Day celebratory hoopla happening elsewhere around town, there were still toddlers playing in the nearby sandbox, their mothers at the ready. Looking up, Kitty's mother called her name, then returned to studying the little kids.
Kitty hesitated, unprepared to face Samantha. But the fact was, she'd gone numb sometime in the past sixty minutes. Perhaps this was the best moment for a confrontation that she sensed she couldn't duck forever.
Still, it was a long walk to that table. Samantha appeared tired, though her marvelous dancer's carriage remained unchanged.
Dancer. Hah.
"I saw you walking through the cemetery," Samantha said. "You looked like Rose Wilder's ghost in that costume. Don't be surprised if the next thing the tabloids mention is specter sightings in Hot Water."
"You mean after they mention you?"
Samantha didn't flinch. "There's not much point in apologizing for that now, Kitty." She glanced away from the children and gazed squarely into her daughter's eyes. "But I'm sorry if you felt I ... abandoned you."
Kitty blew out a long breath. "I shouldn't have said what I did the other day. Woman to woman..." She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. "Woman to woman, I don't blame you for leaving me with Aunt Cat. I've thought about what I would have done in your shoes. I can't say for certain it would have been anything different, or anything better."
There was a long pause. "Thank you," Samantha said. "I appreciate you telling me."
"I'm angry that you came back, though." There was no stopping the truth.
"I know, and I've been thinking about that." Samantha linked her hands on the redwood table and stared down at them. "I can't give you a good reason why I returned to Hot Water when I left Las Vegas. But if it will make it easier for you, I'll close up Bum Luck and leave town."
"No," Kitty said. A man was approaching Samantha from behind, and, sick at the thought of witnessing their meeting, Kitty took a step back.
"I will, Kitty." It was the first time Kitty had ever heard Samantha sound desperate. "Let me do this for you. Let me do something for you."
The man was coming closer and Kitty took another hurried step back. "It's too late," she said softly. The talk had started seven months ago when Samantha had returned. In another seven months or less, another Wilder would be born without the benefit of marriage. No matter what, Kitty didn't think she could stand to see that. "You don't have to do anything. I'm leaving myself, very soon. Today."
D. B. Matthews had quietly closed in on Samantha. "And besides," he said from behind her, "I wouldn't let you take my child away from Hot Water."
Samantha stiffened, an anguished expression crossing her face. "You know," she said, her voice low. She didn't turn to look at him. "You know."
Her shocking suspicions confirmed, Kitty left the park and Judge Matthews and Samantha behind. She'd half guessed it when Aunt Cat said D. B. had been looking for Samantha, but still, it was a hard truth to swallow.
Her mother's secret lover was D. B. Matthews.
A Superior Court judge.
Dylan's father.
Like father, like son; like mother, like daughter; like the present repeated the past. There would never be anything normal, never anything conventional, between a Matthews and a Wilder.
And Kitty couldn't live with anything less.
* * *
"When were you planning on telling me?" D. B. asked Samantha.
She wouldn't look at him, Samantha promised herself, even though he sat on top of the picnic table and put his feet on her bench. "This isn't about you," she said.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?"
It was hard to know what he was thinking without looking at him. He was using his judge's voice, the one that sounded so damn neutral. "It's my body, my pregnancy," she answered.
"But it's my baby, yes?"
Her head jerked up. "Of course it is," she snapped, then realized her mistake. Looking at him hurt. Looking at him and remembering how good it had been between them made her feel lonely. And loneliness was an unsettling emotion for a woman who had been alone for the past twenty-six years. She put her hands over her face. "I can't believe this happened to me."
"What? An unexpected pregnancy?"
An unexpected love. "'Unexpected' hardly seems to cover it. I should be thinking about menopause, not morning sickness."
She thought he touched her hair, but the sensation was so light and fleeting, she wasn't sure. He cleared his throat. "You've been throwing up your breakfast?"
"Breakfast,