His Secret Child

by Lee Tobin McClain

  Was that a sound? Hard to hear over the wind, but maybe.

  He heard it again as he lifted up the boat.

  And saw a small, pink-and-purple-clad shape there. “Daddy?” the shape said with a little sob.

  Thank You, Jesus.

  He scooped her up in his arms, checked her limbs for injuries, kissed away her tears as she clung to him. “Are you okay? Do you hurt anywhere?” His heart was racing, now with joy, because she looked okay and she felt wonderful.

  “I’m cold,” she said, burrowing into his chest, crying. “I called and called but nobody came.”

  “Come on, let’s take you to Mama.” He shifted her to hold her even tighter against his chest, trying to warm her.

  She nestled in. “I got scared,” she said confidingly.

  “Me, too, when I couldn’t find you.” Hugging her, he shot up another prayer of supreme gratitude.

  Then, suddenly, she struggled violently to get out of his arms. He let her go, put her down on her skates but kept hold of her shoulders. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked, squatting down in front of her.

  “Are you going to take me away now?” Her eyes were round, her voice worried.

  After a moment’s puzzlement, he suddenly understood her question and shook his head. “I’m not going to take you from Mama Fern,” he said. “I’m going to take you back to her.”

  She hesitated, considering his words. “Really?”

  “Really. Mama Fern needs you and you need her.”

  She held out her arms to him, and as he picked her up and felt her arms go around his neck, a lump formed in his throat.

  Holding her, looking around the darkening pond as it sparkled in the moonlight, he felt God’s presence as never before in his life, and with it, a sense of calm came over him. God had it in control. God was making everything right, and He’d continue to do so.

  Carlo couldn’t even call out, he was so choked up, so he simply held Mercedes tight and set off at a fast walk toward the bonfire.

  “Mama!” Mercedes cried when they got there, and Carlo put her into Fern’s arms.

  “You found her!” came Daisy’s voice.

  “Praise the Lord,” Susan said as the kids cheered.

  Fern didn’t say one word, but her eyes, lifted to his, were filled with such gratitude and relief that he felt ten feet tall.

  “Tell the others?” he asked Susan, whose eyes were wet.

  “Of course.” She headed off, calling in her strong voice.

  “Oh, honey,” Fern said, cradling Mercedes close, “are you okay? Let’s get you right by the fire. Mama was so scared!”

  “I did like the clown in the book,” Mercedes said. “But it wasn’t fun. And I was cold.”

  “Of course you were,” Fern scolded, holding Mercedes’s small hands toward the fire, holding the child herself in her lap. She looked up at Carlo. “Thank you. Oh, Carlo, thank you so much. I’m so, so sorry I let her get lost.”

  He sat down behind them, wrapped both arms around them. “Thank God. Praise God.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A week later, as Fern parked in front of the dog rescue where she and Mercy had been stranded with Carlo, her mind played a movie of memories: hot chocolate and burned cookies, Carlo’s deep rumbling laughter, his arm warm and protective around her shoulders. His tender kiss.

  “My first sleepover!” Mercy bounced in her car seat. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Mercy had clung to Fern for a couple of days after the near disaster at the skating pond, but then she’d gotten back into her four-year-old groove: playing hard at day care, eating and sleeping well at home, proving her resilience. And when she’d been invited to sleep over at Xavier’s house for his birthday, she was over the moon.

  Fern helped Mercy unhook her seat belt and then pulled the overnight case from the trunk.

  “I’ll carry my new sleeping bag,” the child said, holding out her arms for the prized pink item.

  Fern thought Mercedes was way too young for a sleepover, but Angelica, calling to invite her, had brushed aside Fern’s objections. “She’ll be fine here. She’ll have Xavier, and her dad will be here, too. Her dad. I still can’t believe Carlo has a daughter!”

  So maybe it was okay. Fern’s own childhood had been a little short on fun family sleepovers. What did she know about how to raise a child anyway?

