And as to David, he regretted hurting him. He should have insisted they talk to him, but he’d sensed that Christine believed, deep down, that their relationship wouldn’t last long enough for it to matter.
He should have found David a therapist in Preston when Christine asked—not jumped in to be the big hero—then left Christine the hell alone. Instead, as he’d done with Nathan and Elizabeth, he’d let his feelings override his judgment and screwed up royally.
If he had any doubts, all he had to do was remember how he’d acted after they learned David had run off. Christine had needed him to take her in his arms and comfort her, but what had he done? Offered smug advice and a ride to Preston for her
car.
He son was missing and he offered her a
ride?
He was a psychiatrist, for God’s sake. How could he have bungled human emotions so badly? Because this wasn’t therapy, this was life, where his success rate was dismal. Where he was completely at sea.
And Christine was correct. The silver lining to this black cloud was that they knew now, before they’d turned their lives upside down to be together.
But, oh, how he ached to hold her again.
Sleep was hopeless so he went to his computer, searching for the distraction that would keep him from dwelling on his misery.
His book had been untouched for weeks. He skimmed the first few pages of each chapter to remind himself what he’d intended. There was the research overkill he’d already noted, the dry listing of data and rationale. Who would read such a book? Other psychiatrists and mental health professionals perhaps. And what was the point of that exactly? Preaching to the choir or falling on deaf ears.
Abruptly, he saw what else was wrong. The book had no heart. No emotion. No stories. No people. It was an intellectual exercise. Human beings appeared as data points, not flesh-and-blood patients and their families and therapists struggling against a system that cared less for them than actuarial tables.
His book should to tell those stories. Of course. That would bring these issues to life. So how would that work?
He could interview his own former patients, his colleagues and their patients and write a book with heart, with life, with people and feelings. He would write a book that people would want to read, one that ultimately might lead to action.
Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, Marcus began to outline a new book. He owed this epiphany to Christine. Without her, without the feelings she’d awakened in him, he might never have figured this out. One day, he would tell her so.
“When the grants come through, that will change.”
“Not soon enough for the people I see now.”
“I’m going to L.A. next week and I plan to have some personal meetings with leads Elizabeth gave me. Maybe that can speed up the process.”
“You’re going next week?”
“For a couple of weeks, yeah. I need some interviews for my book.”
“I thought you were about done with that.”
“I’m starting over. I decided last night.”
“Your muse let you down?” Carlos winked.
The smile he gave Carlos hurt his face. “Not at all. She helped me figure this out. However, we’re not seeing each other anymore.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact, but he knew Carlos would not let that slide.
“You what? You broke up? What did you do,
jefe?
Apologize, for God’s sake. You know she’s right.”
“She is, and that’s the problem.” He told Carlos the basics of what had gone wrong.
“So, just like that? She flips out over her son, you go all cerebral, she gets pissed—as well she should—and breaks up with you? And you let her? Jesus.”
“We were dreaming and we woke up. We’d end up hurting each other, so this is for the best.”
“Right. Because you’re a soulless automaton and she’s a drama queen and neither of you deserve each other or love?”
“Mock all you want, but you’re close to the bone here.”
“Rethink this,
jefe.
You’re wallowing in ancient history. She’s not Elizabeth. I know you loved the woman, but she was pretty much an ice queen. You seem so much happier with this one. Give yourself a chance,
hombre.
”
He shook his head. Carlos was as excessively optimistic about love as Christine was about everything else.
“If I were a true friend, I’d go all intervention on your ass. But for now, how about we drown you sorrows in tequila after I close the clinic at five?”
“Sounds good,” Marcus said immediately. It was an escape and that sounded good to him. As good as his new book, which saved him from complete despair. He owed Christine his thanks. She’d awakened him to the world again, opened him up to things he could do, like help Carlos with his clinic. Christine had reminded him to use his heart, as well as his head and hands. He would be grateful to her for the rest of his life.
She was elbow-deep in dishwater when the phone rang, so Aurora answered it. “Harmony House… Oh! Yes! She’s right here, Skip. Hang on.”
Thank God.
Relief washed over Christine as she wiped her wet hands on her jeans, took the phone and rushed into the alcove. “Is David all right?” she asked, holding her breath.
“He’s fine, Chris.” Then he lowered his voice, as if not wanting to be overheard. “Jesus, you made me out to be some kind of psychopath.”
