The Hiding Place

  Veronica stopped playing, though the last notes hung suspended in he air. The woman Tara was certain was Elin Johansen applauded and the nurse joined in. Behind them, Tara stood. Gripping the pew in front of her with both hands, she called out, “Veronica, that was beautiful. I walked all the way in from the back entrance. I need to speak with you. I need your help.”

  The nurse gasped, craned her neck and rose. Elin turned her head, then stood too. The nurse started to protest—Tara ignored that—but Elin cut the woman off. “It’s all right, Anne. This is Mrs. Lohan’s former daughter-in-law, Tara.”

  “It isn’t all right,” the nurse cried. “I have my orders.”

  But that was all background buzz as Veronica’s clear blue eyes met hers and held. She looked fine to Tara, though her hair was wild compared to her usual precisely put together appearance. No, there were darker shadows under her eyes and more wrinkles on her high brow. And not only surprise lurked in her troubled gaze but fear.

  “Tara, my dear, however did you get through the gate?” she asked as Tara rushed toward her. Veronica stepped down to the floor from the organ; her hand hit some keys, and dissonant notes blared from the pipes.

  They hugged each other. Elin was arguing with the nurse, who had a cell phone or beeper in her hands. Veronica was perspiring from her performance; heat seemed to radiate from her to warm Tara’s ice-cold skin.

  “I know about Laird and Jen,” Tara told Veronica, her voice low so only she could hear. With her back to the other women, speaking fast, she held Veronica at arm’s length, staring into her eyes. “But I have to know the truth about when I was comatose. Did Laird and I have—”

  “Oh, my dearest girl, I’m so sorry,” Veronica interrupted and hugged her hard again. She whispered in her ear, “About that—I’m so sorry. Please don’t blame any of us that—”

  A door banged open. Maybe the nurse was going for help, but a man’s booming voice cut off all thought and words.

  “Tara! I’m so glad you tracked us down here. So you got my message that I wanted to see you? What luck I was just down the hall when Veronica’s nurse buzzed me that you were visiting.”

  Jordan Lohan strode at them from the side door into the hall. It swung shut behind him.

  “Such a surprise, right, Veronica?” he asked, and hugged both of them as they held tightly to each other. One arm around each of them, he somehow pried them apart, though they still grasped each other’s hands. “Tara, you understand she’s had a relapse. I had her admitted because she wasn’t making much sense—the drugs talking, as Dr. Middleton says.”

  “I came to ask you both for the truth.”

  “Absolutely. I hope Veronica told you that we feel you’re strong enough now to hear some sad news.”

  He was going to tell her? And he’d sent her a message. She should never have turned off her cell phone.

  “I think I know what it is,” she said as tears blinded her to make two Veronicas, two Jordans. “You should have told me before—right away.”

  “Anne,” Jordan interrupted, turning away, “would you please take Mrs. Lohan back to her cabin? It’s pouring out there—Elin, perhaps you can assist?”

  Both women jumped to attention as if God Himself had spoken. But at least Tara had forced the Lohans to tell her the truth now. Yet, suddenly, she felt more afraid than ever.

  “However did you get into the grounds?” Jordan asked Tara as they entered his spacious clinic office down the hall from the chapel. The masculine room always smelled of rich leather and pine. He went to a coat rack made of steer horns behind the door and took down a coat. “Here, let’s wrap this raincoat around you for warmth. I’d build a fire, but I want to make this quick, then be certain you get home safely before the storm gets worse. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  “My car’s parked outside the back service entrance,” she told him. “I waited until someone drove through, then hurried in on foot. I want the truth right now—all of it.”

  Her teeth were chattering, which she hated, because it made her sound weak and nervous. She’d disliked and distrusted this man for so long she wondered if he put his raincoat over her like a blanket to warm her or to keep her from dripping all over his beige Berber carpet. How had she ever managed to call him Dad? And what did that or anything matter now? He’d gone too far to draw back from finally telling her what had happened. He sat in the brown leather armchair opposite hers in front of the empty hearth.

