Maddy kissed Elizabeth good-bye when she left, and they hugged for a long moment, and then she looked down at the girl's face with a smile and spoke softly to her. “Thank you for finding me, Lizzie. I don't deserve you yet, but I'm so happy to know you.”
“Thank you, Mom,” Lizzie whispered and they both wiped away tears as Maddy watched her go. It was a moment in her life that she knew neither of them would ever forget, and for the rest of the day she was in a daze, and she was still distracted when Bill Alexander called her.
“What's new with you today?” he asked comfortably, and Maddy laughed at the question.
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
“That sounds pretty mysterious. Anything important happen?” He wondered if she was going to tell him she had left her husband, but he had begun to realize she wasn't there yet.
“I'll tell you when I see you again. It's kind of a long story.”
“I can't wait to hear it. How's it going with your co-anchor?”
“Slowly. He's a nice guy, but it's like dancing with a rhinoceros for the moment. We're not exactly graceful together.” She was waiting for their ratings to take a dive, they had already gotten hundreds of letters, complaining about the disappearance of Greg Morris. And she wondered what Jack would do when he saw them.
“You'll adjust to each other eventually it's probably a little bit like marriage.”
“Maybe.” She sounded unconvinced. Brad Newbury was smart, but they were not an exciting duo, and it was inevitable that their viewers would notice.
“How about lunch tomorrow?” he asked casually. He was still concerned about her, and wanted to be sure that she was all right, after everything she had told him. Besides, he liked her.
“I'd love it,” Maddy answered without hesitating.
“You can tell me your long story then. I can hardly wait to hear it.” They agreed on a place, and Maddy was smiling to herself when she hung up, and a little while later she went in to hair and makeup.
The broadcasts went well, and she met Jack in the lobby afterward. He was talking on his cell phone, and the conversation continued into the car and halfway home, and when he finally hung up, she didn't say anything to him.
“You're looking serious tonight,” he said, looking unconcerned. He had absolutely no idea that she had met Lizzie, and she didn't say a word to him about it, until they were in their house, and he was rummaging for something to eat in the kitchen. They had agreed not to go out to dinner, and neither of them was very hungry. “Anything special happen today?” he asked casually. With Maddy, silence was often an indicator of something important she wasn't saying. She looked at him, and nodded. She had been groping for the right words for a while, and then finally decided to come right out and say it.
“Why didn't you tell me that you'd had a visit from my daughter?” Her eyes never left his as she asked the question, and she saw something cold and hard come into his, a burning ember that was rapidly being kindled by anger.
“Why didn't you tell me you had a daughter?” he asked just as bluntly. “I wonder how many other secrets you've kept from me, Mad. That's a pretty big one.” He sat down at the kitchen counter with a bottle of wine, and poured himself a glass, but he didn't offer one to Maddy
“I should have told you about it, but I didn't want anyone to know. It happened ten years before I met you, and I just wanted to put it behind me.” As always, she was honest with him. Her only sin with him so far was one of omission, not commission.
“Funny how things bounce back at you sometimes, isn't it? Here you thought you had gotten rid of her, and she pops right back up like a bad penny.” It hurt her to hear him say that, and she resented it. Lizzie was a great girl, and Maddy already felt protective of her.
“You don't need to call her that, Jack. She's a good kid. It's not her fault I had her when I was fifteen and gave her up. She seems like a decent person.”
“How the hell do you know?” he said, spitting fire at her, and she could already feel the blaze as he watched her. “She could be talking to the Enquirer tonight. You may be seeing her face on TV tomorrow, talking about her famous mom who abandoned her. Lots of people do that. You don't even know if she's for real, for God's sake. She could be a fraud. She could be a lot of things, and she probably is, just like her mother.” It was the ultimate put-down, that she was “as bad as her mother.”
Maddy caught the implication clearly, and thought instantly of Dr. Flowers. This was the kind of abuse they had talked about, subterranean, vicious, demeaning.
“She looks just like me, Jack. It would be hard to deny her,” Maddy said calmly, not addressing any of the slurs he'd made on her, but trying to address facts and nothing further.
“Every hick in Tennessee looks like you, for chris-sake. You think black hair and blue eyes is so unusual? They all look like you, Maddy. You're not special.” Maddy ignored yet another ugly comment.
“What I want to know from you is why you didn't tell me that you saw her. What were you saving it for?” The moment when it would hurt her most, she guessed, when it would knock the wind right out of her, and shock her.
“I was trying to protect you from what I assumed was a blackmailer. I was going to check her out before I told you.” It sounded reasonable, and chivalrous, but she knew him better.
“That was nice of you. I appreciate it. But I would have liked to know about it, as soon as you saw her.”
“I'll remember that the next time one of your bastard kids shows up. By the way, how many of them are there?” She didn't dignify what he said with an answer.
“It was nice seeing her,” Maddy said quietly, “she's a sweet girl.” She looked sad and wistful as she said it.
“What did she want from you? Money?”
“She just wanted to meet me. She's spent three years looking for me. I've spent a lifetime thinking about her.”
“How touching. She'll come back to haunt you again, I can promise you that. And it's not going to be a pretty story,” he said cynically, pouring himself another glass of wine, and staring at her in fury.
“It could be. It's very human. These things happen to people.”
“Not nice people, Mad,” he said, relishing the words, and the wounds he was inflicting on her. “That doesn't happen to nice women. They don't go around having babies at fifteen, and then dropping them on the church steps like so much garbage.” It cut her to the quick as she listened.
“That's not how it happened. I don't suppose you'd care to hear the whole story?” She owed him that much at least, he was her husband, and she felt guilty for never having told him.
“No, I wouldn't,” he cut her off, “I just want to know what we're going to do about it when the story breaks and you look like a slut on national TV. I have a show to worry about, and a network.”
“I think people will understand it.” She was trying to maintain her dignity, outwardly at least, but inside, he had hit his mark. She felt an ache in her soul at the portrait he was painting of her. “She's not an ax murderer, for chrissake, and neither am I.”
“No, just a whore. Poor white trash. I wasn't far off the mark, was I?”
“How can you say things like that to me?” she asked, facing him, with a look of pain in her eyes, but it didn't touch him. He wanted to hurt her. “Don't you know how much that hurts me?”