“What other reason would she have?”
Barbara’s expression was tragic. Richard could almost feel her reluctance to answer.
“She’s protecting you,” she said.
“Me?”
“She thinks—” Barbara said, then buried her face in her hands and groaned. “Oh, Richard. I’m so conflicted.”
“Conflicted?”
Barbara let her hands fall into her lap and shook her head slowly before meeting Richard’s concerned gaze. “I don’t know what or how much I should tell you.”
“If it concerns Missy, you can tell me anything.”
“I can’t violate the confidence of a student, especially one I care so strongly about.”
“The student in question happens to be my daughter.”
Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “I am morally and ethically bound to respect Missy’s privacy.”
“And I’m her father! I have a right to know anything that affects her well-being. If there’s something you’re keeping from me—”
Barbara sighed as if she were a balloon deflating. “Let’s not argue. We’re on the same side. Missy’s side. We both want what’s best for her. We should be working together, not sniping at each other.”
“I’m sorry. You just... I’ve been on edge since you called. It’s just so damned frustrating seeing Missy in so much trouble and feeling like there’s not a thing I can do to help her. And when you insinuate that there’s some deep, dark secret—”
“There’s not any deep, dark secret. Missy just told me some things that led me to believe she’s carrying around a lot of guilt.”
“Guilt? What has she got to feel guilty about? She was just following good old dad’s example.”
Barbara mulled that over a long time before responding. “I don’t think Missy’s decision to have sex had anything to do with finding you on the sofa with a stranger. She’s a teenager, with teenage hormones, teenage curiosity, and teenage peer pressure all around her—and she thought she was in love.” She ventured a smile. “You remember what that was like, don’t you?”
Richard was astonished to find himself smiling back. “Only too well.”
Barbara reached for his hand and held it between hers. “Remember when your mother found lipstick on your collar after the homecoming dance and said no nice girl would wear lipstick that dark?”
“I’d forgotten all about that.”
Barbara traced the length of his fingers, one by one, with her fingertip. “I think my attitude toward your mother is compromising my objectivity.”
Richard’s mouth hardened into a frown. “Has Missy been talking about my mother?”
“She mentions her from time to time. She loves your mother.” She had been drawing imaginary circles on the top of his hand. She stopped abruptly, and said thoughtfully, “Sometimes the people we care about the most have the greatest power to influence our thinking. Or shape perceptions.”
“What kind of perceptions are we talking about?”
“Oh, about people and situations.”
“Any specific people or situations?”
Barbara hesitated before answering. “Do you want Missy to give up her baby?”
“What?” Richard said, perplexed both by the question and the abrupt change of direction in the conversation.
“Is it what you want for her?”
“I want what’s best for her.”
“That’s a cop-out answer. It’s just you and me here. Tell me what you really want her to do, deep down inside.”
Sadness haunted Richard’s eyes. “I want to wake up tomorrow morning and discover this whole thing has been a nightmare and she’s not pregnant at all.”
“That’s not on the list of choices.”
“Yeah. Well, the real choices on the list suck swamp water. I think about her trying to raise a child single-handedly and I’m terrified for her. And then I think about her giving her baby away and I’m just as terrified, because I know she’d never be the same person again.”
“Which prospect terrifies you the most?”
His eyes searched hers. For compassion. For understanding. “Are you a counselor now, or a woman?”
“I’m the woman who loves you.”
He reached for her and wrapped his arms around her tightly as if she were a lifeline. “Tell me what to do. I’ve made too many mistakes already. God, Barbara, don’t let me screw this up, too.”
She kissed him—his neck, his cheeks, his eyelids—and as she kissed him, she caressed him with her hands, smoothing his hair and shoulders. “You’re going to do what’s best for Missy. You’re going to be there for her, supporting her. We’re going to be there for her.”
Slowly they released each other, but they remained close, with Barbara sitting across his lap and their faces just inches apart. Barbara swallowed, struggling for composure as she gathered her thoughts. “Missy...when you and Missy talked about how a baby might change her life, did you mention that you’d wanted to be a lawyer and had to give it up when Christine became pregnant?”
“What? No! Of course not. We talked about Missy’s wanting to go to FSU, not about—”
Barbara’s shoulders drooped as she sighed wearily. “That’s what I thought.”
Richard looked questioningly into her eyes. “Is that what you meant when you said Missy feels guilty?”
Barbara nodded gravely. “She has this idea that you were an innocent drawn into a web of seduction, and if not for her—”
“I’ve never told her that. I’d never tell her anything like that. She doesn’t even know Christine was pregnant before she and I got married.”
“Your mother never talked about Christine? Not even when Missy was little, or when she might have been in the next room? There was never tension between you and Christine when she came to visit Missy?”
Richard shook his head helplessly. Sadly.