  Now Angelica opened the door, sank to her knees and pulled Mercy into a hug. “We’re so glad you’re here, honey! Come on in, it’s cold out.” She looked up at Fern. “Do you want to drop her off or stop in for a minute?”

  Angelica’s casual question surprised Fern. Was it normal to just drop off your four-year-old at someone’s house?

  “We have two other girls and three boys. It’s going to get crazy, but I’ll have plenty of help. I can handle it.” Angelica got to her feet and held the door open, smiling at Fern.

  “I’ll come in,” Fern said, “get her set up and settled and make sure.” She met Angelica’s eyes. “I’m a little overprotective. I can’t help it.”

  “Of course you are, after the scare you had.”

  “You heard about that. I feel awful that I let Mercedes get lost. It was all my fault.”

  “What, that she got lost?” Angelica’s voice, which had sounded distracted and light until then, suddenly got focused. “Are you beating yourself up about that?”

  “I should have been watching her every minute. I got upset and preoccupied and she was gone.” She waited for Angelica’s gasp of horror.

  It didn’t come. Instead, “Did I ever tell you about the time Xavier escaped from the hospital?”

  “What? No.”

  “He got a whole block through downtown Boston. In a hospital gown, no less! And a complete stranger brought him back.”

  Fern leaned back against the doorjamb. “But that wasn’t on your watch.”

  “Yes, it was. I had him out of his room in the playroom and got talking to one of the other moms. I looked up and he was gone.”

  “Wow.” Fern took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, some of her tension ebbing out with it. “I feel like such a bad mother.”

  “I know, right? But we’re all bad mothers at times. Now come in and see what we’re planning.”

  The living room where she and Carlo and Mercy had gotten to know each other was transformed with blue and green balloons and crepe-paper streamers. “Of course he wanted a puppy theme,” Angelica explained. “Wait till you see the cake.”

  “It’s shaped like a dog bone,” Xavier shouted as he ran into the room, another boy racing behind him.

  Quickly, Fern turned to check Mercedes’s reaction. Would the older boys intimidate her?

  But Xavier stopped in front of Mercedes, grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the kitchen. “C’mon, Mercy! We’re cousins now, so you can come over all the time. But you’re gonna have to learn to play fun games, not dolls.”

  “I play fun games.” Mercy put a hand on her hip as if daring Xavier to disagree.

  “Then, c’mon!”

  The three kids ran off together without a backward glance.

  “I’ll, um, just put her stuff down, I guess.” Fern set down the birthday present she and Mercedes had wrapped together, checked the overnight case again to make sure her daughter’s favorite stuffed frog hadn’t been forgotten.

  “I’ll take good care of her, don’t worry. And Carlo will be here all night.”

  Fern’s heart lurched. “Carlo’s staying over?”

  “Just for tonight, for the party. In fact, he should be here any minute. Troy and I can use the help, and we thought it would make Mercy more comfortable. I’m so excited to have a little girl in the family! I’m going to spoil her like mad.”

  Troy
came up behind Angelica, smiling as he heard what his wife was saying. He put an arm around Angelica and patted her rounded belly. “Good practice for us.”

  “That’s right,” Angelica said, her dark eyes sparkling. “Pretty soon, Mercy will have a new baby cousin to play with.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Seeing the loving way the two of them looked at each other, Fern felt her heart aching. Maybe she and Carlo could have had something like that, if she hadn’t blown it.

  “In fact,” Angelica said, “did Carlo tell you he’s going to be moving into the bunkhouse as soon as the weather breaks? That way, Mercy can have room to run and play and get to know all of us better, and we can help when his new job starts up.”

  New job? “Great!” Fern tried to inject some excitement into her tone, but her stomach churned.

  “You should take a look at the bunkhouse on your way out,” Angelica encouraged. “I don’t think it’s locked. I fixed it up a little when Xavier and I were staying there, and it’s really homey. Mercy will be super happy there.”

