Megan's Island (16 page)

“We said, ‘Okay, we don't need your money,' and we meant it. We were happy those first few years, or I thought we were. Poor, but we never went hungry. We were both thrilled when Megan was born. She was such a beautiful baby, with Danny's red hair. And a little over a year later, we had Sandy, who was beautiful, too. I thought that the life that stretched ahead of us looked wonderful, even if we did sometimes have difficulty keeping up with the bills.”

She was speaking directly to Megan now, silently begging her to understand. “Then things seemed to get easier. Your father got a promotion at the office where he worked. At least he said he did. He brought home more money, and we bought a house, and a better car. We bought things for you kids, though you were too young to need much besides food and clothes, and we'd always given you those. And then I found out . . .”

Karo Collier swallowed, and it was impossible not to see that this was increasingly painful for her. “I found out that Danny hadn't been promoted, after all. He was . . . embezzling from his company, using the money to give us a better standard of living.”

“Embezzling?” Sandy echoed, incredulous. “You mean stealing?”

“Yes. Stealing. I found out by accident, and I didn't want to believe it, but when I faced him with it . . .” She had to swallow again. “He acted as if it were no big deal. He'd been rich, spoiled, all his life. He didn't see why he should have to give up all those luxuries, why he should have to struggle.”

Megan felt numb. Her daddy, the beloved daddy of her imagination, had been an embezzler, a thief? She felt as if her world had suddenly tilted sharply, so that she was about to slide off into an abyss. She dug her fingernails into her palms as if to hold on.

“I pleaded with him to talk to his father, to confess and ask for help in replacing the money he'd taken, before he was caught. He finally did, only Daniel Kauffman, Sr., didn't see it that way. In effect, what he told Danny was, ‘You've made your bed, now lie in it.' A month later, Danny's employer discovered the shortage, and Danny lost his job. They couldn't prove he'd taken the money, so they didn't bring charges against him, but they fired him.

“It was frightening. We couldn't make our house payments, and Danny couldn't get another job. Not without a reference from his old employer, who wouldn't give it. So he . . . he held up a bank.”

Megan felt as if her heart had stopped. Her chest ached, and her breathing almost stopped. Sandy was staring at his mother with horrified eyes.

“They caught him with the money still on him.” Now Mrs. Collier sounded stolid, controlled. Megan glanced at Grandpa, and saw that he had known about this for a long time, that he felt compassion for what his daughter had gone through. “There was a trial, and he was convicted, and sentenced to prison. Your father had . . . had shot a teller. He only wounded her, so the charge wasn't . . . as bad as it would otherwise have been, but he'd used a gun to commit a felony. He would be in prison a long time. And I . . .” Suddenly her voice broke. It was several moments before she spoke again.

“We lived in a small town. Everybody knew about it, and I felt ashamed, disgraced. I had thought I loved Danny, but now I didn't know anymore. Could I love someone who would shoot an innocent woman in order to rob a bank? I didn't know. I packed up you kids and moved in with Grandpa and Grandma Davis, in a different town where nobody knew me. That's when I told the first lie.” Her gaze met Megan's again. “I let people there think I was a widow. That my husband had died. I got a job to try to support you kids.”

Was she trying to tell Megan that the first one had been a little white lie? To protect the children, even more than herself? A lie that hurt no one?

“Then Daniel Kauffman came to visit me. I hadn't seen him since Megan was born, though he knew about both of you. He said I wouldn't be able to take care of two kids, and he offered to take you and care for you. I told him no.”

Megan wished an image of this grandfather would form in her mind. Had he been redheaded, like Daddy? Did he have a kind face, or a stern one? Was his voice gentle, or gruff? From what her mother had said, she didn't think he had been either kind or gentle.

“Two days later,” her mother was continuing, “I lost my job. I never knew for sure, but I thought Daniel Kauffman was behind it. Probably all he'd have had to do was tell my boss that my husband was in prison for bank robbery and assault, even though I had nothing to do with that. Anyway, I had to hunt for another job.

