Beneath a Southern Sky

by Deborah Raney

  “Well, we received a telegram yesterday telling us that he has been found alive.”

  “Whoa! That sounds like some kind of hoax to me, Cole—”

  “I wish it were. We spoke to his parents yesterday. They received an identical telegram, and they’ve spoken to their son. He’s in a hospital in Bogotá. Everything checks out, Dennis. It’s no hoax. Nathan Camfield is alive and flying into Kansas City today.”

  “You—You’re positive?”

  “As sure as we can be until we’ve actually seen him.”

  “That’s unbelievable!”

  “Yes. I-I need to know what this means for us legally, Dennis. Is my wife still legally married to this man? What does this do to my marriage? I don’t even know where to begin…” He let his voice trail off as the magnitude of the situation rolled over him again.

  “Oh, man, Cole! I’ve never run up against anything remotely like this. I know there were some similar situations after World War II and, for that matter, probably after Vietnam, too. But what the legal ramifications were, I’m honestly not sure. I’m going to have to do some checking on this one. Let’s see, how long have you and Daria been married?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “And how long had her first husband been dead—or I should say missing?”

  “It’s been…” Cole did some quick calculations in his head. “Well, it’s got to be close to three years now. Daria is pregnant with our child, Dennis. I can’t lose her!” He knew the desperation he was feeling had crept into his voice.

  “I’ll do everything I can to help you, Cole,” Dennis said in a calming voice. “I’ll have to look up the actual wording of the laws, but unless there’s been deceit on your wife’s part, or something like that, my guess is that the law would uphold your marriage since her husband was believed dead. But since you’ve been married less than seven years, that may complicate things. I’ll have to check into this,” he added hastily. “Your marriage is probably completely secure. Like I said, I’ve never come across this situation before, but I’ll find out. I promise you that. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  When Cole was silent on his end, Dennis asked gently, “Cole, is it clear that Daria wishes to…remain with you?”

  Cole hadn’t dared to ask his wife that question yet, and neither had she volunteered an answer. “I don’t know, Dennis. We’re still in shock over the whole thing.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” the lawyer said sympathetically. “Give me your number, and I’ll get back to you the minute I can find some answers.”

  Cole recited the number woodenly. Then, thanking his friend, he dropped the receiver in its cradle. O Father, please help me. I don’t understand why you’re doing this to us. What do you want me to do, God? Please show me. Please, Father. I need you.

  He put his head in his hands and wept like a child.

  When Daria returned from her parents’ house, Cole was sitting at the telephone in the dark, his back to her.

  She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. Cole’s muscles tensed under her touch, and she took a step back.

  “I called Dennis Chastain,” he said to her evenly, not turning around.

  “Oh… What did he say?”

  “He couldn’t really tell me anything definite.”

  She took a deep breath. “Cole, Dad thinks I need to go to Kansas City to talk to Nate in person. Find out how badly he’s injured…” She let her voice trail off, hoping for some indication of how he was receiving this idea.

  But he sat there in silence, still refusing to look at her.

  “Cole,” she said, attempting to keep her voice steady, “Nate will want to see Natalie. He’ll have to see her—”

  He whirled to face her now. “I know that, Daria,” he said tersely. “He’ll have to see you, too. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  She was shocked at the venom in his voice, but it gave her a surge of strength. “Cole, stop it!” she said firmly. “I can’t do this if you lash out at me! This is the hardest thing I’ve ever faced. I need your help. I need you to be there for me!”

  “You need me to be there for you?” he repeated, finally looking at her. “For what? What exactly are we talking about here, Daria? Are you going back with Nathan?”

  She felt as though she’d been slapped. She had barely come to terms with the fact that Nathan was alive, much less the thought of which man was her true husband.

  She longed for Cole to take her in his arms, to reassure her that they would work everything out, that this would all soon be over. And yet, a tender place in her heart, a place she thought had died, had been awakened by the amazing miracle of Nate’s return. He was her first love. They had such a deep history together. They had practically grown up together. And then she had abandoned him in the wilds! It terrified her to think what he might have endured during that time. Guilt pierced her soul. Perhaps Nate could never forgive her. Perhaps he wouldn’t want her back even if she were free.

  But then there was Natalie. Nate had given her their precious daughter, and even Cole could not deny that Nathan Camfield deserved to know his child. Oh, what a tangled mess! God, how could you do this to us?

  The answer poured over her like a flood of icy water. She began to see the truth as if it were projected on the wall in front of her. The dreams she’d had—Nate alive and walking toward her, smiling. The letter from Evangeline Magrit, and the eerie, gnawing feeling it had caused to rise up in her. The strange intuition that had haunted her until she had all but shut God out of her life.

  She could not blame God for this dilemma, for she suddenly realized that he had given her warnings, shown her signs. She simply hadn’t listened! Instead she had turned a deaf ear to the warnings, to what she now knew were divine nudgings. And finally, she had silenced them.

  Cole looked at her, hurt written plainly on his handsome face. He was still waiting for her answer, her verdict on their future together. “I can’t even think straight about this yet, Cole. I don’t know what Nate will want. I don’t know how he is physically, emotionally. I just don’t know what is going to happen.”

