“Someone I knew a long time ago. He’s gone, all right? Dead.”
“Dead? Was he my father?”
Her mother’s blue eyes crackled. “John Lowell was your father, Beth, and don’t you ever forget that. He was the best father a girl could ever have. He loved you so much! He did everything for you! He treated you like…like—”
“Like I was his own?”
“Like a princess!”
“Like the queen rose in the rose garden of girls? But that’s not who I was! It’s not who I am! Who am I, Mom?”
“You are Bethany Ann Lowell, and you know it. Now stop all this nonsense. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you must be, too. Go back to your room and…” She paused. “Better yet, I’ll make you some hot chocolate. You can drink it while I clean up the mess you made in the guest room.”
“Then what? We’ll go to bed and pretend this never happened?” Beth’s jaw clenched. Her mother would try to sweep this under the family rug—Beth just knew it. But not this time. She lifted her chin. “How did my father die?”
“He had ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
“I’m not talking about Dad. I mean him. Thomas Wood. When did he die? What happened to him?”
“He wasn’t your father. He was just a man I knew. A college acquaintance. A friend.”
“A boyfriend.”
“Okay, maybe. We dated in college, and then he moved away, and that was that.”
“Except that you were pregnant with me.”
Jan heaved an enormous sigh. “All right, so what if I was? Does that part matter—really? The point is…John and I married, and he raised you as his own precious daughter. He gave you everything you could need, and he loved you dearly. Certainly as much as Billy and Bobby.”
“But they were his natural children.”
“By birth. Yes, they were. Yet, you were as much John’s natural child as your brothers, Beth. He loved you every bit as deeply. He never showed any preferences. You were his little pumpkin, remember? His ragamuffin. His Bethy-boo.”
“Mother, you know I loved Dad. Nothing will change that. Certainly not this teapot. But why didn’t you tell me about Thomas Wood? Why wasn’t I allowed to know?”
“What for? It made no difference to your daddy and me. Why should you care?”
“Because!” Beth stood and shook her head. “Because I’m different! I’m not the same as the rest of you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Every child is unique. Look at your brothers.”
“Peas in a pod. That’s what Dad used to say. Billy and Bobby, peas in a pod. He never included me.”
“You were a girl.”
“I wasn’t his child.”
Jan exploded up from the bed. “Yes, you were, Beth, and don’t ever let me hear you say such a thing again! You are John’s daughter every bit as much as your brothers are his sons. If you deny that, you deny everything he was!”
“How can you say that?”
“Because he was the man who married me! He did what he didn’t have to do. That’s who John Lowell was—decent, faithful, steady. I could count on him. He never gave me a moment’s doubt about his love for me—or for you, either. The very essence of your father was his willingness to set aside the past and face the future. Did you watch him die?” As she asked the question, Jan’s face hardened. “Oh, I forgot. You were away at college. And then traveling. Colombia and Botswana and places like that. You weren’t here to watch your daddy’s battle.”
“I came home.”
“How often? In his last year, you were home maybe twice.”
“Mother, it was hard to deal with. It was hard to see what was happening to him.”
“Hard to deal with? He didn’t find it hard to deal with the fact that you were another man’s birth child. He didn’t find it hard to deal with his pregnant bride. He accepted all that—just the way he accepted that his disease was going to rob him of every ounce of strength…the ability to talk…even his eyes, at the end. He couldn’t move his eyes, Beth. Did you know that? Because of it, he couldn’t even communicate with me. That brilliant man—silenced by a disease! But he kept on. John pushed forward, never feeling sorry for himself, never looking back. That was your father. That’s who raised you and loved you and gave you everything he had.”
Beth sniffled as she looked down at the teapot in her arms. Why did she feel guilty about even holding the thing? She had been a terrible daughter. And she was even more despicable now that she had opened the box, seen the tea set and read the note.
But she couldn’t help how she felt. She needed to know. Who was the man her mother had named in that cryptic message? What sort of person had given her an ivory, rose-strewn tea set…along with an unexpected baby…?
“Just tell me one thing,” Beth said. “Did he know about me? Thomas Wood?”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference to him. He had his own plans.”
“So you never told him.”
“I hinted. He probably knew. He left anyway.”
“Where did he go?”
“That’s enough, Beth. You don’t need all these details. Let’s go into the kitchen and get some cocoa. Here, give me the teapot.”
Beth clutched it tighter. “It’s mine. You put it in my box.”
“Thomas gave it to me.”
“And you gave it to his daughter. A childhood memento, you said. My childhood. And I’m keeping it.”
“Fine, then.” She flicked her hand in a gesture of disregard as she walked past her daughter. “I don’t care if you keep it. Take the whole box when you leave. Put it into that tiny little roomette you call an apartment.”
“It’s a studio.”
“Whatever.”
Jan could hardly blink back the tears that kept filling her eyes. As she filled the kettle with tap water, she wanted to shout at her daughter. Go away! Just leave me alone! What do you know about anything? You had life handed to you on a silver platter, and it was all thanks to John Lowell.
Oh, John! If only he were here right now. But that would be awful. Thankfully he had died before Beth found the teapot. He would have been crushed to see her reaction—so demanding and curious and stubborn. Hugging that teapot as though it were her own unborn baby. Clinging to it!
Jan sniffled and dug in her robe pocket for a tissue. Why had she even kept that stupid tea set? She should have thrown it out the moment Thomas turned his back on her and walked away. Thomas had professed to love her, but he had no idea what that really meant.
John, with his blond hair and gentle smile…he was the king of true love. He had heard about her predicament in a Sunday school class at church. Jan’s older brother had brought up his pregnant, unwed sister as a “prayer request.” Right. Perfect fodder for the holy gossip mill. But then John had come knocking on her parents’ door, asking if Jan would enjoy going out for ice cream, wondering how she liked her college history class, volunteering to lend her his books for a research paper.
At the time, he had a job as a college teaching assistant while working toward his master’s degree in history at Tyler’s branch of the University of Texas. It wasn’t exactly proper etiquette for John Lowell and Jan Calhoun to date, seeing as he was a teacher and she was a student