After the Rains (18 page)

“Natalie! You scared me half to death. What are you doing home?” Natalie lifted a sleep-weary face.

“I don’t … feel well.”

Her mother sat on the side of the bed, her forehead creased with worry lines. She put a cool hand on Natalie’s cheek. “You don’t feel like you have a fever. What’s wrong, honey?”

Natalie rolled over on her side, turning away from her mother’s scrutiny. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep.”

She felt a tender hand on her shoulder. “Nattie, I want to talk to you about something. Nate—your father—called this morning. He’s in Kansas City, and he wants to see you. I thought maybe I could take you to Grandma and Grandpa’s this weekend, and you could spend some time with him. It— Well, it might be good if you could talk to him … about everything that’s happened.”

Natalie turned and sat up in bed. “Mom! No! I … I can’t face him.”

“Nattie, please. He’s your father. He loves you, and he wants to help.”

“It’s not like he can do anything that will make any difference, Mom.”

Her mother was silent for a few minutes. Finally she looked Natalie in the eye. “Natalie, no one can make a difference unless you
let
them.”

“So, are you telling me I have no choice? I have to go to Kansas City?”

“Nate came all the way from Colombia, Nattie. It wouldn’t be fair to refuse to see him.”

“I didn’t ask him to come home!”

Her mother’s voice was maddeningly steady when she said, “Well, Natalie, we’re all dealing with a lot of things we didn’t ask for. I’d like you to go see your father this weekend.”

Natalie knew it was not a request. She threw herself on the bed and turned toward the wall. She heard the door close, and she flopped over
onto her back to stare at the ceiling. But instead of feeling angry or manipulated, she felt a small spark of hope ignite inside her. Maybe her father could help her. Maybe he could tell her how to shed this unbearably heavy burden that threatened to drag her under.

Nathan Camfield stood shivering on the driveway of his parents’ house. Jack and Vera had gone back inside, leaving him with Daria and Natalie. His daughter had barely spoken two words since their arrival twenty minutes ago.

“I should go,” Daria said for the third time. “You’re freezing.”

“This weather is hard to take after the jungle,” he admitted, burying his chin in the collar of his jacket. But even as he said it, he knew that he was trembling from more than the chill air. “Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?” he said. “Have something hot to drink before you start back.”

She shook her head again. “Thanks, Nate, but I really need to get on the road.”

It was a game they’d played for a decade and a half. And he still hadn’t figured out the rules. He wanted to talk to Daria, discuss Natalie’s situation with her. And yet, the current that still flowed between Daria and him was disconcerting. He suspected that she still felt it too—that she was protecting herself, as well as him, by refusing to come in.

Because Natalie had driven to Kansas City by herself the last time he’d been back in the States, it had been almost five years since Nate had seen Daria. He was struck by how little she had changed over the years. She wore her hair shorter now, and the sun had etched fine lines around her eyes and mouth. But she still had the athletic posture and the becoming smile he remembered. Natalie looked so much like her mother that it made him ache to look at her.

He turned to his daughter now. “Well, Nattie, shall we go see what your grandma has cooked up for dinner?”

The girl nodded and put up a gloved hand. “Bye, Mom. Be careful.”

Daria came around the car and gave her a quick hug, but in spite of
the show of affection, Nate saw that tension was stretched taut between them.

“See you Sunday night, honey,” Daria told Natalie.

“Okay.”

Now Daria approached Nate with her arms out. She hugged him briefly. It was a polite gesture, and an awkward one, especially with Natalie there watching them. After all these years it still hurt to hold Daria in his arms, however briefly, knowing that it could never mean what it once had. He’d forgotten how difficult it always was to see her—how hard it was to convince himself that he had made the right decision all those years ago, that no matter what his heart told him, there was no way things could ever be any different—no way he could ever regain what he’d lost.

He shook off the dark thoughts. “Thank you for bringing her,” he told her quietly, putting a hand briefly on her arm.

She nodded and got in the car. But Nate didn’t miss the tears that welled in her eyes.

Natalie went into the house, but he stood in the drive and watched Daria’s car back away and disappear around the curve in the street. After several minutes, he rubbed his face with his hands, trying to compose himself, and trudged up the drive to the house.

“Nathan,” Vera Camfield said, “don’t you want some more steak? You haven’t eaten enough to keep a bird alive.”

Natalie watched as her father pushed away from the table and patted his belly. “Mom, I couldn’t eat another bite if my life depended on it,” he said. “Everything was delicious, though. Maybe I’ll raid the refrigerator later tonight.”

Grandma Camfield looked pleased at that.

Natalie looked around the table. Across from her, Uncle Jim and Aunt Betsy sat side by side. They’d put Natalie beside her father, and Grandpa Camfield was at the head of the table. Grandma sat at his left, near the kitchen—although “sat” hardly described it. Throughout the meal Grandma had jumped up and down, waiting on all of them, bringing out dish
after dish—more food than the six of them could possibly consume in one sitting.

Natalie was grateful that the adults had kept the conversation going all evening. She’d been able to listen, without feeling that their eyes were all on her. Not one word had been spoken about her “situation,” and while she was thankful for that, a part of her wanted to get it out in the open and get it over with. She knew from the telephone conversation she’d overheard that her reason for being here was so her father could talk to her. Whatever that meant. She felt jittery just thinking about it. She wondered what he wanted to say. Would he scold her and tell her how ashamed he was? In some ways that would be easier to take than Daddy’s quiet acceptance had been. Maybe if someone just chewed her out good, she’d feel as if she’d gotten what she deserved.

