Once Around

by Barbara Bretton

  She couldn't get comfortable. Jinx's snoring was too loud to ignore and to add insult to injury, the baby woke up and decided it was time, for calisthenics. She sipped some tea, flipped through the book. She found the story unsettling. This wasn't the time to read about a group of men who kick off the confines of real life and hit the road like a group of aging Peter Pans. No, it wasn't the right time at all.

  She must have fallen off to sleep at last because suddenly she realized ninety minutes had slipped by and she was late for the reading of Miriam's will. She quickly brushed her hair and her teeth, put her shoes back on, then headed across the lawn once again toward the main house. These things never started on time. They were probably all still eating Ginny's tuna casserole and reminiscing.

  The kitchen was quiet except for the whir of the dishwasher. She moved into the hallway. No sign of anyone. She heard a faint rumble of voices coming from the living room—no, wait. The library. She hurried down the hall and ended up face-to-face with a closed door.

  "... my sister Agnes, my portfolio of stocks and bonds with the proviso that she..."

  Oh, great. They were already deep into the bequests. She couldn't barge into the room now. She barely knew Miriam. Joining them now would be a sign of disrespect, and that's the last thing she wanted. She could hear everything from out here. Maybe she'd just stay and listen so she'd be there for Rafe when it was over.

  #

  Rafe was paying minimal attention to the proceedings. The funeral had been bad enough. Listening to Miriam speak from the grave was too damn sad. She'd thought of everyone from Ginny to Dr. Van Lieuw to her family. He didn't want anything from her. She'd already given him more than any parent ever could have given a natural-born child. She'd given him friendship and guidance and a kick in the butt when he needed it. She'd given him a home and the sense of family.

  He could move on now with only his memories and not feel cheated. He had Molly and the baby, and that was enough for any man.

  The lawyer turned his attention toward Rafe. "And now we come to Rafael Garrick, who is the son God granted me late in my life. Rafe has been my son, my friend, my defender. Knowing him, watching him grow roots, I want those roots to continue to grow, and so..."

  Rafe's brain shut down. He couldn't hear over the roar inside his head. Miriam had left him the carriage house free and clear,

  "Mr. Garrick;" the lawyer broke in. "Did you hear what I said?"

  Rafe shook his head. He was beyond speech, All he could think of was telling Molly the news.

  "There's more to this bequest."

  Miriam had left him more than the carriage house: She'd left him the main house and grounds and prepaid taxes.

  He glanced around the room, expecting to see anger and resentment. He saw nothing but happiness.

  "'All I ask of Rafael is that he approach my family if the time comes when he chooses to sell any or all of the above-named properties.'"

  He nodded again. He would do that. It was the right thing. Anyone could see that. "You have my word."

  "There's one final item," the lawyer said. He withdrew a long white envelope from his briefcase. Rafe could see his name neatly typed in the center. "Let me go back to Miriam's words." He cleared his throat and continued. "'I know that you have tried more than once to find Sarah with no success. I've found your daughter, Rafael. Now it's up to you to learn how to be a father.'"

  #

  Thirty minutes later, the reading of Miriam's will was completed. Rafe felt as if he'd run head first into a brick wall. A gold-plated brick wall, but a brick wall no matter how you looked at it. His daughter. His baby Sarah. The envelope in his hand contained her new name and address and a photo. She was beautiful like her mother, with shiny brown curls and a big white-toothed smile. He saw himself in her straight nose and high cheekbones and maybe in the expression in her big blue eyes. It was hard to say. This lovely young girl had little in common with the baby he'd held years ago. This lovely young girl was a stranger.

  "A lot of changes for you today,. Rafael. Miriam's lawyer extended his hand in farewell. "I wish you the best."

  Rafe edged toward the door. All he wanted was to find Molly. If he felt shell-shocked, he could only imagine what the news would have done to her if she'd heard it cold like that. He was glad she was in the carriage house, asleep. That would give him time to find the right words to make her understand something he didn't understand himself.

  He'd waited too long to tell her. He knew that now. Sarah had always been his darkest secret As the years went by, he found it more and more difficult to understand why he'd ever let her out of his life, why he'd believed he had no rights in the matter. Why he'd believed a father didn't matter.

