Left Turn at Paradise Page 26

  Layla stared from Beth to Colin. Shock scrambled her thoughts at the mind-boggling reality of having her parents standing in the same room together. “How did you get here?” Layla asked him, wondering if talking about him had conjured him up. “Did Beth call you?”

  “No, my mother,” he said.

  “Your mother?” she echoed in bemusement.

  “Colin’s mother saw me at the July 4th picnic,” Beth said. “It didn’t take her long to learn about you and start putting things together.”

  Colin nodded. “I wasn’t sure until I saw you at church.”

  Layla hadn’t. She’d literally bumped into him and hadn’t registered even one glimmer of recognition. She’d always imagined she would know her father on sight.

  “It was the shock of my life,” Colin said.

  He was shocked? Layla had been in a permanent state of shock for weeks now. “No kidding. Beth is good at making grand re-entries.”

  Colin cleared his throat. “I know this is awkward, but would you mind if I hugged you?”

  Layla stilled. She watched him carefully and read the naked hunger and fascination in his gaze. Then she slowly lowered her chin even as she stiffened in anticipation. He stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her. For a second she stood stiff and unyielding, unsure of what to do. Then her arms drifted around his waist.

  “I always wondered how this would feel,” she whispered, the words drifting across the silent kitchen. He smelled like musky cologne – and strangely enough – like her grandmother, with the same intense antiseptic scent. He was solid and muscular beneath his dress shirt. There was strength in his embrace she’d never experienced with Gran or Aunt Grace.

  A soft rumble rose from Colin’s chest. “Is it okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” It was more than okay. It was incredible and overwhelming. Tears stung her eyes. She’d lost so much time with him. Missed so many milestones.

  She drew back to look up at him. That’s when she realized Beth was crying, too.

  “I feel like I’m trapped in one of those family reunion shows,” Layla said, wiping her cheeks. “Any minute now someone’s going to jump out of a closet with a camera.”

  “Wait till you meet your sister and brothers,” Colin said. “They’re with me. I can take you to see them. If you want to, that is. I know this must be a lot to take in.”

  Layla stared at him in a sort of daze. She had more siblings? “You have no idea.”

  “Maybe a little,” he said. “I have a grown daughter I never knew about.”

  “I looked you right in the eye yesterday and didn’t realize who you were,” Layla said. “I think I have you beat.”

  “We missed a lot,” he said.

  Layla looked over his shoulder at Beth. “Yes, we did.”

  They’d missed a lifetime.

  She had a father. Not an image she’d pictured in her head. Not what her childhood imagination had conjured up. A living, breathing human being who seemed thrilled to know he had a grown daughter by a woman he hadn’t seen since high school. Colin Landry looked at her as if she was an exotic creature from another planet. Layla knew because he was looking at her every time she tried to sneak a glance at him.

  Layla sat in the passenger seat of her father’s car. Yesterday, they’d met for the first time. Today, he was taking her to meet his family. Her family, too, she reminded herself. She had a sister and brothers. Another set of grandparents. She tried to wrap her mind around everything, but her brain had been scrambled ever since she’d walked through the kitchen door to find Beth with a stranger.

  A stranger who’d turned out to be her father.

  Layla studied him out of the corner of her eye again. Tried to find something of herself in him. Physically, there didn’t seem to be much resemblance. She was Beth’s daughter in all the most obvious ways. Maybe the curve of his lips and the way his upper lips thinned. He was tall, but then so was Beth. His fingers were long and tapered, but everyone had always said she’d gotten Gran’s surgeon’s hands. Maybe they were his, though.

  She had a father.

  Layla had always dreamt of one. Every father-daughter dance. Every bring-your-dad-to-school day. When she’d seen a kid sitting on his dad’s shoulders, she’d wondered if her dad would have carried her like that. She’d felt certain he would have, if he’d only known about her.

  Another glance over and this time he caught her. Layla tried to smile. Tried to be casual, but there was nothing casual about this moment.

  “You look so much like Beth,” he said, as if searching for something to break the tense silence.

  “Everyone always told me that growing up. They didn’t usually mean it as a compliment, though. Most seemed to be wondering how long it would be before I proved I was like her in every way.”

  “Your mother’s reputation wasn’t entirely accurate,” he said. “A lot of people found it impossible to believe a beautiful girl like her could be anything but bad.”

  Amazement flooded through her. “You’re defending her. She lied to you for all these years, and you’re still taking up for her. How can you do that after what she did?”

  “Because I knew another side of her,” he answered.

  “What side was that?” she asked, curious to know what her parents’ relationship had really been like. Layla had only heard Beth’s story.

  “The side that didn’t think she was worthy of being loved and who didn’t think she could ever live up to your grandmother’s standards,” he said.

  Despite her anger and disappointment in Gran, Layla couldn’t help but come to her grandmother’s defense. “Maybe things would have turned out differently if Beth had tried to follow Gran’s example,” Layla said. “Instead, she rejected everything my grandmother stood for and fought so hard to achieve.”

