The Homecoming Read online

  Long after she’d unpacked and gotten into bed after checking on Nick one last time, she lay awake staring at the ceiling. Reliving the days on the island before she’d remembered why she was there. The attraction, the feelings, hadn’t been all on her side.

  She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but in just a few short days, she’d fallen in love with a man who was probably among the Top Ten Most Complicated Men in the Western Hemisphere.

  And she was pretty sure that he would never allow himself to love her back.

  The following day crawled by, one excruciating minute at a time. Danny spent most of it at Crosby Systems with Trent. His brother cleared out an office so that Danny could do much of the work he usually did from home. Trent had been beyond surprised when Danny had shown up in his office, but had quickly masked it and warmly welcomed him. Danny figured Trent saw his visit as another sign of his emotional stability.

  Several times he nearly blurted out the whole story, nearly told his brother about Sydney and the child she seemed so certain was Noah. But something held his tongue. It wasn’t simply that he wanted to protect Trent from the same heartache he was going through, although that certainly was a factor.

  But there was something more. Something inside him that told him not to voice even a whisper of hope that Noah might still be alive. He couldn’t be. Not after all this time.

  But what about the heart surgery?

  Coincidence. It had to be. Surely there were a number of adopted boys in the country who’d had heart surgery.

  But not little boys whose adoptions had come about in such an unorthodox manner. Not little boys who had literally been dropped on their mothers’ doorsteps at a year of age with no birth certificate and only shadowy knowledge of their pasts.

  Trent invited him for dinner that evening to meet his new wife, Rebecca. Their sister Katie and her husband, Peter Logan, were coming, and Katie was dying to see him, he told Danny. But the last thing he wanted to do right now was pretend there was nothing wrong in front of his far-too-perceptive brother and sister.

  Peter Logan. The thought of a member of the Logan family jarred him into thinking about his childhood friend Robbie. The older brother Peter had never even met. Robbie—Everett Baker now—had fired his public defender, Trent had told him, but Terrence Logan had hired the best criminal defense lawyers he could find to represent the son he’d just found again. Robbie hadn’t wanted to accept, apparently feeling that he should be punished.

  And he should. The part of Danny that was the father of a kidnapped child got furious every time he thought of Robbie involved in a kidnapping scheme, of all things. How could he? True, they’d heard that Robbie had been brainwashed until he’d forgotten his true identity, and Trent had told him some pretty sad stories about Robbie’s life after he was taken. But how could he have stolen other people’s babies?

  Then a truly terrible thought occurred to him. Robbie couldn’t have had anything to do with Noah’s kidnapping, could he? There would be too much irony in that to be believed. He’d ascribed his son’s loss to that cosmic payback theory for so long that he was stunned to think it really could be true. He’d failed to save Robbie from being snatched, and years later, Robbie might have helped snatch Danny’s very own child. The thought was so disturbing that he couldn’t hide his disquiet when Trent stuck his head in the door shortly before six.

  “Hey,” he said to Danny. “You sure you won’t come to dinner?”

  Danny shook his head. “Give Katie a kiss for me. And Rebecca, too.” He forced a smile. “But you don’t have to kiss Peter.”

  Trent studied his younger brother for a moment. “Something’s wrong. What?”

  Danny huffed out a breath of exasperated amusement at his brother’s perceptiveness. He wasn’t ready to talk about it. “Trent, get over yourself. You’ve been taking care of the rest of us for so long that you’ve forgotten you don’t have to anymore.”

  Trent raised an eyebrow and looked at Danny with challenge in his eyes. “Don’t I?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Trent said quietly. “But something’s bothering you. All I’m offering is a sounding board if you need one.”

  “I don’t.” Slowly, Danny spoke again. “But I was wondering about something. Did you ever hear anything about the people Robbie—Everett Baker—was working with?”

  Trent nodded. “One was a guy from Russia. Vladmir Kosanisky, I believe. And he’s going to jail for a long, long time, thanks to Robbie’s testimony. But the brains behind the whole scheme, the one they called the Stork, the guy who recruited them both, was named Charlie Prescott.”

