Breaking the Silence

  “I just…” Laura shut her eyes with a sigh. “She’s always been so bright.”

  “She still is, Laura.” Heather kicked off her sandals and lifted her legs onto the chair, covering them with the skirt of her sundress. “It was interesting having you in the session with us today,” she said. “I wondered if you noticed how different Emma was with you there. She’s very protective of you. Doesn’t want you to know how bad she feels.”

  Laura reached for the box of tissues on Heather’s desk. “I don’t want her to have that burden,” she said, blotting her eyes. “She’s just a little girl.”

  “You’ve raised her to be sensitive and empathetic. That’s not so bad.”

  Laura blew her nose. “Ray raised her to be that way, really,” she said. “Remember, I told you how he taught her about the homeless.”

  “You and Ray raised her together,” Heather said.

  It seemed that Heather would not allow her to say anything positive about Ray without correcting her, but Laura opted to ignore her comment. “If she can’t talk openly with me there, would it be better for me to stay out of your sessions with her?” she asked.

  “For a while, anyway,” Heather agreed. “You can watch from behind the mirror.”

  “Okay.”

  “The thing that still worries me more than anything is all the negative stuff about men,” Heather said. “She makes this hostile face every time she plays with any of the male dolls.”

  “I noticed that,” Laura said. Emma’s disdain toward men had been impossible to ignore during the session.

  “And I’m concerned those feelings have been there for a long time. From before Ray killed himself. They could have a powerful impact on the woman Emma grows up to be.”

  “She was playing at my neighbor’s house the other day when her friend’s father came home,” Laura said. “He’s a nice guy, but gruff, and Emma ran out of the house when he walked in.”

  Heather didn’t look surprised by that information. “One thing that’s really obvious to me, although I know you may not be ready to admit to it, is that your husband and Emma did not have a good relationship. When I asked Emma to use the face drawings to describe her dad, she pointed to the yelling face and the angry face.” Heather leaned toward Laura, her brown eyes earnest. “In Emma’s mind, men yell,” she said. “And men kill themselves.”

  “So what can we do?” Laura felt helpless.

  “Well, play therapy can go only so far.” Heather sat back in her seat again. “I have a question for you,” she said. “Something I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Yes?”

  “Emma’s birth father. What can you tell me about him?”

  Laura laughed. “Essentially nothing. I met him one time, at a party, and that was it. Believe me, I’d never done anything like that before. I was upset that night, and—”

  “That doesn’t matter.” Heather dismissed her excuses with a wave of her hand. “But I wonder if there’s a chance he might like to know he has a daughter.”

  “Oh, no.” It was Laura’s turn to interrupt. The idea of tracking down Dylan Geer and announcing to him that he had a daughter was unthinkable. “I’m telling you, he probably wouldn’t even remember me. And I don’t know where he lives. Or even what he does for a living. And—” she laughed again “—I don’t want Emma to have a father who’d sleep with someone the first night he meets them. She’s already stuck with a mother depraved enough to do that.”

  Heather laughed herself. “All right,” she said. “But I’d still like you to think about it. I wouldn’t want him involved, either, unless he’s good father material and willing to commit to her. But he just might be someone who could correct her notion that all men are snarly beasts. You never know. It might be worth a shot.”

  Laura had designed the skylight room at the lake house herself. It was a medium-size, square room on the second story, its ceiling formed by large, Plexiglas panels. The floor was completely covered in huge pillows, except for one corner where she had her desk and computer. Lying on the pillows, looking up, a person could almost pretend they were outside. Laura’s telescope stood in one corner of the room, ready to be wheeled onto the wide deck that ran around all four sides of the second story, giving Laura the ability to search nearly any part of the sky.

  She had fallen asleep in this room on many nights, and tonight would probably be one of them. She was dressed in her summer pajamas and nestled on top of one of the soft pillows, staring up at the constellation Hercules. And thinking. She’d been doing a great deal of thinking since her appointment with Heather Davison that afternoon.

  Dylan Geer. The thought of him embarrassed and enticed her at the same time. Embarrassed her because of the way she’d behaved that night long ago. Enticed her because, well, Dylan Geer had been one irresistible man. Sleeping with him had been crazy and completely out of character for her. She had never been the sort of woman who melted at the sight of a good-looking guy. She’d grown up with a father whose idea of a great time was an afternoon in the science section of the library, and that had become her great time, as well. In high school, other girls thought she was strange. She was strange. She was the president of the astronomy club, the only girl in the science and chess clubs, and while she had plenty of male friends, few of them saw her as anything other than that—a friend.

  Even in high school, career plans had been her primary focus. Her father would spend evenings looking through college catalogs with her, having her make lists of her strengths and skills. Back then, she’d doubted she would ever get married. There would not be enough room in her life for a husband and children as well as the sort of career she wanted. That had been an accurate assessment; she had not given enough of herself to Ray and Emma.

  She had sex for the first time in college, with a male friend who wanted to show her what she was missing. She enjoyed the experience, especially the sense of closeness to someone she cared for, but she rarely had those feelings other girls talked about that left them unable to say “no” when an attractive guy came onto them.