  “Jordan, just tell me the truth. It might have shocked me once, but I’m ready for it. Did I have a child when I was comatose?”

  He nodded solemnly, then blurted, “Don’t blame Laird, or me either. He was devastated and, believe me, the two of us grieved for you, as well. His loss was as great as yours when you lost the child.”

  When you lost the child.

  So, he’d said it. There had been a child, her child! But she gritted her teeth as she noted how he’d worded that. She’d lost the child.

  “And Veronica,” he went on, “had her own problems, bad ones, so she didn’t know you were pregnant. You may recall she only visited you after you came out of the coma. She probably just thought you were asking about Laird and Jennifer. We kept you pretty much secluded, but for your doctor, of course.”

  “Who is conveniently out of the country. And my coma—did the doctor extend that for me?”

  “It was for your own health and protection, a professional decision.”

  “Really? You do like to play God, don’t you? You and Laird didn’t even tell Veronica about the child?”

  “We thought it best,” he went on, ignoring her sarcasm, “to leave her to her own cure without burdening her with the loss of our grandchild.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said, her voice so bitter it surprised her. “If you don’t tell the mother, why in the world would you bother to tell the grandmother?”

  “Tara, I know this is hard.”

  Desperate to know everything, she decided not to antagonize him more. She gripped her hands together so tightly in her lap that her fingers went numb. Dear God in heaven, it was true, it was true. To hear it admitted—though she’d thought she was ready—staggered her.

  “But I was on birth control pills,” she protested.

  “It surprised Laird. Delighted and excited him, however upset he was about your condition, of course. A miracle child, a very special child.”

  “Oh, of course. Not ‘away in a manger,’ but ‘hidden away in the Lohan Mountain Manor Clinic.’”

  He glared at her. “Tara, Laird was the one who wanted a child, not you. But the doctors we consulted—specialists, I assure you—told us you’d probably never make it to full term.”

  “And no doubt my ob-gyn, Jennifer DeMar—Jennifer Lohan, now—was there to hold Laird’s hand and whatever other part of him she could grab.”

  “I’m not here to defend that.”

  “Because you can’t. Go on. What—what went wrong?”

  “As you may know, such a delivery is highly unusual. It just went wrong, a stillbirth at the end, maybe because you weren’t able to push, maybe—”

  “That’s ridiculous! They could have done a C-section! I have researched two other cases of comatose births where the babies lived. You shouldn’t have had me in a clinic cabin or kept me in a coma if it was medically induced or extended! Was Jen there when it happened? Maybe she didn’t care, since she wanted Laird.”

  Who, Tara thought, was the woman who was screaming? She wanted to throw herself at this man, to tear him apart.

  “I said I am so sorry, Tara. Tragedies happen—you certainly know that from chasing after your friend Alex without Laird’s knowledge or approval. We left no stone unturned to have good medical help for you at the birth, though I realize we may have mishandled telling you. But with the loss of your friend Alex and then Laird, you had been through so much.”

  “So, in the end, the miscarriage is all my fault, right? I was dead to the world, but we can all just bla
me my coma for a dead child.”

  She felt nauseous, but she wasn’t going to get sick in front of this man. Under his coat, she pressed her hands against her lower belly, where she had carried a child she never knew. At least Jordan Lohan was telling the truth about one thing: he regretted the loss of the baby. Like Laird, Jordan coveted Lohan heirs. But she wanted to curse him, hurt him.

  “A boy or a girl?” she asked, her voice suddenly wan and listless.

  “A girl.”

  “What was she named?”

  Frowning, he shook his head.

  “She wasn’t named? I wasn’t there to hold her, and no one so much as named her? Where is she? I searched the records of all the local cemeteries. You didn’t just dispose—”

  “Of course not! She’s interred in the Lohan crypt in a private cemetery, on land my parents once owned. We had her cremated privately—as a favor, actually, to you so that the birth didn’t smear all of your previous tragedy through the papers again.”

  “Cremated? Laird never liked the idea of cremation, so you really must have been in charge at that point. And as a favor to me? I can’t imagine why I’m not grateful to the lordly Lohans.”

