The Dream Daughter

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Uh-huh.”

  I felt her gaze on me. “Are you homesick?” she asked. “You sound kind of sad.”

  “I am a little homesick,” I admitted. I touched the screen lightly with a fingertip. “To me, this is the most beautiful place in the world.” I smiled at her, but my eyes burned. If everything had gone as planned, she and I would be in that house right now, my baby and me. “But I’m happy to be here now,” I said. “Sometimes you wish you could be in two places at once.”

  “Why didn’t you stay there?” she asked. “Does it remind you too much of your husband who died?”

  Because you’re here, I thought. “Yes,” I said. “Someday I’ll be ready to go back, but not yet.” How could I ever go back? How could I ever leave her? Suddenly desperate for a change of topic, I touched the bracelet on her wrist. “This is so cute,” I said. “Is it made of rubber bands?”

  She lifted her hand to study the bracelet herself. “Gayla made it for me on her Rainbow Loom,” she said. “It’s my friendship bracelet.”

  “What’s a Rainbow Loom?”

  “I’ll show you.” She hopped off the bed, the dogs instantly on their feet, circling her legs, as if waiting to see what fun thing we had in store for them next. I watched as Joanna rummaged around in the lower drawers of her dresser as if she couldn’t quite remember where she’d put the loom. Finally, she found what she was looking for and brought a narrow pegboard and a plastic case to the bed. She climbed back to her roost against the pillows, and the dogs settled down again on the floor.

  “I haven’t made one of these in forever.” She opened the case to reveal about two dozen compartments filled with tiny colored rubber bands. “I’ll show you how to make a simple bracelet,” she said. “This one”—she held up her arm to show me the bracelet Gayla had made her—“is an inverted fishtail and it’s way complicated, but I’ll just show you how I make a plain old one.”

  She spent the next half hour demonstrating how to make a bracelet, this one in blue and pink. I watched her as she worked. My daughter. Our daughter. So extraordinarily beautiful. Her profile was perfection. Her nose had the tiniest bump at the bridge. Her lashes were pale but long, downcast right now as she threaded the bands over the pegs on her loom. Her lips were cherry colored, slightly parted, her white teeth visible. We created her, Joey, I thought to myself. I wish you could see her. I was tempted to lift my hand to her cheek. Run my fingers over the smooth, fair skin. But I kept my hands folded tightly together in my lap.

  When she’d finished her bracelet, she slipped it on her unadorned right wrist. Then she put away the loom and rubber bands and asked me to paint her nails, assuring me that her mother would approve “as long as it’s not black or something.” We sat on her bed again and I held each of her hands steady while painting her short nails a pale lavender, treasuring every minute her fingers were in mine. Then she put music on her CD player and showed me a dance routine she and Gayla had performed at a talent show in their old school. She was a ball of energy, this daughter of mine, cramming as much activity as she possibly could into our few hours together before that nine o’clock bedtime.

  “I’m not tired,” she said, when nine finally rolled around. “Mom doesn’t realize that I really got a lot of sleep last night.” She was sitting on the chair at her vanity dresser by then while I stood near the door of the room, feeling like the mean mommy.

  “Come on.” I smiled at her lame attempt to weasel out of going to bed. “Don’t get me in trouble with your parents.”

  “All right,” she said, dragging herself from the chair as if her body was made of lead. “Maybe we can get a mani-pedi sometime,” she said. “Mom’s always too busy to take me.”

  “What’s a mani-pedi?” I asked, and by the way she stopped walking and the look of disbelief on her face, I knew I’d asked an idiotic question.

  “You know,” she said. “It’s when they do the manicure on both your hands and feet.”

  “Oh.” I smiled, loving that she would want to do that with me. Loving that she wanted to do anything with me. “Why don’t you ask your mother if that would be okay.”

  “All right,” she said, trying to mask a yawn. She slithered under the covers and I resisted the urge to walk over, tuck her in, and give her a kiss on the forehead—all those things I would have been doing if she’d grown up being mine. “Turn on the night-light for me?” She pointed to the small red-haired princess-shaped night-light plugged into the outlet next to her dresser. “Please,” she added. “I can’t sleep in the total dark.”