  Of course she would. “Okay, I will. Thanks.”

  Fern found Mercy and hugged her goodbye. “Daddy will be here. You go to him if you need anything.”

  “I will, Mama. I gotta go play.” She struggled away and ran over to where Xavier and the other boy were dumping an army of plastic men on the floor.

  Fern watched for another minute, then forced herself to walk out the front door. She waved to Angelica, who was greeting another mother and a pair of twin girls, and trudged toward her car.

  “Leave her all day tomorrow if you want,” Angelica called after her.

  Fern waved back, unable to speak.

  Mercy was fine without her. She was being embraced by Carlo’s family. And what could Fern, a nerdy librarian, all alone in the world, offer Mercy that would compare with Carlo’s wonderful family?

  She drove a couple of hundred yards, but tears blurred her vision and she stopped to find a tissue. There was the bunkhouse. She blew her nose. Well, sure, she’d stop and take a look. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do.

  She walked inside and looked around, immediately aware of how the pine-paneled walls, bright area rugs and colorful curtains said home. There were two small bedrooms and a kitchen along one side of the living area.

  It was perfect for Carlo and Mercy.

  A spasm of pain creased her stomach and she sank down into a rocking chair, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, still in her winter coat.

  She was going to lose Mercy.

  Just as she’d already lost Carlo.

  By ignoring his offer of a marriage of convenience, she’d given up all she’d ever wanted in life. Now that he saw what a bad mother she was, he’d never take her back. He’d never let her keep Mercy. What claim did she have on the child anyway?

  And what claim did she have on Carlo?

  She’d judged him and pushed him away. She’d been so harsh, refusing to accept his apologies even when he was so kind to her and Mercy. And then that horrible experience at the pond. Even now she remembered the terror she’d felt, thinking Mercy might have been drowned or kidnapped. And she remembered the sternness in Carlo’s voice as he’d called everyone into action, worked to solve the problem, while Fern had fallen apart.

  Now he was settling into the bosom of his family, and rightly so. He’d find another woman, someone who was outgoing and more motherly, someone who wouldn’t let a child get lost, wouldn’t pass judgment, wouldn’t act shy.

  And Fern would go on alone.

  She’d lost it all.

  She let her face sink into her hands, and in the despair of an aloneness she’d created for herself, she cried out to God.

  * * *

  “Isn’t that Fern’s car?” Troy said to Carlo an hour later. They were walking out to the kennels to get puppies for the kids to play with, having decided that Brownie and her pup needed to stay sequestered from the overenthusiastic kids.

  Carlo glanced over, and just seeing her little subcompact stabbed him in the gut. “What’s she doing at the bunkhouse?”

  Troy shrugged. “You should go see.”

  Longing tugged at Carlo’s heart, but he tamped it down and shook his head. “She doesn’t want me anywhere around.” He was trying to accept that no meant no, but it wasn’t easy.

  They walked to the kennel, where the silence between them was broken with loud barking. Troy grabbed a couple of leads and opened a kennel. “Leash up those two,” he said, “and I’ll get a couple more. We need sturdy pups for this crew.”

  As they brought the excited dogs to the house, Troy spoke up. “Seemed as if you and Fern had some feelings for each other. Might be worth a second try.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not much on talking about my faith, but the second chance God gave me and Angelica has meant the world to me.”

  Carlo thought about that as he opened the front door and held it for Troy, laden down with a crate of three yipping pups. Could he open himself up to more rejection from Fern? And where was the line between hope and harassment, when she’d already given him a clear no?

  “Daddy!” Mercy ran to him, hugged his leg and then squatted down to pet the dogs he’d brought in.

  Troy met his eyes over the crate. “Might mean the world to her, too,” he said quietly, nodding down at Mercy. “This back and forth from one house to the other can’t be easy on her.”

