The Good Father

  I walked across the driveway that ran between the B and B and Hendricks House and spotted Mollie working in the garden by the front steps. They had a gardener, of course—a bunch of them, actually—who took care of both properties, but the garden that ran the width of the house belonged to Mollie.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said as I neared her. She sat back on her heels and adjusted her straw hat to look at me.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Her smile looked a little tired and I guessed that having a baby in the house was taking a toll on everyone’s sleep. I’d started calling Mollie and James Mom and Dad at their insistence right after Dale and I announced our engagement a year ago. Calling Mollie “Mom” came easily to me. I loved how kind she was to me. I didn’t remember my own mother and I’d spent most of my life wishing I had someone I could call Mom. Calling James “Dad” had been tougher, though. My own father had still been alive then, so I already had a dad. Plus James always held his distance. Oh, he was really nice to me and I knew he loved me in his own way, but he was such a politician. I was never certain if what was written on his face was what he was really feeling. I’d seen him smile warmly at too many people he’d later put down in private to trust him completely. I sometimes saw the same trait in Dale and it shook me up.

  “Alissa’s going to be so happy to see you.” Mollie brushed a speck of dirt from her khaki shorts. “That baby was up all night.”

  “Did she keep you awake?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Ear plugs. I’ve worn them ever since I married James. I’m going to give you a pair as a wedding gift.”

  I laughed. I started to say that Dale didn’t snore, but thought better of it. I honestly didn’t know if they realized how often Dale stayed over at my apartment. Anyhow, it would be “indelicate” of me to say. I was learning a lot about what was tolerated in a family that needed to keep a polished public image. The word indelicate came up a lot. That’s why they dealt so openly and quickly with Alissa’s pregnancy, making lemonade out of lemons.

  I’d adored Alissa from the moment I met her. She’d been barely fifteen with silky-straight, long, dark hair and a wide, white smile. For the longest time, I’d thought what an amazing teenager she was. She seemed so together. Straight-A student. Popular, with a sweet, shy, lovable boyfriend named Jess. She was a whiz with anything to do with the computer. She set up the website for the bed-and-breakfast herself at fourteen. If anyone should have been able to see through a facade, though, it should have been me, and even I missed it. Only when she was five months pregnant did she tell her parents and Dale. Then, for the first time, I saw all hell break loose in the Hendricks family. When James and Mollie and Dale started talking about contacting Jess’s parents, Alissa owned up to the truth: Jess had been nothing but a cover. He was Alissa’s best friend, as gay as the day was long, and he’d been helping her sneak around to see Will Stevenson, a boy she’d been forbidden to go out with. Jess would pick her up for a “date,” then drive her to wherever she and Will were hooking up. I’d never met Will, so I couldn’t pass judgment on him, but the rest of the family seemed to hate him for reasons that still seemed small and wrong to me. I guessed there were enough small reasons that when you added them together, it was enough to equal one giant one. For starters, he was a high-school dropout doing custodial work for some businesses. His mother was a housekeeper—in fact, she’d been the Hendricks’ housekeeper when Alissa and Will were toddlers. His father was in prison for something to do with drugs. Plus Will was nineteen, two and a half years older than Alissa. The Hendricks all acted like that was a big deal. Since Dale was eleven years older than me, the age difference seemed like a pretty weak argument, but it was one of those family issues I knew I’d better stay out of. Anyhow, Alissa hadn’t been allowed to see him and when she announced he was her baby’s father, the shit hit the fan. We were all sitting in the living room when she told us the truth. James and Dale went ballistic. Seriously, I was afraid they were going to get the rifles from the gun rack in the den and hunt Will down.

  The family kept Will’s name out of the whole mess, simply painting him as an older guy who took advantage of their vulnerable daughter. “Please let us deal with this family matter in private and protect a young girl who made a mistake and is taking responsibility for her actions,” James had said in a statement to the press.