  That was, until six years ago when she literally stumbled into Dylan Geer at a party.

  The party had been given by Rhonda Giddings, a woman who had then worked with Laura at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. Rhonda was little more than an acquaintance, but she’d invited the museum staff to the housewarming for her new mansion in Potomac.

  It was beginning to snow when Laura arrived at Rhonda’s spectacular home, and she was in a rotten mood. Just that day, she’d been turned down for a research grant she’d worked hard to obtain. Angry and frustrated, she drank. An infrequent drinker, she was tipsy almost instantly, and as she walked from the living room to the kitchen, she wove directly into the arms of a man who took her breath away. She knew in that instant what other women were talking about. She knew, too, that she would sleep with him.

  Staring up at the stars from the oversize pillow in the skylight room, Laura allowed herself to remember him. The penetrating blue eyes. The dark hair. The amused smile. They must have talked before they ended up in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but she couldn’t remember a word that passed between them. She couldn’t recall what he did for a living, or where he lived, or how he knew Rhonda. What she did remember was her excitement—the visceral thrill of kissing him, of lying naked with him in the four-poster bed, while snow fell furiously outside the bedroom window. She remembered every touch, every movement of his body. It was possible, though, that she had embellished those memories over the years, because each time she and Ray made love, she drew upon them to become aroused. What she’d had with Dylan had only been sex, though. What she’d had with Ray was a love rooted in friendship.

  After that night, she’d wondered if she’d always had that desire but had kept it tightly under wraps to avoid stealing energy from her work. It had taken the alcohol to free her. Maybe she’d only been fooling herself into thinking she did not have those feelings, just as she’d fooled herself in
to thinking she didn’t care about having children. When she learned she’d gotten pregnant that night, she felt sudden, pure, unadulterated joy—tempered by the awareness that her career and motherhood would not be an easy mix. Her father was quick to point that out to her, suggesting she strongly consider an abortion. It was the only time in her entire life she defied him.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by crying from Emma’s room down the hall. She looked at her watch as she rose from the pillow. Eleven-fifteen. Poor baby.

  Emma was standing in the hallway outside her room, barefoot in her shorty pajamas and shivering despite the warmth of the night.

  “What is it, honey?” Laura asked her.

  Emma sucked harder on her thumb in response to the question. Her cheeks were red and tear-streaked.

  Laura crouched next to her. “Tell me what it is, sweetheart. Did something frighten you?”

  Emma put her head on her mother’s shoulder, her small body sighing with the aftermath of her tears. It broke Laura’s heart that Emma could not give words to whatever had frightened her.

  She looked over Emma’s head to the child’s dark bedroom. “Your night-light went out. Is that it? You woke up and it was dark?”

  Emma nodded against her shoulder.

  Laura stood up. “I’ll put another bulb in the fairy light and then you can go back to bed.”

  In Emma’s room, Laura discovered that her daughter’s bed was wet, again. She changed the sheets and gave her dry pajamas to put on, then gave up on the idea of getting her back to sleep in her room.

  “Do you want to watch the stars with me in the skylight room?” she asked.

  Emma nodded.

  Laura held her hand as they walked down the hall. After Ray’s death, Emma had tried to climb into Laura’s bed on a nearly nightly basis. It had been hard to turn her away; Laura would have loved the human touch as much as Emma. But she knew it would only hurt Emma more in the long run. The skylight room, however, was a different story.

  They snuggled together among the pillows.

  “Can you find Hercules?” Laura asked.

  Emma pointed toward the constellation.

  “And how about Cygnus?”

  Emma pointed.

  “And what was Cygnus?” Laura waited for an answer she didn’t expect to come. “Cygnus was a swan,” she said, answering the question herself. “Do you remember that?”

  Emma did not even bother to nod. She closed her eyes and rested her head on Laura’s shoulder, and Laura was suddenly reminded of all the nights she’d watched the sky with her father. He would quiz her on what she saw. Where was Andromeda? Triangulum? What was the brightest star in Perseus? She’d felt tension during those nighttime quizzes, as though her father’s love for her was linked to her correct answers. She wasn’t doing that to Emma, was she? She ran her hand over Emma’s satiny hair. Her daughter was every bit as alone in the world as she had been, with only one nerdy, head-in-the-clouds parent. And on top of that, she’d had a poor relationship with the man she’d thought of as her father.

  Men yell. Men kill themselves.

  Heather was right. Laura owed it to Emma to see if Dylan Geer might be worthy of playing a part in her life.

  10

  DYLAN TRIGGERED THE BLAST VALVE TO MAINTAIN THE balloon’s altitude. They were off course. Not terribly so, but enough that his usual landing sites were out of the question.

  “I’ve never seen such a beautiful sunset,” the woman said to her husband. The couple was flying with him to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and the woman had lost her nervousness sometime during the last hour and was no longer clinging to the leather rim of the wicker basket. Soon, though, Dylan would have to ask her to hang on again.

  “Look over there,” the husband said. He pointed toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the pink of the sunset gave way to blue-violet as darkness approached.

  They’re oblivious to the problem, Dylan thought, even though they’d heard him radio the crew that the wind had picked up and the balloon was flying north of the landing site. Just as well. Let them enjoy the end of their trip.

