Breaking the Ties That Bind

by Gwynne Forster

  “Hi, Papa. Why didn’t you wait in the car? It’s cold out here.”

  He went around the car and opened the door for her. “A lot can happen before I can get out of this car. I’m a little older than I used to be.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. Her father seldom owned up to thoughts of getting old. “So am I, Papa. A few more years, and I’ll be as old as you are.” His laughter always comforted her, for his happiness gave her a sense of well-being.

  “Mind you don’t get fresh with your papa. How did it go at school today?”

  She told him of her chance to win a trip abroad and of her conversations with Clifton Howell.

  “Seems to me that if you leave that job, you can lose a lifetime career, and if this man, Sam, is worth your time and your affection, you’re taking a chance with him, too. Six weeks from a guy you hardly know, and six weeks from a career-building job . . . I don’t think I’d do it. Howell’s a decent guy, and, after I meet Sam, I’ll have a better notion about him. You said that if you did well in radio, after you graduated, Howell would promote you to television news. I’m wondering if winning that competition and wandering around Egypt or Italy—and you’d better make it Italy—are worth what you stand to lose?”

  Chapter Seven

  Sam rang Kendra’s bell at eleven o’clock the following Sunday morning, and it occurred to him that always being precisely on time might not be in his favor; circumstances could arise in which he’d be late, and she’d think he wasn’t coming. He waited impatiently for the moment when the door opened and she would smile up at him.

  Women were usually closer to their mothers than to their dads, but. . . . He didn’t finish the thought. If she loved her father so much, he couldn’t possibly be a washout as a man, so Sam had no misgivings about spending an afternoon with him.

  The door opened, and Kendra greeted him with a smile. “Hi. Do you think we’ll be too cold out there?”

  “No. We’ll have a fire for warmth. If we’re lucky, we’ll get one of those grills inside of a brick oven. Is it possible to get a warmer greeting?”

  She reached up and placed a quick kiss on his lips. “My papa is due here any minute, so I’d better appear circumspect. Come in.” He resisted telling her that he didn’t see a damned thing about a kiss on the mouth that wasn’t circumspect.

  Not long after she closed the door, the doorbell rang. “That must be my papa.” Sam hoped that she had anticipated his own arrival there with as much happiness.

  “Hi, Papa. Sam just got here.”

  “That means he’s punctual. You look good. How are you?” he asked, standing with her in the foyer.

  “I’m feeling great. How about you?”

  “I’m not at church, but I expect the Lord understands. Where’s Sam?”

  “In the living room.”

  Sam stood and went to meet Kendra’s father, a tall, handsome, and seemingly very fit man. Somehow, he had expected a butcher to be stocky. “I’m Sam Hayes. Glad to meet you, sir.” He extended his hand and received a strong and honest handshake.

  “Sam, this is my father, Herbert Richards.”

  “Please call me Bert. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Sam. Thanks for asking Kendra to bring me along on your picnic. I don’t get out of doors often enough. I brought some steaks and a bottle of red, a six-pack of Pilsner, and some kindling. What part of the park are we going to?”

  “We’ll be near the creek. I’ve seen people fishing there, but I expect it’s too cold for that today,” Sam said.

  “Cold? It’s perfect weather for a picnic. The sun’s shining, the air is dry, and the wind is calm. What more could we want?”

  Nothing grumpy about this guy. Bert Richards was youthful, well kept, and very sure of himself. So far, he liked him. “Thanks for bringing the kindling. I was counting on finding some dry sticks. We’d better get started, sir.”

  Sam put an arm around Kendra’s waist, then remembered who walked behind them and removed it at once. They stepped outside the apartment, and he opened his hand to Kendra for the key. “I’ll lock it,” he said. He considered it his duty to make certain that they left her home secure, and he meant to discharge it. Damned if he was going to relinquish his status to Kendra’s father or any other man.

