The Dream Daughter

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Awesome!” Joanna said, and she cuddled the two dogs as they crawled all over her.

  * * *

  When I returned to the inn, I brought Poppy into Winnie’s private living room. Winnie had her own space in the inn—a small apartment behind the curtained glass door at the back of the foyer. I let Poppy off the leash and she ran to Winnie who was sitting on the sofa, laptop computer on her knees. She set the computer aside and told Poppy to sit before she petted the dog’s head.

  “Did you have a good walk?” she asked. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or Poppy.

  “Very good,” I said. “And I wanted to ask if you’d have any objection to Poppy playing with another dog in a fenced yard tomorrow afternoon. I met a woman—Michelle Van Dyke—and her daughter while we were on our walk. They have a chocolate Lab and Michelle suggested the dogs get together.”

  “Oh, Michelle,” Winnie said. “On Rosewood Court, right? I knew her when I used to volunteer on the Historic Preservation Committee, which I haven’t had time for in years. She was a volunteer at the same time. Tell her I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  “And as long as there’s a fence for the dogs, it sounds like a great plan. The more exercise this girl can get, the better.” She bent over to give Poppy a kiss on the nose. “I hate for you to ruin your whole Saturday, though. You should be able to have time just for yourself after you clean.”

  “I enjoy the time with Poppy,” I said. “Truly.”

  “Well, you’re definitely a keeper,” she said. “I hope you stick around for a good long time.”

  “I expect I will,” I said.

  Winnie’s expression was somewhere between curious and sympathetic. “What was his name, honey?” she asked. “Your husband?”

  The question took me by surprise. “Joe,” I said. As soon as I said his name, an image of him slipped into my mind. He was wearing his khaki pants and shirt, ready to get on the plane for the first leg of his journey to Vietnam. I was trying unsuccessfully not to cry, and he gave me that sexy grin of his, this one belying some of the anxiety he had to be feeling. He pulled me to him with a one-armed hug and a quick last kiss. Our very last kiss.

  “How long has it been?” Winnie brought me back to the here and now. I was gritting my teeth together hard, trying not to cry, and I must have looked at her blankly, because she added, “Since you lost him?”

  “Not quite a year,” I said.

  She nodded. “A year and two months for my Bill,” she said. Then she sighed. “The anniversary will be hard,” she warned me. “You let me know when it is and take that day off. Spend it by yourself. Grieve your heart out.”

  “Is that what you did?” I asked. Poppy walked back to me to lean against my leg. I bent over to scratch her behind the ears.

  “No, actually.” She laughed. “I spent it painting a couple of the bedrooms.” She grinned sheepishly. “Do as I say, not as I do,” she said.

  “Do you have children?” I asked, curious.

  “I wish we’d taken the time to have kids,” she said with a sigh, “but we were workaholics. We owned a rug company and when we weren’t working in the store, we were traveling abroad to find new rugs, which was great fun but it was a lifestyle that didn’t fit with having a family. When we retired, we bought this place”—she waved a hand through the air to take in the inn—“and ran it together. It was a wonderful life, but now that he’s gone, it’s a bit lonely. At least we had forty-five years together. You must have only had a handful. And to lose him in an accident, so young. It breaks my heart for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, giving Poppy a final ear rub as I straightened up. Winnie wanted us to confide in each other, I knew. To commiserate. I would have liked that. I wished I could commiserate with her, but my tangle of lies made it impossible. I was becoming such a deceitful person.

  “It’s hard to talk about, I understand,” Winnie said. “Just remember, my door is always open.”

  I thanked her again, then left her apartment and climbed the three flights of stairs to my little attic room, where I flopped onto my bed. My life was full of impossible magic these days, I thought. I’d traveled through time not once but three times. I’d met my twelve-year-old daughter only a few days after I’d held her in my arms as an infant. But there was still one little bit of magic I wished I could experience: I wished Joe could see her. I wished I could take a picture of Joanna and send it to him. Let him see what we created together. I lay awake much of the night, fantasizing that there was a way to do that. I could imagine his reaction. He’d fill with the same love that was overflowing inside of me at that moment. The love that, in reality, had no place to go.