“Maybe the word got around about my true background. At any rate, I couldn't find another position in that town. At first Daniel Kauffman just kept pestering me, to let him take you kids. Then he filed suit to take you away from me.”

The words were ugly, chilling. What kind of grandfather was this, who would take young children away from their mother?

“I had no job. No money for lawyers. I had lost my husband. All I had left was you and Sandy, Megan. Can you understand how I felt? Your grandfather was rich enough to hire half the lawyers in Chicago if he wanted them. He said I couldn't take adequate care of you kids, and that he only wanted to see that you were well cared for. Until I got on my feet.”

The bitterness was back, and she didn't try to conceal it. “The trouble was, with all the tension and anxiety, I got sick. I wasn't crazy, but I was foolish. I said some wild things in front of other people. Daniel Kauffman tried to have me committed to a mental hospital. The doctors finally said I didn't belong there, but not until after they'd held me for seventy-two hours' observation. I was so angry and distraught it's a miracle they
didn't
decide I was having a nervous breakdown.”

She cast a glance at her father, as if seeking his confirmation. He nodded ever so slightly.

“Grandpa didn't have the money for lawyers, either, but he had a friend who managed to get me released, so he could take me home. I was afraid by that time that Daniel would do
anything
to take my children away from me. I became convinced that he
would
take you, with his expensive lawyers and his testimony that I was unstable, unfit to care for young children. So I panicked and ran. I packed up your clothes, and put the two of you in my old car, and I ran.”

Megan stared at her mother, not knowing whether she felt sorrow for her or only bewilderment.

Her mother had run away, and kept on running, for eight years.

Her father hadn't died eight years ago. He had gone to jail for robbing a bank and shooting a teller.

Megan closed her eyes against the tears that came, and felt them trickle through, then run down her cheeks.

All her whole life, Megan thought, she would remember this hour. She would remember the warmth of the boards of the porch steps, and the chirping of some small bird in a nearby birch, and the sound of Mom's voice, telling her these impossible things. The things that hurt so much by themselves, and were made worse by the fact that the mother she had always thought so perfect had lied to her.

She would remember the shine of tears in her mother's eyes as Karen Collier leaned toward her, as if she wanted to reach out and touch Megan but no longer felt she had a right to do so.

“Surely you can understand why I didn't try to explain anything to you at first,” she begged. “You were too little to understand, only babies! And then the time never came when it seemed right to tell you. . . . It's very hard to say to a child, ‘Your father is a criminal, he's in jail,' and what good would it have done? It would only have been hurtful.”

Did she think it wasn't hurtful now? Megan wondered dully. What would the other kids think, if they knew? Would they say cruel things and avoid her, as if it were her fault? Would anyone, even Annie, still like her? At the moment, Megan didn't like herself. She didn't want to be Megan Collier, or Margaret Anne Kauffman, either.

Was that how her mother had felt? That she didn't want to be the wife of a man who had held up a bank and shot someone?

The thought pricked at her like a sharp sliver, and Megan pushed it aside.

“Is he still there?” she asked, sounding muffled. “Is Da—my father, is he still in prison?”

It hurt so terribly, to say the words. Even worse than hearing her mother admit that she had told lies. How could these things be true about the laughing redheaded man who had tossed her into the air and caught her, the man she was almost sure she really remembered, not just imagined?

Her mother wiped impatiently at the tears that spilled over, with the back of her hand, as if she were a child. “No,” Mrs. Collier said quietly. “He died there, just a few months ago. Not violently, nothing like that. He just got sick and died.”

So the dreams had ended, once and for all, and Megan could never think of her father again as a loving man who would have been like Annie's dad, if he'd lived.

“I thought it was all over, then,” Mrs. Collier said, sighing. “That maybe, somehow, we could stop running. That I could stop watching the papers for his name, being afraid that he'd been paroled, that he'd robbed another bank or something.”