  That was for sure. It wasn’t easy on any of them. “I’ll give that some thought,” Carlo promised.

  * * *

  Fern didn’t know how long she wrestled with herself, tears running down her face, praying for forgiveness.

  Finally, the setting sun cast its rays through the bunkhouse windows, and she lifted her eyes to see God’s glory painted across the sky in pink and purple and orange. At the same moment, she felt warmth and love embracing her.

  Her heavenly father seemed to speak through the sunset, expressing His extravagant love for her. Forgiving her the faults that a childhood tainted by human sin had wrought in her. Offering the hope that she could learn, could grow, could love.

  She wiped her eyes and let the forgiveness wash over her, soothing some of the heartache and loss.

  A knock on the bunkhouse door had her blowing her nose and wiping her eyes again, running her hands over her hair.

  “Fern! Are you in there? It’s Daisy and Susan. We stopped in to wish Xavier a happy birthday and saw your car.”

  She drew a deep breath, waited for her usual antisocial desire to shoo away human contact. But it didn’t come. She actually wanted to see them. She hurried to the door and opened it.

  “You’ve been crying!”

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  They wrapped her in hugs and worried questions, and soon all three of them were sitting at the bunkhouse’s small dining table, drinking from juice boxes that were the only thing they’d found in the refrigerator.

  “Did anyone check the expiration on these?” Susan asked, studying her box.

  “They’re full of preservatives. It’s fine.” Daisy waved a hand. “Fern. Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”

  “I’m just emotional about leaving Mercy overnight, that’s all.” Fern looked at her friends’ skeptical faces and added, “Mostly.”

  Susan smiled sympathetically. “Get used to it. As a single mom, you’ve got to embrace time to yourself when you can find it. In fact, once you start dating, I’ll gladly take a turn at babysitting.”

  “Me, too,” Daisy said. “We’re like the best babysitters in town.”

  “Because we love kids and I, for one, am never gonna have kids of my own.”

  “Me, either,” Daisy said.

  Susan nudged her. “Don’t be too sure. With the vibes I’m feeling between you and Dio
n, I’m thinking you might have yourself a white picket fence and a couple sweet little babies before you turn thirty.”

  “Susan!” Daisy’s fair skin went pink. “That is so not happening.”

  Fern’s memory conjured up the speedy way Daisy had contacted the handsome African-American police chief and how they’d shared a spontaneous hug when Carlo had come rushing across the frozen pond carrying Mercedes.

  Daisy cleared her throat. “Change of subject. You heard that Carlo needs to adjust the schedule for Mercy’s care, huh?” Her voice was businesslike as she switched into full social worker mode.

  Fern could understand wanting to keep your personal life to yourself. “Yeah, only I don’t quite understand what happened. When’s the custody hearing?”

  “Um, unless there’s a problem, there’s not going to be one.”

  Fern frowned at Daisy. “Why not?”

  “Didn’t he tell you he’s not fighting for sole custody anymore? That he wants to do joint custody?”

  “Nooo,” Fern said as her world spun.

  “You’re kidding.” Daisy stared at her, then slapped her own forehead. “I’m so sorry, Fern. I should have told you, but I assumed that the two of you had talked it through. All we need to do is finalize the arrangements, figure out what days she’s with you and what days she’s with Carlo. In fact, I have papers for you to sign back at the office, if you’re game.”

  Fern stared at the other woman, stunned. “You mean,” she said faintly, “I can still be Mercedes’s mom?”

  “Yes! Yes! Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  Fern buried her face in her hands, overwhelmed. Just like that, she was back to being Mercedes’s mom. She had everything she’d hoped for. Only...

  She felt a hand gently rubbing her shoulders from one side, and heard Daisy slide her chair over from the other. She looked up to see both women leaning toward her, concerned expressions on their faces.

  “Are you okay?” Susan asked. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  She nodded quickly, blinking back tears. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I get to mother that wonderful child. Even after I screwed up so bad at skating.”