Free Donovan's Child by Christine Rimmer Page A

world.”
    â€œI hope you’re right.”
    â€œTrust me. I know him. Yes, he suffered a terrible accident. So?” She waved a hand, an airy gesture. “Whatis all that? What are months of operations and painful rehabilitation? Nothing. Less than nothing, next to losing a child…”
    Abilene didn’t know what to say. “Luisa, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you’d lost a child.”
    Luisa pressed her hand against the small gold crucifix at her throat. “Oh, no. Not me.”
    â€œBut you said—”
    â€œI meant of his child. Donovan’s child. Elias.”

Chapter Six
    A bilene could not draw breath.
    She felt, suddenly, the same as she had back in the third grade, when the class bully, Billy Trumball, had punched her in the stomach for coming to the defense of a smaller boy. That punch had really knocked the wind out of her. It was an awful, scary feeling, to fear her breath would never come, to gape for air like a landed fish.
    She pressed her hand to her stomach, hard. And all at once the air rushed in again. She managed to whisper, “I didn’t know….”
    Luisa seemed shocked. “He never told you?”
    Abilene shook her head. “I know I said we weren’t intimate. But even that’s an exaggeration. We are so much less than intimate. We’re not friends, not even close. I find that I want to understand him, you know? But he’s not an easy man to understand. And Ben—Donovan’s assistant?”
    â€œOh, yes. I remember Ben.”
    â€œActually, he quit last Monday, which is another story altogether. But what I’m getting at is that Ben and I, well, I thought we got along. We talked some, about Donovan. About what had happened to make him retreat from the world. I guess I thought I knew more than I did.”
    â€œBen never told you…?”
    â€œNot a word. And Donovan never so much as hinted at such a thing.” She leaned across the table, pitched her voice to a whisper. “I just can’t believe I never knew. Donovan’s a famous man—I mean, to another architect, like me, he’s pretty much a living legend. You’d think I would have heard from someone, at some point, that there was a child. And then there’s Dax….”
    â€œDax? I don’t know him.”
    â€œDax Girard, my new brother-in-law. He and my baby sister got married a few weeks ago. Dax knows Donovan. Not really well, I don’t think. But still. Dax never said anything about a lost child.”
    â€œMaybe it never came up,” Luisa suggested gently. “Elias has been gone for a while now.”
    â€œHow long?”
    â€œAbout five years.”
    â€œBut Luisa, there are no pictures of a child in the house—none that I’ve seen, anyway.”
    â€œNo pictures…” Twin lines formed between Luisa’s dark brows. “But there were pictures a year ago. One on the piano, of Elias at the beach in California, holding a starfish, smiling his wide, happy smile. One over the fireplace, a large portrait from when he was two or three, in the front room…” Her frown deepened. “I didn’t look, last night, when we went through there on the way to the dining room. I didn’t notice if Elias’s picture wasstill above the fireplace. And I didn’t go into the music room.”
    â€œNo pictures,” Abilene repeated. “Not in the public rooms of the house, anyway. How old was the child— Elias—when he died?”
    â€œSix, I think.”
    â€œSo you’re saying Donovan was married, then?”
    Luisa was shaking her head. “Abilene…”
    â€œI just, well, I had no idea he’d been married.”
    â€œPlease, Abilene.”
    She sat back in her chair. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œI can’t say any more.”
    â€œBut I was hoping, if you could just explain to me—”
    â€œI can’t.