  “Well I do know what will happen, Daria. You’ll go to him, as you must. And you’ll stay with him—you and Natalie. You can’t do anything less. All I ask is that you don’t keep Natalie from me. And that I get to be a part of my own child’s life.”

  “Cole! What are you talking about? You sound as if it’s all over between us. Please don’t do this! I truly don’t know what will happen. But I need your help. I can’t do this alone. Please, Cole…” She was sobbing now, begging, but her cries seemed to have no effect on him. He had turned aloof and uncaring before her eyes.

  He pushed his chair back from the desk, turned away from her, and went down the hall toward their bedroom. She followed him, still weeping. “Please, Cole.”

  He whirled to face her in the hallway in front of their room. “Daria, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?” he shouted again, his face ruddy with rage. He softened a little when he looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry, Daria, but this isn’t exactly a decision I can make for you!”

  “Cole, I’m not asking you to make any decision. I just—” What did she want from him? She wanted him to make everything go back the way it had been before this ordeal began. But no! That wasn’t true. Nate was alive, and she couldn’t possibly wish him dead again.

  She slumped to the floor and leaned her back against the cool surface of the wall. The blood pounded at her temples while she watched, helpless, as Cole went into their room, dragged a large suitcase down from the shelf in their walk-in closet and started dumping his dresser drawers into it. He was leaving, and there wasn’t one word she could say to stop him.

  Through tears, she watched him finish packing. When he brushed past her without so much as a glance in her direction, the anger finally rose in her. She followed him out to the kitchen and then to the back porch.

  “Colson Hunter, don’t you dare l
eave like this! Please! We can’t get through this if we can’t talk about it!”

  He set the suitcase down on the floor of the mud room and turned to face her. “I love you, Cole,” she squeaked. Then, abruptly he wrapped his arms around her, as though he were committing the sensation to memory. Finally he held her away from himself and looked into her eyes.

  When he spoke, his voice was steady and serene. “Daria, I love you with everything that is in me. The life we’ve had together has been the greatest blessing of my life. I will never, never stop loving you—or Natalie. I wish to God that everything could go on exactly as it was yesterday, before this…nightmare began. But that isn’t going to happen. You have a decision to make that I can’t even imagine making myself. But I can’t be the one to help you make it. The only thing I can do to help now is to get out of the way so you can decide what you want to do.”

  She began to cry, but though he appeared to be moved by her emotion, he stepped away from her. “Daria,” he said, his voice wavering, “I will be praying for you every minute. I don’t know that I can pray without bias, but that will be my goal. I do know I can’t stay here. Surely you can see that.”

  He leaned forward again as if he meant to kiss her, but instead he turned on his heel, picked up his bag, and went out into the night.

  Twenty-Five

  It was the darkest night Daria could remember—blacker even than that night in Timoné when she’d first accepted that Nathan was dead. How strange that his being alive was now the reason for a night of even deeper anguish. She lay in their bed upstairs, Cole’s absence from the bed feeling like a huge lump that threatened and crowded her instead of the vacant space it was in reality. Her mind reeled with questions. How would she ever know what was the right thing to do? How could they ever disentangle themselves from this knot of family ties that had a stranglehold on them all? She tried to imagine where they would be a year from now, and no picture would form.

  More immediately, how would she explain to her daughter why Cole was gone? She and Cole had just begun giving Nattie little hints of her story, referring to her “other” daddy and telling her that Grandma and Grandpa Camfield were the parents of her “Daddy-Nate,” who had died before she was born. When they had thought Nathan dead, they had struggled with just how to present the particulars to her, but now those details that had once seemed so fraught with confusion seemed simple by comparison. This new truth was so bizarre that Daria couldn’t imagine how it would ever unravel itself, let alone how they would explain it to a child—or to anyone, for that matter. She took in a sharp breath as it dawned on her that there was no “they” anymore. She was alone in this labyrinth of impossible choices. Hers would be a solitary decision. Where did she belong now?

  She tossed restlessly for hours, perspiring in spite of the frigid night air that poured in the open window. Finally she got up and went down to the kitchen. She poured a glass of cold milk and took it to the table. Forcing herself to think through the options, she got up and retrieved a pen and pad of paper from the desk in the kitchen and went back to the table, determined to make some sense of the whole mess.

  She had to go see Nathan. That was her first priority. And Nathan would have to see Natalie. She would have to offer some kind of explanation to her daughter. She wasn’t sure Nattie’s two-year-old mind could understand the concept of two fathers, but it wouldn’t be fair to Nathan for his daughter not to have been told that he was her father when she met him. Coming face to face with Nathan would be like meeting a ghost, and yet Daria thrilled to think of it. It startled her a little to realize that she still loved him. Yet why wouldn’t she? She hadn’t willingly given him up.

  She wondered how he would be after all this time. They still didn’t know how the trauma of being in captivity for so long had affected him. Surely there were psychological repercussions and possibly physical ones. She remembered Jack saying he’d been badly burned. She couldn’t imagine how the incident might have changed him. But then, her “widowhood” and single motherhood had drastically changed her, too. Neither of them would be the same people they had been when they’d loved each other before.