  Danny shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “I don’t think it should.”

  “Why would he do that? Steal babies?” Cause a lifetime of anguish for the families left behind?

  “Funny you should ask.” Trent hitched up his pants leg and settled on the edge of Danny’s desk. “When I talked to Katie earlier, she said Peter’s parents had just learned some new information from the cops. Apparently this Prescott was an orphan himself. He lived at the orphanage years before it became Children’s Connection and everything it is today.”

  “So? Being an orphan shouldn’t warp somebody that badly. Didn’t he get adopted?”

  “He did. But the people who adopted him must not have been screened very carefully. The father abused the boy in every way you can think of,” he added soberly. “And the mother apparently did nothing to stop it. Prescott ran away when he was sixteen but he never forgot the agency that handed him over to those monsters. He went to Children’s Connection a couple of years later to find out who his real parents were, but they wouldn’t release the records to him.”

  “They couldn’t, unless the biological parents had authorized it, right?”

  “Right. Anyway, my guess is that was the last straw. He went over whatever cliff of decency he’d been clinging to and decided to take revenge on the agency.” Trent cocked his head. “Danny! You don’t think Prescott and Robbie Logan might have had something to do with Noah’s kidnapping, do you? My God!” His whole body sagged. “Could that be true?”

  Danny shrugged. “The only way to know is to ask Robbie.”

  “My God,” Trent repeated. Then he glanced at his watch. “Listen, I have to go, but tomorrow, we’ll make some calls, I promise. We’ll find out if there’s anything to this.”

  “I, uh, I’m tied up tomorrow morning,” Danny said. “I might make it in sometime in the afternoon, though.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Danny squirmed beneath his brother’s intent gaze. “Maybe nothing. I’ll tell you about it later.” Maybe. If he could manage to talk about this whole Nick Aston thing at all, it would be Trent to whom he could talk.

  Trent stood. “All right. But I’m not going to forget about this.”

  “Like that’s ever going to happen,” Danny said, only half-joking.

  Trent smiled, sketching a salute as he headed out the door. “See you tomorrow. We’ll talk more then.” It sounded as much like a threat as it did like a promise, but Danny couldn’t work up any annoyance. Trent was the glue that had held Danny’s life together during its worst, blackest moments. He’d been equally involved in Katie’s and Ivy’s lives, far more of a parent to their younger sisters than either of their parents.

  Which was a blessing. Sheila Crosby had never cared for any of her children as much as she’d cared for herself. And Jack, their dad had been so desperate to get away and stay away from Sheila that he’d left the kids to her tender mercies far too often. Oh, well. Water under the bridge. His last counselor had said he could let them continue to ruin his life or he could let it go. He chose the latter.

  Deliberately, he cast thoughts of his past from his mind. He got to his feet, checking his watch and seeing that it was past time for him to leave. He was finished here for the day. Time to head back to his hotel and stare at the tube for the r
est of the evening until he could sleep.

  And then it would be tomorrow. The day of reckoning. The day Sydney had to face the fact that she was wrong about Nick being Noah.

  He couldn’t be wrong. Because deep in his heart, Danny knew his little boy was no longer alive.

  He was up well before the sun the following morning, and then he had to kill hours and hours before 9:00 a.m., when he was supposed to meet Sydney at the office of the doctor who would be explaining the test results.

  He was early, of course. But only moments after he took a seat in the waiting room, Sydney walked through the door. She looked cool and lovely in a pale butter-colored sweater set and flowered skirt, her face still glowing with the color she’d acquired at his home.

  With her was a slender, blond-haired preschooler.

  Danny felt his heart literally stop for a moment. Knock it off! He told himself. That’s not Noah. Maybe not, but he couldn’t keep from studying every inch of the child.

  “Hello, Danny.” Sydney came right over and sat down next to him. The little boy came with her, boosting himself onto a wooden chair next to hers while she set down a backpack at his feet. “Danny, this is Nicholas,” she said to Danny. Turning to the boy, she said, “Nick, this is Mr. Crosby. Can you say hello?”

