“Are you?”
“Don’t make this any harder. I screwed up, okay? But, Jenny, you screwed up far worse. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She’s sitting on my lap listening. Now’s not the time.”
“Time’s running out,” Mama Peg mumbled.
David’s breathing echoed heavy in my ear. “Lindsey wants her to come over and spend time with us.”
My grip tightened on the receiver. “She’s not Lindsey’s daughter—she’s mine.”
“You mean ours.”
“So now you believe me?”
“She looks just like me and you know it.”
Isabella’s heart thumped against me. I stood her up and motioned to Craig. “Would you take her outside?”
He started to push off the floor.
Mama Peg set her shaky hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you dare. This conversation concerns that little girl more than anyone. She has a right to know her father.”
Exasperated, I stood and turned my back on them all. “I’ll let you see her, but it needs to be just you. It’s nice Lindsey’s interested, but Bella should get to know you first.”
“Can she come here?” His tone was softer now, almost pleading.
I cringed at the thought of going back to David’s house and facing once again the perfect life he’d made without me.
“Please?” His tone had descended to the plane of genuine humility.
An overwhelming desire to ask him how it felt to want something he couldn’t have came over me. How delicious it would feel to break
his
heart for a change.
I opened my mouth to say something that would hurt him as much as he’d hurt me, but something inside me whispered,
Look at your daughter.
Slowly I turned around. The light shining up at me from her eyes cast out the darkness that had seeped into my soul. Once again I was reminded that it didn’t matter an iota what I wanted. It was her future at stake, not mine. I held my hand over the receiver and squatted next to her. “Bella, do you want to go to David’s house and spend an afternoon?”
She squealed so loud the windows should have shattered. Dejected, I stood again. “I guess you heard that?”
His laughter sounded as melodic as a hyena’s.
“You can pick her up tomorrow around noon.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.
Before I could hang up, Isabella flung her arms around my legs. I scanned the faces watching me. The look of approval in Mama Peg’s and Craig’s eyes, combined with the blinding joy shining from my daughter’s, told me I had made the right decision. My aching heart told me something entirely different.
My father grabbed his pipe and stalked out of the room. Seconds later, the back door banged shut.
Isabella’s grin threatened to split her face, which only made me feel worse. What was wrong with me? I was her mother. I should be happy for her.
Mama Peg studied me a moment, then turned to Craig. “Why don’t you read Bella her bedtime story? I think Jenny needs to get some fresh air.” With that, she aimed the remote at the television, filling the room with cheers from the television audience.
Craig stood.
“You don’t have to,” I said, though I hoped he would. Listening to my daughter prattle on about David as I tucked her in was more than I could handle at the moment.
“It’s the least he can do after nearly killing you both,” Mama Peg said flatly, not taking her eyes off the tube.
Craig grabbed the small of his back. “She knows just where to plunge that knife, doesn’t she?”
I shook my head at her sick sense of humor.
He took my hand. “I really am sorry I kept you out in the rain.”
“So you’ve said a hundred times. And like I’ve said, I’m going to get sick whether I dance in the rain or live the rest of my days in a bubble. It was worth it.”
He smiled.
Mama Peg cleared her throat. “Might as well jump out of an airplane without pulling your cord since we’re all going to die someday anyway.”
Craig shook his head as my fingers slipped from his grasp. He turned to Isabella, who sat on the carpet cross-legged, excitedly rocking back and forth. “Let’s go pick out a book, Sleeping Beauty.”
Craig disappeared up the stairs with Isabella bouncing at his heels. Mama Peg muted the TV again and turned to me with an expression that suggested a lecture was imminent.
Without giving her the chance to speak, I said, “You were right. I do need some air.” With that, I slipped out the back door to join my father. For once he was bound to be more sympathetic.
As I stepped into warm night air, a chorus of crickets serenaded me. Dad threw a glance my way as he dipped the lighter’s flame into his pipe bowl. He sucked, causing a small ember to brighten and grow.
A plume of smoke wafted my way as I sat. I inhaled the intoxicating mixture of vanilla and apple that tinged his favorite blend.
