The Good Father

  Now I gently stroked Hannah’s fluffy hair with those hands, my eyes on the baby’s face. My thighs were locked together and Hannah rested in the valley they formed, her head near my knees. I loved holding her this way so I could take in every inch of her. Had someone held my own baby like this, staring into her face, filling up with love? The emotion was so deep and pure. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  Early that morning, I’d strolled through the Old Burying Ground with an elderly couple from Tennessee. Over breakfast in the B and B’s dining room, they’d asked me questions about the cemetery and I’d volunteered to bring them over. I’d been feeling sort of emotionally low the past few days. If my period hadn’t just ended, I could have blamed it on PMS, but that wasn’t the case. I thought playing tour guide might lift my spirits and I loved the cemetery. I loved the deep shade of the trees and the peaceful greenness of the place. Still, it hadn’t done much to cheer me up. It actually had the opposite effect. Well, it was a cemetery. What had I expected?

  I showed the couple the grave of the army surgeon who died on his wedding day in 1848, a thought which gave me a chill, since my own wedding day was such a short time away. I showed them the crooked old headstones of sailors and soldiers and the women who died in childbirth. They asked questions and I was pleased to know every single answer. Days like this, I felt like a native Beauforter. I wanted to be a native. “You’ll be a native by marriage,” Mollie’d reassured me. “People will accept you more.”

  I was already perfectly well accepted, and it took me a while to realize that Mollie meant “accepted” on a deeper level. On a “Who are your people, darlin’?” sort of level. It reminded me of my father telling me Travis wasn’t “like us.” But then again, everything was reminding me of Travis these days.

  We came to the grave of the girl buried in a barrel of rum.

  “Oh, my word!” The woman pointed to the only bit of tackiness in the ancient cemetery. The small raised grave was covered with stuffed toys and trinkets. A flag bearing the image of Blackbeard, another of Beaufort’s famous—or, in his case, infamous—visitors, jutted from the side of the grave, and a purple baseball cap hung from one corner of the of the impossible-to-read headstone.

  I told them the story about the little girl whose seafaring father had preserved her body in a keg of rum, and although I’d told the story a dozen—maybe five dozen—times before, it suddenly choked me up when I imagined the father losing his child so far from home. We continued walking through the cemetery while they chatted about the girl in the rum keg, and for the first time I noticed all the babies. Okay, maybe there weren’t all that many, but their little headstones jumped out at me and I pictured every one of them alive in the arms of a loving father. A loving mother. A parent who would never recover completely from that baby’s loss.

  You could block things from your mind for years at a time. You could make them go away because you know that if you let them in, the pain could nearly kill you. That’s how it was with Travis and the baby for me. I blocked them out, and I’d been successful at it until I held Hannah in my arms and wondered about that other baby. The one I couldn’t wait to get out of my body. The child I had made a decision never to know.

  “Robin?” Mollie asked. “Did you hear me?”

  I looked up suddenly, realizing only then that Mollie had been talking to me and I’d been so absorbed in Hannah and my memory of that morning stroll that I hadn’t heard her.

  The seamstress laughed. “She only has eyes for that baby,” she said.

  “We’ve got to get this girl married as soon as possible,” Mollie said. “She has the worst case of baby hunger I’ve ever seen.” Mollie touched my shoulder with affection. “Let Dale get settled in office before you go having a baby, now, okay?” She smiled.

  I smiled back, but it felt false. How could I tell her it wasn’t Dale’s baby I was hungry for? It was my own. The baby who felt like a phantom. Like a dream.

  Alissa had changed out of the dress and we were ready to go. I got to my feet, slipping the baby into the sling I was wearing, and we headed for the door, my mind a hundred miles away.

  Did my baby and Travis still live in Carolina Beach, I wondered? Would Travis and his wife ever tell her about me? I hoped the woman he’d married was a great mother to my baby girl. Did she ever wonder about me, that woman? Was she starting to feel the tug on her daughter as I pulled her toward my heart?

  * * *

  Back at the B and B, I stared out the bay window of my apartment and felt nearly overwhelmed by the same sadness I’d felt in the Old Burying Ground. I didn’t know exactly what was wrong with me lately. Why I couldn’t shake the blues. It wasn’t like the depression I’d suffered as I recovered from the transplant. It was more like a pall hanging over me. I needed to focus on gratitude, I told myself. I was alive and healthy. When had I started taking good health for granted? I had to be grateful for all the things that were going spectacularly well in my life, and there were plenty.

  I stood up, walked into the little room I used as my office and sat down at my computer. I logged on to the Facebook page for Taylor’s Creek Bed and Breakfast and added a status update: Took visitors to the Old Burying Ground today. They were fascinated by the girl in the rum barrel. I pulled a picture from my computer of the girl’s grave and inserted it into the post.