  He was running out of daylight, and they needed to land soon. There was a cornfield not far ahead of them, but landing there would be messy. The crew would have to get permission from the farmer, the process of landing would destroy some of the corn, and his passengers would have to fight their way through the cornstalks to reach the crew’s vehicles. He remembered the woman saying something about arthritis in her knees. No, the cornfield wouldn’t do.

  He spoke into the aircraft radio. “Come in, Alex.”

  “Yo, balloon.” Alex’s voice was clear, the only sound other than the occasional roar of the flame above their heads.

  “I’m going to have to aim for the median strip again,” Dylan said. He saw the couple turn away from the sunset to look at him, then at each other. He smiled at them and winked, but he wasn’t sure they could see his expression of reassurance in the fading light.

  “Cool,” Alex said. “About the same spot as last time?” He’d had to land on the median strip a month or so ago.

  “Right. Think you guys can get there in time to assist?”

  “If we fly, man. Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”

  “Okay, then,” Dylan said. “See you on the ground.”

  He slipped the radio onto his belt and checked the altimeter.

  “Is there a problem?” the man asked.

  “Very minor,” Dylan said. “Remember before we boarded I explained that an unexpected gust of wind might blow us off course?”

  They nodded. He had their complete attention, the sunset forgotten.

  “That’s what happened. So, we missed our usual landing site. I’m going to land on the median strip of one of the main roads.” He intentionally avoided saying try to land. They didn’t need to hear uncertainty in his voice.

  “You’re what?” the woman said. “What about the traffic?”

  “It won’t be a problem,” Dylan said. “You’ll see.” His voice was so calm that they seemed to relax a bit. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he continued. “See that line of trees up ahead?”

  The tops of the trees glowed a surreal pink from the sunset. The couple nodded.

  “I’m going to brush over the tops of them with the basket,” Dylan said. “That’ll slow us down a bit. On the other side of the trees is the highway and the median strip. Do you remember what I told you about a high-wind landing?”

  “Face the direction we’re landing in,” said the man.

  “Right,” Dylan said. “And bend your knees and hold on to the rope handles. And we’re going to be fine.”

  The woman looked at him with doubt in her eyes.

  “Honest,” he said.

  He let some air out of the balloon as they approached the trees, enough to allow the basket to coast across the treetops. Twigs snapped and leaves brushed against the wicker. He loved the sound, but the woman gripped the rope handle tighter.

  “You doing okay?” he asked the couple.

  “Doesn’t matter how we’re doing,” the man said. “You’re the one we’re worried about.”

  Dylan laughed. He lowered the balloon on the other side of the trees, flying above the two lanes of traffic. They were close enough to the cars that, had it been lighter, the surprised looks on the faces of the drivers would have been visible.

  The crew had not made it in time, but he hadn’t expected them to.

  “Bend your knees,” he said to his passengers. “And hold on.”

  Down they went, the balloon touching the ground and being carried only a few feet across the grass by the wind before stopping. Good landing, given the circumstances. His jelly-kneed passengers hugged each other, laughing in apparent relief.

  A few cars stopped along the median strip, their drivers and passengers getting out for a closer look. Dylan spotted Alex’s truck as it pulled in behind the line of cars. Brian’s van was right behind him.
br />   “Here come our rescuers,” he said to the couple.

  Once on the median strip, Brian grabbed the drop line, and Alex produced the stepladder to allow the couple to disembark.

  “Don’t know what you need us for,” Brian said, acknowledging Dylan’s safe solo landing.

  “I wonder about that myself sometimes,” Dylan joked as he helped his passengers from the basket.

  Once safely out of the basket, they celebrated the successful flight with the requisite champagne toast. The passersby kept a respectful distance from them, and Dylan knew that some of them would call him for their own balloon rides over the next few days.

  The couple got into Brian’s van for the ride back to Dylan’s barn, where their own car was parked.

  Dylan and Alex dismantled the balloon in the near darkness, Dylan glancing at his watch from time to time. He had a date tonight. It was not with Bethany, he was sure of that, but damned if he could remember exactly who it was with.

  No big deal, he thought as he helped Alex load the basket into the truck. He would know when she showed up at his door.

  11

  EVEN THOUGH RHONDA GIDDINGS NO LONGER WORKED AT THE Air and Space Museum, Laura was able to track her down at her new job.

  “How nice to hear from you,” Rhonda said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” Laura lied, not wanting to get into all that had changed in her life since she’d last seen Rhonda. “I was wondering if—”

  “When does the best viewing start for the latest Comet Brandon?” Rhonda asked. “I hear it’s going to be a good one.”

  “I hope so,” Laura said. “It should peak next summer.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “I’m calling for a favor, Rhonda,” Laura said. “I’m trying to get in touch with someone I met at a party at your house quite a while ago. Six years ago, actually.”

  “Wow,” Rhonda laughed. “I have to warn you, my memory isn’t what it once was. Who are we talking about?”

  “Dylan Geer.” Laura cringed as she said the name. She wondered how many people had been aware that she and Dylan had disappeared upstairs together the night of the party.