The Mother of His Child

by Sandra Field

  By unspoken consent a few moments later, they released each other. Kit gave Marnie a wobbly smile. “When’s the first lesson?”

  Marnie began, “For your father’s sake, maybe we should wait until…” Then her voice broke. Suddenly, it was all too much. The young girl who was her beloved daughter, with whom she was now truly reunited, and the tall, dark-haired man who for one glorious night had been her lover: both of them watching her in a sunlit clearing at the base of a granite cliff. Marnie sat down hard on a clump of blueberries, put her head on her knees and started to weep as though her heart was breaking, sobs tearing their way from her throat, her whole body shuddering with an uprush of emotion impossible to quell.

  From a long way away, she heard Kit’s distressed question and Cal’s deep-voiced response. Then she felt him kneeling beside her, his arm going around her shoulders. She buried her face in his chest, all the tears that had been pent up for years streaming down her face and dripping onto her bare legs.

  Gradually, more from exhaustion than anything else, she quietened. Cal said gently, “Here, Kit had a couple of tissues in her pocket. Not used, she assures me, although they aren’t what you’d call squeaky clean.”

  Marnie blew her nose, scrubbed at her face with her hands, also dirty from the climb, and finally looked up. “I’m s-sorry,” she hiccuped, “I had no idea that was g-going to happen.”

  With adolescent awkwardness, Kit crouched beside her, her face a study in conflicting emotions. “You really do care about me, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t have cried like that.”

  “Of course I do,” Marnie gulped. “It broke my heart to lose you so long ago. And to have found you again…. I’ve got to stop b-bawling my head off, it’s nuts. Tell me to stop, Cal.”

  His face was very close to hers, so close she could have traced the cleft in his chin or drowned in the gray blue depths of his eyes. “Stop crying, Marnie,” he said huskily. “And that’s an order.”

  “You know how I f-feel about orders.” She dragged her gaze away from him and produced a semblance of a smile for Kit. “My mother was the original sergeant major.”

  Kit said impulsively, “I do believe you about your mum. I know now that you didn’t abandon me.”

  Again Marnie’s vision blurred with tears. “Thanks,” she whispered. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

  Cal swatted at a mosquito. “We don’t have any bubble gum ice cream at the campsite, but we do have a couple of bags of chips. Why don’t we go back and celebrate?”

  “I should tell William that Kit’s safe,” Marnie mumbled. She felt tired out, calm and deeply happy all at the one time. Her daughter had been restored to her, righting an old and bitter wrong. Maybe, she thought dimly, she would now find it within herself to forgive her mother.

  “We’ll tell him first,” Cal said, and lifted Marnie to her feet.

  For a moment, she swayed against him, the touch of his hands and the closeness of his big body both working their usual magic. Maybe she and Cal would work out, too, now that the barriers between Kit and herself had fallen, she thought in a surge of optimism. With a lilt in her voice, she said, “I hope they’re not just regular chips.”

  Kit giggled. “Spicy ketchup and dill.”

  “Lead me to them.”

  On the way back, they met Christine, Don and William, who’d been looking for them to find out what happened. Cal explained, then said, “We’re going back to our campsite for lunch.”

  “Good,” Christine said, and winked at Marnie.

  “I’m going to give Kit rock-climbing lessons,” Marnie said with an innocent smile. “See you later.”

  At the end of the trail, the others veered right, while she, Cal and Kit turned left. Kit said, “Do we still have to go home today, Dad?”

  Marnie’s heart gave an uncomfortable lurch; she’d taken it for granted that Cal and Kit would be staying until tomorrow, and that she’d have time to enjoy Kit’s presence in a way totally new to her. Cal said, “Yeah…I’m going to Uganda tomorrow, Marnie, a consultation for an irrigation system. But I should be back by the middle of next week.”

  “I’m staying at Lizzie’s,” Kit said. “If we weren’t leaving today, I could have a lesson with Marnie tomorrow.”

  Marnie stopped dead, a spruce bough brushing her bare arm. “Cal, Kit could stay with us at our campsite. I’d deliver her to Lizzie’s tomorrow. If she wants to, and if you trust me with her.”

