Unexpected Father

by Carolyne Aarsen

  “We met at a truck stop. We were on the same gravel haul. I’d seen him a couple of times before, and we ended up sitting together. Talking. That was about a year ago. We clicked. We started arranging to meet when our schedules worked. One day he told me he had this place that wasn’t getting used to its potential. I told him I was looking for a place for a few years and he offered to lease me this ranch. He talked about you a lot and said he missed you—”

  “So what kind of truck do you drive?” she cut in, her disappointment with her father too fresh to hear false platitudes.

  Denny’s frown made her regret her sharp tone, but at the same time she wasn’t in the mood to hear secondhand about her father’s affection for her.

  “I have three gravel trucks,” he said. “They keep me busy.”

  Of course they did. The more she talked to Denny, the more she understood how her father would have connected with this guy. They had so much in common.

  “Then if you’ve seen what you need, I guess we’re done here,” she said, pulling her keys out of her purse. If she stood here long enough she would get angry with her father again and that was an exercise in futility. She had to move on from the past.

  But as she drove away, she glanced in her rearview mirror at the man who stood by his truck looking over the ranch with the same expression she had caught on his face as they’d walked the yard.

  As though it was home. A place he belonged.

  Evangeline tore her attention away, memories, long buried, assaulting her.

  She and her mother working in the garden....

  Riding in the hills with her father and mother to check the cattle on the upper pasture....

  Coming home from the bookstore after spending Saturdays there with her mother, carrying crinkly bags filled with new books and heading directly to her favorite spot in the shade of a large fir tree where she could see both the ranch yard and the mountains guarding it....

  It had been the best time in her life. A time when she’d felt safe. Protected. Loved. Life was perfect.

  Then her mother had died.

  She and her father had stayed on the ranch for a month before she’d moved in with Auntie Josie at age eight.

  From that time until she was nineteen, Evangeline had spent her spare time in the store helping her aunt manage it for her father. When her aunt decided she wanted to live closer to her sister, she’d moved away, leaving Evangeline in charge for the past nine years.

  Her father had promised she would get the store when she turned twenty-one. She was twenty-eight now and still no closer to full ownership.

  Her throat thickened as she turned onto the road. Why did her father’s broken promises still bother her?

  I’m not going to cry, she told herself, reminding herself of other disappointments as she clamped her hands on the steering wheel. I’m a big girl. I shouldn’t care about another broken promise.

  I’m not going to cry.

  And then she did precisely that.

  * * *

  Was that crying he heard?

  Denny wove his shirt onto the metal hanger, dropped it onto the bar in the cupboard, then paused, listening.

  But whatever he’d heard had stopped.

  Must have imagined it, he thought, picking up another shirt. After touring the ranch with Evangeline Sunday, he had spent yesterday moving the few things he owned into the apartment. He had to finish today. Tomorrow he had to arrange to get the trucks moved and Friday he’d start work.

  His yearlings were coming to the ranch in a couple of weeks. Which gave him time to do the work necessary to get the ranch ready.

  He hooked the hanger on the bar in the closet, trying not to let his thoughts crowd in on him. Too much to do and too little time.

  He paused.

  There was that baby crying again. This was followed by the murmur of a woman’s voice. The crying grew louder, then stopped.

  Then he heard someone pounding on his door.

  He stepped around the last couple of boxes he had to unpack and opened the wooden door of his apartment.

  A tall, thin woman with lanky brown hair stood in the hallway with her back to him. She wore blue jeans and a discolored purple hoodie. A black bag was hooked over one arm; a suitcase lay at her feet.

  She was holding a little girl, who looked to be a year and a half old, wearing a stained, white sleeper. The toddler had sandy, curly hair, brown eyes shimmering with tears and a mustache of orange juice. She stared at him over the woman’s shoulder, her lip quivering.

  “Can I help you?” Denny asked.

  The woman turned and Denny’s heart fell like a stone as he recognized Deb.

  His sister-in-law. Ex-sister-in-law, he corrected.

  “Hey, Denny. Long time no see,” she said in her raspy, smoker’s voice. She jiggled the baby a moment, then held her up, handing her to Denny.

  “Hang on to her a minute, wouldja?”

  Not sure what else to do, Denny took the little girl, catching a whiff of cigarette smoke and old milk.

  “What is going on?” he asked just as the toddler pushed at him with sticky hands, whimpering again.

  Deb handed him the black diaper bag, then pushed the suitcase toward him with her sneakered foot. “You may as well know, and I don’t know how to tell you better than this, but Lila’s dead.”

  Denny stared at her, his grip loosening on the baby in his shocked surprise.

  The little girl whimpered and he quickly pulled her close again, trying to wrap his head around what Deb had so causally thrown at him.

  Lila? Dead? Why hadn’t anyone told him?

  “What? When?” The questions tumbled out of his shocked confusion. “How did it happen?”

  “She got sick about three months ago,” Deb said, crossing her thin arms over her chest, looking down at the floor as if still remembering. “Got some infection from a cut. Never got better. She died in the hospital a month ago.”