  My chest tightened in sympathy as I turned on the little light. I thought of the first few months of her life when she’d slept under the bright lights of the CICU. Was that why she still needed light now? How else had those early months of pain and helplessness affected her?

  I stepped back to the doorway and turned off the overhead light. “Good night,” I said, the word barely making it past the knot in my throat. “I had fun.”

  “Me too,” she responded, her voice muffled by the covers as she snuggled beneath them.

  The dogs followed me downstairs and I let them outside for a few minutes, giving them treats I found in the pantry when they came back in, my actions mechanical. My mind was still upstairs in Joanna’s bedroom. Then I went into the room the Van Dykes called the “family room” and tried to read the book I’d brought with me, but I couldn’t concentrate. I set the book aside and went upstairs again, opening Joanna’s bedroom door quietly to peek inside. She was sound asleep. The faint light from the princess night-light dusted her blond hair where it spilled over her blanket. Her left hand with its stubby lavender nails was balled into a fist near her cheek.

  Stepping back into the hallway, I shut the door quietly behind me. I intended to go downstairs again, but my knees suddenly gave out on me and I sank to the floor. Burying my face in my hands, I wept, overwhelmed by my daughter’s preciousness. Overwhelmed by her very existence. Overwhelmed by everything I’d lost.

  * * *

  Back in the family room a while later, I didn’t bother picking up my book again. Instead, I studied the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined one wall. Were there photograph albums? I wanted to see pictures of Joanna’s childhood—her growing-up years—even though I knew it was going to hurt to see those pictures that should have been mine. I could find no albums, though. I supposed they kept all their pictures on their computers these days. But I spotted a book that didn’t seem to fit among all the others, and when I pulled it from the shelf, I realized it was a baby book. The design on the cover consisted of white polka dots on a pale blue background, and at an angle, in large navy blue and white striped letters, was the name Joanna. I carried the book to the couch and the dogs rested at my feet as I opened it. On the first page, Michelle’s and Brandon’s names were handwritten in the blanks for “parents.” The names of strangers were in the blanks for “grandparents.”

  Did I really want to torture myself with this book? I thought, but my hand was already turning the page.

  There was a “first photograph” of Joanna. Ten months old. She sat on what looked like a big white chair cushion wearing a sleeveless pink jumper. A hairband adorned with a pink bow was wrapped around her head, her pale hair almost invisible beneath it. She looked like she might be giggling, her cheeks pudgy, her chocolate eyes squinty with joy. I could see the tops of two tiny white teeth in her mouth.

  Below the picture, there was an inscription in what I imagined to be Michelle’s meticulous handwriting:

  This is how you looked when we first brought you home. You were so adorable!

  Another photograph: Joanna standing in a blue dress, barefoot, holding on to the white picket of a fence, a stuffed zebra in her free arm. That same captivating little smile.

  This is how you look a month after we brought you home. You have five teeth and have started walking, already getting into everything! Your favorite word is “Dada.” Your favorite food is blueberries and you make a mess
with them!

  The subject of the next page was “How We Found You.”

  We tried for years and years to have a baby. Then Mom got very sick and had to have a hysterectomy and that was the end of our dream of having a family, or so we thought.

  I stopped reading for a moment. “Very sick.” Cancer? Michelle seemed so vibrantly healthy to me and I hoped she was. No matter how much I wished Joanna were mine, I’d never want her to lose the only mother she’d ever known.

  But we still longed to share our lives with a child, so we talked to agencies and social workers and one of them told us about you. When we heard about you, how you were a miracle baby who had surgery while still inside your birth mom, how you had to be in the hospital for a long time, and how you lost your mom and dad before you could even get to know them, our hearts filled with longing to take care of you and love you forever. That was even before we met you. When we met you, you reached for me (Mom) and cuddled up in my arms like you knew that was where you belonged. Daddy cried, he was so happy. We were instantly a family.

  I shut my eyes, my chest and throat too constricted to continue reading. I was filled with both envy and gratitude, each emotion so strong it couldn’t be crowded out by the other. Joanna had belonged in my arms, and yet I felt grateful to Michelle and Brandon for taking her. Accepting her and her damaged heart. Loving her.

