Thunder Canyon Homecoming (14 page)

She loved them, too, and the very last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt them. But she also knew that she
couldn't ignore the truth. She couldn't pretend the mistake hadn't been made. She didn't want to. She wanted to know Grant as her brother; she wanted to meet his mother—the woman who had given birth to her.

And what about what they wanted?

Although he hadn't said anything in a while, it was Corey's voice that she heard, asking the question that echoed in the back of her mind.

What if they only wanted to enjoy the status quo and not have their entire lives turned upside down?

And she couldn't help but wonder, “How could someone leave the hospital with the wrong baby?”

“Neither mother thought she had the wrong baby—no one had any reason to suspect that a mix-up may have occurred.”

“I guess I just thought that, after carrying a baby for nine months, there would be a natural bond between mother and child.”

“The maternal bond is an amazing thing,” Delores said. “But it's not always instantaneous. It can happen within minutes or it can take days or weeks, especially if the mother and child are separated for some reason immediately following the birth.”

“As happened when my mother was taken into surgery,” Erin guessed.

Delores nodded. “She was in rough shape for a few days after that, and by then, Helen Clifton had already left the hospital with her daughter.”

“Still, you could have said something then,” Erin said. “You could have admitted there might have been a mix-up and fixed it then.”

“I could have,” Delores agreed sadly. “And I should have. But I was scared, terrified. It had been my mistake—I would have lost my job. And it didn't seem like any real
harm had been done. After all, both mothers went home with beautiful baby girls.”

“That's how you justified it?”

Delores looked down at the hands she'd wrapped around her mug. “I'm not proud of what I did. And not a day has gone by in the past twenty-six years that I haven't thought I should have done things differently. But the longer I waited, the harder it was to admit my mistake. If it even was a mistake.”

“Did you tell anyone what had happened?”

“Dr. Gifford. We didn't only work together, we were…involved. He urged me to keep quiet, insisting that no one would ever find out what I'd done. I was sure he was wrong, that someone would start asking questions.

“I didn't sleep for days. But then, as the weeks turned into months, I started to think maybe he was right. As the months turned into years, it seemed more and more believable that no one would ever know.

“But I knew. And the longer I held on to the secret, the more it ate away at me, haunted me.

“I knew where both of the babies were. Elise Clifton had grown up in Thunder Canyon, so I knew that—despite her father's tragic death—she had a family who loved her. And through my correspondence with Erma, I knew that the same was true about you. But then Erma began to make comments that caused me to worry that everything wasn't as great as I wanted to think.”

“What kind of comments?” Erin asked, curious.

“She said that your parents didn't understand you, that if she hadn't been there when you were born, she'd have thought you were left on their doorstep.”

“Do you think she knew?”

“I don't know how she could have.” She paused, as if considering the possibility, then smiled. “And yet, Erma
seemed to have a knack for seeing things others didn't—that's why people called her crazy.

“And then, when I went to see her in the spring, when I told her that I might have mixed up the babies, she said, ‘Well, that explains everything.' To her, it wasn't a possibility but a fact.”

“I know she was adamant that my family was in Thunder Canyon,” Erin said.

Delores nodded. “She told me that she was going to tell you what happened all those years ago. I've been waiting on pins and needles for months, expecting that any day you would show up.”

“I didn't get the whole story from Erma, only a few pieces that I struggled—unsuccessfully—to put together. That's why I came to Thunder Canyon, to try to get more information. I didn't even remember your name until my mother mentioned it. And when I couldn't track you down through the telephone listings, I decided to go to the hospital, looking for someone who might be able to help me find you. As it turns out, I ran into Dr. Gifford when I was there.”

“And he pretended he'd never even heard my name,” the nurse guessed.

“He certainly didn't give any indication that he'd worked with you.”

“David excels at nothing more so than covering his own behind,” Delores said. “Not that I can blame him, in this case. He only knew about the possibility of a mix-up because I told him. He wasn't there—he'd gone into surgery with Betty. And he wasn't responsible for ID'ing the babies—that was my job.”

“But he encouraged you to keep quiet about your concerns.” Erin didn't quite manage to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

Delores didn't make any more excuses for her former lover. “And now that you know, what do you plan to do about it?”

“I guess we need to prove that the mistake was made.”

“You're sure that's what you want to do?”

“Of course.”

“And are you prepared for the consequences whatever the truth may be? Because if it's true that I put the wrong bracelet on the wrong baby, that Helen Clifton gave birth to you and Betty Castro gave birth to Elise, then the truth is going to turn a lot of lives upside down.”

 

Erin was quiet for a long time after Delores had gone.

Corey left her alone, figuring she needed some time to fully assimilate everything she had learned. He finished tidying up the kitchen while he tried to do the same.