“Right, Natalie?” Her thoughts were interrupted by Aunt Betsy’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” Natalie said, embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming. “What did you say?”

“I was just telling your dad that you’re about to surpass even Grandma in the cinnamon roll–baking department.”

She smiled nervously. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Grandma still makes the best rolls in the world.”

Her grandmother beamed. “Well, yours are a close second, honey.”

“Hey,” Betsy protested. “What am I? Chopped liver?”

Uncle Jim put an arm around his wife and kissed her cheek. “You’re still
Numero Uno
on my list, sweetheart.” Then he put a hand next to his lips, leaned across the table, and said in a stage whisper, “Sorry, Nattie. But I’ve got to protect my own best interests here if I ever want to see another cinnamon roll on my breakfast plate.”

Natalie grinned and nodded conspiratorially, whispering back, “I understand.”

After dinner Natalie helped Grandma and Aunt Betsy with the dishes while the men watched television in the den. She was drying the last of the silverware when Nate came into the kitchen.

Natalie sensed that this was the moment. Butterflies flitted in her
stomach, and she busied herself putting forks and spoons in their compartments in the drawer. She didn’t even know what to call him. Lately, when she thought of him, she’d simply thought of him as
Nate
. But that didn’t seem appropriate. He was her father, after all. When she was little, everyone had referred to him as her “Daddy-Nate.” But that seemed unnatural and a little silly now.

Nate was giving Betsy a hard time about the wildly flowered peasant blouse she was wearing. “I would have thought you’d have grown out of this hippie phase by now, Bets,” he teased.

“Hippie is back in style, if you haven’t noticed.” She snapped a corner of the dishtowel at him, but he caught it and wrested it from her. Betsy squealed and backed into the corner cabinets.

Natalie smiled at their antics. It was good to see them enjoying being together. It reminded her of the way her mom and her Uncle Jason were with each other. Mom and Daddy clowned around like that sometimes too. Yet, she couldn’t help but think that if her birth parents had stayed together, Mom might be in on this cheerful scene now.

“Hey, Natalie,” Nate said, suddenly serious. “I got some pictures back—from Timoné. Would you like to see them?”

She shrugged. “Uh, sure, let me finish putting this stuff away,” she told him. She put the last of the forks in the drawer and closed it slowly.
Help me, Lord. I’m scared
.

When she turned around, she saw that everyone had left the kitchen. She went out to the living room and found Uncle Jim and Aunt Betsy getting their coats on.

They said their goodbyes, and when they closed the front door, Grandpa stretched and yawned. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m heading for bed. If it’s not snowing tomorrow, I’ve got an early golf game.”

“Big surprise,” Grandma said wryly. But she told him, “I’m going to turn out the lights, and I’ll be up in a minute.”

Natalie could hear her grandmother walking through the downstairs rooms, flipping light switches. Natalie followed her father into the dining
room, where he had several envelopes from a local photo developer spread out on the table. She stood there, rubbing circles in the glossy finish of the cherry wood table, not knowing what to say.

Vera Camfield finished her rounds and popped her head around the corner. “Well, good night, you two,” she said. “Nate, will you be sure and turn out this light before you turn in?”

“Sure, Mom. Good night. See you in the morning.”

Natalie pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. “Did you just get these developed?” she asked, feeling awkward to be alone with him.

“Yes. Mom—Grandma—sent a bunch of film back with me last time, and thankfully I remembered to bring it with me.”

“There’s no place to develop pictures there?”

“Well, there is in Bogotá, of course—and I think there’s even a place in San José—but it’s expensive, and I’m never there long enough to wait on them. It was just as easy to bring it back here.”

“Oh,” she said. “Can I?” she indicated the photos with a nod of her head.

“Yes, sure.” He picked up one of the packets and riffled through the stack of photos. “Here, these are the earliest ones. They were taken about a year ago.”

Natalie began to flip through the pictures. In several of the shots, he posed arm in arm with various native men, and he was surrounded by smiling children in another shot. Many of the pictures depicted the surrounding countryside or huts in the village. A few were apparently taken at a small airport. Natalie was so intrigued by the images that she soon forgot about her nervousness. It was amazing to see her father in the environment in which he lived and worked. She couldn’t help but notice how relaxed and happy he appeared in these photos. “That’s the airstrip at the mission in Conzalez,” he told her, peering across the table. “It’s just a few minutes’ flight into San José from there. That’s where we get our e-mail.”

Natalie was surprised how much it meant to her to now have mental images of the places her father had spoken about in his letters and e-mails. For the first time his life in Colombia seemed more than some fairy tale
she’d heard all her life. Here were real people who knew and spoke with her father every day.

She leafed through another packet of pictures. Holding up a photo of a bearded man who appeared to be an American, she asked, “Is this that guy you told me about—the one who’s translating?”

“Yes. That’s David Chambers. Great guy … I don’t know what I ever did without him. David is making tremendous progress in preparing to get the language into written form. He started altogether from scratch since the Timoné don’t have a written language. It’s been a real challenge. He’s already doing the work of three people, and with our limited computer equipment and having to make a two-day trip just to get to a decent printer, or to get on the Internet, it’s a wonder he hasn’t given up.”