeared real enough.
Jesus. Adeline swiped at her eyes, ordered herself not to cry again.
She’d had no idea about his feelings or about how her mother had suffered as a young woman.
None at all. How could she have not recognized how complicated her mother’s life had been?
Not paying attention, that was how. Adeline had only been worried about herself and her career.
“I realized I had to do something,” Cyrus said.
“I went to the church and spoke to the priest.” He shook his head.
“I hadn’t set foot inside those doors in years.
But your mother and father were faithful members.
I explained the dire situation.” He drew in a deep breath. “Two weeks later I received a call.”
Tremors worked their way along Adeline’s limbs. “From the church?”
Cyrus gave a nod of confirmation. “Your father and I met with a priest named Grayson. That same night we drove all the way to Cincinnati. It was three or four o’clock in the morning when we arrived at Joan’s.
” Cyrus’s expression reflected his unwillingness to apologize for his actions, then or now.
“We brought you to her and suddenly she was alive again. The light returned to her eyes.” A sad smile haunted his lips.
“She came back to us. We brought the two of you home that very day. Everyone thought your mother had gone to Cincinnati and had the baby. No one ever knew any differently. You were such a tiny thing, by the time your parents started to show you off, no one seemed to notice you were older than we claimed.”
Why hadn’t Grayson told Adeline that part?
Emotions she couldn’t label churned inside her.
The idea that she had, in fact, been whisked away in the middle of the night shook her.
Another realization hit hard on the heels of that one.
No matter how sweetly Cyrus painted this story, the bottom line would be the same.
“How much did I cost you?” The roiling emotions coalesced into one—anger.
“That information is between me and the church.” Cyrus met her angry gaze with lead in his own.
Try as she might, Adeline couldn’t hold on to the anger.
She felt dazed. This was . . . difficult to take in.
Like everything else she’d learned the past few days.
“Wait.” Another question jarred her. “Where did the baby pictures of me come from?” If she was six months old when her biological parents were murdered .
. . how had her mom and dad gotten those photos?
“The priest gave them to us. He’d gone through the Solomon photo albums, since there was no family to pass them onto, and collected the photos of each child—alone—and sent those to the new parents.”
“This is . . .” Adeline couldn’t find the words to adequately quantify or encapsulate these incredible facts. She put her hands palms up in front of her. “Unbelievable.”
At least now she knew how Prescott’s family had photos of Cherry as a baby despite the fact that she’d been four when she came to them.
Adeline imagined that if Prescott survived this, she—like them all—would need some serious therapy.
Evidently, she’d totally repressed any recall of her own early childhood until her own daughter had turned four.
Now that Adeline thought about it, this was the reason Prescott’s family had moved to Hattiesburg when she was four.
And Arnold’s had moved to Wiggins when she was two.
That was part of the deal, they had to extract themselves from their former lives to some degree to limit the questions. But what about extended family?
Adeline pushed aside the mounting questions. All those issues could be sorted out another time. Not that they really mattered. What mattered was finding those women—her sisters—alive.
And stopping the man who had done this. She stared down at her mother. She was gone. Nothing Adeline did or thought or said would bring her back. The agony swelled in her chest once more.
“I did what I had to do to save my family,” Cyrus said, that commanding tone he generally used back in full force. “I make no apologies for that.”
Adeline arrowed him an incredulous look. “What do you want me to do, old man?” she demanded. “Give you a medal?”
“I expect you to do what needs to be done.” Fury tightened his face. “Kill the bastard who did this.”
Adeline sliced her hand through the air, cutting him off.
Did he think she was a fool? That he could come in here spouting this fairy tale and have her suddenly seeing him in a different light?
The idea of all the time she’d lost with her mother because of him abruptly bobbed to the surface of all the other churning emotions.
“You know, if you loved my mother and father so much—paid whatever the price for me—why the hell did you threaten my life nine years ago?”
That made no sense at all. The bastard had run her clean out of Mississippi. He’d never treated her with anything but disdain. Was she just supposed to buy this damned story?
“To protect you,” Cyrus admitted, though he looked away as he did.
“Gage was my son. I loved him no matter who and what he was. I knew that none of his or Sheriff Grider’s supporters would sit back and allow you to get away with the part you played in his death.
As long as you were here, your life was in danger, and I couldn’t protect you from the fallout. ”
Adeline wasn’t going to waste her breath arguing with him about her so-called part in Gage’s death. Nor could she swallow his too pat answer. “You hated me.” She let him see the frankness in her eyes. “And I always got the distinct impression that my mother hated you as much as I did.”
Pain, fierce and genuine, flickered in his eyes, taking Adeline aback yet again. “She despised me most of the time, but she always came to me for help. That was enough for me.”