He may not have grown up in Thunder Canyon, but he had family and friends in this town. They were a close-knit community, and this kind of news—if it was true—could devastate them. It would certainly devastate Grant and Elise.

“You haven't said anything,” Erin noted softly.

“I don't know what to say,” he admitted. “All I can think is that you lied to me.”

She winced but didn't deny it.

“You told me you were going to forget your theory about babies being switched,” he said.

“No, I didn't—at least, not intentionally. I only meant to promise that I wouldn't say anything to Grant until I had proof.”

“You didn't say anything about continuing to look for proof.”

“Because you didn't give me a chance.”

“So it's
my
fault you lied to me?”

She sighed. “No. I should have made my intentions clear. But you were being so unreasonable and—” She cut herself off, as if realizing that being critical of his attitude wasn't an effective defense of her own actions. “It doesn't matter. I should have been honest.”

“Yes, you should have,” he said. “And now you're still determined to drag all of this out into the open, aren't you?”

“‘All of this' happens to be my life. I need to know who I am,” she insisted.

“Delores admitted that she
may
have put the wrong ID bracelet on the wrong baby. Even she can't say for sure that she did. I'm willing to admit that it's possible that she got the babies mixed up. Why can't you admit the possibility that she didn't?”

“Because there are too many coincidences to ignore, and because Elise looks more like my brothers than I do.”

“But what purpose can be served by bringing a twenty-six-year-old mistake to light now?”

“How about the truth?”

“But at what cost?”

She frowned at that.

“Erin, if you go to anyone with your suspicions—whether it's your parents or Grant—there are a lot of people who will be hurt.”

“Do you really think it would be better if I didn't say any thing? Do you really believe the truth can be buried for ever?”

“I'm wondering if a woman who could deceive so many people so easily can even recognize the truth,” he told her.

She recoiled as if she'd been slapped. He hadn't intended to hurt her, but he couldn't just stand back and watch as she hurt other people—people he cared about.

“Because the truth may be that Delores Beckett was distracted from her duties the day you were born but still managed to put the right ID bracelet on the right baby,” he continued.

“No one else has any clue what's going on—not your parents or Grant or Elise or their mother. You've had
months
to think about this, to put all the pieces together. Do you really think they're going to be happy when you start throwing around these allegations?”

“You can't understand how I feel,” she told him. “Because you know exactly where you fit into your family, but I can't make plans for my future when I have so many unanswered questions about my past.”

“I can't—I
won't
—be a part of this. If you insist on following through with this, you're on your own.”

Her eyes—those beautiful blue eyes that could never hide her feelings—were filled with anguish. “Don't do this, Corey. Please.”

“I'm not doing anything.”

“You're forcing me to make an impossible choice,” she told him.

“Is it impossible? Or has your choice already been made?”

She looked away but not before he saw the shimmer of her tears. “I guess it has.”

He left without saying anything else.

From his perspective, there was nothing left to say.

E
rin didn't know what to think when she was called into Grant's office the next day.

At first, she'd worried that Corey might have gone to her boss after he'd left her condo the night before, but she dismissed that idea almost as quickly as it had come to her. Corey had been adamant that he wouldn't have any part in bringing to light the information she'd obtained from Delores Beckett.

“Is everything okay?” her boss asked.

“That's what I was going to ask you,” Erin said.

Grant smiled, but he still looked concerned. “You seem a little…preoccupied today.”

“I'm sorry—”

“I don't want an apology. I want to know if there's anything I can do to help.”

She could only shake her head, not meeting his gaze.

“You're a good employee, Erin. An asset to the resort.
And if you're dissatisfied with any part of your job, I want to know.”

She looked up now. “I love working here,” she assured him.

“Then it's personal,” he guessed.

She nodded.

“And none of my business?”

She wanted to open up to him, but she didn't know what to say. It was hardly the time or the place to tell him that she believed his mother had also given birth to her.

Now that she'd spoken with Delores Beckett, she was closer than ever to the answers she'd come to Thunder Canyon to find. But in her search for the truth, she'd found something she'd never expected to find—and lost it. And when Corey had walked out on her the night before, he'd taken her heart with him.

“Just not anything you can help me with,” she told him.

“Okay,” he said. “But I want you to know that I have an open-door policy here, and I hope that you'll come to me if there's ever anything you think I can help you with.”

“Thank you. I will.”

“On another topic,” he said. “It's my sister's twenty-sixth birthday on the twentieth.”

She nodded. “You mentioned that at Erika and Dillon's wedding.”

He seemed surprised that she would have remembered. She probably wouldn't have if not for the fact that it was her birthday on the same day, but of course he didn't know that.