  Her mouth dry, she waited for his response. If he said yes, he was acknowledging her place in Kit’s life as the girl’s mother; accepting that she was indeed trustworthy. A huge step, she thought, panic-stricken, wishing she hadn’t asked, her heart banging against her ribs as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

  He was staring at her, his expression unfathomable. Kit looked from one to the other and in a small voice said, “I’d like that, Dad.”

  Cal said slowly, “I’d trust you with Kit, Marnie. Of course I would.”

  Through an uprush of joy, Marnie heard Kit squeal, “You mean it’s all right? That means we can have our first lesson, Marnie.”

  “At least I won’t be around to watch,” Cal said. He’d meant it as a joke, Marnie was sure; yet there was an undertone in his voice that put all her senses on alert. Later, she thought, I’ll ask him about it later.

  “There’s one condition, Kit,” she said. “That we stop at the first ice-cream stand on the way home.”

  “My favorite’s cherry swirl,” Kit said promptly.

  Marnie’s lashes flickered as she remembered the initial tempestuous meeting between herself and Cal. “You can have a double,” she said.

  Cal’s campsite was on a small beach, the cedar canoe drawn up on the sand. After they’d demolished a bag of chips and a bottle of ginger ale, Kit said, “I’m going for a swim. Coming, you two?”

  “I’ll pass,” Marnie said. “I feel wiped—too much emotion, I guess.”

  “I’ll keep Marnie company,” Cal said with a casualness that didn’t quite ring true, and again Marnie felt that shiver of unease.

  Kit disappeared into the tent, reappearing in a businesslike maillot. She dashed into the water, swimming out in a strong crawl. “She’s very athletic,” Marnie said, needing to break a silence that was getting on her nerves.

  “Ever since she talked about blaming me for Jennifer’s death, we’ve been getting along really well,” Cal said, picking up a twig from the sand and shredding it, his profile to Marnie as he gazed out at the lake. “So I figured I was okay to go overseas this week, where it’s just a short trip. I need to get away, Marnie. Today, watching the two of you on that cliff—I can’t tell you how hard that was.”

  “Try,” she said.

  “I expected any minute for the two of you to fall. To be killed in front of my eyes.” He was frowning, his jaw an unyielding line. “I could tell you’re a good climber just by watching you—but this isn’t about logic, it’s about feelings. I thought I knew all about feelings after Jennifer’s death. What I’m starting to understand is that I had no choice back then—I had to be with her step by step of the way. But with you, I do have a choice. I can get involved. Or I can back off.”

  With sudden violence, he snapped the twig into two separate pieces. “I’m like Kit, stuck somewhere. Halfway up a cliff. Not able to go up or down.”

  “Maybe you need to let me come and rescue you,” Marnie said, watching a handful of sand trickle through her fingers.

  “I’m not sure I can do that. What if I lost you like I lost Jennifer? I couldn’t stand it.”

  So what was she supposed to say? That life is full of risk? That if nothing’s ventured, nothing’s gained? All the old clichés that were nevertheless full of truth, Marnie thought, and watched the tiny grains filter between her fingertips.

  “Maybe if I go away, I’ll figure it out,” Cal said.

  “I don’t understand,” Marnie said carefully. “Are you saying I’m important to you—other than a
s Kit’s mother, that is?”

  For the first time, he turned to look at her. “Well, of course you are.”

  “Of course?” she said, raising her brows. “I’m not a mind reader, Cal. And your face does inscrutable like a pro.”

  “We made love, Marnie! I keep telling you that.”

  “But you haven’t touched me ever since!”

  “How could I when Kit didn’t want anything to do with you?”

  Her temper rising, Marnie said, “As of an hour ago, Kit is no longer the issue.”

  He was gazing out at the far shore of the lake again. “I thought I knew what love was, until you came along. I loved Jennifer, I told you that. But what I feel for you—it’s like a force of nature. Elemental. Unstoppable. Totally out of my control. Is that love, Marnie?”

  “Why don’t we risk finding out?” Marnie muttered, picking up another handful of sand.