  I felt sorry for Alissa. She was sixteen years younger than Dale, a change-of-life baby, Mollie told me, and it was like she had three parents instead of two. They started monitoring her cell phone and computer to make sure she and Will had no contact, and I honestly thought she’d lost interest in him until she mentioned him in the labor room. I’d asked her about that once since Hannah was born but she said she was just “crazy” that day and that she really didn’t care about him anymore.

  It was strange that I never connected what Alissa was going through with what I’d gone through with Travis. Maybe because Alissa was so healthy and together and I’d been anything but. Maybe because she had two parents and a brother and I’d just had my father. Maybe because I’d never met Will, so it felt almost as though he didn’t exist. The one thing I knew, though, was that my sympathy was with Alissa more than with her parents or Dale. I was careful about ever saying that, but I hoped Alissa knew I was in her corner. I could hear Hannah crying as I neared Alissa’s room. The door was open, and when I walked in, Alissa was sitting in the rocker by the window while Hannah wailed in her bassinet.

  “Is she hungry?” I asked, walking to the bassinet to peer down at Hannah. I couldn’t stand it when she cried. I just wanted to fix whatever was upsetting her. “When’s the last time you fed her?”

  Alissa held up a bottle. “I was just going to,” she said, although it looked to me like she’d been pretty relaxed for a while in that rocker. “You want to do it?”

  “Is the bottle still warm?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I made it too hot and was waiting for it to cool down.”

  I bent over to lift Hannah into my arms. I could finally hold her without crying. That first day in the delivery room when I held her in my arms had opened up a whole part of myself I’d buried. Now I couldn’t get enough of her. I helped Alissa every chance I got, though Mollie had hired a nanny, an older woman named Gretchen, who came in several hours a day—hours I wasn’t needed and left me wishing I was. Everyone thought I was hormonal or something, the way I’d get so emotional around Hannah, and maybe that was it. I’d seen plenty of babies since my own was born four years ago, and I’d never had this reaction before. It was like I was ready now. Ready to let myself admit it had all happened, though I refused to dwell on it.

  Through the bay window, the sun fell on Alissa’s long, reddish-brown hair, and for the first time since Hannah was born, she looked strong and well and pretty. I took the bottle from her and settled down in the wing chair opposite the rocker. I could see Alissa’s desk from where I sat. The book I’d given her on baby care was tossed on a messy pile of other books and magazines. I doubted she’d even glanced at it, although I’d read it from cover to cover myself before I gave it to her.

  “Mom said she was awake a lot last night,” I said. I touched the nipple to Hannah’s lips and she trembled as she took it in her mouth as though she couldn’t get to the formula fast enough. It made me smile.

  Alissa rocked a little. “I couldn’t get her to settle down,” she said. “Gretchen said I should make little swishing sounds in her ear, but it didn’t work.”

  “Frustrating,” I said. Gretchen had told Mollie and me that Alissa wasn’t bonding well with Hannah. We were supposed to keep an eye on her. Make sure she wasn’t sinking into some major postpartum depression. I just thought she needed sleep, but maybe it was more than that. She was such a social girl and I knew she’d felt cut off from her friends, first by the pregnancy and now by the baby. She’d go back to school in another month and maybe that would help her mood.

  Hannah opened her eyes and stared right at me. I wondered if she did
that with Alissa. I hoped so. How could you feel those dark eyes on you and not be hooked for life? “Hi, sweetie,” I said to the baby. “Is that good?”

  From her seat by the window, Alissa watched Hannah drink the way she might look at a puppy she hadn’t quite decided whether to take home or not. I smiled at her. “She has such a good appetite,” I said.

  “She’s so much better for you than she is for me.”

  “You’ll get the knack of it in no time.”

  “But you never had a baby and it’s natural with you. It’s totally not natural to me. Gretchen said I need to relax when I hold her, but I get all tense.”

  “Be patient with yourself,” I said.

  She looked out the window toward Taylor’s Creek. “Maybe you and Dale should raise her,” she said, without glancing back at me.

  “We’ll be right there to help you with her, Ali. Don’t worry.”