  46

  Michelle opened the front door when Poppy and I arrived the following day. Again, I was struck by her beauty and the way her simple beige T-shirt and blue capris accentuated her athletic-looking body. The day was warm and I’d worn my best sleeveless red blouse and cleanest jeans, not wanting to look like a slob next to her.

  “Joanna’s so excited,” she said, stepping back to let us in. She tucked a lock of her silky dark hair behind her ear. “She’s out back with Jobs. This way.”

  She led me through a large foyer rich with hardwood floors, a red oriental carpet, and a wide staircase with a thick white bannister. We walked into a huge kitchen that sparkled with cleanliness, not an errant spoon or glass or plate on any of the black granite countertops. The air was filled with a savory aroma. Despite the almost clinical look of the kitchen, something was cooking in here.

  Michelle pointed to a large metal pot on the island. “I’ve become a lazy cook since going back to work,” she said with a chuckle. “If I can’t make dinner in the Crock-Pot, we get takeout.”

  “It smells delicious,” I said absently. My gaze was on the windows that overlooked the expansive backyard as I searched for my daughter.

  Michelle grabbed two bottles of water from the enormous refrigerator and handed one of them to me. Then she opened the sliding glass door and we stepped onto the deck. From the middle of the yard, Jobs spotted us. He hesitated for a moment and I caught a glimpse of the shyness Joanna had told me about, but then he seemed to recognize us. He bounded across the grass, leaping up the four steps to the deck to greet Poppy. Joanna followed him at a run, laughing, her fair hair waving like a flag behind her.

  “Poppy!” she called.

  “You can let Poppy off,” Michelle said.

  I didn’t hear her at first, or at least, her words didn’t register. I was mesmerized by the sight of my daughter running toward us, all long legs and arms and joy.

  “Her leash.” Michelle lightly touched my arm. “You can let her off.”

  “Oh, right.” I reached down and unsnapped the leash from Poppy’s collar. She looked up at me as if to say, You’re kidding, I’m free? and I realized that she’d probably never had the chance to run and play outside before. She’d never had the chance to simply be a dog.

  “Go on,” I said to her. “You’re free.”

  “Come on, Poppy!” Joanna said, and she ran back into the yard, both dogs bounding after her.

  The yard was quite extraordinary. It was large, the grass thick and emerald green in the late afternoon light, the perimeter lush with trees and shrubs. From where we stood, no other houses were visible and it appeared that the rear of the yard abutted some massive forested natural area. In the far right corner of the yard, an enormous tree house was nestled among the branches of a couple of oaks, the top of the house so high I couldn’t see it from the deck.

  “What an amazing tree house,” I said.

  “Brandon and his cousins built it,” Michelle said. She motioned to the chairs at the glass-topped table and we sat down.

  “Brandon’s your husband?” I asked, setting my water bottle on the table.

  “Yes. He’s a software engineer and a frustrated carpenter.” She glanced at her watch. “He’s playing golf right now,” she said.

  “I guess
that’s where Joanna gets her interest in computers,” I said, thinking Joanna would have developed an interest in bridges and architecture and tennis from Joe. My eyes threatened to fill and I quickly blinked. How had everything gone so terribly wrong?

  “Most definitely.” Michelle took a drink from her bottle. “She sure didn’t get it from me. I’m an aesthetician at a dermatologist’s office three days a week and I teach yoga on Saturday mornings.”

  “Wow,” I said. No wonder she was in such great shape. I felt a stab of envy. Her life seemed so easy. She and her husband clearly had tons of money and a gorgeous house. And my daughter. They had my daughter. “You have a full schedule,” I said, trying to keep up with the conversation.

  She shrugged. “Brandon and I tag team in taking care of Joanna, so it all works out.”

  That’s good, I told myself. It was good that they both loved her. They both took care of her. Then why did hearing about it make my heart hurt?