  “Hi.” The little boy smiled shyly, but his blue eyes were direct and open. “Are you a friend of my mommy’s?”

  “Yes,” Sydney answered for him. “He is. Nick, we may have to wait awhile. I brought along a few of your books, your CD player with the new Veggie Tales CD and a couple of other things. You can decide what you want to do.”

  As the little boy dove into the treasures his mother had packed, Danny tried not to stare. Even though he’d known Sydney was a mother, it was odd seeing her in this new role. And he found it impossible to prevent his gaze from straying to the child over and over again, cataloging him against Danny’s memories.

  Sydney’s son had a neatly trimmed wealth of shining hair as blond as the silk tassel on an ear of corn. Felicia’s hair had been almost that color. And he’d seen pictures of himself as a small child with hair almost the same. It was still blond, still wavy, almost thirty years later, though it had darkened considerably from that early lightness.

  He shifted uncomfortably. Coincidence. Besides, Noah hadn’t had hair that color. Of course, Noah hadn’t even had hair. It had been quite a source of amusement to Danny and Felicia when their firstborn had remained as bald as an egg month after month. When he’d turned a year old, he’d just begun to get a fringe of light fuzz around the back of his head, like an old man who’d lost it all but that small remnant.

  The unexpected memory nearly undid him and to his horror, he realized he was on the verge of tears. Fiercely he fisted his hands, letting his nails bite deeply into his palms to divert his thoughts. The lump that had risen in his throat dissolved fraction by minute fraction, and the stinging in his eyes eased as well.

  While he was trying to get himself under control, Nick Aston chose a book from the backpack and gave it to his mother. “Will you read this to me?” he asked her.

  Sydney smiled, hefting him onto her lap. “Of course I will. And if you know any of the words as I go along, you can read them out loud, okay?”

  “Okay!” It was obvious that this was a frequent activity for the pair.

  Again, his gaze was drawn to the child. He seemed skinny, but Danny really didn’t know a lot about kids this age. Maybe they burned a lot of energy. Or maybe it had something to do with the surgery he’d had. Would that affect his size? Logic told him probably not, unless it had truly stunted his growth, and Nick seemed tall for five. Five-and-a-half, if Sydney was right about him being a year old when he’d come to her.

  Needing heart surgery. Another coincidence.

  “Mr. Crosby? Ms. Aston? Dr. Cantoni will see you now.” The woman in the lab coat who’d opened the inner office door smiled as she beckoned to them.

  Danny stood and moved forward, aware that Sydney had stooped to help Nick gather his toys. He didn’t look back, wouldn’t let himself look back as he followed the woman to the end of the hallway and into a large, pleasantly appointed office in pale greens and creams. He’d spoken to the doctor on the phone but hadn’t met him when he’d gone to Portland General for the lab test, and he tried to smile as the tall, thin man came forward and shook his hand. “Have a seat,” he suggested, and Danny obediently sat in one of the large wing chairs.

  The doctor moved around him to welcome Sydney. He also knelt to meet Nick, who let himself be led to a child-size table in front of a huge fish tank along the far wall.

  “My granddad and me catched fish when I stayed wif him,” Nick announced to the doctor.

  The doctor snapped his fingers. “I don’t have any fishing poles here. I guess you’ll just have to look at these fish. I have some pretty ones in there.”

  Nick giggled, a happy-child sound that tore at Danny’s heart all over again. “You can’t catch fish in a tank!” he explained. “Only in a river. Or maybe a ocean or a lake.” He looked at his mother for confirmation.

  Sydney smiled and nodded. “That’s right, buddy.” She unzipped the backpack and set it on the floor beside the table. “Mr. Crosby and I need to talk with Dr. Cantoni for a few minutes, honey. You can play here until it’s time to go.” With a whoop, the little boy all but plastered his nose against the fish tank, raptly watching its inhabitants.

