Knowing how close Jackson was to his parents, she couldn’t begin to predict how he would react if he found out they had kept something like this from him for so long.
Laurel was also disturbed by Donna’s comment about the strained state of Jackson’s marriage. Had Jackson been talking to his parents about her? The very possibility made her chest tighten.
She stretched out in the recliner, propping her feet up as she took another sip of her drink, then set the capped bottle aside for later. She hadn’t slept much the night before, and weariness and stress were catching up with her.
Still mentally replaying Donna’s overheard words, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the cartoon and Tyler’s giggles wash over her.
Laurel dreamed of the day she met Jackson.
The summer-afternoon party wasn’t a typical event for either of them. The purpose of the gathering was to celebrate the adoption of the homeowners’ infant son, and Laurel had been invited as the social worker who had helped arrange the adoption. The new father was a successful businessman who had recently hired the construction company Jackson worked for to build several new stores for him. Jackson, along with several of his management-level co-workers, had been invited to the gathering to welcome their client’s son.
Later Laurel would think what a cliché their meeting had been. Eyes meeting across a crowded room. Everyone else fading into a misty background. Her toes curling when he smiled. Sparks of sexual awareness coursing through her when their hands touched.
They had left the party together a short while later. They’d driven to Cannon Beach, where they’d walked barefoot in the sand at sunset, listening to the shorebirds that nested on Haystack Rock. The salty breeze tossed their hair and tugged at their clothes—clothes they had abandoned in a hidden nook among the rocks after sunset. They had been daring and reckless and impetuous that night. By dawn the next morning, they had been in love.
She dreamed of that beach. Of the birds and the rocks and the sand and the stars spread above them like an endless, bright future. She dreamed of conversation and laughter, of passionate whispers and hoarse cries. Of two young people so desperately in love that they had let their emotions sweep them into a life neither of them had been prepared for….
It was his gentle touch on her cheek that woke her.
She opened her eyes to find Jackson’s face close to hers as he knelt beside the recliner. The room was quiet now, the television dark and silent. Tyler lay on the bed, curled around his penguin, sound asleep. Even the clatter from the hallway seemed unusually muted just then.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, her voice still husky.
“About an hour. You really went out.” His thumb moved against her cheek again. “There are tears on your face. Are you worried about tomorrow?”
Tears? Remembering snatches of her dream, she pushed herself upright and ran a hand through her hair. “I suppose I am.”
“It’s going to be okay, Laurel. Everything’s going to be okay.” His tone, combined with the set of his jaw, made it clear he would accept no other possibility.
That obsessive need of his to be in control, to make sure everything in his world turned out exactly the way he wanted it to, was etched all over his face.
As if he had read something of her thoughts in her expression, Jackson gave her a crooked smile. “I sound just like my dad, don’t I? Making well-intentioned guarantees I can’t back up. Dad’s philosophy has always been that nothing bad can happen if he refuses to acknowledge the possibility. I guess he passed some of that trait to me.”
His comment reminded her of the conversation she had overheard between Carl and Donna in the hallway earlier. She wondered again how Jackson would react if it turned out that he was adopted. Would Jackson understand, as she had come to see during her years as a social worker, that Carl was no less his father even if it had been love, rather than biology, that had bestowed that title upon him?
Or maybe she had completely misinterpreted what she’d heard. She’d never been a particularly skilled eavesdropper, had never wanted to be. And even if her guess had been right, that was between Jackson and his parents. Now that Tyler had been diagnosed and was being treated, she couldn’t see how Jackson’s genetic history mattered at the moment.
“You’d probably better head home and try to get some sleep,” she told him, changing the subject. “Tomorrow’s going to be a trying day and it will start early.”
“I thought maybe I’d stay here tonight. I know they only want one parent to stay in
the room all night, but there are recliners in the waiting room.”
“There’s no need for you to do that. You won’t be able to sleep well here, and you’ll want to be rested tomorrow.”
“What makes you think I’ll sleep any better at home?” He turned his head to look at the child on the bed. “I can’t imagine sleeping a wink tonight.”
“Still—”
“Laurel.” He frowned, his voice losing the gentle tone with which he had awakened her. “The decision is mine to make.”
She locked her hands in her lap. “Of course.”
For just a moment the invisible wall between them had lowered. Now it was back. She couldn’t for the life of her decide which of them kept rebuilding it—though she suspected it was a joint project.
He covered her hands with one of his, his work-toughened palm pleasantly rough against her softer skin. “Don’t close me out of this, Laurel. He’s my son. We’re a family. We need to be together in this.”
After a moment, she turned her hand so that their fingers linked. “I’m not trying to close you out. If it makes you feel better, you should stay. I simply wanted you to get some rest, for your sake.”