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“At least one of them is here. Jessamine. The rest I don’t know. I mean, I don’t even know how large my new family is.” A pain twisted in my heart. “I don’t even know if they’d consider me family.”
“Oh, baby.” He nuzzled my hair. “They would be fools not to want to count you as kin.”
“I don’t know about that. If the shoe were on the other foot . . .”
“If the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be making plans for a family reunion. Or would it only be a ‘union’ since y’all haven’t met yet?” He laughed, but his humor didn’t really help.
“How it must have hurt them, to be deserted like that.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it hurt like hell, but it wasn’t you who did the hurting. Don’t you take any of that on.”
“I think Iris has claimed all that guilt for herself.”
“She’s been thrown for a loop by all this.” His large hand ran down my arm, slid to my stomach. “Learning about your grandpa’s lies has made her feel like she isn’t who she always believed herself to be. I think I understand how she feels.”
I stiffened as my heart jumped to my throat. “What are you talking about?”
He sighed. “I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to you about something.”
I could feel his heart beat against my cheek. He seemed to have lost his nerve. “You know you can tell me anything.”
He planted a kiss on the top of my head. “Yeah, I know that. I shouldn’t have even brought it up, though, at least not right now. You’ve got so much on your mind already.” A pang of guilt hit me. I hadn’t even broached the topic of my grandmother’s fate, or the more difficult matter of Emmet coming home to Savannah.
I placed my hand against his rock-hard shoulder and pushed myself back so I could see his eyes. “Tell me.”
He removed my hand from his shoulder and pulled me back in against him. “Before the baby is born, I think we need to talk to my parents about who I really am.”
I was dumbstruck. What had we done to betray his origin? Had I said something? Had I not said something? Panic nearly caused me to blurt those questions out.
“I mean, look at them,” he said, interrupting me. “Then look at me. Dad’s barely five foot seven. He and Mom are both black Irish.”
I felt myself relax. It was true, only the most miraculous combination of Claire and Colin’s recessive genes could have created my redheaded giant.
“I know what you are about to say.” Peter rocked me gently. “I’ve looked through all the family pictures. I don’t look like any of my relatives from either side.”
“So, you think you were adopted? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I would have thought so, but no, there are plenty of photos of Mom when she was so pregnant she looked bigger than a—” He stopped himself. “Pregnancy didn’t suit her like it does you.”
Relief washed over me. He had no idea that Claire was not his natural mother. “Yeah, nice try there.”
“I’m hers all right, but I don’t think my dad is my father, if you follow me.”
I didn’t have the heart or the energy to lie to my husband actively. “How do you feel about that possibility?”
“Yeah, thanks, Doctor. It’s more than a possibility. I feel it in my gut. I always have. I love my dad so much, it never mattered before, but now . . .” I pulled from his arms so that I could see him. His two-tone eyes, one blue, one green, looked down, as if he were imagining the confrontation he felt he should have with his mother. “I need to know who I am.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I owe it to our son. I mean, there are medical reasons.” This rationalization didn’t ring true, even though logically it sounded valid. He had obviously long suspected his parentage, and that he was becoming a father himself must have sharpened his desire to learn the truth. It hurt me to think I would be one of those forced to hide the truth from him.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll go to visit Claire. Together. We’ll ask her together. All right?”
He nodded, and it broke my heart to see tears well up in his eyes. He brushed them away with the back of his hand, then reached over and turned off the light.
NINE
I awoke to find Peter gone. Again. I rubbed my eyes, amazed to see the clock showed it was past eleven. I should have been up hours ago, helping Iris finish up with preparations for Thanksgiving. I jumped out of bed and rushed through a shower. Makeup could wait. I dried my hair enough so it wouldn’t tangle and threw on drawstring sweatpants and one of Peter’s T-shirts.
I smelled no cloves, no cinnamon, no sage. I rushed downsta
irs and into a kitchen empty except for Uncle Oliver, who sat at the table examining the old tourist map we had marked with the locations where the body parts had shown up. His eyes were red. He’d been crying. The sight unnerved me. He always shrugged off emotion. Pain seemed to slide off him. To witness Oliver hurting was a new and unpleasant sight. I averted my eyes to the map. So much had happened since I last looked at the map, it seemed like a thousand years had passed.