  Sydney smiled wryly. “I’ll have to drag him out of here when we’re done. He’s got a thing for fish.”

  As Sydney came forward and sat to his left, Danny took a deep breath and tried to unlock tightly clenched muscles, to relax his shoulders, to sit back in the chair rather than sitting on the edge with his hands gripped tightly together. This was it.

  The doctor went around behind his desk. He opened a folder before him. “All right,” he said. “Mr. Crosby, this test was performed on hair samples from you and Ms. Aston’s son to determine whether that child could be your biological offspring.” He took a piece of paper from the folder and slid it across the desk facing them. “This is a chart of your DNA sequence, and below it is the child’s.”

  He spent several moments explaining how the test was performed, how they achieved results, why those results could be considered conclusive evidence without a doubt, and then went into a detailed comparison of the two sets of test results. Halfway through, Danny realized he couldn’t absorb one more word.

  “Dr. Cantoni.” He laid his hand in the middle of the piece of paper, obscuring the information. “Can you just tell us? Is he my son?”

  The doctor stopped. He looked over his glasses at first Danny, then at Sydney. “Yes,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind, Mr. Crosby, that Nicholas Aston is your son.”

  Nicholas Aston is your son…is your son…is your son.

  He heard someone gasp aloud, and realized distantly that it had been himself. The doctor was still talking, but it was only background noise to the clamor inside his head. Noah was alive. Alive! How could it be? Was he sure it wasn’t a mistake? No, of course not. DNA didn’t lie. That was the whole reason they’d had the test done. He became aware that there were tears on his cheeks and he put a hand to the bridge of his nose, pinching it tightly as if that would somehow stop the emotion flooding through him.

  “…give us a few minutes, Dr. Cantoni? This has been a shock for Mr. Crosby.” Sydney, he realized, was trying to give him time to pull himself together as she extended her hand and firmly shook the doctor’s.

  “Certainly. Just have my nurse call me when you’re ready to continue.” The doctor stood and left the room.

  A moment later, Sydney’s hip bumped his shoulder as she perched herself on the arm of his chair. Her right arm came around his shoulder, rubbing his upper arm gently while her other hand came down over his. She didn’t say a word, but he couldn’t stop himself from turning his hand over and gripping hers.

  Across the room, Nick—Noah!—was chattering
happily at a large purple fish with a wide mouth, apparently oblivious to the drama unfolding near the desk.

  Finally, Sydney leaned down and spoke near his ear. “Danny, are you okay? Is there someone you’d like me to call?”

  “No.” One of the few things he did know was that he wasn’t ready to share this with his family yet. “No calls.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

  She made a small, dismissive sound. “I don’t blame you. You would have been foolish not to,” she said, “especially after the disappointments you’ve had before. You must have been terrified to let yourself hope.”

  He swallowed and nodded. “I was so afraid it couldn’t be true….”

  Silence fell, broken only by the sound of the little boy’s lilting voice as he continued to chatter at the fish.

  As Danny sat up a little straighter, Sydney returned to her own chair. “I guess,” she said softly, “we have to decide how to handle this now.”

  Danny glanced at her, seeing for the first time that there were tears in her eyes, too. And for the first time he realized what this news meant. He might have found his son, but Sydney would be losing hers. God! Could he do that to her?

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I need to sort out my feelings before we talk any more about what to do next.” He hesitated. “Could I come over and visit him?”

  Sydney squared her shoulders. “Of course. But would you mind if we don’t tell Ni—him right away? I have to talk to my family first. I don’t want him blurting it out to them the next time his Gramma calls.”

  He hadn’t missed her hesitation over the boy’s name. Another quandary to be resolved. And her family… This was going to require a lot more planning than he’d originally considered. It was going to affect a lot more people than simply Sydney and him, though they would be the ones to absorb the most direct impact.

  Now that his mind had begun to function again, it seemed to be racing at a mile a minute. There were millions of things, it seemed, to think about. And of all of them, the only one he could positively say he was sure of right now was that he wanted his son back.