She glanced at her father. “I don't know how many times, over the years, I thought Daniel Kauffman was about to catch up with us. For over a year we didn't even see Grandpa and Grandma Davis, and I wrote to them at a post office box, under an assumed name, to make it harder for anyone to trace us. By the end of that year, they had moved to another town, too, and I thought it was safe for a while. Then I saw a man I thought was watching our house, and I spooked and ran again. Grandpa Davis thought I imagined some of the things that made me think Daniel Kauffman was still looking for us. Maybe I did, I don't know, but I couldn't take the chance. This whole last year nothing had happened, and then I read that tiny piece in the paper about your father's death, and I thought it was all over. I didn't have to worry anymore.”

She sipped at her coffee, which must have cooled off by this time. “That lasted until I saw the picture on TV, the picture that still looked like you two, even though it was taken so long ago. And I realized Daniel Kauffman was looking for you again, or still. That Danny's death didn't mean it was all over, only that his father would never have his son back, so he wanted his grandchildren. Not that he ever gave up wanting you, I suppose, but now he was going to really try hard to find you. I took it for granted that if he were doing that, he'd use his money and his influence to try to take custody away from me, the same as he tried before.”

Sandy cleared his throat. “Don't we have anything to say about what happens? Doesn't it matter who
we
want to be with?”

Mrs. Collier reached out and hugged him. “Of course it does! Only he can offer you so much, and I . . . I haven't done very well in what I've been able to give you, have I? I guess I've always been afraid that you'd
want
to go with him, to that big house and all that money. . . .”

Her voice broke, and for a few seconds she and Sandy clung together.

“We'd never want to leave you, Mom,” he said, sounding gruff with emotion.

Mrs. Collier managed a teary smile, speaking over the top of his head. “Can you try to understand, Megan? I thought I was protecting you. And now Daniel's detective has caught up with us. Though he doesn't know we're here right this minute, does he? We could still follow through on my plan, go to a new town, take the new job, and hope he doesn't find us again. . . .”

“Karo,” Grandpa Davis said gently. “All Daniel has said is that he wants to talk to you. According to this Mr. Picard, he doesn't want to take the kids away from you, he only wants to see them. Wants to make them part of his life. You can't blame him too much for that. You've proved that you can take care of the kids, that you're a good mother. Even his money can't argue against that. He probably couldn't get custody of Megan and Sandy now if he
did
take the matter to court, and he's sworn he won't do that.”

“And you think I should talk to him.” Mrs. Collier sounded subdued.

Grandpa hesitated. “Yes, since you've asked me, that's what I think. In the meantime, until you decide, we'll just pretend the kids aren't here, if Picard comes back. So where's the risk? Daniel isn't going to give up looking, if you disappear again, so you'd eventually have to go through all of this another time. And think how it would feel to stop running and hiding.”

Ben, who had listened to all this without speaking, suddenly moved from where he was leaning against the post at the top of the steps. “Uh, I guess I better go on home and see if Dad found my note. I'll see you later, guys.”

Megan leaped up, too. “I'll walk partway with you,” she offered. She didn't want to sit there any longer and hear more things that would frighten her, make her heart ache. She didn't want to look at her mother's face.

Megan bounded down the steps, not looking back, and Ben trotted at her side. Neither of them said anything until they were on the beach, heading toward his house.

“I almost wish I didn't know the truth about my father,” Megan blurted. “Who's going to like me, if they know?” She couldn't even think of him as
Daddy
anymore; he was a stranger, a horrid stranger who had done terrible things.

“Kids aren't going to dislike you because of your father,” Ben said halfheartedly. And then, when she flashed him an angry glare, he shrugged and admitted, “Well, maybe some of them will. They're the stupid ones, though. The ones worth having as friends will like you for yourself.”

“Kids can be cruel,” Megan said. “They make fun of people who are different—someone who limps, or has to wear glasses, or can't talk plain. Or someone whose mother is fat, or whose father is in prison.”