The Good Father

  He closed the door and stood in front of it. “As far as I know, she’s fine,” he said. “But…you had them write Travis’s name on the birth certificate, honey.” He reached out to touch my arm, as though he was forgiving me for doing that. “So he had to be notified about the adoption. The potential adoption. And he fought it.” He shook his head as though he couldn’t believe Travis was that stupid. “I tried to prevent him from taking custody,” he said. “Such a monumental, asinine mistake. But he won.” He shrugged. “The couple you wanted to adopt her didn’t get her.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, lowering myself to the edge of my bed. One reason I could so easily push that baby from my mind was because I knew I had done the right thing for her. She’d have two parents who had the money to give her everything. And yet, she belonged with Travis, didn’t she?

  “I tried to fight Travis in court,” my father said, “but he’s the baby’s father and that won the day for him.”

  I’d been wrong about my new heart being completely empty of my old emotions. At the mention of Travis—just hearing the two syllables of his name—my heart nearly turned itself inside out from missing him. She’ll have love, I thought. Maybe she’d never have her own TV or the most expensive computer or go to private schools, but when it came to love, she couldn’t do any better than Travis.

  I hadn’t said a word and my father was staring hard at me. “Are you all right?” he asked. “The social worker thought—”

  “I need to talk to him,” I said.

  “No.” He gave a violent shake of his head. “Don’t even think about doing that, Robin.”

  “I don’t want a say in raising her or anything,” I said quickly. That was the truth. I felt no attachment to her at all. “I just want to tell him I know he has her and it’s okay with me.” I was glad, in fact. The more I thought about it, the more right it seemed.

  “You don’t owe him that,” Daddy said. “You don’t owe him anything.”

  “Okay,” I said, deciding not to fight with him. I’d email Travis on my own. My father never needed to know.

  “Seriously, Robin, just put this out of your mind.”

  “I said okay.”

  He said nothing for a moment, and I knew he didn’t believe I was going to let it go this easily.

  “You never could understand what he did to you,” he said. “How callously he treated you. You sounded like a naive little girl in the email you wrote, telling him not to blame himself. Well, I blame him. I—”

  “What?” I frowned at him. “How could you know what I wrote to him?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “You were so sick, hon—”

  “Did you go on my computer?”

  He sighed and leaned tiredly against the door. “For your own good,” he said.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You were spying on me?”

  “When you’re a parent you’ll understand. You were at a vulnerable point in your life, Robin.” He began to pace around the room. “I had to protect you. You kept putting your health in jeopardy. I was doing everything I could think of to keep you healthy and you sabotaged me at every turn. That boy…that idiot…you think he loved you? He doesn’t know what love is. All he was thinking about was himself and what he wanted, not what you needed. I’m not the least bit surprised he didn’t put the best interest of his child first. I wasn’t going to let him destroy you, so yes, I blocked him on your computer and I stopped your email from going out to him.”

  I stood up, furious. “That was so unfair!” I shouted. “That was cruel!”

  “Shh. Peace and calm.”

  “How could you do that to me?”

  “Let it go,” he said. “You’re over him, thank God. Now you have a new heart and you’ll—”

  I tried to hit him, but he caught my arms and pulled me into a hug I couldn’t escape from. I’d never felt so much anger before and I didn’t know what to do with it.

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he said. “I knew it would only upset you. You were doing so well, but the social worker—”

  I struggled free of his arms. “Guess what, Daddy?” I said. “I can use the computer here any time I want and you can’t do a thing about who I email.”

  “He’s married, Robin.”

  “What?” I felt the fight suddenly go out of me, my arms dropping limply to my sides.

  “He’s married. He met someone right after you two broke up and if you care about that baby at all, you need to just leave them alone to become a family. I only hope whoever he married has more sense than he does.”

  He was married? While I was so sick and out of it, he’d met another girl. Fallen in love with another girl. I turned away from my father. I didn’t want him to see how hurt I was that Travis could so easily forget about me. Now that I knew he’d never gotten my emails, how could I blame him? Did that girl have a father who saw past Travis’s social status and supported their relationship instead of tearing it down?

  “You need to move on with your life and let Travis move on with his,” Daddy said.

  I had to be an adult about this. It was good the baby had two parents, I told myself. It was good she was with her biological father and hopefully he’d found someone who’d treat the baby like her own. I let those thoughts run through my mind. Maybe in time I would really believe them.

  “I’m tired,” I said, pulling back the covers on my bed. “I’m going to take a nap.”

  “Good idea, honey.” He moved toward me and rested his hand on the side of my head. “I know this was all hard to hear, but you’re a strong girl and I know you’ll be fine.”

  “Right,” I said again, and I climbed into the bed and lay down with my back to him.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said.

  Go, I thought. Just go. All I wanted was to be alone with the hurt I was feeling. And the loneliness. And the part of my life that never happened.

  25

  Erin

  After Bella and I had searched the parking lot for Travis’s van for nearly an hour, we walked back into the coffee shop.

  “We’ll wait here for him,” I said, sitting down on the sofa next to Bella. “I’m sure he’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Maybe he went to fill her up,” Bella said, her gaze on the door.