  He grabbed her by the wrist. “Do you feel the same way?” he said roughly. “Or am I only imagining that you do?”

  She stared at his fingers. “You tear me apart,” she said, “and you bring me such joy as I’ve never known.”

  She could feel the breeze teasing her hair; the sunlight lay like a sheen on her face.

  Cal raised her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles one by one. “You tear me apart, too,” he said. “Tear to shreds the man I thought I knew. I’m the one who had to go overseas because my marriage was too confining. With Jennifer, I was always the strong one. There was a lot she didn’t want to know—we had a huge fight after that magazine article because I hadn’t told her how dangerous it could get. But you’re different. You want me to be myself. No masks. The real man. I can tell you anything and everything, you said.”

  As if it were scalding him, he dropped her hand. “Let me tell you this much. I can hardly bear to think of you going up the side of a cliff or taking a canoe through the rapids. So I guess I’m the one who’s a coward.”

  That Cal was exposing his vulnerabilities to her made him far from a coward. Marnie said forthrightly, “I won’t stop climbing. Not for you or anyone else.”

  “I’d never ask you to.”

  “I’d never ask you to stay home from Uganda, either. Or Ghana, or the Sudan. Even though I’d worry about you dreadfully.”

  “I was seven when my mum and dad died,” he said moodily. “I waved goodbye to them at the airport and I never saw them again. They didn’t even find the bodies. And it was just five weeks from the time of Jennifer’s diagnosis to her death.”

  “You can’t live in the past, Cal—even though it’s scarred you,” Marnie said passionately. “Right this minute I’m alive, sitting beside you. What else is there but that? And you want me, I know you do.”

  “Want, darling Marnie, is a totally inadequate word for the way I feel about you,” he said with an ironic twist of his mouth. He took her chin gently in his fingers. “Here’s a loaded question. Would you have another child? My child?”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  She gave a breathless laugh. “Yes.”

  “Even after all the pain Kit’s birth brought you?”

  Color staining her cheeks, Marnie said, “I’d love to bear your child, Cal.”

  “You’re so brave and beautiful,” he said. A smile lightened his features. “And I don’t just mean your red hair.”

  “Auburn.”

  He held a strand full in the sun. “The color of fire.”

  “I’ll miss you next week,” she said with desperate truth.

  “I’m probably every kind of a fool not to be proposing to you right now,” he said. “Will you wait for me, Marnie? Wait until I come back? Because my gut’s telling me I need to get away, even though I don’t have a clue why.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said.

  “Maybe you could meet me at the airport. It’s an evening flight, a week from Wednesday.”

  “It sounds like forever,” Marnie said, and felt his smile go right through her, making her whole body ache with desire.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said thickly. “We’ve got a chaperon, remember? Your daughter and mine.”

  Somehow she knew this conversation was over, that Cal had said what he’d needed to say. “Lunch,” she announced. “Why don’t we get some lunch?”

  They ate on the beach. After Kit had packed up her gear and Cal had everything else ready to load into his canoe, they walked to Marnie’s campsite. Cal said goodbye to Kit. Then, while Kit was setting up her sleeping bag next to Marnie’s in the tent, Cal drew Marnie back into the shelter of the trees and kissed her with such passionate single-mindedness that Marnie was trembling when he released her. He’d kissed her as though he’d never see her again, she thought with an inward shiver, but didn’t share this conclusion with him.

  “I’ll see you at the airport,” she said. “I’ll paint my toenails purple.”

  “Right now I wish I wasn’t going anywhere,” he muttered, and kissed her again, his tongue laving hers, his hands roaming the length of her spine.

  She wanted to throw him down on the ground and jump him. “Let me know your flight time,” Marnie said faintly.

  “I’ll tell Andrea—that’s Lizzie’s mother—about the climbing lessons. Take care of yourself, won’t you? I know you’ll take care of Kit.”

  “Thank you for leaving her with me.”

  “Who better to leave her with? Bye, Marnie.”