“Children don’t have to be told some things, Richard. They absorb information through some sort of osmosis. They tune in to attitudes and pick up snatches and snippets of conversation, and sometimes partial truths get all tangled up with perceptions, and a fertile imagination fills in the blanks.”
Richard groaned. “I thought things couldn’t get any worse.” His gaze met hers evenly, searching for answers. “How do we help her?”
Her eyes grew limpid with tears. “It’s not going to be easy.”
Richard chortled bitterly. “Like I even remember what that word means.”
“I think you should talk to Missy about you and Christine. I think she needs to know the whole story.”
Richard’s heart was in his throat. “It’s ancient history, Barbara. What possible good would it do for Missy to know—?”
“That when her father was young and inexperienced, he succumbed to peer pressure and made an error in judgment? I can’t think of anything Missy needs to know more.” She framed his face in her hands, pleading with her eyes. “She adores you, Richard. She feels like she’s let you down. If you let her know that you’re fallible enough to make a mistake, then maybe she can believe that you can understand how she could make one and love her in spite of it.”
“Missy knows I love her.”
“Of course she does. Because you’re her perfect father, and perfect fathers love their daughters. She knows you’ll love her even if she messes up your life the way her mother did. But think how much more it would mean to her to know that you’re imperfect enough to understand what she’s going through. Think what it’ll mean to her if she knows that you’re with her, no matter what, even if she makes her decisions based on what’s good for her and the baby instead of what’s good for you.”
“Is she really doing that?”
Her face strained with the effort of holding back tears, Barbara nodded, then fell forward, looping her arms around his neck and burying her cheek against his shoulder. “Yes. And someday, after she’s spent Christmas after Christmas and birthday after birthday wondering about the child she gave up, she’s going to r
ealize it, and when that happens, she’s going to resent you, because she’s going to realize that she didn’t have a choice, not a real one. But if you do this for her...”
She leaned back so she could see his face. “If you give her a real choice, she’s going to love you even more than she already loves you.”
He folded his arms around her once again, drawing on her strength as he held her tightly against him. “You make it sound as if I’m standing at the bedside ready to wrest the child out of her arms like some Victorian curmudgeon.”
“You’re as far removed from a Victorian curmudgeon as you could possibly be,” Barbara assured him. “And Missy knows that. Ironically, your loving support feeds into the misconception she’s developed over her lifetime.”
His sigh rattled her ear. “Life is so very...complicated.”
“Would it help if I told you I love you?”
“Help? You’re my rock. I don’t know how I would have made it through this without you.”
“But will you still love me when you don’t need me so desperately?” Barbara was only half teasing.
“I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, and nothing—not time or separation or stupid mistakes or anything else—is ever going to change that. Finding you again, when I needed you most, has been...it’s been like stepping out of dense fog into sunlight. But if I hadn’t found you last month—if it had been next month, or next year—I would have fallen in love with you all over again, the way I do every time I see your face.”
Barbara’s throat was too tight, her heart too full for speech, so she clung to him, letting him know by her closeness what was in her heart. Several minutes passed in a silence rich with their wordless communion.
“What are we going to do if she keeps the baby?” Richard asked at length.
“Love it, of course,” Barbara replied. “And keep on loving Missy, so she knows she’s not alone.”
“It’s so daunting,” Richard said. “The idea of a baby in the house. The noise and confusion and the sleepless nights and the constant demands—”
“You managed with Missy.”
“I was younger then. I had more energy. I didn’t realize how difficult parenting was. I just did it.”
“And you’ll help Missy do it the same way. And I’ll help you and it’ll be crazy, but we’ll do it because we’re a family, and that’s what families are for.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said.
“There’s only one real problem that I can see.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” he said. “If there’s something I haven’t thought of already, I’m not sure I want to know.”
Barbara giggled. “It’s that you look too young to be a grandfather. No one’s going to believe you! Grandfathers are supposed to have gray hair and carve squirrels out of blocks of wood.”
He cradled her head in his hands and looked lovingly down at her face. “You may be the only person in the world who could make me smile right now. But I gotta tell you—you aren’t going to have any more credibility than I do. You’re going to be the sexiest grandma in history.”
“You can buy me a flannel nightie.”
Richard laughed in earnest. “This is Florida. No one wears flannel nighties here. How about something...lacy that I can see through?”
“Is that any way for a grandfather to talk?”
“It is when he’s got a woman like you in his lap.”
The pleasantness of the interlude lingered through several minutes of silence before Barbara sensed the tension creeping back into Richard’s body. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Ten-thirty. Will Missy be awake when you get home?”
“I don’t know. She used to be a night owl, but now she sometimes tucks in around ten.” He paused, then asked, “I really have to do it, don’t I?”
Barbara nodded against his chest, and Richard sighed. “Where am I going to find the strength?”
“You have the strength inside you. It’s mixed in with the love you have for Missy. You’ll find it.” She threaded her fingers through his and kissed his mouth gently. “And after you do, you’ll be closer to Missy than ever.”