  “Fill her up? You mean get gas?”

  Bella nodded. “Moby Dick needs a lot of gas.”

  “That’s probably it,” I said, but I was both disappointed in Travis and angry. Worried, too. Could something have happened to him on his walk to the van? But then, wouldn’t the van be there? This didn’t make any sense.

  “You didn’t drink your juice yet,” I said as I sat down again. I pulled the straw from the side of the carton, unwrapped it and stuck it into the juice.

  “Read me more of the book again, please,” she said.

  “I like your manners.”

  “What’s manners?”

  “When you say please and thank you. That’s good manners.”

  She leaned forward to pick up the book from the coffee table. I opened it and began reading, but I was no longer putting my heart and soul into it. I was watching the door with a mounting sense of dread.

  The took all of ten minutes to get through and by the time I’d finished, Bella was done with her juice and getting squirmy. She climbed off my lap and ran to the door, pressing her small hands and forehead against the glass as she peered outside.

  “Bella,” I called, “stay with me, honey.”

  She came back to the couch and sat down. “Where did Daddy go to fill her up?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to say those empty words He’ll be back soon to her again, because I now had the sinking feeling they would be a lie. “I think he must have gotten sidetracked.”

  “What’s sidetracked?”

  I let out a sigh
. “He must have gone into a store or something.” I glanced at my watch. Something was very, very wrong.

  “I got to go potty.” Bella stood up again.

  “Okay.” I took her hand and headed with her toward the ladies’ room. “Do you want privacy?” I asked as we walked into the room. I expected her to say “What’s privacy?” but instead she said, “I don’t like to be alone.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m right here.”

  She lowered her pants and I spotted the corner of a piece of paper sticking out of her pocket. “What’s in your pocket?” I asked.

  With her pants around her thighs, she pulled the piece of paper from her pocket. “Did you put it in?” she asked, handing it to me.

  I took it from her and she climbed onto the toilet. The paper was nothing more than a gas station receipt dated the day before, so I could rule out the “went to fill her up” theory. I was about to toss it in the trash can when I saw handwriting on the other side.

  Just for tonight. Please keep her safe. Thank you.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, staring at the paper. “Why didn’t he just ask me?”

  “Ask what?” Bella said from her perch on the toilet.

  “A favor,” I said. “Your daddy wanted a favor.” He probably couldn’t show up at the interview with a little girl in tow. Was he afraid I’d say no—which I probably would have, because I was not equipped, physically or emotionally, for a four-year-old in my apartment. That was the real reason for the flowers. A thank-you in advance.

  Bella reached for the toilet paper, wiped herself and stood up, bending over to pull her pants up.

  I knew what any one of my friends would do in this situation: they’d call the police. I didn’t know what Travis’s problems were, but I did know he loved his daughter. This was really wrong of him. Really stupid. But I wasn’t going to turn him in for it and have Bella end up in foster care overnight. Travis was trusting me with her. When I turned her over to him in the morning, I’d have a major talk with him. I’d ask him point-blank about his living situation. We’d get everything out on the table. I’d figure out what kind of help he needed. If it was child care, I’d get serious about helping him find it. I’d help him, but I’d chew him out, too. He left his daughter with me, but what did he really know about me? Barely anything. How did he know he could trust me with her? My brain was going a mile a minute.

  “Well, guess what, Bella?” I said, as I lifted her up to the sink so she could wash her hands.

  “What?”

  “This note is from your Daddy and he asked if I could babysit you tonight.” I looked at our reflection in the mirror and felt the slightest jolt at the image of me holding a child other than Carolyn.

  “Where?” she said, back on the floor and drying her hands. “In the burned-down house?”

  “What burned-down house?”

  “Where Nana babysitted me?”

  Burned-down house? Nana in heaven? Oh, God. I hoped there was no connection there.

  “No,” I said. “At my house.” My apartment was as un–child friendly as a home could be. Plus I had no car seat in my car. How was I going to get her to the apartment and back to JumpStart again in the morning without a car seat? This was ridiculous. Ridiculous! I could buy one in Target, I thought, but I knew where there was a car seat. Same place there were books and toys and anything else I could possibly need to occupy a child for an afternoon and evening.

  I suddenly had the strangest, almost unrecognizable feeling—happiness. I was happy Travis had dumped this on me. He’d given me something to do. Something useful. And I would have nearly twenty-four hours alone with Bella.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I took her hand and we walked out of the shop and into the parking lot again, this time to my car. “Now, I don’t have a car seat in the car,” I said, “so I’m going to buckle you in like a big girl in the backseat and drive very carefully, but then we’re going to get a car seat at my old—” I stopped talking. This was going to be way too much explanation. “We have two stops to make,” I began again. “I used to live in a house where there’s a car seat we can use and lots of toys and books and things we can take to the house where I live now. Then we can play and read all evening and in the morning we’ll go back to the coffee shop and your daddy will be there. Okay?”

