Meeting His Secret Daughter
Автор
Marie Ferrarella
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Prologue
Riley Robertson struggled to hold back the tears she felt welling up within her. She had known for a while now that this day was coming closer, but somehow she had still refused to allow herself to fully believe it was actually happening. That her best friend, Breena Alexander, was really dying. That she would not be alive much longer.
Stubborn, despite the toll her illness was having on her, Breena had steadfastly refused to go to the hospital. Either the new one built in Forever or the older one located some fifty miles away.
Despite Riley’s endless pep talks—including this one—to try to make Breena see things in a positive light, her friend, sensing that she had next to no time left, had decided that what there was of it, she would spend it with her four-year-old daughter, Vikki. Even though, at this point, regardless of what she might want, her ill health was forcing her to spend most of her time in bed.
“They wouldn’t let Vikki come visit me in the hospital, much less stay with me,” Breena pointed out. “No, I’m going to be home for as long as humanly possible. Do you think you would still be able to look in on us from time to time?” Breena asked Riley hopefully.
Shaking her head, Riley, the first nurse practitioner the small town of Forever, Texas, had ever had, held her friend’s hand. “Just try and stop me. I’ve got some time off coming to me. I can spend it with you and Vikki—” Riley began.
But Breena cut her off. “No, don’t do that,” she protested. “I don’t want to take you away from your work. Just come by the house whenever you can.”
Riley sighed. That was so like Breena, not wanting to put anyone out.
“You plan on arguing with me to the very end, don’t you?”
A small, weak smile curved Breena’s lips. “There’s no fun in being agreeable. You taught me that.” And then her friend paused. “Riley, I need to tell you something,” she said.
Riley gently squeezed her friend’s hand, not sure just what was coming. Breena looked so serious. Did her friend want her to adopt Vikki? She knew that she would in a heartbeat.
“Go ahead,” Riley urged. “I’m listening.”
Breena paused again, taking a shallow breath. Breathing hurt and talking was growing harder and harder for her these days. “It’s about Vikki’s father...” she began.
As friends, Breena and Riley had shared everything. Consequently, Riley was the only one who knew who Vikki’s father was. He hadn’t been a local, but a man who had come out on vacation from Arizona one summer five years ago. Matt Logan and Breena had hit it off instantly. They had spent every moment together until he’d had to leave to finish up his last year of college.
When Breena had found out she was pregnant, Riley had urged her to tell Matt, but Breena had totally refused to even entertain the idea. Moreover, she’d forbidden Riley from contacting Matt to tell him. She’d felt that since he was just starting out in his career, if he found out that she was having his child, he would give up his long-range plan and take a job to support her and the baby. Breena had absolutely refused to allow that to happen. To that end, she had sworn Riley to secrecy.
But now that she was dying, circumstances had changed.
“Go on,” Riley encouraged quietly.
“He doesn’t know...” Breena prefaced her words with another hesitant breath.
She couldn’t believe that Breena had never attempted to tell Matt about his four-year-old daughter.
“Doesn’t know you’re dying?” Riley questioned uncertainly.
Breena shook her head and then said hoarsely, “No. He doesn’t know he has a daughter. I never told him.”
For one of the few times in her life, Riley found herself almost too stunned for words. When she finally found her tongue, she asked, “How could you not tell him? I know that in the beginning you had your reasons. But now...?”
Breena seemed to almost fade into her bedsheets right before Riley’s very eyes. “The time never seemed right. This isn’t something that you can just casually drop into a sentence,” Breena insisted.
“But you didn’t tell him?” Riley cried in total disbelief. It didn’t seem possible—or right.
“It was a summer fling,” Breena explained. “He went back to Arizona after summer was over and when I found out that I was pregnant, I couldn’t find the words to tell him.”
All sorts of words sprang into Riley’s head, but she kept them to herself. All but one sentence. “How about, ‘Guess what, honey? Know that perfect summer we spent? Well, it got a little more perfect.’”
Breena made no comment on Riley’s summation. Instead, she had just one request.
“After I die, could you get in contact with him for me? Vikki deserves to be with her father. Or at least to get to know him. His name is Matt Logan.”
“I know what his name is, Breena,” she reminded her friend, wondering if the illness was taking a toll on Breena’s mind.
All sorts of objections regarding Breena’s mindset occurred to Riley, but she wasn’t about to voice them, not now, not when Breena was dying. Instead, she asked, “Do you have a current address where I can reach him?”
Breena nodded. “Yes. But don’t reach out to him until...well, you know,” she emphasized, unable to bring herself to say the words.
She didn’t need to.
Riley’s heart ached and she felt tears all but choke her as she nodded. “I understand.”
“Until” came faster than either woman had expected. Breena died only two and a half weeks later, leaving a hole in a great many hearts. A lot of people loved the kind, soft-spoken, young elementary school teacher who had died much too soon.
“I’m going to bring Matt Logan back to Forever, Breena,” Riley said as she stood in her friend’s bedroom, holding the woman’s lifeless hand. It was already growing cold. Riley’s mother, Rita, had come with her and had taken Vikki into another room to spare the little girl. “Even if I have to wrap him up in plastic and sling him over the back of a horse, I’ll bring him back here so he can meet his daughter.”
Riley swallowed a deep sigh as tears began to gather again in her eyes. For a moment, she was unable to speak.
“I’m really going to miss you, Breena,” she finally whispered, her heart lodged in her throat as she brushed her friend’s soft red hair back from Breena’s face.
As she stroked Breena’s hair, Riley finally allowed her tears to fall freely.