  One last kiss and he was striding along the path as though he was being pursued. The forest swallowed him, the soft swishing of the evergreens smothering the sound of his footsteps. Marnie bit her lip to keep herself from calling him back. Ten days wasn’t long, she thought stoutly. And she’d have Kit for company until tomorrow afternoon and again next weekend.

  A month and a half ago, the prospect of being reunited with her daughter would have been happiness enough. Certainly what had happened today had made her marvelously happy and fulfilled, healing so many of the old wounds. But she wanted more. Along with Kit, she wanted Kit’s father.

  Who had, more or less, told her that he loved her. Hadn’t he?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MARNIE went to bed at nine-thirty on Monday night, after soaking in a hot bath that felt wonderful after three nights of camping. The past twenty-four hours had been among the happiest in her life. Yesterday, she and Kit had swum, canoed and cooked together. They’d shared a tent and before falling asleep had talked for nearly an hour, the darkness perhaps giving them both courage. This morning, Kit had had a climbing lesson. And as the time passed, minute by slow minute, Marnie knew she and her daughter were building something new and infinitely precious: a brightly spanned bridge that would, she was certain, strengthen with every meeting.

  With a sigh of repletion, she fell asleep.

  At eleven-thirty, the telephone rang. Cal. It had to be Cal. Marnie leaped out of bed, tripped over one of her hooked rugs and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?” she croaked.

  “Marnie? Marnie, are you there?”

  The connection was appalling, full of crackles and spits. “Yes, it’s me. Where are you?”

  “Marnie? I can’t hear a thing. Speak louder.”

  She yelled into the receiver, “I’m here, Cal!”

  “Dammit, what’s wrong with this phone? I called to tell you—” A series of cracks like rifle shots interrupted him, echoing down the line, making an incomprehensible jumble of his words. “…timing’s terrible. I just wish I knew if you could hear me!”

  “Where are you?” she shouted again. They weren’t real rifle shots; she was almost sure of that. Still, she was achingly aware of not only the thousands of miles between them but also the other distances that weren’t a matter of mere geography.

  Amid a volley of miniature explosions, the line went dead. With a moan of exasperation, Marnie waited, then replaced the receiver, praying he’d call again. But the phone remained utterly and frustratingly silent, and fifteen minutes later she relu
ctantly returned to bed. Why had Cal phoned? What had he wanted to tell her?

  Why, after thirteen years, had she opened herself up to the kind of loneliness and longing that now was keeping her wide-awake?

  Cal, she said silently, I want you, I love you, I need you. Come home to me, please.

  Because, of course, she did love Cal. She knew that now, without a shadow of a doubt.

  Nine days later, when Marnie walked home from school, she was in a state of high excitement. It was June, the sun was shining, and Cal was coming home tonight on a ten-thirty flight. And she and Kit were getting along wonderfully well.

  They’d spent all of Sunday together last weekend, practicing on one of the beginner slopes at Eagles’s Nest. Then they’d eaten supper at a Chinese restaurant and talked, really talked, about any number of things. In the middle of which Kit had said, “Maybe someday you and Dad’ll get married.”

  Marnie had dropped her fork with a clatter and flushed scarlet. “Oh, I don’t know, that’s not…well, what I mean is—”

  “I think it’d be cool if you did that. And I bet Mum would like the idea, too.” Kit’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “She wasn’t daring like you, but she always wanted Dad to be happy.”

  “I know she and your father loved each other,” Marnie ventured.

  “Yep. He cried when she died, I never knew men cried. It was sort of a shocker. But I think he really likes you.” Rather anxiously, Kit added, “I don’t want you thinking he’s a wimp just because he’s scared of heights. One time in the Sudan, he saved the lives of a whole bunch of people by hijacking a truck and getting them out of danger. He’s really very brave.”

  “I know that, Kit.”

  “We could have ice cream for dessert on the way home,” Kit said, swallowing the last of her sweet and sour chicken.

  Smiling to herself as she remembered this conversation, Marnie admired the sun’s playful dance on the ocean and the tall blue spires of the lupins in the ditch. She turned down her driveway, already going over her wardrobe to see what she’d wear tonight. A dress, perhaps. Something very feminine…