  And then I did what I knew I’d wanted to do all day—I typed the name Travis Brown into the search box. I held my breath for the one second it took Facebook to pop up with the names. There were two Travis Browns and a bunch of near misses—Travis Browning, Travis Byron, that sort of thing. The first Travis Brown was a black man, so I could skip him, but the other Travis had a boat instead of his picture as his profile image. My heart gave a little extra thump when I saw it. Travis could have a boat by now, living in Carolina Beach. He’d always wanted a boat. I hoped he put a life preserver on his daughter when he took her out in it. There were no other photos on this guy’s profile, but his information told me he lived in Florida and was married with two children. And born in 1966. Not my Travis. My Travis. I actually thought that. Not good.

  My imagination was definitely getting away from me. I looked on Google for Travis Brown and culled through the results without any luck. If someone searched for me—Robin Saville—they’d find tons of information. They’d find the bed-and-breakfast, of course. Loads of articles about me being engaged to Dale. They’d see that professionally shot photograph of me in pearls and the little black dress Mollie had bought me, my hair done up like I was a born-and-bred Southern belle. So not me. Born and bred, yes, but no belle. But I would do whatever I had to do for the sake of Dale’s campaign.

  So whatever Travis was doing these days—assuming he was alive, which he absolutely had to be or I just couldn’t bear it—he wasn’t doing something that caught the radar of a search engine. I pictured him living a quiet life with his wife and daughter, working his butt off to support them.

  I was making myself crazy imagining all the possible turns his life and my baby’s life might have taken. I was thinking about him way, way too much.

  Last night, Dale had sat with me here in my office as we compared our calendars for the next few weeks and he suddenly got really quiet.

  “I feel like you’re pulling away from me lately,” he said

  “What do you mean?” I felt busted. “Why?”

  “You’re much quieter than usual. You don’t seem excited about the wedding. You haven’t wanted me to stay over. You used to beg me to stay over.” He gave me a smile.

  “Oh,” I said, looking away from him. “I’m sorry. I think I’m just nervous about the wedding. You know, being the center of attention.” I felt guilty and dishonest, like I was living a lie. How could I be in the same room with Dale, beautiful Dale, and be thinking about Travis? I was becoming one of those sick women who tried to track down former boyfriends and totally mess up their own lives while they did it. When we were married, these feelin
gs would go away like magic. I was counting on that.

  “Most women love being the center of attention at their wedding,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “And I’m sure I will. It’s just the…the anticipation that’s getting to me.” I wondered, as I did every once in a while, if someone from the media could dig up the fact that I’d had a baby, the way they’d dug up the truth about Debra and her first marriage. I should have told Dale long ago and dealt with the fallout. But why would I have told him about something I’d pretended never happened, even to myself?

  I was logging off the computer when my phone rang and I saw Alissa’s cell number on my caller ID. I could hear Hannah crying in the background when I answered.

  “Can you come over for a while?” she asked. “Gretchen’s not coming till four and Hannah’s driving me crazy. She won’t stop.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I stood up with a sense of relief and headed for the door. I was glad to get away from the computer and my thoughts about Travis. It felt like a sickness to me and I refused to trade one sickness in for another. I was done being sick.

  * * *

  I found Alissa in the parlor pacing back and forth, jiggling Hannah against her shoulder as she tried to quiet her.

  “Want me to take her for a while?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes,” she said, and I knew neither her parents or Dale must be home for her to talk that way. I took the baby from her arms and rocked her from side to side just to try something different. The way she was crying was enough to break my heart.

  “Why don’t we take her for a walk?” I said. “You’ve been cooped up in the house with her and it’s beautiful out. We can try out her new stroller.”

  Alissa smoothed her long brown hair back from her face and fastened it into a ponytail. “She’s just going to scream her head off while we’re walking and everyone will think we’re child abusers or something,” she said.

  “Maybe it will calm her down,” I said.

  She let out a long, world-weary sigh. “All right,” she said.

  We got the stroller from the mudroom at the back of the house and settled Hannah, still screaming her little head off, into it. It took both of us to carry the stroller down the back stairs, but as soon as Alissa started pushing it along the sidewalk, Hannah stopped crying.

  “It’s a miracle,” Alissa said as we walked.

  “Now we know the secret.”

  “I only wish I could do this when she’s screaming in the middle of the night.”

  I pointed toward the water. “Let’s walk along the waterfront,” I said.

  “No, I want to go this way,” Alissa said, turning onto Orange Street and away from Taylor’s Creek.

  “Really?” I said. “It’s so pretty by the water today.”

  “Too many people,” she said. “I don’t want to go past all the shops where everyone will want to talk to us and see Hannah and everything.”

  I thought I understood. It was true we would attract attention from the locals. I couldn’t go anywhere anymore without people recognizing me. Alissa wouldn’t be quite as recognizable, since the Hendricks had done all they could to keep her out of the paper. The only picture that floated around the media of her was a school picture from a couple of years earlier, and she’d really changed since then. But seeing her with me, people would put two and two together and realize who she was and that she was walking the illegitimate baby the Hendricks family had welcomed so tolerantly.

