Stef Ann Holm (25 page)

It wasn’t until two years ago that Drew flew to Florida, and he and Caroline met in private. They finally cleared the air about what had happened. She was a saint, never once raising her voice at him. The only time he’d ever seen her lose her temper was the time she’d told him to get off her porch.

Drew pulled into his driveway, got out of the Hummer and headed toward the front door. The rapid-fire
pop
of the Iron Mike spitting out baseballs pulled his attention. He changed direction, and at the side of the house he saw Mackenzie inside the cage, helmet on, taking some swings. Holding back, he watched.

She had a perfect stance, a good pivot on the balls of her feet. She held the bat at the right angle, took a swing and made contact. The ball flew into the cage with a metallic ring. Her smile was one of pure satisfaction.

Pride surged through Drew, his pleasure intense. Seeing her determination, the way she held herself with an effortless grace and speed, reminded him of himself way back when.

Readying for the next pitch, she kept her form steady. A ball sailed toward her and she sliced the air, chasing after leather and hitting it hard. If she had been in a Little League field, that one would have been a home run.

He went to her, stood outside the cage with his fingers curled in the chain link. “You sure can hit a baseball.”

Without making eye contact with him, she replied, “I can do a lot of things you don’t know about.”

She missed the next ball, her concentration broken. Another pitch came and she threw her whole upper body into it, fouling the ball away.

“Mackenzie. I want to talk to you.” When she didn’t acknowledge him, his confidence faltered and a natural reaction was to build up his defenses. He wasn’t sure if he had what it took to make things right with her.

“It’s a free country.”

Drew went to open the latch on the batter’s gate. “Let’s turn this thing off. You’re liable to get hit on the head.”

“I can hit a baseball and listen to you at the same time,” she challenged, taking a swing and this time ripping one hard.

“But I’d feel better—”

“I’m sure you would. It’s always about what makes you feel better, isn’t it?”

“That’s not the truth and I think you know it.”

“I don’t know anything.”

Sweat dampened her brows. The golden tan on her cheeks was enhanced with blush. A mottled line of perspiration showed on the back of her sand-colored tank top. She had on white shorts and white tennis shoes. She wore his wrist guards. When she gritted her teeth to take a bite out of the air, slicing a chopper, she looked just like him.

It sort of freaked him out, put a dip in his blood pressure. But not in a way that made him want to run. He wanted to hug her in the worst way.

“Mackenzie,” he said, his voice scratchy. He cleared his throat so she could hear him over the noise. “I know I’ve been a shit to you for most of your life.”

“You were a shit to my mom,” she countered.

“Well, Caroline and I got things settled.”

“I know. She told me. She told me to give you a chance.”

“I’m glad she said that.”

“I wish I’d never come—” she reached for a ball, took a swing, but missed “—out here. It was a bad idea. If Brad hadn’t two-timed me, I would have spent the summer in Florida with Aunt Lynette.”

There were a few implications here: an unfaithful boyfriend. So did that mean Mackenzie had had sex with him and then he’d gone out and had sex with someone else? The scenario paralyzed Drew. He couldn’t think about his daughter making that choice, and he hoped Caroline would have talked to her about responsibilities. He’d bet his Cy Young Award she had. Something else struck him—her being here didn’t have anything to do with him, but rather she’d used him as an escape.

That reality stung. But he had to own part of it. He’d done her wrong, and she owed him nothing. Even so, he recognized the hurt that nicked his heart.

“Who’s Brad?” he asked, tempering the father-instinct in his voice. If the kid had even laid a hand on her…

“Nobody.”

“How come you ran away from nobody?”

Mackenzie abruptly stepped out of the batter’s box and a missed ball slapped the wire of the cage, falling to the ground.

Hand on her slight hip, she glared at him with hazel eyes. “He was my boyfriend and I never did
that
with him since I know that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have done it with Misty Connors, but I’m over him so I don’t care anymore.” Blowing the hair off her forehead, she wiped her damp skin with the back of her hand. “I shouldn’t have told ya’ll why I came. Momma said bad manners are no excuse to give bad manners in return. I didn’t mean to tell you that’s why I changed my mind, but now that it’s out, you know.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Of course not.”