  She let out a long sigh. “I am so trapped,” she said.

  “But soon you’ll be back with your friends.”

  “With a baby.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, but I knew she had an uphill battle in front of her. Things would never be the same between her and her old friends.

  I stayed with her another hour, until it was time for me to get back to the B and B to check on the housekeepers and answer messages. I’d burped Hannah, changed her and settled her back in her bassinet when Alissa grabbed my hand.

  “I’m so glad you came along,” she said. “I’m so glad Dale ended up with you instead of Debra.”

  Dale had told me about Debra, his former fiancée, early on, when we were just getting to know each other. He’d been crazy about her and she’d told him she’d never been serious about anyone before. Some reporter, though, wrote an article about the Hendricks family in the local paper and he’d dug up the fact that Debra’d been married before. Not a crime. The crime was that she’d never told Dale about it and he was hurt and humiliated by her deception. I saw it in his eyes when he told me. The pain had still been raw then, and I’d felt sorry for him.

  I bent over to give Alissa a hug. “I’m glad, too,” I said. “Call me if you get lonely.”

  I left her room and was nearly to the front door when I spotted James and two well-dressed men in the living room. “Here’s our Robin!” James boomed, and I slowed my pace to a more ladylike walk.

  “Hello.” I smiled.

  “Come in, come in!” James held out an arm to motion me into the room. I walked in, and he introduced me to the men, whose names I quickly forgot. Dale told me I was going to have to do better with names. I just couldn’t keep everyone straight the way he did.

  “Robin’s going to be the newest member of the Hendricks family,” James said. He sounded proud of me and I tried to look worthy, but in my shorts and T-shirt with a little bit of baby spit-up on my shoulder, I doubted I was pulling it off. I hoped he wasn’t upset that I was such a mess.

  One of the men held my hand in both of his. “All my wife can talk about is your wedding,” he said. “She said it’s been too long since she’s been to one. You’ll have to meet her beforehand so when she starts crying, she’ll at least know the person inspiring her tears.”

  “I look forward to meeting her,” I said. I was getting so nervous about the wedding. It seemed like everyone in town was being invited. I’d had almost nothing to do with the plans. Mollie took over, picking out the invitations and the flowers and the cake. Well, I did say I wanted chocolate, but she picked the style. She also picked out my dress, but since it had been hers, I couldn’t criticize her for that, and it was beautiful. Just amazing. I was trying to think of the event as a dream wedding, but I kept waking up around two in the morning, feeling as though it was more of a nightmare. My life these days seemed a little out of my control.

  “I have to run,” I said to James. “Need to see how things are going next door.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said, and I heard him say to the men as I headed out the front door, “Isn’t she lovely?” The words made my eyes burn. The people in this family were sometimes two-faced, sometimes back-stabbing, sometimes calculating. But one thing I felt sure of: they loved me. And as I walked across the yard to the B and B, I had to ask myself if a lie of omission was just as bad as the outright lie Debra had told Dale.

  In the B and B’s kitchen, I started putting together the casserole for tomorrow’s breakfast, thinking of James’s sweet words and what a miracle my life was turning out to be. My girlfriend Joy, whom I’d known from the cardiac rehab center where we’d both been patients, had been the one to tell me about the job opening at the B and B. She’d been working as a waitress at a Beaufort restaurant and she encouraged me to leave Chapel Hill and move in with her in Beaufort. I’d been at loose ends. Dad was pushing me to go to college. But while college was definitely in my plans, I wanted a taste of freedom. I felt as though I’d been locked in a closet of a life for years, first by my illness, then by my recovery. After my year of rehab, I didn’t feel like studying. I just wanted to enjoy being alive for once.

