Guilt had haunted her for a long time. She was guilty of not telling Richard; she was guilty of walking a tightrope with Ron when she should have dealt honestly with the situation from the outset. Those were petty guilts, next to the real one-her guilt over a marriage gone wrong…
Lorna turned off the bathroom light, padded barefoot to her bedroom and slipped on a nightgown in the darkness. In just seconds, her head was on the pillow, but her eyes still blinked wide open in the night. That episode of her life was like a door that wouldn’t close, a bad dream that just refused to end. Richard hadn’t believed her version of the incident-her true version-but he had tried to save the marriage. He rather had to; two weeks later, the pregnancy test came out positive. The next eight months were a nightmare; they both tried and failed. There was just no trust left to build on. No love. And the day Johnny was born, blond like Ron, about eight and a half months after that terrible morning…
Richard had been killed in a car accident when Johnny was a year and a half old. The divorce was final by then, but Matthew had sent a note to tell her of his brother’s death. During the divorce proceedings, Matthew had tried a dozen times to talk with her, but she’d shut him off every time. Perhaps she didn’t really want to tell him the story because in her heart she already knew there was no point in trying to salvage the marriage. Perhaps she didn’t want to tell him because, from the first time she met him, she knew she occupied a special, if tiny, niche in his life, and that mattered to her. She’d had his respect, his gentle teasing, his supportive caring…and now she was so ashamed.
It had taken her a long time to put her life back together. She had regained her self-respect, earned her independence. Self-sufficiency was her goal, and she achieved it. The toughest hurdle had been regaining her lost pride. Lorna vowed never again to let anyone get into a position to judge her without a trial; and love without trust…could never be love. She had been overwhelmed by bitterness against Richard-and his father-for judging her… She was not likely to forget the experience.
And Matthew was a Whitaker as well. She hadn’t forgotten that either. But Johnny had a right to know his father’s family… His isolation from the Whitakers had bothered her for a long time. Her son had a right to his last name, a right to the financial support the Whitakers could give him.
Fine, Lorna, she told herself in the darkness. Fine.
If Matthew had ever felt anything other than brotherly love for her, she hadn’t known it. She certainly hadn’t had any sexual feelings toward him. Matthew was terrifying; a successful, formidable, too-quiet man whom she had once taken ridiculous pleasure in getting to laugh. She knew he’d honestly wanted her marriage to succeed. He had never so much as laid his little finger on her in a sexual way…
So what happened today? she asked herself. She closed her eyes in the darkness. How on earth had it all happened? How had they ended up touching…kissing… Matthew’s last name alone should have precluded the kind of feelings Lorna had experienced tonight. The name Whitaker meant pain to Lorna. No trust. Men hung up on black-and-white truths, possessive, judgmental…
She’d been a fool to tell him he could call, Lorna decided wearily. She had only opened the door to more heartache. She’d just feel she was on trial all over again; there’d never be any trust. She’d never again sacrifice trust in a relationship, and she had to think of Johnny.
She did, right before sleep finally overcame her.
Chapter 4
“Johnny, you’ve got two choices,” Lorna called out, tapping her booted foot impatiently. “Either get the lead out of your feet or get grounded for the next ninety-seven years.”
The rapid pounding of boots was eventually followed by the entrance of her grinning son. “I don’t know why you bother to threaten me,” he said cheekily, pecking her affectionately on the chin as he headed outside ahead of her. “You know you aren’t really going to really do anything. Besides, we’re an hour earlier than you said.”
“Three-quarters of an hour now,” Lorna scolded as she hurried toward her Camaro.
“I told you school was going okay.”
“And I told you I wanted to see for myself,” she replied, turning the key in the ignition.
“You’ll be bored. It’s just for kids.” He paused and gave her a sidelong look. “Come to think of it, you’ll probably fit right in.”
“Thanks, urchin.”
The forty-minute drive to Johnny’s new private school took all of Lorna’s concentration; they stopped talking. A fresh layer of snow had fallen overnight, hiding an equally fresh layer of ice. Her car liked to skid, and the roads were giving it every opportunity.
Just less than an hour later the two walked down the silent corridors of the school. Not another soul was in sight at seven-thirty, but a beacon of light emanated from the farthest doorway. Johnny had been here only two weeks, yet each day Lorna had to fight with herself not to worry about how he was adjusting, not to show anxiety to her son, not to come on like an overprotective mother. When Mrs. Wright had called the night before, inviting Lorna to see how Johnny was functioning in the classroom, it was all Lorna could do to force herself to go to bed rather than pace the floor all night.
“Mrs. Whitaker?” The young blonde woman smiled, rising from a clutter of papers on the carpet when she saw Lorna and Johnny. “You two are early birds.” While Johnny was hanging up his coat, the teacher said simply, “I realize that you visited the classroom before you enrolled your son here. But I know Johnny a little better now, so I thought at this point I could give you a definite idea what we want to do together.”
Lorna nodded. “He’s doing all right?”
“He’s doing fine.”
The look of the classroom still surprised Lorna. Bright print curtains hung at the windows; carpeting warmed the floor; there was no blackboard. The school practiced Montessori methods, which meant that each student had an individually structured program based on his interests and abilities, regardless of his age. Under the teacher’s supervision, each student was allowed to work at his own pace; it had seemed ideal for an exceptional child like Johnny, and yet Lorna was concerned about discipline and socialization.
Certainly she had never seen a better-equipped classroom. A fourth-grader with a gift for languages was able to choose not only from among all the modern and even classical languages, but hieroglyphics as well. Geography included not only globes and standard texts, but also clay and water, materials with which the children constructed their own topographical maps. Two computers offered math challenges up to college-level statistics. All the materials and supplies were of high quality, plentiful and visually appealing.
The school was expensive far beyond what Lorna could have afforded had she not gone to Matthew, but it was the only school that suited Johnny’s unique abilities and personality. In public school, instead of taking pride in his quick mind, he had felt like an outcast when he mastered new skills and concepts more rapidly than his classmates.
“…lazy with his reading,” Mrs. Wright was saying. “Oh, I know he’s well ahead of grade level, but as I told you, that isn’t the point. He could be working up to his potential more, but we’ll just take care of that without his knowing.” Mrs. Wright winked conspiratorially. “I didn’t see him objecting when I put a seventh-grade science text in front of him yesterday. I think he was expecting an extended Dick-and-Jane basal reader.”
“But is he making friends? Does he seem to be adjusting? Academic achievement is important to me, Mrs. Wright, but…”
“But it’s not everything.” The teacher nodded her curly blonde head, and then hesitated. “Johnny seems to like the other children, but he is a bit sensitive, isn’t he? I don’t want to pry, but I understand his father is no longer alive-”