“That’s not true.” But it was close, she knew, and she felt guilty about it. “I’m sure he’s exaggerated because he’s so angry at me.”
“He’s got good reason to be pissed at you.”
“Will you send him back, Skip? Please.”
“He seems to think he belongs here, since you say we’re so alike, what with our terrible tempers and all.”
She cringed. Skip was furious with her. What should she say? Marcus’s advice about acknowledging strong emotion with David popped into her head. “I can hear that you’re angry that I kept David from you,” she said slowly.
“You’re damn straight I am. You pretended you didn’t know where I was to him. I called you when I moved most of the time. You know that. Maybe once or twice I couldn’t make a visit, but that’s no excuse to lie about me.”
Once or twice? Try five or six or seven.
“I’m sorry, Skip. That was wrong of me.” She gritted her teeth.
“People change, Chris. And no one’s as perfect as you want them to be.”
“I’m sure that’s true. So will you send him back?”
“David needs to get to know me, not the monster you told him about. He’s fine right where he is.” Click.
“Wait!” But it was too late. He’d hung up without giving her a phone number, leaving her still stuck with no way to reach David. Worse,
David wanted to live with Skip.
She felt as though she’d been slammed into a wall. That was what had scared her most. Marcus had her dead to rights on that one. She’d been protecting David from his terrible father, but she’d also been protecting herself. She was afraid David would love Skip more than he loved her. How pathetic was that?
Whatever failings Marcus might have in a relationship, he had read Christine like a book. She owed him an apology. When she could be near him without bursting into tears, she would give it to him.
The days and nights blurred. She slept fitfully, moments with David and Marcus playing over and over in her head, conversations she wished she’d had ringing in her ears. She missed them both like parts of her body had been carved away.
She restricted herself to one e-mail or phone message to David each day, forcing herself to sound easy and warm. Inside, she was dying of sadness. She rarely saw Marcus, which was a relief, and his car was often gone.
Through it all, she kept working and somehow, day by day, time managed to pass.
“Anything from David?” Aurora asked, taking a seat on the adjacent stool. Aurora had treated her with surprising gentleness, for which Christine was grateful.
“Nothing,” she said, then saw that her momentary distraction had caused her to collapse the vase. “Dammit!” she said, her voice cracking. “I worked and worked this. I had it perfect. Now look what I did!” Her hands were shaking and her eyes burned. She wanted to
cry,
for heaven’s sake. She was ridiculously emotional. “I’m hopeless.”
“You’ll throw another one, bunny. Not a biggie.”
Startled and touched, Christine stared at her mother. “You haven’t called me ‘bunny’ since I was in kindergarten.”
“Your problem is you let it get too wet,” her mother said, ignoring her words. She cut the mangled clay from the wheel with a wire scraper, then dropped a mound of newly prepared clay onto the wheel. “How about a fresh start?”
“I miss him so much,” she said, her voice breaking, her emotions too high to ignore. She’d almost added
Mom,
she’d forgotten herself so much.
“Of course you do,” Aurora said. Her gaze slipped away from Christine’s, but she seemed to fight to pull it back, to keep eye contact. Her mother was truly trying to help her—and in a way Christine recognized.
“I chased him right to Skip. I should have let him see his father, even if he got disappointed. I was afraid to lose him. I was selfish and stupid.”
“Stop that right now,” her mother said in her usual blunt tone. “You did what you thought best.” Her mother’s face softened and to her surprise, she reached out and gave Christine’s thigh a tentative pat, then quickly pulled her hand away and cleared her throat. “Now get going on that.”
Christine sponged some water on the clay and began to spin the wheel slowly.
“It hurt like hell to let you go, you know,” Aurora said.
“Yeah?” Christine knew better than to look up or her mother would never finish the story.
“My parents wanted to lock me in my bedroom and throw away the key. I swore I’d be better than them, so I had to let you go if you wanted to leave. That was the promise I’d made to myself.”
Christine was startled. So it hadn’t been a case of out of sight, out of mind for her mother when Christine ran away. Aurora had struggled and been sad.
“You always have doubts as a mother,” she said. Christine had sworn to be a better mother than Aurora, too. She hadn’t done as well as she’d intended. Perhaps Aurora hadn’t done as poorly as Christine had always thought.