  Colin’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, but his voice emerged calm and even. “That’s the thing. She did try. I don’t think you can understand what it was like to be raised by a legend. What your grandmother accomplished was truly extraordinary. I know it doesn’t seem so amazing now. Female doctors – even surgeons – are pretty common these days. Your mother was smart, but smart wasn’t good enough for the daughter of a legend. Beth had to be extraordinary, too. She had to be perfect. I think in the end, she was so afraid to fail that she just stopped.”

  “She quit.”

  He glanced over. “She gave up on herself. There’s a difference. Maybe if she’d had more support at home, things would have been different.”

  “So, it was all Gran’s fault?”

  He took his eyes off the road for a second. “Maybe if your grandmother had accepted Beth for who she was and appreciated the things that made her special, all our lives would have been different. I don’t remember ever hearing Dr. McCarthy praise your mother. Not once in all the years I knew her.”

  Layla stared out the window. “Gran tried to tell me,” she said, her gut twisting at the memory and the knowledge that Gran would have given her up to strangers. “It’s still hard for me to see her that way.”

  “Maybe she was different with you as a way to make up for her mistakes,” he said. “You were very lucky to have her.”

  She twisted around again and arched a brow. “Lucky to be raised without a mother and father? Believing no one wanted me?”

  His eyes closed briefly, and he swallowed. “I’m sorry about that. No child should ever feel unloved or unwanted, but the truth is that you were neither. Your grandmother loved you, and even though you may not believe it now, your mother loved you, too.”

  “Wow, she really knows how to push your buttons,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “Even after all these years she can twist you around her finger. I can’t believe you’re saying this after everything she did.”

  He let out a small chuckle. “I can’t either. The other day I was ready to kill her.”

  “What changed? Is she that convincing?”

  “I looked into her eyes and saw
thirty years of regret and guilt. You don’t have kids, so I know you can’t fully understand what it would take for a parent to give up a child.”

  “Would you have given up your kids? For any reason?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment, and Layla could see him trying to find the right words. “My first instinct would be to say no, but if I had no one to support me? If I was living in a place where my children were in danger, and I knew there was someone who could keep them safe? I’d want to die, but I might do it if I felt it was my only choice.”

  She twisted more so she could study his face. “Would you have left me on a porch step and never looked back?”

  “I’m not sure what I would have done.”

  Case closed. She nodded. “So no.”

  His lips firmed. “I didn’t say that. I can’t pretend to understand everything Beth did. I probably would have made other choices, but I’ve never been driven to that kind of desperation. I never felt that my parents had turned their backs on me.”

  She stared at him, another wave of shock crashing through her. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

  He swerved. “What?”

  “Eyes on the road, Dad.”

  He let loose with a colorful curse that made Layla smile. Nice to know he wasn’t as calm, cool, and collected as he seemed.

  “I’m not in love with her,” he said, bringing the car back under control. “That would be crazy.”

  “Maybe crazy is genetic then. I’m falling in love with a guy who ran back to his ex-wife.”

  “If he’s stupid enough to go back to her, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

  What a dad thing to say, she thought. Not that she had much experience with dad pep talks, but that sounded like one. “You don’t know his ex, and you don’t know me. Maybe he’s back where he belongs. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to stop loving women he shouldn’t. Like someone else I know.”

  “I don’t love Beth,” he repeated. “I loved my wife.”

  Layla’s stomach cramped. “Your wife. I didn’t even think about her. Does she know about me? I hope you told her before you spring me on the family. Not all wives would look kindly on their husbands bringing home a grown daughter.”

  He shifted in his seat. “We’re getting divorced. It should be official by the end of summer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Layla said. She wondered what had happened. Something told her Colin wasn’t the type to cut and run on his marriage. “Whose idea was it?”

  “Does it make a difference?” he asked. “Divorce hurts no matter who wants it.”

  “So it was her,” Layla said. “Why’d she want it? You seem like a decent guy. What do you do?”

  “I’m a doctor. Research side.”

  That would explain the antiseptic smell. She should have recognized it yesterday. “Why would she want out after so long?”

  “We’d grown apart. She wanted more.”

  “More what?”

  “Are we really having this conversation?” he asked through what sounded like clenched teeth. “I’m not talking about my marriage with my daughter.”

  “Ex-wife, and I may be your daughter, but I’m also as good as a stranger.”

  “Which makes it even more absurd.”

  “My life is absurd,” she said. “What’s a little awkward conversation with my new dad?”

  He glanced at her in exasperation. Then he sighed. “Fine. She said there was no passion anymore. She wasn’t sure there ever had been, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life missing it.”

  “No passion?”

  “I can’t believe I just said that,” he muttered, eyes trained on the road with intense concentration.

  “Did you feel passionate about her in the beginning?”

  His head swiveled around. “Seriously? You expect me to answer that?”

  “I’m just trying to find out if it was only your wife,” Layla said. “Did you feel passionate about other women?”