He rocked back and forth in his chair, speaking around the stem of his pipe. “She’s a good girl.”
“The best thing I ever did,” I agreed.
“That’s just what I used to say about you.”
I eyed him. “Really?”
He pulled the pipe from his mouth. “Don’t act so surprised. You think the love you feel for her your mother and I didn’t feel for you?”
A breeze rattled the azaleas and sent my father’s pipe smoke trailing in the opposite direction. The wind died as my dad leaned his head back on the rocker and blew an oblong ring of smoke into the air. “It doesn’t thrill me to know I’m going to be sharing my granddaughter with that man.”
I feigned interest in my cuticles. “Dr. Preston is more the
grandfather
type than the
cowpa
type. Besides, just because she might love him doesn’t mean she’ll stop loving you.” I realized I was speaking more to myself than to him. “You know, Dad, you’re going to need to get along with him for Bella’s sake.”
“I can’t do it, Jenny. He’s the reason your mother’s not sitting here with us.”
I continued to focus on my hands rather than him. “You’re going to need to forgive him.”
“Are you going to let David raise her?”
At last I looked up, relieved to find his eyes fixated on the lake rather than me. “I don’t know. He’s her father. You see how she pines for him.”
I longed for some fatherly wisdom—some truism that might make the pill of losing not only my man to Lindsey, but possibly my daughter as well, easier to swallow. My father took a long drag of his pipe and nodded.
I drew my legs up onto the chair and squeezed them against my chest. “What if she loves him better than me?”
“Love
him
better than
you
?” He made a face as though I’d asked the dumbest question ever. “He may be her father, but he’s still a Preston.”
I laughed at his joke but also at the surprising freeness I suddenly felt. I’d come home to find Isabella a family, and maybe I had succeeded. She wanted her father, and it seemed he wanted her too. The only problem was the feud between my dad and Dr. Preston. For Isabella’s sake, it needed to end.
“Dad?”
“I don’t have the answer,” he said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any answers. I thought I did when I was younger, but the older I get, the more I realize just how ignorant I am.”
“I have to ask you something, and it’s no small thing.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it if you promise to go to the cancer center.”
I huffed. “This again? Haven’t we beat that dead horse long enough?”
“Just one consultation. That’s all I’m asking.”
Anger rose within me but was quickly replaced with the sadness it tried to mask. “Each time I go to a new doctor, even though I tell myself I’m not going to hope, I do anyway. I begin to think maybe, just maybe, this doctor could be hoarding some secret cure.” I hugged my knees tighter. “Dreams for my future—the future I’m never going to have—seep into my mind, but each time I’m left with my hopes crushed and a brochure for hospice care. I can’t go through that again. I can’t, Dad.”
My father’s neck was bent so far down, I couldn’t see his face. I went to him and wrapped my arms around his now-trembling shoulders. He gathered me onto his lap like when I was little.
I laid my head against him and listened to his heartbeat—the steady, comforting sound of a drumbeat, which in my childhood had lulled me to sleep. The smell of pipe tobacco mingled with his Old Spice deodorant and the fabric softener Mama Peg used on his clothes. It was, to me, a heavenly combination.
I pushed all worries from my mind and surrendered to childhood as he rocked me just as he’d done years before. Deep within my soul, I could almost remember that time when I felt safe and secure in my little protected world full of hugs, hope, and a complete lack of responsibility. I picked my head off his shoulder and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Dad, promise you’ll at least try to get along with the Prestons.”
He ushered me from his lap. “Jenny, even if my life depended on it, I don’t think I could.”
I don’t know why his stubbornness surprised me so. He’d always been this way. “But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you. Your life does depend on it, Dad.”
He glared at me. “So we’re going to throw Scripture around? ‘Hypocrite! first get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s.’”
The crickets grew louder, and my head began to throb. “Even around this log, I can see that you’ve got far more than a speck in your eye. Keep ignoring it and one day you’ll go blind.”
He stood and snatched his pipe off the armrest. “I wish I would.”