“I swear if we’d stayed in that apartment, you’d have suffocated,” Aurora said. It took Christine a second to follow her mother’s train of thought. Then she realized Aurora was still talking about the choices mothers faced.
“I loved our apartment. It was cozy and tidy and perfect.”
“No place is perfect, Christine. That’s why Harmony House was good for you. You needed to break out of that cookie-cutter crap. Being different made you independent.”
“It didn’t feel that way at the time.”
“And I’ll tell you something else. If I’d been as strong as you, I wouldn’t have been so scared when my folks locked me out. I panicked. I didn’t take care of myself like I should have. I didn’t eat or see a doctor. If I’d been stronger, you would have a big brother or sister this very day.” Her mother swallowed hard and shook her head, clearly fighting emotion.
“You didn’t cause your miscarriage,” Christine said, startled to realize that was what her mother believed. “One out of four pregnancies fails. A miscarriage means something was wrong with the fetus. That’s all.”
“I don’t think so.” But hope flared in Aurora’s eyes before she firmly put it out.
“Losing that baby was not your fault. And as to being scared on your own, well, you did your best,” she said, repeating her mother’s consoling words to her.
Aurora seemed to think that through, then dismiss it. “You’re getting me off track. My point is that you would have taken charge. You wouldn’t have been wimpy and weak like I was. And why was that? Because I brought you here.”
“Okay…” she said, though her mother’s reasoning was seriously flawed. She was flattered that her mother thought she was strong and brave.
“I knew you needed to escape the nuns and the rules and those bossy girls you liked so much. You were getting boxed in, your whole soul stifled. I wanted better for you, Christina Marie.”
Emotion made Christine’s nose sting. All these years, Christine had assumed she was an annoying burden to her mother, not her reason to come to Harmony House.
“From the moment I got pregnant with you I did everything right, too. I took every vitamin, got plenty of rest, saw the doctor once a month. At first I was living at Bogie’s place, then in Colorado with friends, but I stuck to my promise.”
Movement made them look up to see that Bogie had come into the barn carrying a jug of water and two Mason jars. “You should try for a nap, Aurora,” he said, filling both glasses and handing them each one. “You know how you are after too much heat.”
“I have a clean bill of health.”
“And you practically fainted yesterday. Drink up,” he said more firmly than Christine had ever heard him speak to her.
“You almost fainted?” Christine asked.
“I stood up too quick is all. You both worry too damn much.” But her tone was friendly. Aurora looked at Christine, then back at Bogie, who was turning to leave.
“Stay a minute,” Aurora said to him.
Bogie looked at her. “All right.” He sounded wary, but he dragged a sawhorse over and sat. “I just want to say again how sorry I am about that marijuana,” he said to Christine. He’d apologized three times already. “He never took much and I just didn’t want to rock the boat.”
“That’s your whole problem, Clancy Hampton,” Aurora said, suddenly blunt. Christine hadn’t heard her mother use Bogie’s real name since she’d introduced him to Christine before they came to Harmony House.
“Sometimes you have to rock the boat. Hell, sometimes you have to tip the damn thing over. It’s time to tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Christine said.
A look passed between the two of them, heavy and slow, before Aurora continued. “We’ve been talking about the old days, so now’s as good a time as any. You promised.”
Bogie hung his head.
“Bogie?” Christine stared at him, hardly able to breathe for the way her heart pounded in her chest. “What is it?”
“Oh, Crystal.” His eyes filled with sadness and shame.
“Hell’s bells, do I have to do everything for you? Bogie is your father, Christine. There. It’s done.”
“What?” Her mind stalled out. “But my dad’s a policeman—”
“I made him up for you,” Aurora said. “Bogie was out of the picture and you wanted a hero so damn bad.”
“But I remember him. His coat. His aftershave.” She remembered him throwing her into the air, the brush of his stubble, the scratch of his badge when he hugged her close.
“You’ve always had a good imagination.”
“You and Bogie were together?” She couldn’t imagine. Bogie seemed so much older than her mother.
“It’s only ten years between us. And Clancy was a handsome man. Jesus. Anyway, when I got pregnant, Bogie couldn’t handle it and took off.”
Bogie hunched his shoulders, but didn’t look up.
“He was afraid is all. It was a different time.” Aurora cleared her throat. “I went to stay with friends in Colorado.”