She walked with Richard to the door a few minutes later. “I’ll only be a phone call away,” she said. “Let me know how it goes.”
Richard nodded and gave her a quick good-night kiss before leaving.
Barbara went through her nightly bedtime routine, but as she settled into bed to read, she found it impossible to concentrate on a complicated journal article while her mind was preoccupied with Richard and Missy. Richard was probably home by now; he and Missy could be talking at this very minute.
The ring of the phone startled her out of deep thought, and a sense of ill ease lingered with her as she lifted the receiver and said hello.
“Missy’s sound asleep,” Richard said without preamble. “I don’t want to wake her up tonight. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
“That may be better,” Barbara said. “You’ll have some time to think about how you want to approach it.”
“I’m coming back to your place, Barbara. I called so you could watch for me. I don’t want to ring the doorbell and get your neighbor’s dog all riled up.”
“Tonight? This late?”
“It’s all right. My neighbor, Cynthia Munoz—the woman you saw at the basketball game—is coming over to sleep on the sofa in case Missy wakes up or there’s an emergency. She doesn’t mind. She owes me a few favors.”
“Oh,” Barbara said, vividly recalling the image of Richard lifting Eddie Munoz’s father from the wheelchair.
“I can leave your place in time to get home before Missy wakes up in the morning,” he said. “Please, Barbara. If you don’t want me to come, I won’t. But I just...I need your arms around me. I want to be with you. All night.”
She waited for him in her nightshirt, without bothering with a robe. Silently she reached for his hand when he arrived, and they went to the bedroom together. She got back into bed while he undressed.
“I don’t feel like a stud tonight,” he warned, settling into bed beside her. “I just want you next to me.”
Barbara snuggled up to him, nestling her cheek on his shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Why would she, when there was nowhere else on earth she’d rather be than next to Richard?
13
BARBARA KISSED Richard’s cheek. “Richard.” His other cheek. “Richard.” His lips. “Richard.”
His eyes flew open. He tensed in an instant of disorientation, then relaxed as he remembered where he was.
“The alarm just rang,” Barbara said apologetically.
A slow smile spread over Richard’s face. “I like your method better than an alarm clock.”
“I hated to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully.” He hadn’t even stirred when the alarm went off, or when she’d gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom.
“It was the company,” he said a bit groggily.
“It was nice, waking up and finding you here,” she said, “then remembering what it was like to fall asleep touching you.”
He pulled her into a fierce embrace and rolled atop her. “This is the way it’s supposed to be between us. The way it was meant to be. The way it’s going to be.”
His intensity spoke as eloquently as his words. As did his sensuous growl as he clamped his arms around her even more tightly. “We should have set the alarm thirty minutes earlier.”
Barbara grinned tauntingly. “What for?”
“We’ll just have to make the most of the few minutes we have,” he said with single-minded determination.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Barbara said.
It wasn’t.
Later, propped up on the pillows, she watched Richard dress. He paused between shirt buttons. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said with a bittersweet smile. “Something’s right. It’s...the ordinary things.”
H
e sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. “I meant what I said earlier. This is the way it was meant to be.”
Barbara smiled and a mellow silence, filled with the promise of their future, followed. But they could not ignore the present for long.
Richard’s expression was solemn as he wove his fingers between hers.
“I may keep Missy out of school today. I don’t want to put off talking to her until this afternoon, and I don’t think the hour we have before school would be enough.”
“That’s probably a good idea. You don’t want to rush the kind of talk you two need to have. Missy can afford to miss one day of school.”
Richard sighed tiredly. “Do you know how much I wish I could crawl back under those covers and spend the day in bed with you?”
“Sooner or later you’d have to get out of bed and deal with reality. You have to face this.”
His jaw muscle twitched as he nodded grimly, and as he got up from the bed, he moved with a wooden dread.
“I’ll be thinking about you,” Barbara said. “Call me when you get a chance. I’ll make sure they know to put through the call immediately.”
A cursory nod was his only reply.
* * *
BARBARA WAS DISTRACTED all day, waiting to hear from Richard and growing increasingly apprehensive with each passing hour. The afternoon progressed and still there was no news. After school she drove home to continue waiting. And fretting.
The phone rang just after five o’clock.
“Is Missy all right?” she asked frantically as soon as she recognized Richard’s voice.
“She’s fine.”
“When I didn’t hear anything, I was afraid something might have happened. I almost called Dr. Scofield’s office to make sure Missy hadn’t been rushed to the hospital.”
“Don’t you think I would have called if there had been an emergency?”
Barbara’s languid sigh slid through the lines. “I’m sorry. When I didn’t hear anything, I panicked.”
“Missy and I just got home. We spent the day at the beach.”
“The beach?”
“It seemed like the best place to have a heart-to-heart talk.”
“You sound—” She couldn’t decide on a word. Relieved? Ebullient? “How did it go?”
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