  She shuddered to think how he must feel about her, leaving him there for dead as she had. She began to understand a little how Cole must have felt about his responsibility in Bridgette’s death, and in his son’s death.

  She looked down at the pad of paper in front of her. On it she had written two names: Nathan. Natalie. She couldn’t even remember writing the words down, and yet they stared back at her in handwriting that belonged to her in spite of the tension in its loops and curls. But it was the absence of a name that jumped off the page at Daria. Cole. Where was Cole in all this? When she pictured a reunion with Nathan, she pictured him taking Natalie in his arms, that thousand-watt smile lighting his face, and her beside them both—the happy family she had envisioned since the day she and Nate had fallen in love.

  As if in protest, the baby within her womb somersaulted, asserting its presence. Cole’s child. The infant that was to have bound her and Cole and Natalie together as a family. And she could envision that happy family, too. In many ways, this was the family that felt real to her, the one that was familiar, the one she was longing for right now. Though Cole had only been gone from her for a few hours, her yearning for him was a deep ache within her.

  But her heart broke for Nathan. How could she desert him again after what he’d been through? And how could she even dream of taking Natalie away from him after all he’d already lost? She couldn’t. No matter what she decided, he would have to be able to see his daughter.

  A terrifying thought crossed her mind. What if she had no decision to make? What if neither of the men she loved wished to remain with her now? What if neither of them could face the specter of the other man that would always hang over their relationship? Certainly their dilemma would tear one of her children from a father’s arms. It couldn’t help but sever the precious love of siblings, divide their loyalties toward one another. Would this shatter both of her families into a million pieces?

  A flood of anxiety and confusion washed over her. What could she possibly do to redeem this mess? “O God!” she cried, her voice a hoarse squeak in the silence of the kitchen. “Show me what to do! I don’t know what to do.”

  The reply came as his answers had come to her long ago, before the rift—a still, small whisper in the dark. Give it to me.

  “But how can I, when—”

  Give it to me.

  Daria startled, as if the words had been spoken aloud. But when she looked around the kitchen, only the hushed ticking of the clock over the desk broke the silence.

  Finally beyond tears, she wrung her hands in her lap and put her head on the table. “I don’t know how, God. Help me. I want to give it to you, but I don’t know where to start.”

  Just let go.

  Again the words seemed almost audible. She slid from her seat and fell to her knees, bowing over the chair. She unclasped her hands, straightened her spine, and turned her palms up in submission, as if going through the physical motions would help her let go spiritually. It seemed fruitless, and yet it was all she knew to do.

  “O Father, I do give it to you. I can’t do this myself. I’m…I’m lost…so lost…”

  Almost immediately, a sense of peace washed over her, and she felt sheltered in a haven of security she didn’t understand—or need to. A phrase came to her mind: the next thing. But what was the next thing? And the question seemed to answer itself. Go see Nathan.

  “Thank you, Lord.” Oh, that she could learn to always trust him to guide her each minute, each tiny step of the way, no matter how rocky or treacherous.

  She struggled to her feet and went to the sink to rinse out her milk glass. Then she checked on Natalie. She was so thankful she had decided to bring Nattie home from her parents’ that afternoon. To be completely alone tonight would have been unbearable. The little girl was sleeping on her stomach with her tiny rump in the air.
Deep maternal love welled up in Daria, and she turned away from Nattie, not wanting to think about what the future might hold for her daughter.

  She climbed the stairs to their room—her room—and crawled wearily into bed. She wasn’t any closer to an answer than she had been at the beginning of this night, but she had received something far more precious. She had been given a fragile peace. And for now, she had her assignment. She would do the next thing, and the next and the next. And she would try with everything in her to trust that God would lead her to the place he wanted her to be.

  Colson Hunter squinted and rubbed his eyes against the bright sunlight that had awakened him. He reached for Daria, but found her place in the bed beside him empty. He smelled the strong aroma of coffee brewing and wondered why she was up so early this morning. He finally managed to open his eyes, but instead of the sunlight playing on the softly patterned wallpaper in their bedroom, it glanced off of stark white walls through a curtainless window.

  Sitting upright, the remembrance of where he was washed over him with cold grief. After driving unseeing down nameless dirt roads, he had found himself at Kirk and Dorothy Janek’s apartment where Travis Carruthers lived now. Travis had taken Cole in without question, unwittingly putting him in the bedroom that had been Daria’s when she had lived here. Though the room was empty, its blank walls testifying to the status of a bachelor pad, Cole imagined Daria’s sweet scent still lingering there. He fell back against the lumpy pillow and let the waves of grief roll over him. He willed himself to sleep, to recreate the dream that he was home, that the woman he loved was brewing coffee in the kitchen, that his precious daughter slept in the cozy nursery below him.

  But the dream had been shattered and, try as he might, he could not find that place of refuge again.

  Swinging his legs over the side of the high mattress, he planted his bare feet on the cold wood floor. He felt as though he’d run a marathon, his muscles ached so, and yet he knew that his utter fatigue was emotional, not physical.