by Shirley Jump
He turned away, crossing to the window, looking out over the street where he’d lived for several years, among dozens of families. In a huge house that could have held the very thing that he’d always wanted, and never dared to have for himself. Why choose this neighborhood above all others? Was he just torturing himself? “Not all my books were like that. My first one had no walls. No boundaries. I poured everything into it. Hell, I poured my soul onto the page.”
She waited, quiet and patient. Behind them, the baby suckled the pacifier and began to nod off.
“I had all these pent-up emotions sitting there, waiting, I guess. They’d had nowhere to go for years, and when I sat down to write my first book, it all poured out on the page. It was almost…cathartic. Almost.” He shook his head at the irony, then went on. “That was the book that launched my career, that hit the Times list, and made me ‘Dalton Scott.’” He used little air quotes. “But for all that book did, it hurt like hell to write it, and I vowed I’d never ever write another one like that again.”
“Why?”
He spun back around, and in his eyes, she saw the pain that Dalton had held back all this time, as if a veil had finally dropped. “Because every word was like ripping off an arm. Because that one might have looked like a thriller on the surface, to my editor and my readers, but underneath it all, it was my story.”
She thought a second back to the pages she had skimmed on his shelves. “That’s the book about the father whose baby gets kidnapped. He basically turns up heaven and earth to find him.”
Dalton closed his eyes and nodded. “For me, that book was really about—” he let out a long breath “—my own son.”
The words hit her like a freight train, and took a long second for Ellie to process. “You’re…you’re a father?”
“My son—” and saying those words a second time seemed to release something in Dalton, cut a weight on a fishing line that had held him down for so long “—is twelve now.”
“Oh, Dalton…Where is he?”
“I wish I knew.” His gaze went back to the window. Could his boy be one of the dozens sleeping in the houses peppered among the neighborhood? Or did he live in Seattle? Denver? New York? Every day Dalton wondered what he looked like, whether he liked baseball or football, if he had siblings or a dog, silly questions, and serious ones.
Most of all, Dalton just wondered…
Was he happy? Was he with people who loved him?
But he had never voiced those thoughts, thinking it would hurt too much. Dalton had thought sealing off this part of his heart would make it easier, but if anything, he wondered if maybe it had made it harder. Had he done himself a disservice all this time?
Had he been wrong?
“His mother and I gave him up for adoption after he was born,” Dalton said. “It seemed like the only decision we could make. We were seventeen, still in high school when she got pregnant, and…I don’t know, scared as hell.”
“Oh, Dalton.” Ellie went to him then, both arms wrapping around his chest, holding him tight. Understanding. Caring.
But he couldn’t accept the embrace, not yet. Not until he’d said it all. Told her everything. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I should have tried. I should have—”
“You were young, Dalton. You didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Ellie.”
She reached up and cupped his face. “You’re right, there is, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the right choice. Look at me, I’m an adult single mom with a college degree raising my baby, and I’m still struggling. What kind of home would you have been able to provide as a teenager?”
“I loved him, though.” Dalton’s voice broke, shivered on the last syllables. “Maybe it would have been enough.”
“You loved him enough to make the right decision,” she said softly. “A chance at the best possible life, one with two parents, who would love him and be there for him.”
He shook his head, the questions that had plagued the last dozen years still raising their ugly heads, still knocking on Dalton’s heart. “I worry about him every day. Wonder where he is. If he’s happy. If he—” The sentence sliced in half.
“If he thinks about you.”
The lump in Dalton’s throat was too thick for him to speak. He nodded instead.
“Of course he does.” Ellie’s touch echoed gentle words. “You should sign up for that adoption registry. So that when he’s old enough, and he wants to find you, he can. And you can answer all his questions, and maybe he can answer all yours.”
“Do you think…” Dalton shook his head and cut himself off, his gaze going to Sabrina, only now he couldn’t see the baby anymore because his vision had blurred, because so much had happened in the last few minutes, too much for his heart to process, and the swirl of emotions nearly overwhelmed him now. “Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”
“I think it has to start with you forgiving yourself.” She pressed a hand to his cheek. “A child is a gift of love, Dalton, and you made the most incredible gift of all to one lucky couple. Stop beating yourself up.”
There, Dalton knew, lay the problem. Forgiving himself had always been the biggest roadblock. He may be able to say all the right words. Write them on the page, but telling them to himself—
That was where he got stuck.
“I tell myself that, but there are still a hundred questions in my mind, Ellie. A hundred more regrets.” He turned back to her, his voice hoarse. “And until I answer those, I don’t know how I can be any kind of man for you or—” his gaze went to Sabrina again and now, his voice did crack “—father for her. I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT Dalton had told her explained everything. His distance with Sabrina, his unwillingness to get close. Ellie watched him cross the street, a solitary, hunched figure in the amber light of the streetlamp.