  I rested my head against the back of the sofa. I knew I could never take Joanna away from Michelle and Brandon. I couldn’t take her away from her computer and her science and technology school and everything 2013 could offer her.

  But I could stay here, couldn’t I? I could stay in 2013. My breathing quickened at the thought. Maybe I could get fake documents from Myra that would let me go back to college. I could earn a current degree in physical therapy. Get a legitimate license. Try to get the job I lied about wanting at Kessler or some other place nearby. I could build a life here that included my daughter, if only as a family friend. A close family friend.

  The unbearable pain of never seeing Patti, Hunter, and John Paul ever again washed over me, but I swept it from my mind. I wouldn’t let it in. It would derail me if I did.

  Joanna would be in my life. If I stayed here, I would have my daughter. That was all that mattered.

  51

  I met the Vietnam vet and his wife over breakfast at the inn on Wednesday morning. We were the only three people eating that early and I sat across the table from them. The woman, Linda, who had to be at least sixty, was petite, chatty, and very cute, her hair dyed a vibrant reddish-purple that matched her personality as well as her V-neck T-shirt. By contrast Gary, her husband, was quiet, seemingly content to let her do the talking for them both. He was clean-shaven, his complexion very tan, almost ruddy, and set off by his thinning white hair. The skin around his eyes was lighter, as though he always wore sunglasses when he was outside. He had on a green and yellow short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, and his left forearm was covered by a tattoo, too blurred by time and the furry gray hair on his arm for me to decipher.

  They were in town to see Linda’s family and spend some time in New York, Linda told me. “But the real impetus for our trip is Gary’s reunion this coming weekend with other vets,” she added. “Those boys have a tighter bond with one another than they do with their wives,” she said with a smile. I was surprised to see her taciturn husband wink at her. They might have very different personalities, I thought, but clearly they got along.

  I tried not to stare across the table at Gary as I ate Winnie’s blueberry pancakes, but I caught my gaze drifting in his direction over and over again, wondering if Joe would look or act anything like him by now if he’d lived. Of course that didn’t make sense. They were different men with different life experiences. Yet they had Vietnam in common, and if there was one thing I’d learned since coming to the future, it was that veterans from that war bore shared scars, whether physical or psychological. Gary caught me staring at him and he offered me a small nod I couldn’t read. I wished I knew what his experience had been like, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask about out of context.

  * * *

  I took Poppy for her walk after finishing my work that afternoon. I still felt warm and happy at the memory of my time with Joanna the night before, yet I was anxious about my nascent decision to stay in 2013. The decision both terrified and thrilled me … and made me miserable every time I thought of Hunter and Patti and their confusion and grief when I never returned. They’d wait until I didn’t show up on that last portal, many months from now, and then what? Would they have to report me missing? Go through the charade of an investigation? How would they explain not reporting my disappearance for so long? Would suspicion fall on them? I wanted to think through every possible ramification of my decision before I made it, but I always came back to the one certain fact: I would be living in the same world as my—and Joe’s—daughter and that trumped any obstacles I could think of.

  Poppy and I reached Rosewood Court at three thirty, as I’d planned, but I saw no sign of Joanna or her parents. There were no cars in the driveway, either, although I wasn’t able to see the garage at the rear of the house. Then I remembered Brandon mentioning something about a family get-together as he drove me home last night. His brother-in-law’s birthday party? Something like that. I imagined Joanna with Michelle and Brandon at that party now. I pictured her surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins.

  By bedtime, I was mired in depression. I wanted my daughter, damn it! I wanted her to be with me in Nags Head, with Patti and Hunter. It was where she belonged. Where I belonged. I didn’t belong in Summit or in 2013. I pulled the covers up to my chin. Squeezed my eyes shut as I sank even deeper into depression. Only Poppy, pressed against me in bed, saved me from a brutal loneliness.