Christine kept looking from one to the other. She felt as though she was in a bad dream, foggily fighting to wake up.
“When Clancy found me at that rally, I didn’t want him to tell you. You had your hero, first off, and I was still angry at him.” She shot him a look. “Talk to your daughter now. Here’s your chance to explain.”
“I’m no kind of father,” he said huskily. “I knew it then and I know it now.” He stood stiffly and walked away.
Christine’s mind reeled. The universe had suddenly tilted on its axis and she felt dizzy. Her heroic father was gone, replaced by a humble hippie who had left her pregnant mother all alone.
“Don’t let him chicken out now,” Aurora said. “He has a side in this story, you know. He’ll be in the greenhouse.”
Dazed, Christine went after him. Sure enough, he’d escaped to his sanctuary. He looked up, startled, watering plants that clearly didn’t need it.
“You left Aurora pregnant?” That seemed so awful and not like Bogie, who’d always been steady and loyal.
“I freaked out. I left her all the money I had and the house had a year’s lease. And I was only gone for a week. When I came back, she’d gone. I hitched out to Denver—I heard that was where she was—but never found her.” He lifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug, that passive, noncommittal Bogie move.
“When I saw her again at that antinuclear protest, I knew it was my chance to make it right, to fix what I’d done.”
He smiled. “I’ll never forget when I first laid eyes on you. You had on a pink dress and black shiny shoes, and I knew I’d do whatever it took to spend time with you. I was so honored to meet you. Honored.”
Christine’s throat tightened. She felt so confused and shaken. The beloved father she remembered had been replaced by the humble ghost of Harmony House. “Why didn’t you tell me back then?”
“You talked a lot about your dad. You were so proud of his being a cop and a hero. I couldn’t ruin that.” Bogie’s face contorted and she saw he was crying. “I couldn’t take it if you hated me, you see.”
“How could I? You were always good to me, Bogie.”
He shook his head. “Then you got here this time with David, so I figured I could be a father to you even if you didn’t know who I really was.”
She looked into his gray eyes, watery with tears. Now she knew why they’d always seemed so familiar to her. They were the color of her own. She had her father’s eyes.
It was all suddenly too much. Her emotions were crashing like waves in a storm—confusion, anger, sadness. She needed to sort them out, adjust her thinking, recast her whole life. She had to get away before she burst into tears or started throwing things or yelling.
“It will take me a bit to get used to this,” she said. “I’m glad to know the truth…and I’ll…just… We’ll talk later.”
She left, her heart tight in her chest. Her brain, which already swirled with worries about David and sadness over Marcus, felt as if it might burst wide open.
She needed to talk about this, get the words out in the air. There was only one person who could help her. He’d said if she needed anything…
Without stopping for a moment of doubt, she ran up the stairs to Marcus’s room and knocked on his door, hoping he was there.
He answered, looking rumpled and foggy, as if she’d woke him from a nap. “Did you hear from David?” he asked.
“Not yet. Nothing more from Skip, either.”
“David will call. Try not to worry.”
She smiled, wishing she were as confident as Marcus seemed to be. “Did I wake you?”
“I guess I dozed off,” he said, rubbing his face. “I’m not sleeping much at night. What’s up?” He widened his eyes, as if trying to be more alert.
“I just learned something I need to talk about, so I wondered if you—” She hesitated. “Maybe you should sleep.”
“No, no. Please. If I can help, I want to. Let’s talk.” He smiled, clearly pleased to see her, despite everything that stood between them. He motioned her inside, but there were too many memories there.
“Can we walk to the river maybe?”
“Absolutely.” He pulled his door shut and they set off. Usually, she had Lady with her on walks, but the dog seemed to be waiting for David, staying in his room or standing guard outside the door, making Christine even sadder.
Marcus stayed silent, waiting for her to speak. But Christine just wanted to walk with him beside her, strong and tall and reassuring. Being near him settled some of the chaos in her head. The sun was warm on her face and arms. Crickets buzzed and birds twittered genially.
Soon they reached the cottonwoods and then the river and found the rocks they’d sat on the first time they’d come here, before they made love.
“So,” she said, glancing at him, then away, suddenly shy. “Here’s the deal.” She took a deep breath and blurted it out. “It turns out that Bogie is my father.”
“He’s…what? But your father was a policeman.”