Dalton Scott was a man with a shattered heart. A man who couldn’t forgive himself for a decision he’d made as a teenager, a decision anyone could understand and support.
Ellie had never met a man she admired more. He had made an incredibly difficult choice, one she wasn’t so sure she could have made, not now that she had had her own child, and known the joys of holding her baby.
A little while later, Ellie had Sabrina fed and tucked in bed. If Ellie had any sense at all, she’d be doing the same. But instead, she paced the house, puzzling over the day. Over Dalton Scott.
And over the reasons why she hadn’t gone after him when she’d had a chance. Because for all her understanding of what he’d said and why he’d acted the way he had, she was still standing in her own house. Alone.
A little after ten, her doorbell rang. Ellie expected to find Dalton on her doorstep, but found instead—
Mrs. Winterberry.
“Turn your TV to Channel Three, please,” the older woman said, as she entered the house, her bag of knitting over one arm, and her house slippers in the other hand. She paused by the door long enough to take off her shoes and exchange them for the slippers.
What on earth? “Channel Three?”
“The commercial’s about to end, and I’d hate to miss any of my movie.” Mrs. Winterberry crossed to the sofa, sat down and plopped the knitting bag down beside her.
“Isn’t your television working?”
“Of course it is. But I can’t very well watch my grandneighbor from my house, not if she’s already asleep in her crib.”
“You don’t need to watch her, Mrs. Winterberry. Not tonight.”
“I do if you’re going to go across the street and settle things once and for all with our handsome neighbor.” Mrs. Winterberry shook her head while she tugged out her knitting needles and a half-finished red and white sweater. “Honestly. The two of you are so stubborn.”
“We’re just…”
“Stubborn.” Mrs. Winterberry propped a fist on her hip. “My dear, when you get to my age, you’ll learn that life is too short to s
it around waiting for a man to come back across the street and decide he can’t live without you. You want him, you go get him. And stop being so afraid of changing your life.”
Clearly, Mrs. Winterberry wasn’t going to go anywhere, not until Ellie did first. She handed her neighbor the remote, and flicked on the television. Channel Three popped into view, with an advertisement for carpet cleaning playing on the screen. “For your information, I’m not afraid.”
Mrs. Winterberry arched a brow.
Was she? Ellie thought for a second. Had she been as at fault in all of this as Dalton? Had she been holding back, holding her heart secure, using the excuse of “complications,” because she was terrified of being left alone all over again? All this time, she hadn’t dealt with losing Cameron, because she’d been afraid it would hurt too much. Then little by little, being around Dalton had forced her to do so. And it hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d thought.
So what was she afraid of now? A little change?
“Go,” Mrs. Winterberry said, giving Ellie a little wave, using the needles to emphasize the point. “And don’t worry about hurrying back. I have a whole lot of knitting to get caught up on, and tonight’s movie is a double feature.” She grinned, and Ellie could swear she saw a gleam in Mrs. Winterberry’s light blue eyes.
Dalton sat in his office and realized he was an idiot.
Of course, he’d probably been an idiot the entire week. It had just taken the last few minutes for the truth to come out. As it did in most things with a writer, the truth had bled through his fingers and onto the page.
He watched her walk away, and felt something tear in his chest. She disappeared into the rain, swallowed up by a powerful storm. But it wasn’t the storm that took Ellie away, it was his own fears. His own silence.
He hadn’t said what he needed to say when he’d had the chance, and now he hadn’t just lost the woman. He’d lost the family he’d sought for years. All these years, he’d thought he’d been looking for his child, seeking his face in that boy on the bike, or that child in the mall. But really, all he’d wanted was the dream of a family he’d had to let go because he’d been too young to handle the mistake he’d made at seventeen.
And now, the words lodged in his throat, too late.
I want you. I need you.
I love you.
He popped out of his chair, and backed up.
He loved her?
He thought of the last few days. Of the picnics. The smiles, the toast, and of all things, the coffee.
And Dalton had almost thrown it all away.
But how could he make this work, how could he be the kind of man she wanted, needed?
He glanced out his window, at the little Cape across the street, that housed two women he loved, and thought—
How could he not?
Ellie didn’t even make it halfway across the street.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” Dalton said. A smile curved across his face, and Ellie’s heart turned over. “What are you doing?”
She smiled back. “Looking for you. Mrs. Winterberry is watching Sabrina.”
“So that means we’re alone?”
Streetlights and porch lights, along with the occasional smattering of landscape lights, punctuated the dark night. A burst of laughter came from a nearby house, announcing the presence of neighbors. A sprinkler system sent its staccato rhythm of water spraying across a lawn two houses down. “As alone as you can get in the middle of the street.”
He chuckled. “True.” He put out his hand, and hauled her to him. “As much as I love your kid, I’d really rather not have an infant audience, or any audience, right now.”