  Michelle told me about some of the women in her yoga class, but I wasn’t really listening. Chatting with her wasn’t what I’d expected to find myself doing on this visit. I’d hoped to spend the time with Joanna, but I could see now that would have seemed strange—a twenty-seven-year-old woman showing too much interest in a twelve-year-old girl. I would have to be careful. Anyway, Joanna was in her own world, happily throwing a ball for the dogs. I wouldn’t have much of a role to play out in the yard. I needed to settle for being this close to her.

  “Poppy’s loving this,” I said, when Michelle seemed finished with her story about her yoga class.

  “It’s definitely good for Jobs, too,” Michelle agreed, “but it’s even better for Joanna.” Her voice had sobered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Michelle looked thoughtful, her head cocked, her gaze on Joanna rather than me. “We bought her the dog to try to get her nose out of her electronics,” she said. “And to give her a friend, really.” She glanced at me with a quick smile. “Oh, she actually has tons of friends, but we moved her into a private school the middle of last year on the recommendation of a counselor we saw. Joanna was bored to tears in public school and her grades were tanking, but all her friends are there, at that old school. In her new school, she’s thriving academically—she adores the work and the teachers—but she’s having a hard time making friends. All she does is homework, and when she’s not doing homework, she’s texting her old friends or reading on her iPad or researching something on her computer. Thus, we decided to give her a dog so she’d have something she can’t program.”

  I ached at the thought of Joanna struggling to make friends, but I loved that she was a brainiac. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know everything. And I wanted Michelle to talk about the adoption, so I fished.

  “She’s very cute,” I said. “She has your dark eyes, doesn’t she.”

  Michelle laughed. “People tell me that all the time, but the truth is, Joanna’s adopted.”

  “Oh?” I held my breath.

  “We adopted her when she was less than a year old. The most wonderful day of my life.” Michelle smiled, while my heart contracted in my chest.

  “I bet it was,” I said, and I found myself once again fighting tears.

  “She was in a foster home,” Michelle continued. “She was an orphan, actually. Her father was dead—I don’t know how. I only hope it wasn’t drugs.” She gave me a worried look. “And her mother died in 9/11. I think she was working in one of the towers or something.”

  “How terrible,” I said. Beneath the table, I dug my nails into my palm.

  “I know,” Michelle said. “She was in foster care for nearly a year and I hate to even think about what that was like for her. She had some health problems that got in the way of her being adopted right away, plus I think they were trying to track down relatives who might take her in, but they couldn’t find any.”

  Oh, my poor baby. I never should have gone back to 1970. Why didn’t I just stay with her? Why did I risk losing her?

  “What sort of health problems?” I asked, not caring if I sounded nosy. I had to know what Joanna went through.

  “It was her heart,” Michelle said. “She had some problems when she was born that were taken care of back then. When she was ten, she had some related issues and had to have her aortic valve dilated, but she’s perfectly fine now.”

  Now my own heart sped up. If I’d managed to take Joanna back to 1970 with me, would I have been able to get her the medical help she’d needed?

  “Ugh,” Michelle said suddenly. She nodded toward the yard. “See what I mean?” she asked. Joanna had stopped playing with the dogs to check her phone. “She can’t stay off that thing.”

  You could always take it away from her for a few hours each day, I thought of saying. You’re the grown-up. But I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t get to make the rules here.

  “I feel like she’s not getting a real childhood, you know?” Michelle said.

  “Maybe this is a real childhood in 2013,” I said. “It’s just not the childhood we had.”

  She smiled at me. “Well, it’s definitely not the childhood I had. I grew up in the sixties and seventies. It was a totally different world. Joanna thinks I’m ancient, and compared to her friends’ mothers who are all in their late thirties and early forties, I am. But you … how old are you? Twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-seven.” I realized this was the first question she’d asked me about myself since we’d sat down. She was the sort of woman who liked to talk about her own life. That was probably for the best. All I had to share was lies.

  “So you came of age in the nineties.”