  All this was delivered in an emotionless monotone that beat at him like waves on sand.

  Denny’s heart slowed and then sped up as reality slowly sunk in.

  “A month? You never thought I should know this?” Denny felt a white-hot anger mingled with sorrow growing in his gut as his brain caught up with the information Deb had thrown at him so casually.

  The baby let out another whimper and he realized he’d been holding her too tight. He eased off, anger still coursing through him.

  “You were divorced,” Deb said, as if that explained everything. “Didn’t think you would care. Lila always said you two fought like cats and dogs. Besides, I didn’t have your number and Lila’s phone got stolen in the hospital. Took me this long to track you down.” Her voice grew shriller with each word and Denny struggled to stifle his own anger with her, reminding himself that Deb had also recently lost her sister.

  But at least she’d had a month to deal with it.

  As her words found a place in his mind, awareness of the weight and warmth of the sticky little girl he held worked its way through his fog of confusion.

  “And who is this?” he asked, dropping the diaper bag Deb had handed him into the hallway and looking down at the little girl.

  She stared up at him, her deep brown eyes unblinking. Cute little thing even if she looked and smelled as though she needed a bath.

  Deb only looked past him into the apartment, nodding as if she approved, then looked back at the little girl now tucked against Denny’s hip.

  “That’s Ella. Your daughter.”

  “What?” The word burst out of him as another shock jolted him. “No. That’s impossible.” Denny glanced at the little girl he was holding. His angry outburst had erased the smile and her lip quivered again.

  He jiggled her to settle her down as he looke
d back at Deb.

  “No way.”

  “Yes, way.” Deb continued, “Lila found out she was pregnant after you guys signed the final divorce papers.”

  “She was lying. She’s done this before.” Denny felt like he was on an amusement park ride, his head going one way, his body another, and nothing making any sense. Even in his shock he thought of the fake pregnancy that had gotten them married.

  “She wasn’t seeing anyone before or after she divorced you. Your name is on the birth certificate as the dad.”

  As Deb spoke it was as if her words barreled toward him from the far end of a tunnel. He stared at her as his mind slipped back to his last months with Lila. She had been miserable, staying away all hours, never coming home, and when she was home, all she did was yell at him and complain about being on the ranch.

  Denny had started going back to church, trying to find the strength to keep their relationship going. One night she had come home early, in tears. He had asked her if she was unhappy because she was seeing someone else, but she had vehemently denied that.

  So he’d convinced her to try again. She had agreed, and he’d believed her. After months of being apart, they had been intimate.

  The next day she’d left and the next week he’d been served with divorce papers.

  When he’d called her to find out why, she had said it was because she wasn’t happy on the ranch. Never would be and it wasn’t fair to him to stick around and prolong the agony. Those motives had started to sound pretty suspect when Denny found out how much money she’d wanted to settle the divorce.

  Denny looked back at the little girl. The girl Deb said was his daughter. “How old is she?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “She can’t be mine,” he protested, unwilling to believe what Deb was saying.

  “The certificate is in the diaper bag if you want to check,” Deb was saying. “And so is her health care card. You’ll need that if she gets sick.”

  “Why didn’t Lila tell me about her?” he insisted as the baby squirmed. “She never said anything about this pregnancy.”

  “She said you two never talked after you split.”

  That much was true. Lila’s petition for divorce had been a shock, but at the same time a small relief. In spite of his last-ditch effort to keep the marriage going, when he’d received the papers he’d decided not to contest it. Nor had he had any desire to be in contact with her.

  The proceedings had been a financial drain. Once Denny had walked away from Lila with precious little in the bank and a bitter taste in his mouth after having to sell the family ranch, he couldn’t face her again. Apparently the feeling had been mutual. He’d never heard from her over the past two years.

  “I told her to tell you but she said something about how you wouldn’t believe her. But I pushed and she promised me she would. Obviously she didn’t.” Deb shot a pointed look at the little girl in his arms.

  “Anyhow, when she got sick I took care of Ella, but I got another job and another boyfriend and can’t take care of the munchkin anymore. You know me. Not crazy about kids. Then I figured, hey, she’s your kid. You should be the one to do it. Took me a bit to track you down, and so here you are. Clothes are in the suitcase, diapers in the bag. She drinks out of a sippy cup and doesn’t like strawberries. There’s more info on a paper in the suitcase.”

  Denny’s brain spun a few more times as he tried to regain his balance. Tried to regain control of the situation.

  “What about your parents? Do they know about this?”

  “Of course they do. But they told me that I had to do the right thing and find you. Besides, after Lila died, they left on some project out in Bolivia. Can’t get hold of them until they call me. And they won’t be back for about a month or so. So here I am.”

  The information she threw at him was like a landslide. One thing after another, leaving him feeling buried.

  “How did you find me?” was all he got out as the little girl wriggled in his arms.

