Discovering by Wendy Corsi Staub Read Free Book Online

stirring her hair.
    Reluctantly, she pulls back so that she can think straight.
    “I really need your advice, and there’s no one else I can tell.”
    “Is it about what happened with that woman?”
    “Sort of.”
    When she called him from Florida Saturday, she’d filled him in about what Sharon Logan did to her. And, presumably, to her mother.
    But Jacy doesn’t know about the e-mails.
    Or about the baby.
    She tells him now, eventually going from leaning against Jacy to facing him, laying it all out in a detached, matter-of-fact tone.
    As if she’s talking about total strangers, and not her very own mother.
    And her very own sister or brother.
    He’s quiet for a long time.
    “Say something,”she begs at last.
    He reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing it. “I don’t know what to say. Are you okay with all this?”
    “Not really. Would you be?”
    He answers her question with another question. “What happened to the baby?”
    “I don’t know . I haven’t read the rest of the e-mail yet.”
    “Are you serious?”At her nod, he asks, “But why not?”
    “For one thing, because I don’t want my father to know about it, and he’s been watching me like a prison guard twenty-four-seven.”
    “He’s not here now.”
    “Neither is the laptop.”
    “You can check it when you go back to Odelia’s, though. Unless you don’t want to.”
    “I do, it’s just . . . I guess I’m afraid of what I’m going to find out. And I’m definitely dreading what will happen when my father finds out.”
    “Don’t tell him.”
    “But I have to. I mean, I can’t go the rest of my life keeping this deep dark secret from him.”
    “Your mother did.”
    She blinks. “That’s different.”
    “Not really.”Jacy lets go of her hand and raises his to hold off her protest. “Let’s say you tell your father. . . . And then what?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What will happen? If he finds out, I mean?”
    “You know . . . . He’ll be upset.”
    “How much more upset can he be than he already is? Hasn’t the worst already happened? She’s dead.”
    “Yeah, but . . . she was in love with another man.”
    “You don’t know that for sure.”
    “She had a child with him.”
    “Years ago. It was over. She was married to your father.”
    “I know, but . . . I mean, you didn’t read the e-mail. She said it was incredible to see Darrin again. She was lying to me and my father about where she was, saying she was away on a business trip when she was sneaking off to meet him. Do you really think they were just friends?”
    He doesn’t answer that.
    She does. “I know they weren’t. They were still in love.”
    “Yeah, well . . . nobody’s perfect.”
    “Nobody’s perfect?” Calla’s eyebrows shoot up. “What kind of thing is that to say?”
    “It’s true.”
    She hates his reasonable tone of voice, hates that he isn’t outraged with her. How can he sit here discussing it like they’re talking about her mother switching brands of laundry soap?
    “You can’t possibly think it was okay , what my mother did?”
    “There are a lot of worse things,”he says flatly, “a mother can do. Much worse.”
    Oh.
    Right.
    “I’m sorry,”she tells Jacy, whose mother, she heard, neglected and abused him. Calla doesn’t know the details, and she hasn’t felt comfortable asking. She lost custody. Signed adoption papers to give him away to someone else.
    “Why are you sorry?”
    “Because . . .”She shrugs. She can’t say it. He doesn’t need to hear it.
    Here comes that defensive expression of his again, rolling in like storm clouds. She’s seen it before.
    She touches his arm.
    Ordinarily, he might have shaken her off, or at least, have failed to respond.
    But they’ve turned a corner. He looks up at her and nods, as though he knows exactly what she’s thinking.
    “You can’t change what happened to me, Calla. You can make a lot of things better for me. But not the past.”
    “I know . And the same goes