  Not really, I thought, but I nodded. “Yes,” I said.

  “That dog!” Michelle suddenly frowned toward the yard where Jobs was merrily digging in one of the flower beds, dirt flying out behind him. “Joanna!” she shouted, and Joanna looked over at us. “Don’t let him dig!”

  Joanna grabbed Jobs’s collar and shouted something at him we couldn’t hear. Jobs stopped digging for a couple of seconds, then went right back to it.

  “We need to get him back into obedience class,” Michelle said, “but now that school’s started, there’s no time.”

  I stood up, reaching into my jeans pocket for a handful of dried-liver treats. There were bowls of it all over the inn.

  “Let me see if I can help,” I said to Michelle, relieved to have a reason to join Joanna in the yard.

  “Hey, Joanna,” I called, walking down the steps from the deck. She looked toward me, the late afternoon sun turning her hair gold. The most beautiful child in the world. “Let’s do some recall training with them.” My voice had a shiver to it. Looking at her, moving toward her, was literally stealing my breath away.

  “How do we do that?” Joanna asked.

  Both dogs rushed toward me, Jobs leaving the hole he’d been working on in the flower bed to see what I had in store for them.

  I walked close enough to Joanna to give her a fistful of liver treats. Our hands touched, and I longed for more. I wanted to fit her slender hand into mine. Raise her fingers to my lips. I took a step away from her. “You stand on that side of the yard and I’ll stand over here by the tree house, and we’ll call them back and forth and reward them with liver,” I said. “Break the treats into little pieces so they last.”

  “Okay!” She seemed to like the idea and ran toward the shrubs at the far side of the yard. The dogs leaped around her, and she giggled as she held the treats high above her head to protect them.

  I bent over, holding out my hand with the liver. “Poppy! Jobs! Come!” I called.

  Jobs understood first, his training, however minimal, kicking in, and he ran toward me, Poppy on his heels. I made them sit—no easy feat—before rewarding them with the treats, then nodded to Joanna. “Your turn,” I called.

  “Jobs! Poppy! Come!” she said, and the dogs ran back to her.

  “Make them sit first,” I said, and she did.
/>   There followed one of the most blissful fifteen-minute periods of my life as we sent the dogs back and forth between my giggling daughter and me. Joanna’s laughter reminded me of Patti. I felt homesick then. I wanted Joanna to meet my family. I wanted them to be able to meet her.

  Michelle walked toward me across the lawn as our game of recall wound down. “Can you stay for dinner?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” I said, glancing at my chronometer. It was nearly five thirty. I’d overstayed my welcome. “No, we should get back.”

  “Oh, stay!” Joanna pleaded and my heart soared. She wanted me here. My smile was so broad, I probably looked ridiculous.

  “Yes, you’ll stay,” Michelle said, clearly accustomed to getting her way. “Brandon can drive you and Poppy home after dinner.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked her. “I don’t want to impose.”

  “There’s plenty of cacciatore in the Crock-Pot,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, torn between joy and anxiety. “I’ll call Winnie and let her know where we are. She says ‘hello,’ by the way.” I pulled my phone from my rear pocket.

  “Tell her ‘hi’ back,” Michelle said. She turned to Joanna. “Why don’t you show Caroline your tree house?” she suggested. “We’ll have dinner at six. Dad’ll be home any minute.”

  “Her name’s Carly,” Joanna said. She looked at me. “Right?”

  “Right.” I smiled. “And I’d love to see your tree house.”

  * * *

  The two-level tree house was astonishing. Although it was still daylight, the structure was nestled so deep in the trees that sunlight strained to reach it. Joanna flicked a switch as we reached the first level and the room filled with light. A tree house with electricity! The room was nearly twice the size of my little attic room at the inn, big enough for two twin beds and a small table and chairs. The ceiling was low, six and a half feet at best. We were about to climb the circular wrought-iron staircase to the second story when Joanna’s phone chirped and she pulled it from the pocket of her shorts to check the screen. She slipped it back into her pocket without responding.