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The cop tipped his hat back away from a domed forehead and pivoted his face from side to side while clucking his tongue. “Let me get this straight, you have no identification and you’re driving that truck?”
Sunshine, still low on the eastern hillside, cast glaring shafts of yellow against trees and brush. It enveloped everything in a white haze, all Eric could see through his slitted eyes anyway. “That’s my truck, but like I said, they took my wallet.”
“I’m gonna have to run you in.”
The cop handcuffed Eric and lobbed him into the back seat of a police cruiser. He groaned in pain thinking lying on shards of glass would have been more comfortable than sitting with his arms drawn so tightly behind his back. “Do you mind telling me what I’m being charged with,” he was still brazen enough to ask.
The cop glanced through the cruiser’s rear-view mirror. “Disorderly conduct and driving without a license.”
As Eric expected he was led to a cell, not read his rights, and not been allowed his one phone call. Like hearing the ogres say the name Baldwin, none of it came as a great surprise.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After drying her hair, Jenna inspected herself in the mirror for any telling signs of love making on her body. The soft swelling of her lips wasn’t that noticeable, but the moony smile that touched her eyes might tip off a knowing friend. Thank goodness Randi was still home with her family.
Jenna picked up Janie from Anne’s, and they had breakfast at the café. Beverages with three-inch toppings of foam seemed in order—caffeine to bolster Jenna and hot chocolate for Janie—the proverbial spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.
An hour later they were home. “Baby, it’s time we had that talk I’ve been promising you.”
“Is this about my father?”
“Yes. It’s aboutmeand your father. I’ve kept things from you I shouldn’t have, and it’s time I told you the truth.”
Heavy-hearted, Jenna regarded the serious posture of her little girl. Janie was a month shy of her ninth birthday, nine years of being denied her father, a father who would have loved and cared for her.
“First I need to tell you something about myself.”
Stalling, Jenna studied her daughter’s face. Janie was suddenly a baby again, a cherub with a soft round face and eyes like big blue buttons. “Before you were born, I was a professional singer. I was…was pretty well known.”
“Well known? Like famous?”
Jenna shrugged. There was no reason to downplay this part of the story. She’d have to sugar coat enough of it. “I was. I made two movies, and I had a big concert tour.”
Wrinkling her nose, Janie began to laugh. “Yeah right, Mom.”
“I’m serious.” Jenna felt the blood rush from her face. She barely drew a breath.
Silence stretched forth. When Janie’s giddy laughter stopped, she knew her daughter believed her. “But, but how?”
Jenna told her child the story of how she became famous without detail. She was a person on a journey not taking time to notice the surroundings, a person only intent upon arriving at a destination without delay. She watched her daughter’s eyebrows rise with doubt, and her mouth skew crookedly as she absorbed what Jenna knew had yet to sink in.
“But, Mom, people don’t getun-famous. Why aren’t you still—”
“Something happened, sweetheart, something terrible.” Jenna squeezed her eyes tight and took a deep breath before continuing. “It was something I was afraid might hurt you too, so I ran away when you were a baby.”
Janie squinted and tipped her chin high as if bracing for a blow. Jenna’s heart wrenched with a sudden pain as she realized her daughter’s brave demeanor was something she had inherited from Eric. All the challenges he had faced, the hardship and suffering he’d endured during his own childhood had been met with the same resolve now standing before her. He didn’t even know his daughter, yet he had given her his courage.
“Is that why we moved so much? Are we going to have to run away again, Mommy? Is that why you’re telling me all this?”
“No, sweetheart, no more running.” Jenna took her daughter in her arms and stroked her hair, the pale blonde waves silk against her palm. There were few euphemisms for the word rape, so Jenna told Janie very simply about Mark Chambers’ “assault” and the terrible misunderstanding about her paternity.
It wasn’t how she ever envisioned giving her daughter the “where babies come from” lesson, and the child’s eyes began to fill. Jenna embraced her daughter tightly. “I wanted to tell you all of this when you were older, but your real father is here in Cromline, and he needs to know the truth also.”
Jenna’s confession ended with news about a cable program that might recount the sordid circumstance and media frenzy of Janie’s birth. “We’re going to have to be very careful about who we talk to and where we go from now on.”
That bit of information, along with the name Eric Laine finally made Janie’s small lips tremble and tears run down her cheeks in fat drops.
****