“Anyway, I thought if you weren't doing anything, you might want to come. I've already invited Corey—”

“Corey and I—we aren't dating any more,” she told him.

“Oh,” Grant said, in a sympathetic tone that suggested he suddenly understood why she'd been distracted. “Well, there will be other people there, too, and Stephanie and I would like you to come.”

“That's very kind of both of you,” Erin said. “But I don't even know your sister.”

“Elise and my mom have been living in Billings for so long now that there are a lot of people in town that she doesn't know, but I'm hoping this party will give her the opportunity to get to know them and maybe entice her to move back to Thunder Canyon,” he admitted.

“You must miss her a lot.”

“I do. It's hard to play the annoying big brother when she's so far away.”

Erin managed a smile. “I have two big brothers—they seem to manage even from a distance.”

Grant chuckled. “Elise would probably say the same thing about me.”

“I'd like to meet her.”

“Then you'll come to the party? We're taking over DJ's at seven o'clock for the event, so you know the food will be good.”

“I'll think about it.” Erin stood up. “But right now I should get back to work before my boss catches me slacking off.”

“I'll put in a good word for you.” Grant walked with her to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “Corey and I have been friends for a long time, but if he doesn't come to his senses soon, there are plenty of other single guys in this town that I could introduce you to. And a lot of them will be at the party.”

“I appreciate the offer but—”

“None of my business,” he filled in for her.

She smiled to show that she wasn't offended, then ducked out of his office before she burst into tears and completely humiliated herself.

 

Corey decided to head to The Hitching Post on Monday night to grab a beer and maybe find someone to shoot some pool with. He needed a distraction—something to help him forget about Erin and all of her lies. His mind kept replaying the scene between Delores and Erin, but he was still having trouble accepting that the nurse's story had confirmed Erin's suspicions. Maybe he'd been hasty in dismissing the suggestion that she could be Grant's sister, and maybe it had been unfair to expect her to leave the past in the past. But in the end, what he couldn't forget—what he couldn't forgive—were her lies.

Every day that passed and she didn't tell him the truth, she'd lied. He felt angry and betrayed. And maybe he was hurting, too, because when it came right down to it and she'd had to make a choice, she hadn't chosen him.

He pushed open the door and was greeted by a familiar country song about a woman who'd done a cowboy wrong. Yeah, he'd come to the right place. Or so he thought until a cursory glance around the room showed his brother having dinner with his new family.

He moved toward the bar.

The last thing he needed tonight was an invitation to join Dillon and his bride and their two-year-old daughter. Technically Emilia was Dillon's stepdaughter, of course, but Corey knew his brother didn't think of the little girl that way. When he'd married Erika, she'd become his wife and her daughter had become his daughter, too. Dillon didn't seem to care about Erika's past relationship or the man who had fathered her child.

It was probably one of the reasons Corey found it difficult to understand why Erin was so obsessed with knowing who gave birth to her when, by her own admission, she had a family who loved her. Why wasn't it enough that he loved her, too?

Of course, he hadn't actually spoken those words to her. He'd never had a chance to tell her what was in his heart. Would the words have changed anything between them? He didn't know.

He was on his second beer when Dillon slid onto the vacant stool beside him. Corey looked around but didn't see any sign of his brother's wife or child.

“Erika took Emilia home,” Dillon answered the unspoken question. “It's long past her bedtime.”

“So why are you still here?”

“Because you don't look like you should be drinking alone.” He signaled to Carl, who was tending the bar tonight, for a draft beer.

“I'm fine,” Corey said.

The statement was so blatantly untrue that his brother didn't even bother to dispute it. “How are the evaluations at Rycon coming along?”

“Fine.”

With a nod of thanks to the bartender, Dillon picked up the mug that had been set in front of him. “How about your discussion with Grant about the Resort?”

“Fine,” Corey said again.

“How's Erin?”

“Look, Dillon, as much as I appreciate the brotherly concern, I really wish you'd just go home to your new family and leave me the hell alone.”

Dillon nodded. “So she
is
the reason you look like you want to knock some heads together.”

“And if you insist on hanging around here, yours might be the first.”

“I'm not worried,” his brother said. “Because as often as we've gone head-to-head, I've always had your back, and I know you've always had mine.”

Corey sighed, silently damning his brother because he spoke the truth. And because it was true, because Dillon had always been there for him, he wouldn't get any satisfaction from turning on him now.

“So are you going to tell me what happened to make you so miserable?”

“Let's just say that I learned something I didn't want to know.”

“Everyone has secrets,” Dillon said.

“Weren't you the one who warned me about Erin's?”

His brother shrugged. “Only because I know you have a tendency to leap before you look.”

He didn't say ‘Like with Heather,' but they were both thinking it.