  “I know that’s pain and grief talking. We have been nothing but good to you. As I said, you never wanted his child. Laird told me.”

  “Not until we had a decent marriage during the day and not just at night! Oh, he was warm and understanding that last month—”

  She stopped shouting and frowned. Why had Laird suddenly been so sweet? Was he feeling guilty because he’d already taken up with Jen? Maybe even the Lohans didn’t know when Jen and Laird really got together. Jen had known Tara wasn’t happy; Tara had realized Jen thought Laird was the ultimate prize. Could she have put herself in his path—and then that woman had attended to her when their baby was born? A child to adore and rear together might have, at least temporarily, patched up their marriage. But if things went wrong, Laird would need comforting.

  “Was Jennifer there when my baby was born?” she asked.

  “Yes, but so was your specialist and Laird. I was in and out, mostly in the next room.”

  Tara threw the raincoat off so she could get up to flee this place. They’d let her daughter die, all of them.

  “Sit down!” Jordan ordered, and pushed her back into her chair. “I’m going to call someone to drive you home. I’m sure your girl Claire will be a comfort to you. Her uncle, too. A new family, Tara.”

  “Nothing and no one can replace a lost child,” she whispered, shaking her head so hard that her long hair flew free from her cap and whipped her face. “I want to visit the Lohan crypt,” she insisted, shoving her hair back behind her ears.

  “Of course,” he said as he rose and pressed buttons on his telephone. “Yes,” he said into the mouthpiece. “If Dr. Middleton’s not with Mrs. Lohan, send him in to see me, with his bag. And find Jim Manning.”

  Tara jumped to her feet. She wanted to see her daughter’s resting place right now, not be sent home. She was going to lose control; she could feel it coming, fury and regret rampaging through her.

  “You turned her into nothing!” she screamed. “No name! No grave! No bones, even. I want to see her, hold her…”

  For the first time in her life, she fainted.

  Nick stood, horrified, as Jordan Lohan explained everything to him on the phone.

  “Who is it?” Claire asked, coming up to him and tugging at his sweatshirt. “Is it about Aunt Tara? Is that her? I want to talk to her.”

  Nick gestured for her to keep quiet and turned away to look out the window. “How could someone be prepared for that?” Nick asked the man. “She had found evidence, but it’s still a terrible shock.”

  “I think the fact that she exhausted herself walking a couple of miles in here in the storm contributed. She was soaked to the bone. She’s awake now. We’ve given her a sedative and hot tea, and Jim Manning and Dr. Middleton will have her and her vehicle home to you soon. I’ve assured her that she can visit the child’s resting place when she feels stronger, though she’s insisting it be right now. Mr. McMahon, we may have handled this wrong, but we were only doing what we thought was best for her after all she’d been through. It would have set her back—”

  “More than now?” Nick challenged.

  He heard Jordan Lohan clear his throat. “It’s wonderful that you and Claire will be there waiting for her. If only she could get away for a while, or even leave the area completely, it would surely be best. Our son Laird was so distraught to lose his child that he left—”

  “With his new wife,” Nick cut in, “while the woman who had delivered his dead child was still comatose. Look, I appreciate your getting her back to us. I’ll be coming with her as soon as possible to visit her daughter’s grave,” he said, trying to sound decisive and strong. He wanted to say much more to this man, who was corrupted by his absolute power—actually, he wanted to beat him to a pulp—but Claire needed him, so he kept his mouth shut and ended the call.

  “Aunt Tara got caught in the storm today,” he told Claire, squatting to her level. “She was taking a long walk and got cold and wet. She fainted, so a doctor and an old friend of hers are bringing her home. We’ll just give her time to let her tell us what happened her own way, okay?”

  Wide-eyed, looking older than her years, Claire nodded. “Fainted. It isn’t as bad as a coma, is it, like she was in before?”

  “No, she’s awake and just fine,” he assured her. But he realized that Tara might never be just fine for a long, long time. And he was astounded by how damn much it mattered to him.