  * * *

  I threw myself into my work on Thursday, doing extra tasks around the inn to try to keep my mind off Joanna. I washed windows and laundered quilts in the inn’s huge washer and dryer in the basement. I found a hundred things to do to keep me busy until three o’clock, when I could take Poppy for her walk.

  My timing was perfect. Joanna and Michelle were getting out of the blue van in the driveway just as I began passing their house. Joanna dropped her backpack on the ground and ran over to me. Poppy jumped on her and I made the dog sit.

  “Can Poppy play?” she asked.

  “Is it okay with your mom?” I glanced at Michelle, who walked toward us, a bag of groceries in her arms, a welcoming smile on her face.

  “We don’t want to take advantage of you,” she said, “but if you have time, Jobs could really use the exercise.”

  She thought she was taking advantage of me? “That would be great,” I said happily. I looked down at my daughter. “Why don’t we let them play for a little while and then do some training?” I suggested.

  “Cool,” she said.

  So, I had my hour of bliss with my daughter until Michelle called her in to do her homework. Michelle walked with Poppy and me down the driveway and out to the sidewalk.

  “I worry you’ll start avoiding our street, thinking we’ll drag you into the yard every time you pass by.” She laughed.

  “Poppy loves it,” I said, amazed at how backward Michelle had it. “And Joanna’s such a doll.”

  “She had fun with you Tuesday night,” she said. “Thanks again for sitting. I think you’re good for her.” She looked over her shoulder toward the house, as if she could see Joanna through the exterior walls. “Yesterday she used her Rainbow Loom for the first time in ages,” she said. “She pretty much gave it up when she got her phone and started texting every two minutes.”

  “Call on me anytime,” I said. “I don’t have friends here yet and no obligations other than my job, plus Joanna’s a pleasure to be with.”

  “Well”—she smiled—“if you’re serious about that, we’ll be going out again Tuesday night. Tuesdays are our date night and—”

  “I’d be happy to,” I interrupted. How abou
t every Tuesday night for the rest of my life?

  “She won’t need a sitter much longer,” Michelle said, as if reading my mind. “I have no problem leaving her alone during the day, but nighttime”—she shook her head—“not yet. Maybe when she’s thirteen.”

  “That’s just around the corner,” I said, for something to say.

  “Ugh, don’t I know it.” She wore a worried grimace, unconvincing given the smile in her eyes. “She already gets moody and grumpy and obstinate sometimes. I’m reading all the books on parenting teenagers that I can find.”

  “I bet you’ll be good at it,” I said, and I meant it. I only hoped I could play a part in those teenage years. I was determined to find a way to make that happen.

  52

  I woke up the following morning feeling strong about my decision to stay in 2013. I wondered if Myra might know of some way to get word to Hunter and Patti that I was okay? It seemed impossible, but so did traveling through time. I teared up, thinking about them. I wanted to let them know how much I loved them and would miss them, but that I needed to be with Joanna. I had to be close to her forever. That was all there was to it. Maybe someday, far in the future, I would even be able to tell her the truth.

  Lying there, I thought of the things I needed to do. First and foremost, I had to get my courage up and contact Myra to ask for her help in getting me the false documents I needed. College transcripts, maybe? Could she possibly get me a fake degree in physical therapy? No, I thought. That would be akin to malpractice, since I had no idea what advances had been made in PT in the last forty years. But maybe I could already have an associate’s degree. Shave a couple of years off the education I’d need. Hopefully I could still live and work at the inn while going to school. And what was I going to do about health insurance? I now understood what Obamacare was and I’d checked the application process on the library computers. I could never get it. They required a wealth of documentation, none of which I had. Employment records, tax returns. I couldn’t ask Myra to provide all of that for me … though she had managed to get insurance for me when Joanna was born. Maybe she could get it for me again? Maybe I could just skip it? I was healthy and always had been, but my work as a physical therapist had taught me that you could be perfectly healthy one day and hit by a bus the next. I added insurance to my ever-growing list of things I needed to talk to Myra about. I also needed a credit card so I could buy my own computer. I was certain Myra could get the card for me, but this time I would tell her I’d pay my expenses myself. I wouldn’t use Temporal Solutions money again, not that I had any illusion she’d offer it.