  “My boyfriend’s friend did some carpentry work for a guy who drove a truck. We met him at a bar. Found out the guy used to work for you. He gave us your number.”

  Might have been Stewart, a driver he had fired a couple months back. Probably had it in for him, Denny thought. Awesome.

  Then the little girl whimpered and he jiggled her, still not sure what he was supposed to do, trying to find a way to reason with Lila’s sister. Trying to wrap his head around Lila’s death.

  Then Deb took a step back and waggled her fingers at the child. “Be good for Daddy, Ella,” she said. Then, without another word, she turned and strode down the hallway and around the corner.

  What? She was leaving the baby behind?

  Denny looked from the now-empty hallway to the howling little girl, trying to figure out which emotion to hang on to. Fear. Anger. Confusion.

  Concern for the little girl in his arms.

  “Deb,” he called out, “come back here. We need to talk about this. This can’t be my baby.”

  But the only thing he heard was the echo of Ella’s pathetic cries.

  Of course his phone would chime right then. He yanked it out of his pocket as if hoping to find some answers there. But it was just his sister Olivia. Asking him to send her money again.

  He’d deal with that later.

  Then the door to the bookstore opened and there stood Evangeline, her shining hair flowing in waves over her shoulders, her white dress giving her an ethereal look.

  And she was looking at him as if he was crazy.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, though clearly she could see it wasn’t. He was holding a crying baby and yelling at an empty hallway.

  Denny looked from Evangeline to Ella and felt his heart sink.

  What was he supposed to do with a baby?

  Chapter Three

  “Do you need a hand?” Evangeline asked, the howls of the little girl catching at her heart.

  She had heard a commotion in the hallway and, curious, had stepped out just in time to hear a baby crying. Then she saw the little girl in Denny’s arms and heard him calling out to someone named Deb.

  The baby was screaming now, batting at Denny with her hands.

  Denny looked as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He leaned against the doorjamb like a sailor on a storm-tossed boat clinging to a mast.

  Pity rushed through her at his confusion.

  “Yeah. No.” He grabbed his head with his free hand, tousled his long, thick hair, then shook his head.

  The child’s howls were piercing. She flailed, arching her back, looking wildly around as if seeking a familiar face. Denny patted her back with one huge hand, looking completely at a loss.

  Big, fat tears spilled down the little girl’s cheeks and her sorrow caught at Evangeline’s heart.

  Without thinking, she took the little bundle of brokenhearted humanity out of Denny’s arms and held her close.

  Then she caught a whiff of something unpleasant.

  “She needs a clean diaper,” Evangeline said.

  Denny dragged his hand over his face and looked down at the bag lying at his feet.

  “Deb said something about diapers in here,” he mumbled, his eyes flicking from the bag to the empty hallway as if hoping this Deb person would return.

  “Give me a minute,” Evangeline said, rocking the child as she walked back into her store. It was almost closing time anyway, so she locked up and turned the sign over. She’d get the lights later.

  Then she walked back through the quiet store, the little girl’s sobs subsiding somewhat.

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Evangeline cooed, holding her close as she walked back to the apartment. Denny was still standing in the hallway, looking as stunned as he had a few moments ago
.

  “Let’s get her cleaned up,” Evangeline said, cutting him a quick glance. “Bring the bag to the bathroom. I’ll take care of this.”

  Sticky hands clung to her and Evangeline’s heart stuttered as she held the little girl close. Poor little person, she thought, clearly remembering the times she’d gotten dumped, in this very building, on her aunt’s doorstep upstairs when her father decided it was time to go.

  She had been a lot older but often just as upset.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she murmured, rocking the baby as her sobs slowly subsided into hiccups. Then, when she took in a last, shuddering cry, Evangeline gently pulled back, her hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

  Chocolate-brown eyes, the same color as Denny’s, stared back at her, tears still sparkling on eyelashes as long and thick as Denny’s.

  “This can’t be my baby,” she had heard him yell. But in spite of his protest the little girl bore a striking resemblance to him.

  “Here’s the bag,” Denny said from behind her.

  Evangeline nodded, gently laying the baby on the counter. “How old is she?”

  “I think she’s eighteen months.”

  “You’re not sure how old your baby is?”

  Denny lifted one hand in a helpless gesture. “I knew nothing about her till now.”

  “And her name?” she said, keeping focused on what was at hand.

  “Ella.” Denny heaved out a sigh, leaning against the doorjamb, watching as Evangeline unzipped the stained sleeper.

  “Does she have any other clothes?” Evangeline asked, making a face at the sight of the equally stained onesie underneath the sleeper.

  “Deb said there was some in the suitcase,” Denny muttered. By the time he returned, Evangeline had filled the tub with water and had dealt with the dirty diaper. The sleeper and onesie she had tossed into a pile.

  Ella was quiet now, her unblinking eyes flickering from Denny to Evangeline. Back and forth, back and forth, as if trying to figure out what she was supposed to do with these two strangers.

  Evangeline looked around for soap and was surprised to find a bar already set out.