  “I’ll lead, if you don’t mind,” he told Kendra’s father when they reached his car. “I’d rather take Connecticut to Nebraska, exit Nebraska into Northampton Street, and take that into the park. That’s a good area for what we want.”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  With the traffic light all the way, they reached the park in less than twenty minutes and, almost at once, Sam found the brick-oven grill that he preferred, laid on it the potatoes, asparagus, and onions. Bert lit the kindling, and Sam added the coals. By the time they finished unpacking, the fire had begun to provide heat. Bert left them and returned with three folding chairs he’d put in the trunk of his car.

  “Roughing it is fine when you’re a teenager, Sam, but I like my comforts. Have a seat while the coals heat up. The steaks and drinks are in that cooler. It’s your party, so you do as you please with it.”

  “Thanks for confusing me,” Sam said. “I love red wine with steaks, but at a picnic, I love beer.”

  Bert laughed. “Moral of the story is not to bring steaks on a picnic.”

  “With charcoal-grilled porterhouse steaks the issue, I certainly wouldn’t use that solution,” Sam said. “Moral or no moral. Nothing’s wrong with drinking beer before the steaks are done and wine while we’re eating them.” He went over to the cooler, got three cans of beer, opened them, and passed one each to Kendra and Bert.

  “I never drink beer,” she said.

  “Then drink wine,” Bert advised. “Or you can make this the first time you drink a beer.”

  She looked from her father to Sam, and Sam waited to see what she’d do. It did not displease him when she got the bottle of wine and handed it to him. “Would you open that, please?”

  “My pleasure.” While opening the wine, he noticed her father’s careful attention to the way in which he and Kendra interacted, and he’d seen the day, years earlier, when he’d have given the man something to look at. But Sam knew that he would probably need Bert Richards’s support one day, so he didn’t want to make an enemy of him. He looked at the coals and then said to Bert, “Do you think those coals are hot enough?”

  “Five or ten more minutes and they’ll be perfect.”

  Sam had a few questions that he wanted to ask Bert Richards, but since the answers to none of them were any business of his, he kept his questions to himself. How had a decent, straightforward man like Bert married the woman that Kendra described her mother to be, and how had he lived with her for five years? And it wouldn’t hurt to know in what ways, if at all, Kendra was like her mother. So far, what he’d seen of and experienced with Kendra suggested that she and her mother did not have the same DNA family. He’d have to be patient, because any allusion to that matter would probably ruin his relationship with Kendra.

  He heard Kendra talking to her father and focused on her words.

  “Papa, it would have been nice if you’d brought your guitar.”

  “You play the guitar?” he asked Bert, although it was obvious from Kendra’s comment that he did.

  “Whenever I have time, I do. When I get home at night, I’m too tired to practice, and on Sundays when I’m off, I have so many other things to do that I don’t get to my guitar. Too bad. I was once pretty good at it. It’s in the trunk, but there’s no telling what it will sound like in this weather.”

  Kendra got the guitar out of the car and brought it to her father, who tuned it and plucked a few strings. Bert looked at his daughter. “What would you like to hear?”

  “How about Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words?” She looked at Sam. “Papa transcribed that for guitar, and I love it.”

  “I like it, too, but I’ve only heard it for piano and violin.”

&nbs
p; Sam sat enraptured while Bert Richards played the guitar like a professional, and he couldn’t help wondering about the man’s youthful dreams and goals and what had torpedoed them. This man had not reached maturity intending to be a butcher, and Sam wouldn’t demean his accomplishments by asking him how it had happened. It occurred to him that Kendra’s drive and tenacity might have had its seeds in what she knew of her father’s life. The music ended, but he remained under its spell.

  “Thank you,” Sam said, looking at Bert. “I could listen to you play like that forever. I’m surprised you don’t make your living as a musician.”

  “I appreciate the compliment. It’s a long, long story. We can put the steaks on now. Anything I can help with?”

