Let It Be Me, Becky Wade [beautiful books to read .TXT] 📗

“We’ll be more comfortable sitting down. Shall we?”

Stiffly, Leah took her usual seat at the round table.

Tess poured milk into two glasses. A dusky blue plate supported the cookies . . . a testament to the dozens of batches of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that Tess had made for Leah and Dylan through the years.

Tess sat, then took a slow sip of milk.

Leah didn’t reach for either the milk or the cookies.

Tess was a controlled person, not given to fissures of emotion. Even so, given the magnitude of Leah’s bombshell, Tess’s response seemed tremendously understated.

The older woman carefully positioned her glass on the table, her knobby fingers loosely encircling its base. “I’ve thought for some time that you might find out.”

“Why did you do it?”

“If you know what I did, then I’m guessing you know something of my motive.”

“I think it has to do with your son Ian.”

“Yes. My son Ian.” Her sigh spoke of pain. “I wish I could explain to you what a joy he was to me. He had such a sweet nature. Quiet and kind. Full of fairness. Every year his teachers would give him citizenship awards. Best Listener. Best Helper and the like.”

Tess’s focus drifted toward the living room, but Leah guessed that it had actually drifted back decades. “He grew and became a little more serious, a little more subdued. But he was still good, through and through. There wasn’t a mean or malicious bone in his body. He cooked dinner for the family when I wasn’t up to it. If I asked him to take out the trash, he’d do so immediately. If I told him to come home at ten, he’d come home at nine fifty.”

Leah waited.

“He went off to college and earned a degree in business, then started work for an electronics company. It was during those years that he had an idea for a web browser that could display images. He did all the research, worked out all the logistics. He told a few of his closest friends about his idea.”

“Was one of those friends Jonathan Brookside?”

Her lips thinned. “Yes. They were the same age and had started at the company the very same day. Jonathan stole Ian’s idea. He went behind Ian’s back and assembled a team. He was from a wealthy family, and his father lent him the capital to start a company of his own.”

“Gridwork Communications Corporation?”

“Exactly. Jonathan was able to get the web browser off the ground long before Ian could raise the funds.”

“And Jonathan’s company went on to become a huge success.”

“It did. Ian was devastated. He’d been betrayed by someone he trusted. He slipped into depression.”

Tess’s heartache was a palpable thing. Leah could feel it against her skin. “His father and I persuaded him to sue Jonathan,” Tess continued, “and he improved somewhat during that process. He had hope that right would prevail . . . that justice would win.”

“I know that the suit didn’t go his way.”

“I wish, very dearly, that it had. Jonathan was able to afford excellent lawyers. So, no. The case didn’t go Ian’s way. Afterward, we tried and tried to reach him, to help him. But we couldn’t get through. He committed suicide a year later.”

“I’m very sorry.”

Tess’s gaze met hers. “Unless you’ve lost a child, you can’t imagine the grief. I loved Ian with every fiber of my being. His death is not something I’ve ever recovered from, nor ever will. I went on because I had another child, family members, work responsibilities. But I did not get over it. Half my heart belonged to Ian. And still does.”

“I understand.”

“My marriage to Malcolm fell apart. We divorced. Suddenly I was without one of my sons, without my husband. I was struggling with depression myself when one day, at work, I learned that Jonathan Brookside’s wife was giving birth at my hospital. Magnolia Avenue was located near Atlanta’s best neighborhoods, of course. Some of the most well-respected obstetricians in the city delivered babies there.”

“Did you see Jonathan that day?”

She shook her head. “I was working in the nursery when both you and the Montgomery baby arrived for treatment and observation. After the pediatrician finished and said that you were both well enough to be returned to your mothers, I found myself alone with the two of you.”

“Jonathan had taken your baby. And now you had the chance to take his.”

“Yes. That was the precise thought that entered my head.”

“You wanted to punish Jonathan.”

“It’s true. I wanted retribution for what he’d done to Ian. He’d gotten off scot-free, you see. He’d never paid any price at all for ruining my son’s life . . . and mine.” She turned her glass in a circle, then set her hands in her lap. “The things I felt and did in that moment are difficult, even for me, to comprehend. I’d never broken a rule in my life. But neither had Ian, and look where that got him.”

Quiet wafted between them, and Leah registered the distant sound of Rudy’s TV show, of a bird’s song.

“I switched you with the Montgomery baby, which took some doing, as far as your ID bands and records went. When Tracy entered the nursery, I asked her to take you back to your mothers. And off you went.”

“And that was that.”

“I was certain I’d get caught. For days. Weeks. But no one was the wiser.”

“How did the Bonnie O’Reilly who worked at Magnolia Avenue become Tess Coventry?”

“I was born Bonnie Theresa Byrne. My mother gave me the middle name Theresa in honor of her sister, then called me what she’d always called her sister: Tess . . . which is short for Theresa. Everyone in my family called me Tess, but at school and around town, I went by Bonnie. When I married Malcolm, I became Bonnie O’Reilly. Then, years afer my divorce, I met Rudy. When he found out that my family called me Tess, he started calling me Tess, too. Then I married him and my last name changed to Coventry.”

“But even if