Ball after ball methodically hit the chain link. Drew opened the gate, went inside and turned the machine off. Facing her, he tried to form the right words. “Mackenzie, I have to ask you something.”

Her chin rose, defiant and on guard.

“I know I wasn’t around when you were growing up. I’m sure when you found out who I was, it was a shock to you.”

She released the bat and it made a sharp noise hitting the ground. Her breathing seemed to catch in her throat. “When I saw your name on my birth certificate, I flipped. I knew exactly who ya’ll were—I’d been looking at your picture on the Wheaties box that morning when I was eating my breakfast!”

Unsnapping the strap, she removed the helmet and set it down. Her hands shook as she smoothed her hair from her face. “I don’t know if you know this, but my momma always encouraged me to love baseball, and she even told me she had known some baseball players when she worked at the motel. She especially pointed you out when Dodgers games came on the TV. She did that so when the day came and she had to explain you were my real father, I’d have good thoughts about you—like it would almost feel as if we’d been friends.” Her hair was flicked over her shoulder with a terse move. “When I was twelve and I saw you walking up our steps, it was like that Wheaties box come to life.”

A long span of time stretched between them. He wasn’t sure what to say, how to say what he had to. The tension between them was thicker than the August air.

“I should have come sooner,” he finally said, then explained, “Your mother brought you to Vero Beach when you were seven.”

“I know.”
Ah know.
The Southern vowels were punctuated by her distress.

“She wasn’t how I remembered. She’d developed into a fine-looking woman, not that girl I’d met so long ago. She’d grown up, gotten rid of some of her shyness. She came right up to me in the locker room and she said, ‘I have your baby daughter sitting in the bleachers and I want you to meet her.’”

“Why didn’t you come out?”

“I couldn’t.” Drew’s response was spoken fast. His mind raced, trying to organize thoughts to clarity. “Meeting you would have been more than meeting a seven-year-old little girl. You would have expected me to be your dad. I couldn’t deal with it.”

“And how do you think that makes me feel?”

“Mackenzie, I’m so sorry. Back then, I was a full-blown alcoholic. I didn’t know the upside to a bottle from looking at it down the neck. Every night I got trashed, and every day I played baseball better than the day before. It took years before it caught up with me, but at that time in my life, I wasn’t any good to myself, so I sure as hell wouldn’t have been any good to you.”

Her full lips almost formed an obvious pout, a stubborn streak with a defiant downturn of the corners. “So you never did those drugs like the newspapers said?”

“No, Mackenzie. Never.”

She digested that news. “What made you come see me when I was twelve? Were you still drinking?”

“I’d been sober for two years, but that didn’t mean I thought with a sober conscience. The behavior of an alcoholic is still there even though they’re not drinking. It’s taken me some time to heal. Your mother kept sending me pictures of you throughout the years, and it was when you were twelve that I saw something that scared me. I knew you were mine—the photo of you standing by the rosebush with your hair on your shoulders and that expression on your face, the look in your eyes. But I needed scientific proof, so I asked her for that paternity test.”

“She told you to go to hell and get off our porch.”

“So I didn’t come back for two years.”

When Mackenzie had been fourteen, he’d returned to Kissimmee and he’d waited for her to come home from school. Caroline had been at work, so he’d sat on the porch alone.

Mackenzie had walked up, seen him and stopped. Gone was that look of wonder and hope that she’d given him when she’d been two years younger. This time he’d been met with resentment and distrust.

“When I saw you there, I was mad at you,” she said.

“You had every right.”

“But when you started talking to me about the trouble I was having in school, I knew Momma must have told you, and I wondered why she was even telling you my business if she was so angry with you.”

“Caroline kept in touch with me throughout the years, and when she said you’d been struggling, I knew I had to come see you and try to make things up.”

He blamed himself for hurting her so bad that she might never recover as an adult. To Caroline’s credit, Mackenzie had never had issues with drugs or alcohol. A true testament to Caroline’s well-grounded parenting skills.

In a lifetime of mistakes, Drew felt worst about how he’d treated Caroline and Mackenzie. It was the one thing after becoming sober that he knew he needed to go back to and correct.