Isabella and I sat side by side on the front porch steps, waiting for David to arrive. The midday sun poured down its happy golden rays over her, while a cloud of gray seemed to hover over me alone. I raised my glass to my lips and took a sip. Cold liquid hit my tongue, accosting me with a taste both rancid and sweet. Though I knew it was my disease-altered taste buds causing the sickening flavor rather than the tea itself, I still couldn’t make myself swallow. I leaned over and spit it into the hydrangeas.
Lately, everything managed to offend my palate. This symptom, which I hadn’t anticipated, had become even more of a thorn in my side than the ever-increasing fatigue. Nausea rose within me as I eyed the ice cubes floating in the remaining liquid, whose hue reminded me of campground toilet water. Rather than have to look at it, I dumped the rest into the mulch. I watched it disappear into the thirsty ground and turned back to Isabella.
Her right knee bobbed like a jackhammer as she stared hard down the gravel road and clutched her stuffed koala.
I guided her face toward me. “What’s my cell number?”
She pushed the bear in front of my eyes and pointed to the numbers I’d written on his tiny T-shirt in laundry marker.
“Just in case you lose Cocoa . . .”
She pressed him tight against her chest. “I won’t lose him. He’s my friend!”
Despite how miserable I felt, her response still managed to draw a smile out of me. “I know that you won’t
try
to lose him, but just in case you do, David has my number and I’ll see you at three no matter what.”
She looked through rather than at me.
“Bella, are you listening?”
Her gaze slid from me back to the deserted road. “What time is it now, Mommy?”
“Two minutes later than the last time you asked.”
“You think he forgot me?”
“Who could forget you?”
The sun reflected off of her white sundress, casting a golden halo all around her as she leaned over to pick a scrap of mulch from her sandal. She looked like a little bride waiting on her groom. I could almost see the woman she was to become and wondered if God would let me watch her wedding from heaven. I would give anything to do that.
A visceral pain gnawed at me. “Remember, you call me if anything goes wrong. If you feel uncomfortable or scared or—”
She heaved a sigh.
“He’s going to come, baby.”
“I know.” A blush colored her cheeks as she brushed a wrinkle from her skirt. “Do you think he’ll like my dress?”
I ran the back of my hand across her soft cheek. “Beautiful Bella, even if you were wearing a potato sack, you’d be lovely. Besides, people who love you love you no matter how you look.”
She went cross-eyed as she swatted something in front of her nose that only she could see. With her preoccupied, I snuck another glance at my watch. David was now officially late. I picked up the phone from the step beside me and flipped it open. No missed calls. If he let her down . . .
Above us, movement caught my eye. I looked upward. A glass globe dangled from the porch overhang. A hummingbird fluttered beside it, dipping its narrow beak into the glistening red liquid. I started to point him out, but Isabella screamed.
“He’s here!” She jumped up, sending the stuffed koala tumbling face-first into a pile of wet mulch.
The same Infiniti Coupe I’d seen parked in David’s garage tore forward, spraying gravel and dirt. He stopped the car at the end of the driveway and honked his horn twice, just like he used to do when we were dating. For the first time, I understood why the gesture used to infuriate my father. I waved David out of the car.
As he slammed the door, Isabella ran for him as though she had known him all of her life. The smile she wore was the biggest I’d ever seen on her. Not a trace of fear or trepidation glinted in her eyes. “Daddy!”
He held his arms out to her and she jumped into them. He kissed her forehead while I tried not to wince.
After a moment, Isabella turned to me. “I love you too, Mommy.”
My face warmed with embarrassment. Apparently, my jealousy and insecurity were obvious even to my little girl. “Oh, sweetness, I know you do. It’s okay. You have plenty of love to go around.”
David balanced her on his hip. “Thanks, Jenny. We’ll see you around four.”
I crossed my arms. “I think you mean three.”
The devilish grin that met me would have made my heart flutter a few years ago. Not now. “I mean it, David.”
Isabella scrutinized our exchange with such intensity that it slapped the scowl off my face and the negativity from my tone. “You have fun, sweetness.” I kissed her cheek and turned to David. “Do you want her car seat?”