  “You’ve done more than your share. As soon as the steaks are ready, we’ll eat.” Sam turned the asparagus, halved Vidalia onions, and slices of small red potatoes on the grill beside the steaks. He spread the tablecloth on a picnic table, opened the wine, and tasted it. Not bad. The man knew something about wine. Bert Richards did not add up. Since this wasn’t a fancy sit-down dinner, Sam stacked the plates and utensils on the table, poured three glasses of wine, and checked the grill, turning the steaks and the vegetables. He poured blue cheese dressing on the arugula and Belgian endive salad, tossed it, put the potato salad on the table and looked at his handiwork. Not bad. “It’s ready.”

  They consumed most of the food, including a large porterhouse each, and drank the wine. Bert slapped Sam on the back, sat down with his second glass of wine, and said, “At least you’ll be able to feed her well.”

  Sam glanced at Kendra, who stared at her father with eyes wide, and her lower jaw dropped. He regarded Bert’s sanguine and smug expression and Kendra’s barely leashed fury and couldn’t control the laughter that rolled out of him. But he collected his wits when Bert said, “You think that’s funny?”

  “No, sir, I don’t. But the difference between your facial expression and Kendra’s is the funniest thing I ever saw. She’s about to explode.”

  Bert emptied his wine glass. “This was a fine meal. Kendra was taught from childhood to control her temper, and I see she’s doing a good job of it.”

  “Papa, how could you say that to him? We’ve practically just met.”

  The quick rise and fall of Bert’s shoulders expressed his attitude toward that reasoning. “Sam understands me perfectly even if you don’t.”

  Sam saw the first snowflake of the season and almost immediately silvery flakes began to fall silently all around them. “I didn’t check the weather forecast, so I don’t know how much of this we can expect,” he said. “From the looks of it, though, we ought to pack up.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Bert said. “This has been wonderful. I hope we can get a chance to do it again soon. If the weather won’t permit, I’ve got a nice place that’s warm, and my stove has a wonderful grill. You don’t have to be out of doors to have a picnic.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember your offer. I don’t know where you buy your steaks, or what’s different about your steaks, but that was the best steak I remember eating. Thanks for your company.”

  “It’s been my great pleasure, Sam. And to know that my daughter has a man like you for a friend gives me a lot of satisfaction. I’ll drive straight home. You two have a nice day.” He put the cooler in the trunk of his car and kissed Kendra. Then Bert walked over to Sam, shook his hand, gazed into his eyes, and smiled. “Good-bye and thanks again.” He strode back to the car, his steps quick and lithe.

  “Your father is quite a man, and you were wrong, he did not ask me about my intentions.”

  “No. What he said was much worse. You wait till I tell him what I think about that.”

  “Really? I imagine your reprimand will be short, sweet, and gentle. Your father is not a man anybody yells at, and he is not used to reprimands. So, I’m not impressed with your threat. We’d better go; this stuff is getting heavier by the minute.”

  Sam stopped on the corner near the building in which she lived and put the car in park. It didn’t surprise him when she said, “Does this mean you aren’t coming in?”

  He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “I’m debating that with myself right now. If the snow continues to fall at this rate, an hour from now I won’t be able to see to drive, and in two hours, the streets will be nearly impassable.”

  “In that case, you go home with my blessings.”

  “How will you get to school tomorrow morning?”

  “If the streets are really bad, classes will be cancelled. It’s getting to the station that will be a problem.”

  “By that time, the streets will have been cleared. I hadn’t planned for the day to end this way, but man proposes and God disposes. I’ll see you to your apartment.”

  They dashed through the blinding snow, and when they entered the building, he brushed a heavy layer of snow from her coat. At her apartment, he opened the door with her key and gazed down at her, certain that his eyes reflected what was in his heart. But he didn’t put it into words, for when he reached that stage, he wanted plenty of time in an appropriate place.

  “I like your father. If he had asked my intentions, I was planning to tell him that I wanted you for myself. I’m glad he didn’t ask, because having met him, I imagine that he wouldn’t have liked that.”