  Footprints in the snow…bloody footprints in the snow. She’d obviously been hemorrhaging that night, no doubt from childbirth, Tara told herself. At least, they didn’t let her die, but then, they couldn’t have simply had her cremated and stuck away in some old family crypt without a lot of questions.

  Frowning, she stared out the passenger window into the rain as Dr. Middleton drove her truck up Shadow Mountain Road. At the clinic, he had rushed in and broken an ammonia capsule under her nose. Now Jim Manning was leading them in his truck, his taillights blinking in the rain so they could follow. But her mind was following her own thoughts. In fainting, she’d hit her head. Had it jarred loose some memories of her daughter’s birth? Surely, Jordan Lohan had not told her everything. She remembered bright lights—flashes in her eyes. Yes, twisting pain and crying, crying, crying…

  But was that her crying or the child’s or Laird’s sobbing, or…

  “Not feeling faint again, are you, Tara?” the doctor asked. He was Veronica’s doctor and seemed nice enough. He wasn’t someone who had ever attended her—she’d asked. If he had, right now, however bad she felt, she would have been interrogating him as she never had any other witness. She almost said, I’m okay, but that would have been such a lie. To answer his question, she said, “No,” and looked out the side window again.

  Maybe, just as they’d forced her to wake up today, they had brought her out of her drug-induced coma when the labor started. Maybe they thought she could help deliver the child. Then, after the miscarriage, when they were all focused on the baby, she’d gotten away somehow, run out in the snow bleeding. They’d thought she’d still be comatose, but she’d been aroused and agonized by a vaginal delivery. Just like today, she’d made it to the chapel where Veronica was playing the organ. Jim had found her and called for help, so Veronica knew something had happened. Still, she did believe that Veronica had tried to tell her that Laird had married Jen, but that her former mother-in-law had not known about the child.

  Her thoughts tied themselves in knots and twisted like spiderwebs. She was never so happy to see home—that is, Nick’s home—than she was when it appeared through the rain.

  She would see her child’s resting place tomorrow, hold the urn, then try to build a new life. Somehow, she must go on, even if she lost Claire and Nick and Beamer.

  Nick opened the car door and lifted her in his arms. Ov
er his shoulder, through the slant of rain, she saw Claire waving from the lit doorway with Beamer at her side. Nick’s touch was so strong and sure. Exhausted, beaten, grieving, she buried her face against him. Cradling her, he strode inside with her close to his heart.

  15

  Nick fixed dinner and fed Claire while Tara took a shower and fell into a deep sleep. All she’d told him was, “It’s true. I had a daughter. I’m going to see where her ashes are tomorrow. If you can come…”

  “Of course I can. I’ll be right beside you through this.”

  She had shaken her head. “Don’t make promises,” she’d whispered, still not meeting his eyes, but staring off toward the blank wall behind him. “Because it will take me forever to get through this.”

  After Claire was ready for bed and Tara was awake, the child went in to see her, then darted right out and told Nick as he was wiping the table, “She says, can you come in too.”

  Tara was in bed, in a white terry-cloth robe, with the covers pulled up to her hips. She reached out to pat the bed. That must have been some sort of sign, because Claire lifted the corner of the covers and got in beside her. Tara put her arms around the child.

  “Sit, Nick, please,” Tara said, nodding toward the bed. “I want to tell you both something.”

  He sat, about at her knee level, feeling almost like an intruder.

  “I just found out today,” she said, looking down at Claire, “that when I was in my coma, I had a baby, a little girl, but she died right when she was born.”

  “Oh, no!” Claire cried. “That’s as bad as losing a mom!” She lifted her head from Tara’s shoulder to look closely into her eyes.

  Nick thought Tara looked like a ghost of herself, pale, mournful, almost ethereal. Her voice was a whisper nearly muffled by the wind and rain. He ached to hold her.

  “I had an idea it might be true,” Tara went on, “but it was still a big shock. To learn there was a child and to lose that child all at once—and that she’s been gone for two-and-a-half years.”