He'd met Heather while he was in college. She was the first woman he'd ever fallen in love with and he'd actually thought they would get married someday. One of the things he liked about her was that she didn't expect him to pay her way just because he was rich. Unlike several other women he'd dated, she prided herself on supporting herself through her job as a waitress. At least, that's what she'd told him she did. He later found out that she wasn't waiting tables but dancing on them, and it wasn't an exclusive upscale restaurant but a private men's club.

He didn't care that she'd taken off her clothes for money. Not that he was thrilled to think of all the men who had stared at and undoubtedly lusted for her naked body, but he didn't blame her for taking a job that paid her bills. He couldn't forgive her for lying, though.

After his experience with Heather, he had no tolerance for half-truths. Maybe Erin hadn't actually lied to him, but her failure to tell him the whole truth was just as much a breach of trust. He'd been played for a fool…again. And he was as furious as he was hurt by her deception.

“But in retrospect, I may have been too quick to pass judgment,” Dillon was saying now.

“You weren't,” Corey told him.

“And maybe you are, too.”

He frowned.

“The thing is, Erika and Erin are really close, and Erika isn't easily taken in.”

“As you learned when she kept saying ‘no' to you,” Corey couldn't resist teasing, although the effort was halfhearted.

His brother shrugged. “As a single mother with a young child, she had reason to be wary. But she never had any misgivings about Erin.”

Maybe she should have, he thought, but he didn't say the words aloud because he didn't want to cause his brother undue concern. After all, Erin's reasons for being in Thunder Canyon really wouldn't affect the life Dillon was building here with Erika and Emilia.

“Do you ever think about Emilia's biological father?” he asked.

“Of course,” Dillon answered without hesitation.

“Okay—fast forward twenty years and think about how you would react if the daughter you'd raised since she was two years old suddenly told you she wanted to know her father.”

Dillon sipped his beer, considering. “I'd hope I could be supportive,” he finally said.

“Wouldn't you think she was…ungrateful?”

His brother shook his head. “Six months ago, I might
have given you a different answer.” He smiled. “Of course, six months ago, I didn't know Erika or Emilia. But Peter's recent heart attack has made me see a lot of things differently. Now I can appreciate everything he did over the years. Not just as a husband to Mom, but as a father to six kids he had no biological tie to. I can also see how tough it has been for some of the others—Rose, in particular—to have no memory of the man who contributed half of her DNA, and I can understand that the not knowing can leave a void no one else can see.”

Corey finished his beer and shook his head when Carl looked over to see if he wanted another refill.

…the not knowing can leave a void…

Maybe that was what Erin had meant when she said that she needed to know her past before she could plan her future.

But her lies had undermined the foundation of what was between them, and Corey couldn't forgive her for that.

 

Erin couldn't go to a birthday party empty-handed, but never having met the guest of honor made it difficult to know what kind of gift might be appropriate. She wandered through the resort shops on her lunch hour, hoping something would catch her eye. What finally did was a collage-style picture frame with the word “Family” etched in the bottom corner of the glass.

She wondered at the irony that would have her give such a gift to a woman whose family she might tear apart with the information she had. But that wasn't her intention. Yes, things would change—for both Erin and Elise—but she refused to look at it as a negative. She had no intention of walking away from Betty and Jack and her brothers if it turned out that Betty Castro hadn't given birth to her, and
she certainly wouldn't expect Elise to turn her back on Helen or Grant.

As the salesclerk wrapped the gift, Erin continued to wander through the store. She paused at a display of decorative perfume bottles and caught a glimpse of someone through the store window. For one brief, heart-stopping moment, she thought it was Corey. But then the man turned to speak to the woman at his side, and she saw that it was actually his brother, Dillon, with his new wife. Erika smiled at something her husband said, then he bent his head and kissed her gently.

Erin felt a pang in her heart, and she had to look away from the obvious love between them. She'd started to think that she'd found something similar with Corey. She'd let herself believe that if Erika could find love, maybe she could, too.

Obviously she'd been wrong.

 

Corey hadn't expected that Erin would show up at the birthday party Grant was hosting for his sister. He wouldn't have thought she'd have the nerve. But not only did she come, she came with Erika and Dillon.

And when she walked through the door, his heart knocked hard against his ribs, forcing him to admit how much he'd missed her. It had only been a few days since he'd last seen her, since he'd learned of her deception, but those few days had seemed like a lifetime.

He noticed that she'd brought a gift—a good way to get an introduction to the birthday girl, he figured, then remembered that Erin should be celebrating her birthday today, too.

She set the wrapped package on a table that had been set aside for that purpose and unbuttoned her coat. As she shrugged it off of her shoulders and turned to hang it on
a hook, he nearly choked on the beer he'd been about to swallow.