  Her lower lip started to quiver and I held her hand tighter. Standing next to my car, she was so tiny, her big gray eyes filling with tears of confusion. I bent over and lifted her up, held her close, her cheek to mine. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. “We’ll have fun. I promise.”

  I buckled her into the backseat, wishing I had something I could use to boost her up a little. Bella cried, but quietly, as though she didn’t expect me to fix things for her. As though she was used to her life not going according to plan.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” I ran my hand over her dirty hair. She’d get a bubble bath tonight. A shampoo. “You’ll see,” I added with a smile. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  * * *

  Michael was at work, thank God, so Bella and I had the house to ourselves. I talked her into leaving her purse along with mine on the kitchen table, but she insisted on carrying her lamb with her upstairs. She’d stopped crying, though she had grown very quiet, and she didn’t say a word as we reached the upstairs hallway. I chattered nonstop to try to keep my nerves under control. “A little girl used to live here,” I said, “and she would love it if we packed up some of her toys to play with and her books to read.”

  I licked my dry lips and opened the door to Carolyn’s room. I stood in the doorway, but Bella didn’t notice the invisible wall that kept me out. She walked straight through it and over to the play kitchen. She stood there for a moment, studying the knobs on the plastic stove, the pots and pans and the bowls of wooden fruit and vegetables. Then she smiled and started playing make-believe.

  “Will you cook me something?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. “You sit here,” she said, pointing to one of the tiny chairs at the small table in the corner.

  “That chair’s too little for me, I think,” I said. “How about I sit on the bed?”

  “Okay.” She was putting wooden tomatoes in a plastic saucepan, so she didn’t see me as I stepped through the invisible wall. I walked the five steps to Carolyn’s bed and fell onto it more than sat down on it, my knees giving out. My heart was beating at a ridiculous rate. I rested my palm flat on the bedspread with its harmonizing blues and greens. “What are you making?” I asked. There was a tiny crack in my voice.

  “Momlet,” she said, opening the brown plastic eggshells to let the rubbery fried eggs drop into the pot with the tomatoes.

  “It looks delicious,” I said. “Do you like omelets? Maybe we can have one for dinner?”

  She looked at me like I was as loony as I was feeling. “This is just pretend momlets,” she said.

  “Oh, I know. I was thinking we could have real ones later. What do you like in yours?”

  She didn’t answer. Her face was full of concentration as she stirred the noisy concoction together in the pan.

  “I need to go in the attic to get a car seat,” I said. “Are you okay here by yourself? I’ll be just two minutes.”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  I left the room and headed for the hallway door that led to the attic stairs. I was halfway up them when I heard Bella scrambling behind me. I turned. “You decided to come with me?” I asked.

  “I’m not okay by myself,” she said, reaching for my hand.

  “Okay, that’s fine.”

  I had no idea where in the attic Michael had stored the car seat. The attic was unfinished and dimly lit even after I pulled the chain on the bare light bulb at the top of the stairs.

  “What is this place?” Bella asked.

  “It’s an attic,” I said. “Have you ever been in an attic before?”

  “Are there ghosts here?” She stayed close by my side.

&nb
sp; “Oh, no,” I said with a laugh. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” But there were ghosts up here. At least one. I could feel her leading me to the corner of the attic as surely as if she’d taken my hand, and there it was—the car seat wrapped in a clear plastic bag. “I found the car seat!” I said. “Now we can buckle you safely into my car.”

  “Right now? I wanted to play in the little girl’s room more.”

  “You can,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll get a tote bag and we can take some of the toys and books you like over to my house. My new house.”

  “Okay.” She held the railing and walked down the stairs one at a time, just the way Carolyn used to, and I felt one tiny panicky moment of confusion about what child I was with. Oh, I knew it was Bella. I knew exactly what was going on, but I seemed to want the confusion. I wanted to believe that Bella could turn around and it would be Carolyn’s brown eyes I’d be looking into. I wanted the impossible to be possible.

  Back in Carolyn’s room, I squatted in front of the bookshelf. For some reason, this seemed like the hardest thing to me. The books were so loved. Carolyn knew all the words to nearly every story. She’d correct me or Michael if we screwed up and got a sentence wrong. She didn’t care if she’d heard a story a thousand times before, she wanted to hear it again. Bella was that way, too, with The Cat in the Hat. When Carolyn was little, she’d point to each picture, telling me what it was or asking me if she didn’t know or couldn’t remember. When she was a little older, she’d grow impatient if I read too slowly, turning the page herself before I’d finished reading it. It had always been hard for Carolyn to sit still for long even though she still loved the books.

  I pulled one of them from the shelf. “Do you want to help me pick out some books, Bella?” I asked. She’d deserted the play kitchen for one of Carolyn’s dollhouses. Carolyn had two of them. There was the elaborate Victorian that Michael’s father had built for her, decorated with gingerbread on the outside and wallpaper on the inside. It was beautiful, but she usually ignored it in favor of the second—a small, plastic princess dollhouse that she adored. Bella, too, went right to that dollhouse. “I’ll just pick out a few books,” I said, and I grabbed a handful without looking at them. Easier that way. No memories in a handful.