Surprise rocketed through Ellie. Had she heard him right? “You…you love my kid?”
“Sabrina has…grown on me. She’s also puked and peed on me, but she kind of made up for it with the whole da-da thing.”
It took a half a second, but then the word processed in Ellie’s brain. She stared at Dalton, reading his ocean-blue gaze, unable to believe what she’d heard. “You…you just called her Sabrina. Instead of kid.”
He grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”
She nodded, dumbfounded.
Dalton gave Ellie’s hand a tug, and turned toward his house. “Come on inside, Ellie. Let’s not have this discussion in front of the entire neighborhood.”
As soon as the door shut behind them, Dalton gathered Ellie into his arms. He cupped her jaw, his fingers catching a few loose tendrils of her hair. “I’ve been an idiot.”
A smile curved across her face. “Now there’s a first line I’ve never heard.”
He laughed, then sobered, his gaze holding her captive. “I almost let you go because I thought that would be the best thing for both of us. I didn’t want to hurt you, didn’t want to let you down.”
“Oh, Dalton, you couldn’t—”
He put a finger on her lips. “Let me say this.” He drew in a breath, as if searching for the right words. “Ever since Julia and I decided to put our son up for adoption, I’ve felt like a failure, like I let him down. And that made me feel like I could never be a good father to another child. Or a good husband. But after tonight, after you and I talked, I went home and I did what I do best to work through my problems. I wrote.”
“You wrote?”
“Yeah, and this time, it was good stuff. I’ll probably never use it in a book, because this wasn’t fiction, but I did let all that internal angst out on the page.” He held her face gently and searched her eyes. “My son went to a loving family, I’m sure of that. The agency we placed him with was a really good agency. You were right. Julia and I never would have done right by him, not at seventeen. But now, I’m nearly thirty. I can do a much better job.”
She nodded. “You can, Dalton. I’ve seen you.”
His gaze sought hers. “If it’s not too late.”
She shook her head, a smile breaking across her face. Her heart soared so high, hitting the clouds, she thought it might never come back to earth. “No, it’s not. At all.”
“Wonderful.” He leaned in, and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Because I don’t just love Sabrina. I love you.”
Now her heart broke through the clouds, and the smile on her face seemed to become endless. “You love me? But we hardly know each other.”
“It was the toast. And the coffee. And the way you smiled. And definitely the chili.”
She laughed. “The chili? And coffee?”
He kissed her again, this time longer and sweeter. “In fact, Ellie, I don’t want to spend another moment without you or Sabrina in my life. I don’t even want you to walk back across that street.” He paused, his gaze searching hers, then holding hers. “Will you marry me?”
Marry him? Had he just proposed?
Suddenly, fear gripped her. This was moving so fast, maybe too fast. All the what-ifs slammed into Ellie, and she broke out of Dalton’s arms and stepped back. “We should take this slower, Dalton. Maybe take a breath.”
“You’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared. In the course of a few days you’ve asked me to quit my job, told me you loved me, and now asked me to marry you. You’ve turned my life upside-down between Monday and Thursday. This is insane, Dalton. It doesn’t happen this way.”
“You don’t have to quit your job. Work part-time. Work half-time. Work eighth-time, I don’t care. Just be with me. I just don’t want to wait. We’re not kids, Ellie. And I’ve been a fool, putting my own life on hold for all these years, because I thought it was the right thing to do.” He took her hands in his. “You’ve put yours on hold long enough, too. It’s time you had the dream you’ve always wanted. For you and Sabrina.”
A tear fell down her cheek. But this time, she wasn’t crying from frustration or stress, like when she’d first met Dalton. It was a tear of hope. She could have what she’d always wanted. What she had dreamed of for her daughter. Dalton had showed her that this week.
He grinned, then swept her into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and deeply. This time, they walked on the clouds together. “Then let’s go home,” he said, “and get our daughter. It’s time we made a family. Together.”
EPILOGUE
VIOLA sat in the church wearing her best hat and a new dress, holding Sabrina, who also had on a new white dress trimmed with a pink ruffle that Viola had insisted on sewing herself. Outside, fall leaves fell from the trees, as if God had decided he’d create his own orange and yellow confetti for the celebration.
“I’m so glad you were there for me,” Penelope said, grasping her sister’s hand. “Whatever would I do without you?”
“Oh, you’d get along. You have Lenora, you know.” Their youngest sister lived in Arizona, but was closest to Penelope, who had always doted on the baby in the family.
Penelope waved in dismissal. “Lenora is a pain in the butt. She talks too much.”
Viola chuckled. “Now, shush, Penelope. The wedding is about to start.”
“You really should stop interfering in people’s lives,” Penelope said, adjusting her wide-brimmed yellow hat. “Although you did bring me my Harold—the cutest doctor on the third floor, and right at retirement age, which was mighty handy for me. Now you need to find someone for yourself.”