The First Baby

Reed looked devastated when Lucinda said yes. I guess we were hoping that Lucinda would tell us that there was no chance that Reed had a brother.

He wanted to know how it was possible. He wanted to know why he never knew and he wanted to know right then and there. But Lucinda didn't really want to tell him.

"Mom! You have to tell me! He's in town and by now he knows that I exist! I need to know how I could have a brother and not know! Please mom?"

It took a good ten minutes and a few aggravated groans before Lucinda finally told him she would tell him about his brother. At least all she knew. "I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want you to think badly of me Reed. I'm not proud of what I did!"

What did she do? Well it seems that Lucinda was a little bit if a 'wild' child, according to her. When she was 17 a few of her friends were heading to the coast for a couple weeks in the sun before starting their last year of high school. Lucinda's parents forbid her to go but she went anyway.

"I was young and single, tired of my parents' rules so I just left," she told us. "I met your father while I was there; his friends had the same idea that my friends did, except that there were heading into collage instead of high school when the summer ended." Lucinda stopped for a moment, a smile on her face.

"Mom?" Reed frowned as he reached for her hand.

"Hmm?" Lucinda glanced at him and then me before remembering what she was supposed to be telling us. "Your father was so different from most of the guys I knew and I thought he was the cutest guy I ever laid eyes on."

I smiled at the look on Lucinda's face as she remembered when she first met Roger. "Amber knows what I'm talking about," she said. "I see the same look in her eyes when she looks at you honey." Lucinda cupped Reed's chin in her hand and gazed at him. "You look so much like your father did when he was your age."

"Mom, my brother?"

"Oh," Lucinda dropped her hand and sighed. "Your father was a complete gentleman," she told him. "He was promised to another woman, so he wasn't really paying that much attention to any of us girls."

"We were at a party one of his friends was having, he had just called his fiance and they ended up fighting. Your dad was drinking pretty hard that night and well..." Lucinda bit her lip as she stopped, she gave Reed a look but he didn't seem to get what she meant.

"You and Roger...?" I was a little surprised to say the least. "When he was drink?"

Lucinda lowered her head, her 'yes' was barely audible. "I wasn't thinking that night, I had a few drinks myself and well...we ended up in one of the bedrooms and we..." she chuckled nervously. "Well you know what we did."

"I left to go back to school not long after that night and I didn't expect to ever see your father again." She went on to tell us that she found out a month later that she was pregnant. "I didn't want to have an abortion," she told us. "I didn't think it was right for me. My parents found out about it, they demanded to know who the father was but I was too ashamed of how it happened and the fact that Roger was supposed to marry another woman make me feel even worst."

"Since I wouldn't tell them who the father was and I wouldn't get an abortion, they did the same thing to me that your parents did to you Amber, they sent me off to live with some distant relative who lived in the States."

"Months went by and finally I had the baby, a beautiful little boy." Tears rolled down Lucinda's cheeks as she told us that during her pregnancy she changed her mind. "I wanted to keep the baby when he was born, I told my parents but they said there was no way that they were having a bastard for a grandchild."

"I think they knew that I would try to do something to keep him once he was born because they had hired someone to be with me when he was born and then they took him away from me." She stared up at us. "There was nothing I could do to stop it! I had signed him away before I even felt him move in my belly!"

"I cried for months," she told us. "I wanted him back, I begged my parents to look for him but they wouldn't. They told me that I was better off without having the baby to tie me down."

I felt angry. What her parents did to her, is exactly what my parents tried to do to me and the worst part? She didn't even try to do anything to stop it, she was one who called me a liar when she found out about the baby. I wanted to say something about it but one look at Reed, his expression, stopped me. He looked so utterly fragile at that moment, it was strange.

"But mom, you and dad got married. How come you two didn't try to find the baby then?"

"Your father doesn't know," she said softly. "I never told him about the baby. As far as he knows, you are his only son."

"What?" Reed jumped up. "You didn't tell dad about my brother? How come? Didn't you think he deserved to know that he had another child out there? Didn't you think that he would want to find him and bring him home where he belonged?"

"I was scared Reed!" His mother cried. "My parents told me to never tell anyone about the baby because it would ruin their arrangement with your father's parent's! My father was about to lose everything! He was determined to have me marry into the Johnson family so we wouldn't be penniless and homeless! And your father recognized me! He knew who I was and he told me never to tell anyone that we met before, that he was unfaithful to his former fiance!"

"What happened to her?" I asked out of the blue.

"What?" Lucinda and Reed looked at me like they forgot I was in the room.

"Roger's fiancee, what happened to her? How did you end up marrying Roger?"

"Ummm," Lucinda pressed her hand against her head and sighed. "I believe there was some sort of scandal with her and the daughter of another prominent member of the community."

"Scandal?" I stared at her. "As in...?"

"I would rather not get into that Amber! Roger was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing!"

I didn't need her to tell me, I had a pretty good idea what the scandal was.

"My father knew Roger's from previous business dealings. Roger's parents came to my house to meet with my parents and the next thing I know, I was told to pack my stuff because I was going with them."

There were so many things that I disliked about what she said but I knew that's how it worked; it was how my parents ended up together. A business deal between my grandparents. I glanced at Reed and found him looking at me, he smiled and so did I. We may have been set up to meet but our relationship was ours, our love was real.

So basically. Lucinda met Roger at a party, they slept together and she got pregnant. She was pretty much forced to give the baby up, even though she agreed at first, she changed her mind but still wasn't able to keep the baby. A few years later, both of their parents made some kind of business deal that included marriage between Roger and Lucinda. They got married and had their second baby boy, five years after their first baby was born.

Reed is freaking out. He wants to met his brother. He wants his mother to tell his father about him and he wants to try and see if they could be a family. He told me that night, when we were lying in bed that he always wanted a brother. "I just hope that he wants to be mine."

Lucinda didn't want to tell Roger, even now but when Reed told her that it was only a matter of time before his brother figured out that his parents were in town, he would look for them. She told us she would tell Roger the next time she saw him. That was last night.

From Reed's end of the conversation with his mother late last night, I don't think Roger took it all that well. When he got off the phone, Reed told me that his father stormed out when Lucinda told him about the baby. "Mom has been trying to reach him but he won't answer his phone."

Reed went out looking for his father last night but came home empty handed.

Before Lucinda left the other night, she asked me if I could get Penny to tell me more about her son. "I don't even know his name," she cried. "I didn't get to name him before they took him."

I'm not looking forward to asking Penny anything about the guy she thought was Reed but I have to admit, I'm curious to find out exactly how much he looks like Reed.

When I told Reed that, he laughed and asked me to promise not to go ga-ga over his older brother. "Remember that it's me you love, darling."

I don't think Reed has anything to worry about, no man could be like him.