  After the family hired me, Dale gave me a crash course about Beaufort so I’d at least know more than my guests about the area. He walked me along the waterfront, introducing me to every shop owner, pointing out the boats, telling me about their owners. In the distance, we could see a few of the ponies standing in the surf on Carrot Island. Dale and I fell in love on those walks. I was moved by how much he adored Beaufort and how much he wanted to do for its people. Even then, he was planning to be mayor one day, though I didn’t realize he’d be running so soon. I was so attracted to him. I’d forgotten that part of myself while I was sick. The sexual part. It’s so weird when your entire life is consumed by illness. Sometimes I’d felt like a heart instead of a person. With Dale, I felt the rest of me coming back to life. When he took my hand, I felt every cell in my fingers as though I’d just noticed them for the first time ever. And his beautiful gray eyes! I hadn’t yet seen those eyes turn stormy back then. Oh, wow, could you see thunderclouds in his eyes sometimes! Dale had a gentleness to him, a real honest warmth, but there was steel behind it. He didn’t bend easily, and I was learning that if I wanted to do something he didn’t want—to change the way we handled something at the B and B, maybe, or even to watch a movie he wasn’t crazy about watching—I had to approach the subject carefully and slowly if I stood a chance of breaking through that stubbornness. But there were compromises in any relationship. I’d learned that growing up with my father. This was nothing new.

  My father was thrilled when I told him I was seeing Dale Hendricks. Since he taught political science, my father had always been tuned in to state politics and he knew exactly who Dale was: heir apparent of the Hendricks empire. Daddy had wanted me to be taken care of. He knew if I became a Hendricks, he’d never have to worry about me again.

  I was tired of talking about my heart by the time Dale gave me my Beaufort tour, but he asked tons of questions about it and I answered them all. He said I was amazing, and I said the people who were really amazing were the donor’s family. And then I cried, which is what I always did when I thought about the people I would never know who gave me the greatest gift I’d ever receive. We’d been sitting in the public gazebo looking out over Taylor’s Creek, dusk falling around us and the colors of the sunset in the air and the water. Every single moment of my life was beautiful, but that one was like a painting in my mind, permanently hanging on the inside of my forehead. Dale put his arm around me. He brushed away one of my tears with the back of his fingers. Then he turned my face toward him and kissed me. It had been so long since I’d been kissed, I’d forgotten how the simple touch of lips could send sparks to every other part of my body. How it could make me lose all reason. How it could lead me to do things that were a little crazy, like sleeping with a man I barely knew. Yes, we walked back to Hendricks House, quietly climbed the outside stairs that led to his private apartment, and I was pulling his shirt out of his pants before w
e’d even reached his bedroom.

  I smiled at the memory of that night as I covered the casserole with foil and slid it into the refrigerator. Then I picked up my cell phone and dialed Dale’s number.

  “Can you come over earlier tonight?” I asked, leaning back against the counter. “I miss you.”

  * * *

  I could hear my baby crying from somewhere in the B and B, but I couldn’t get to her. I knew I was dreaming, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I ran through the house, which in the dream was made up of rooms that led into other rooms that led into yet more rooms, some of them so small I had to crawl through them on my hands and knees, others as big as a ballroom. The crying was heart-wrenching—she needed me! The sound seemed to come from one direction, then another, and I couldn’t find her. When I looked down at the T-shirt I was wearing in the dream, I had two round wet patches over my nipples.

  “Robin!” The voice sounded far away. “Wake up, Robbie. You’re dreaming.”

  I opened my eyes. In the darkness, the only thing I could see was the blue LED light from the small TV on my dresser. I was winded from running in my dream and confused about where I was. The hospital? My childhood bedroom? I touched my left breast through my tank top. Dry.

  “Sit up, honey.” It was Dale’s voice. I was in the B and B, and Dale’s body was nearly wrapped around mine as he lifted my shoulders from the bed.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re breathing so hard. Is your heart—”

  “It was just a dream,” I said, to myself as much as to him. I knew my heart was fine. It was probably stronger than his. It had come from a fifteen-year-old girl killed in a car accident. When I had nightmares, they were usually about her. I dreamed about her last moments, lying injured and alone in a car that had flipped over into a ravine. I dreamed about the life pouring out of her body and into mine. Sometimes I dreamed we both lived and I’d wake up feeling this impossible joy until I remembered.