  “Of course.”

  “Like my mother?”

  He cursed again.

  Layla let out a bitter laugh. “We’re more alike than I thought.”

  He didn’t say anything else. Then there wasn’t a chance to rebut or argue, as he turned onto Heron Street and then pulled into the driveway in front of a one-story bungalow-style house with a beautiful garden in front. A riot of colors shouted for attention, from the bushes framing the front porch, to orchids hanging from the trees. More flowering plants surrounded the base of a huge Royal Poinciana tree.

  “Who’s the gardener?” Layla asked.

  “My dad.”

  “Really?”

  He grinned. “He needed something to do when he retired, and after shoulder surgery, golf was out.”

  “What field was he in? Medicine like you?”

  “No. Advertising and marketing.”

  Layla burst out laughing. “You’re kidding.”

  He looked over, a puzzled smile on his face. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m in advertising and marketing. I had my own business in Miami.”

  A grin kicked up the corners of his mouth. “He’ll like that. Did you take a leave of absence or something?”

  “Or something,” she said, uncomfortable talking about her business failure.

  Colin seemed to guess at least part of the “something”. “My dad had to start over a few times during his career,” he said. “That’s why they left Shellwater Key after I graduated from high school. The firm he worked for lost a big client, and he was let go.”

  Being downsized wasn’t quite the same as losing a business due to your own stupidity.

  The front door opened, and an older woman emerged. Her hair – cut in a very short bob that barely brushed her ears – was the same shade as Colin’s. Not a hint of gray showed through, so either she had a fabulous colorist or Layla had a good chance of staving off dye jobs for a long time to come. Her features were a softer version of the ones she’d passed on to her son. She was nearly as tall as Gran, though more rounded, and dressed in what one might call country club chic. She wore peach-colored linen pants and a short-sleeved, flowy peach blouse, with a white shirt underneath. Flirty gold sandals adorned her feet.

  “That’s a grandmother?”

  Her father laughed. “Did I mention she was the Executive Director of Children First for the last ten years?”

  Children First was one of the most respected charitable organizations in the state. Established by two retired Florida senators, it helped provide health care and scholarships for foster children after they turned eighteen.

  “You absolutely did not,” Layla said. She looked more closely and realized she recognized the woman from television interviews.

  Layla didn’t have time to reflect on this latest revelation because the woman was hurrying down the stairs. “I know you said to wait inside, Colin, but I couldn’t bear the suspense a second longer,” she said.

  Colin shoved his hands in his pockets. “Layla, this is my mother, Margaret Landry,” he said, dipping his head.

  “Hi,” Layla said.

  Colin Landry might have disappeared for all the attention his mother paid him. Layla stood still, uncertainty freezing her in place. Her new grandmother studied her at length, as if she was trying to memorize every detail. She let out a breathless “oh” of exclamation and clapped her hands together.

  Colin sent Layla an indulgent smile. “I think my mother is trying not to grab you.”

  “Oh, stop teasing,” Margaret Landry said. “I promised not to cross any boundaries, didn’t I?”

  “Boundaries?” Layla asked.

  “I cautioned everyone – well mostly my mother – that you might need time to adjust and not to rush you,” Colin said.

  “Who is everyone?” Layla asked. “You mean there are more than siblings?”

  “More?” Mrs. Landry laughed. “Honey, you have no idea. You have a great-grandmother. Did you know?”

&nb
sp; “No.”

  “She’s ninety-four. Lives in an assisted living facility in Tampa. I warn you, longevity is a family trait. My mother’s sister and brother are all still alive and kicking, too. Plus, I have two brothers, and my husband has a two sisters.”

  “And I have three older sisters who all like to tell me how to live my life,” Colin added.

  Margaret shushed him. “I won’t scare you by telling you how many cousins you have now.”

  Layla swallowed. “Big family.”

  She grinned. “Yes, and another warning, the phone lines have been ablaze since yesterday when Colin told me. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them show up to see you for themselves very soon.”

  A warning indeed. “Great,” Layla said. “How upset are they?”

  “Upset?” she asked in bemusement.

  “About a mystery child showing up all of a sudden,” Layla said. “For all they know I could be a scam artist.”

  Her new grandmother laughed. “The thought never occurred to any of us. We must be too trusting.”

  Layla hadn’t expected such a warm reception. Such unconditional acceptance. It seemed like she’d been alone for so long. An island unconnected to anyone. She’d convinced herself she was fine on her own. That she preferred to live free of connections.

  But truthfully, it had been easier to pretend than to face the emptiness. The deep chasms where parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins should have been. For a moment she feared she might start bawling on her new grandmother’s front lawn. She angled her face away to hide the overwhelming emotions raging through her.

  Margaret Landry saw anyway. She brushed a gentle hand down Layla’s arm and then clucked her tongue. “Oh, hang boundaries.”

  Layla found herself swept up in an engulfing, mother-bear embrace. “You’re being very kind,” she said. “It must be strange for you, too.”