A Dad At Last by Marie Ferrarella

horizon. Someone they should be getting ready to call brother, she thought silently. Fingers icy, she began. “You all know that your father and I started Maitland Maternity so that young women who found themselves pregnant and alone would have somewhere to go. Somewhere along the line, the clinic became a trendy, in place to have a baby, and I’m not quite sure why that is, but the fact that it happened is beside the point.” She saw the question in their eyes. They were wondering where she was going with this. “What you don’t know is why the hospital was founded.”
    Confused, Abby looked at Beth, who shrugged. “You just told us, Mother—”
    â€œNot the whole reason.” She realized that she’d been folding and refolding her napkin and forced herself to stop. “It was started because I didn’t wantanyone to have to go through what I had gone through.”
    R.J. glanced at Mitchell, then at his mother. “But you were married.”
    Megan moistened her lips. “Not when I was pregnant with my first child.”
    Abby grinned. So that was it. Their mother was going to confess being human to them. It seemed sweetly old-fashioned. “You mean you and Dad danced the light fantastic before he married you?”
    It was now or never. “I was seventeen years old and very much in love.”
    â€œBut you’re sixty-two,” Beth protested. “If you were seventeen when you were pregnant for the first time, that would make Mitchell, what? Forty-five?”
    There was an apology in her eyes as Megan looked at Mitchell. “Mitchell is not my firstborn.” Her glance shifted briefly to Connor before she dropped her bombshell. “Connor is.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    I T WAS QUIET enough to hear the proverbial pin drop. Certainly quiet enough to hear the spoon that slipped from Lacy’s suddenly lax fingers, landing on her plate with a clatter.
    So that was what Janelle had been hinting at, Lacy realized. Janelle knew. Somehow, the other woman had discovered that Connor wasn’t Clarise’s son but Megan’s.
    That had to be what the letter was about, the one she’d started to say she’d found among her father’s things. Why hadn’t she pressed Janelle further when she’d had the chance?
    Reflexively covering the spoon with her hand, Lacy met Megan’s eyes and offered the woman who had befriended her so easily an apologetic half-smile. She could have sworn she saw a touch of gratitude in the other woman’s eyes just before they left hers and swept over the other occupants of the tomb-silent dining room.
    You could almost hear the light emerging from the chandelier overhead, Megan thought. There were varying degrees of shock and astonishment registeredon her children’s faces. What she didn’t see, she realized, was condemnation or any looks of dismay.
    It was too early to entertain relief, but she made a mental reservation.
    It was Mitchell who found his tongue first. Slanting a glance at Connor, he then addressed his mother. “How…how is that possible, Mother?”
    Though she’d thought him dead, she’d never stopped loving her first child. And never stopped feeling the weight of the secret she’d silently carried around with her all these years.
    She folded her hands before her primly, fortifying herself with the small, formal action. It kept her hands from trembling.
    â€œIt’s possible, Mitchell, because it’s true.” And then, very slowly, she began to bare her soul to the people who mattered most in her life. They had a right to know. It was past time. “Forty-six years ago, when I was just seventeen and very naive, I believed a tall, strapping, good-looking ranch hand when he said he loved me. That he couldn’t live without me.” Her lips curved sadly at the thought of the trusting, vulnerable young girl she’d once been. “As it turned out, he