  “That’s fine,” I said, and we walked one block away from the water and then another and another. Hannah was a perfect angel. Neither Alissa nor I seemed to be in the mood for talking, and I was secretly glad. When she talked to me these days, it was usually about how much she missed Will and then I was stuck feeling like I was carrying around her secrets as well as my own.

  “Want to turn around now?” I asked, when we’d walked about half a mile. We were in a poorer neighborhood, the houses small, some of them in obvious need of repair. “I bet she’ll sleep for a while now and you can get a nap.”

  “Let’s go one more block,” Alissa said, and I was surprised by how much she seemed to be into the walk now. When we reached the middle of the next block, she suddenly slowed down. “See that house two doors up on the right?” she asked.

  I looked at the house. It was small, just one story, and it stood out from the others because it looked freshly painted. The siding was a creamy white, the shutters a pale aqua. The plants in the garden looked like they could use watering, but they still gave off some color.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “What about it?”

  “That’s where Will lives.”

  So. This was the real reason she didn’t want to walk along the waterfront. I put my hand on her arm.

  “We should turn around,” I said. “You’re only torturing yourself.”

  “I just wanted you to see,” she said. “I wanted you to see that it’s a nice house. It’s not like he lives in a slum or something. My parents and Dale totally suck.”

  “Let’s turn around, Ali.” I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want Will to suddenly pop out of his house. I already felt like I was deceiving Dale by talking with Alissa about Will. Bumping into him would be something else altogether. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go back.”

  She obeyed but her eyes were red-rimmed. “Thanks for never telling Dale about that time I talked to Will on Skype,” she said.

  “You haven’t done it again, have you?

  She was quiet a moment, glancing back over her shoulder at his house. “I tried once, but he said they could catch me and we shouldn’t.”

  “He’s right.” I thought it was a good sign that Will was putting her needs first. “Right now, you need their support in every way, so it’s best to just go along with them.”

  “Dale would be angry if he knew you talked with me about him,” she said.

  Yes, he really would be. “This is between you and me,” I said. “Not Dale and me.” That felt wrong enough to make me squeamish. I was letting Alissa know that I kept things from Dale. Letting her in on the biggest problem between Dale and me: secrets. “What I mean is, this is girl stuff. I love Dale and I’d never do anything to hurt him, but as long as you’re not acting on your feelings for Will in a way that could hurt you or Hannah, you should be free to talk about them. Does that make sense?”

  “I love him so much, Robin.” She stopped walking long enough to stomp her foot on the sidewalk like an angry kid. “And I hate them for keeping me from him.”

  “I know,” I said. I was relating way too strongly. Will wasn’t Travis. Travis wasn’t Will. The Hendricks family wasn’t my father. I’d been sick. It was all so different. And yet I could feel her hurt and longing clear down to my toes. I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “After the election and the wedding, when everything’s settled down, I’ll talk to Dale again about Will, all right? About you still being in love with him and—”

  “No,” she said. “Talking doesn’t do any good. They’re so stubborn and stupid. Once I’m out of school, I can do whatever I want. Hannah and me can move in with him and his mother. He said he’d wait for me.”

  Would he? Will was a young, good-looking guy. Would he hang in there for another year of no contact with Alissa? I was so afraid of her getting hurt.

  “I don’t want to see you throw away your family,” I said. “Maybe there’s a way they can be convinced. They came around when they found out you were pregnant. They supported you and—”

  “Oh, come on, Robin,” she snapped. “They figured out a way to use me to get votes. That’s what they do with everything, don’t you get it? Somebody in the family has a pimple, they figure out how to use it to their advantage. Maybe appeal to the acne crowd or something. Just the way they’re using you and the wedding.”

  I stopped walking, truly hurt. “They’re not using me,” I said, although I’d just accused Dale of that very thing, hadn’t I? Hearing Alissa say it fed
my insecurity.

  She laughed. “No? You had this, like, major illness, but Dale loves you anyway. That makes him look good, right? It makes all the voters think he’s this awesome guy and everything.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I argued, but I knew in my gut there was truth in what she was saying.

  “You’re pretty naive,” Alissa said. “My brother is not the saint you think he is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just know him better than you, that’s all. He’s not all that perfect.”

  “I know he’s not perfect. No one is.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll leave it at that.”

  Okay, I thought. We will. She was just angry with him because of Will.

  We walked on, but Alissa’s words about the wedding, about Dale, about me were rolling around inside my head. I remembered Dale telling me there were things I didn’t know or need to know, and as we walked, I wondered if I was less a part of the Hendricks family than I’d thought I was. There was, for the first time, a little bit of relief in the idea. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure right now that I wanted to belong.

  23

  Erin

  I sat across from Judith in her office, anxiously checking my watch. I’d almost canceled my appointment with her this morning because I was afraid that by the time I got to JumpStart, Travis and Bella would be gone. If I hadn’t already known I’d become way too attached to Bella, I knew it then. I’d stopped in a store the evening before and bought her a couple of Winnie the Pooh books, since I’d been unable to walk across the floor of my daughter’s room to take them from her bookshelf.