Mackenzie shifted her weight, put a hand on her hip. “I remember you said sometimes adults make mistakes that fall back on children, but it’s not their fault.”

“I did.”

“Do you realize you said I was a mistake?”

Drew felt the breath knocked out of him. “Mackenzie, I never.”

“Yes, you did. You said I was a mistake.” Mackenzie’s chin rose, a quiver in her lower lip. “How can I ever forget that?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry! That’s all you’ve ever said!” She balled her hands into fists. “I wrote you letters! After you came to see me the first time, I wrote to you. I wanted you to be my dad.”

Drew had received her letters, but he hadn’t responded. He didn’t know how to. He’d been dealing with stuff from rehab, but having a brain messed up from alcohol abuse was no excuse. If he could throw a baseball, he was capable of picking up a pen.

After those first few letters, her enthusiasm changed and she’d wanted to know how come he was so rich while she and her mother lived in a two bedroom house?

In Drew’s mind, he felt it best not to reply, because ultimately, he would just let her down. But because of Mackenzie’s long letters, he did start to send Caroline money. He had more than made up his financial responsibilities.

Only once did Caroline ever threaten him—that was when Mackenzie had been entering her senior year and Caroline wrote to ask if he could pay for college. For some reason, he never got that letter. To this day, he didn’t know what had happened to it. So Caroline called him and the first words out of her mouth when he answered was, “I’ll see you in court.”

After he’d calmed her down and got her to believe he knew nothing about her letter, he’d agreed about the college tuition. Mackenzie needed that education and she had to go.

Even when Caroline got sick with cancer, any hope he’d had of having a mock family was nixed. He would have gone to see her in the hospital, but she was adamant he stay away. She didn’t want his memory to be of her dying. Up to the end, Caroline never displayed a bitter hatred toward him—and she had every right. She only wanted what was best for their daughter.

The hot sun beat down on his face and a bead of sweat trickled down his neck. Lucy’s words came back to him, reminding him of the differences between actual remorse and actual forgiveness—even if what he’d done had been entirely wrong.

Sorry and forgiveness
were
two different things.

His eyes burned from the lack of sleep last night. But if he was being honest with himself, he’d admit they burned from the hot sting of unshed tears. He knew there was no hope, could feel it in his heart. “Mackenzie, when I think about all the birthday cards I never sent, the phone calls I never made, no Christmas gifts, no regard for you whatsoever when you were growing up—I don’t deserve any chance you might give me.”

He couldn’t even beg for one. He didn’t have that right.

“I do want to ask you something, though.” He swallowed the saliva in his throat, blinked hard once, then twice. “If you can’t, I understand, but it has to be said. Can you forgive me?”

Mackenzie glanced away, unable to look at him. He knew it, and didn’t blame her. Bees droned in the nearby brush, their sound so loud it was deafening. Someone down the street was mowing a lawn. Life moved on. And here they stood. Stagnant. And he was helpless to fix it.

“After Bobby left…and then I found out who you were, my reality was no longer real.” Mackenzie’s soft voice carried to him and she met his gaze. He saw years of fear, loneliness, hope and despair, a deep longing, rejection, fondness, and something else. He couldn’t dare to probe deeper in case he was wrong.

Tears spilled from her eyes, coursing down her cheeks. She cried without noise, the sight going straight to his heart. “All I ever wanted was someone I could call Dad—who
knew
he was my dad. Bobby knew he wasn’t.
You
knew you were…but you never—” Her voice cracked. “You never said you wanted me to be your little girl.”

Drew took a step closer. So close, he smelled her skin. That distinct scent that he’d come to know as Mackenzie. Flowers, shampoo, a certain lotion. It scented her sheets, the bathroom, his house. It was something he’d never forget.

He wanted desperately to draw her into his arms and hold her tight, but he wasn’t sure.

“Momma always told me,” she said, wiping at her tears with her fingertips, but they fell faster than she could catch them, “to give you a chance if the day ever came. She wanted me to have you as my father. Not Bobby. Even when she was dying, she said that me and you needed to be together and I really was someone’s little girl.”