The Cottage

“I'm afraid not.” She handed him the letter from the woman he no longer remembered, and didn't say another word. The letter was long, and as he read it, he looked up at her several times. And when he finished it, he sat for a long moment, staring at her, not sure what to say next, or what she wanted from him. He handed her back the letter, and looked serious as he did. If it was another blackmail scheme, he wasn't up to it. One of those was enough.

“What do you want from me?” he asked bluntly, and the question made her sad. She had hoped for a warmer response from him.

“Absolutely nothing. I wanted to meet you. Once. And I hoped you'd want to meet me. I'll admit, it's a bit of a shock. It was to me too. My mother never told me. I found the letter, as she intended me to, after she died. My father died years ago. I have no idea if he ever knew.”

“I hope not,” Coop said solemnly. He was still in shock. But relieved by what she'd said about wanting nothing from him. He believed her. She looked like an honest person, and a nice woman. He would have been attracted to her, but she was a little old for him.

“I don't think it would have mattered to him. He was very good to me. He left me most of his money. He had no other children. And if he did know, he didn't seem to hold it against my mother or me. He was a very kind man.”

“How fortunate for you,” Coop said, looking closely at her, and suddenly realized why she looked familiar. She looked like him. With good reason. The letter said that her mother had had an affair with Coop forty years before. They were both in a play in London, and the affair had been brief. When the play closed and she went back to Chicago, she had discovered she was pregnant, and she decided, for reasons of her own, not to tell Coop. She didn't feel she knew him well enough to impose on him, as she put it. It was an odd thing for a woman to think when she was having his baby, which she had decided to do, again for reasons of her own. She married someone else, had the baby, a daughter, and never told her that the man she believed was her father actually wasn't. It was Coop. Instead, she left her a letter, which explained it all. And now they were sitting, examining each other. The man who thought he had no children suddenly had two. This thirty-nine-year-old woman who had suddenly appeared, and the one Charlene was carrying, and claimed was his. It was a very odd feeling for a man who hated kids. But Taryn was no kid. She was a grown woman, who appeared to be respectable and intelligent, had money, and looked a great deal like him. “What did your mother look like? Do you have a picture of her?” He was curious to see if he remembered her at all.

“Actually, I brought one just in case. I think it's from about that time.” She took it carefully from her purse and handed it to him, and as he looked at it, something jogged in his memory. It was definitely a familiar face. She hadn't left a lifelong impression, but he remembered something about her, and he thought he knew which part she'd played. She'd been an understudy, but the actress she stood in for got drunk a lot, and Coop remembered being on stage with her. But he didn't remember much else. He'd been pretty wild in those days, and drank a lot himself. And there had been a lot of women since. He'd been thirty years old when Taryn was conceived.

“This is very strange,” he said, handing the photograph back to her, and looking at his daughter again. She was very good-looking in a kind of classic way, although very tall. He guessed her to be just under six feet. He was six four. And he thought her mother had been tall too. “I don't know what to say.”

“That's all right,” Taryn Dougherty said pleasantly. “I just wanted to see you, and meet you once. I've had a good life. I had a wonderful father, I loved my mother. I was an only child. I have nothing to reproach you. You never knew. And it was my mother who kept it all a secret, but I don't reproach her anything either. I have no regrets.”

“Do you have children?” he asked with trepidation. It was enough of a shock finding out he had a grown daughter, he wasn't ready for grandchildren too.

“No, I don't. I've always worked. And I've never really wanted children, embarrassing as that is to admit.”