  Her scent furled up to him, the smell of her rising heat sending him the message that if he was planning to leave, he’d better go right then.

  He gripped her body to his, covered her lips with his own, and possessed her as surely as if he were dancing inside of her. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he said in a voice that he barely recognized.

  Minutes later, he ignited the engine of his Buick Enclave and headed for Connecticut Avenue. He had some thinking to do, although he wondered if he’d gone so far that, for once, thinking would be a waste of time. Nothing could be done about one of his principal reservations, which was Kendra’s mother and their relationship.

  Kendra’s mother was busily contriving to create a problem for Kendra, a serious one. On Monday morning, following one of the largest snowfalls in Washington, D.C., since records had been kept, Ginny telephoned the bank at which Kendra had an account, and in a soprano voice that camouflaged her usual alto register, she said, “This is Kendra Richards. I can’t get to the bank in this weather, and I have an emergency. I need to withdraw fifteen hundred dollars from the nearest ATM and you didn’t send me my debit card.”

  “Just a minute, Miss Richards. Let me check. We can get a card to you by mail tomorrow. What is your address?”

  “I moved last week.” She gave her own address.

  “What are the last digits of your social security number, Miss Richards?”

  She’d just looked that up from Kendra’s college entrance papers. So far so good.

  “And your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Virginia Hunter.”

  “Thank you, Miss Richards. I hate to ask all these questions, but we are only protecting your account. You have a security question here. Who is your favorite author?”

  Just when she thought it was going so smoothly. “My favorite . . . My goodness, I have so many, I don’t remember which one I put down. Gosh, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to have that money. This is an emergency.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Richards. Maybe you wrote it down somewhere. When you remember, call us. In the meantime, because of this . . . uh . . . glitch, your account will be locked for twenty-four hours, but we can open it earlier if you remember the answer to the security question and call us back. Thanks for banking with Westwood.”

  Ginny hung up, slammed the phone against the wall, and paced from one end of her bedroom to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Talking aloud to herself, she said, “Damn her. She does everything she can to make me suffer. But I’ll be damned if I’ll kill myself standing on my feet all day when she’s got a plumb of a job making good money. She’s just like her damned fat
her. I’ll get it yet. A security question. I’ll bet she’s the only person in this city with a security question. What am I going to do when Asa gets here? He thinks I’m socially and financially well-placed. I’ve gotta get tickets to the Kennedy Center jazz series, and I need an evening dress. That means money.”

  She made a second pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to drink it. Maybe if she sued Bert for letting their house go into foreclosure, she’d get a chunk. It would be her word against his as to why they lost it. A smile floated over her face, but it quickly vanished when she recalled that he’d won the divorce on the grounds that she’d squandered the money he gave her monthly to pay the mortgage.

  Anger began to boil up in her. Damn that Asa. He should be giving her money. Being able to out-screw the man who invented screwing didn’t make him worth more than Fort Knox. Besides, she wasn’t bad at it herself. And maybe she’d manage to change things.

  Kendra was in the midst of dictating her mid-term paper on the recorder that Sam gave her when the telephone rang. Sam had already called her, so she was not in a hurry to interrupt her homework. When the ringing persisted, she lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Kendra Richards?”

  “Yes. This is Kendra.”

  “Ms. Richards, this is Westwood Bank calling. Have you phoned this bank today?”

  Her antenna shot up. “No. I don’t think I have ever phoned your bank. And how do I know it’s the bank calling me or if you’re a scammer?”

  “Hang up. Call your bank and ask for Ms. Marris.”

  “I will.” She hung up, dialed the bank’s number and asked for Ms. Marris.

  “Thank you for calling back, Ms. Richards, and for being careful. We suspect that someone has stolen your identity. The woman knew your social security number and your mother’s maiden name. I’m not sure about your address, because she said she moved a week ago. We tripped her when she didn’t know the answer to your security question.”