  How did you tell that to the woman you loved? He felt as if she'd been in his life since the beginning of time, but that wasn't the case. They'd bridged the gap from acquaintances to lovers in one random heartbeat, and he still hadn't found the moment or the words to tell her about Sarah.

  Leave it to Miriam to force his hand.

  She'd given him a home and now she was giving him back his daughter.

  It was up to him to bold onto Molly and her baby.

  The door to the carriage house was open. That wasn't like Molly. She checked and double-checked doors and windows. He felt a cold knot form deep in his gut. He took the stairs two at a time and ran down the hall to the bedroom. Jinx was sprawled, sleeping, in the middle of the mattress. There was no sign of Molly. He saw his old copy of On the Road facedown near her pillow and he saw his snapshot of newborn Sarah.

  No reason to be concerned. It could be his niece or his godchild. She wouldn't take off because a snapshot of a baby girl fell out of an .old book. Not unless she knew who the baby girl was.

  He threw himself back down the stairs and outside. His truck was gone. Why hadn't he noticed that before? She must have grabbed the keys from his jacket pocket and hit the road herself.

  Maybe she needed something from the store, decaf teabags or honey or those sesame seed bagels she loved. Maybe she got tired of waiting for him and went out for a ride. There was always the possibility that she'd slept longer than she'd planned and felt funny about joining them in the middle of the proceedings.

  But it wasn't any of those things.

  She'd heard about Sarah and she was gone.

  #

  Molly drove for hours. She followed the river north, then when darkness fell she turned around and followed it back down south. She stopped for gas not far from Stockton. Three dollars' worth. That was all she could find stuck in the empty ashtray. She'd left her purse back at the carriage house along with her money, not to mention her license. If she made a left and followed that curving road she'd be back where she'd started from, at the carriage house with Rafe. If only she could turn back the clock, as easily.

  She couldn't drive forever. It was late, and exhaustion was beginning to slow her reflexes. She knew that even if she' could drive forever, she still wouldn't be able to outrace her thoughts.

  Rafe had a daughter.

  She tried to comprehend the words and came up short each time. He had a child. A baby girl. He'd pressed his lips to another woman's pregnant belly, felt the baby kick beneath his hand, said and done all the thing she'd said and done with her. Things she'd believed he was doing for the first time. She could have lived with all of that. They'd both been married before. They both had histories. If he'd told her, she could have lived with it, made his child part of her life.

  But his child wasn't part of his life.

  Rafe had walked away from his daughter the same way Robert had walked away from their unborn child. He'd turned and walked out: the door, and he needed a dead woman's persistence to remind him he was a father.

  It didn't make any sense. None of this characterized the man she knew. The man she knew understood what love meant. He understood about commitment and loyalty. His relationship with Miriam was proof of that.

  He'd found Molly at the darkest
moment of her life, when she thought she'd lost everything that mattered. He was the one who caught her when she fell. She hadn't been looking for him. She'd tried her best to maintain her distance, but he'd showered her with passion and warmth and kindness until she forgot why she'd ever held back. She'd learned more about love and generosity in her few months with him than she had in all of her years with Robert.

  Funny thing, though, either way she ended up alone.

  Her three dollars' worth of gas didn't get her very far. The needle flirted with Empty, and she knew she'd run out of options. She had no choice but to go home. How she was going to get in the house was another story. Her keys were back at the carriage house. She could break a window or try to pick the lock. If worse came to worst, she could sleep in the truck then call a locksmith in the morning. All she wanted was to make it all the way up Lilac Hill Road without running out of gas.

  The guard waved her through without even looking at her. So much for security. She wasn't about to complain though. She didn't have a single scrap of identification with her.

  All of the houses lay dark and quiet. The windows stared blankly at the street. She loved early evening when lamplight illuminated the rooms, throwing lives into sharp relief. She used to walk the length and breadth of the subdivision, pausing in front of different houses as she pretended to tie the laces on her running shoes so she could look inside the windows and see how families worked. Because she really didn't know: She'd grown up in chaos that she'd accepted as normal family life. Family life with Robert had been more like partnership in a small, moderately successful law firm. She'd been on the outside, looking in at her whole life. She didn't want that for her baby. She wanted warmth and laughter and so much love that her child wouldn't have to stand in front of other people's windows at' dusk and pretend she was part of a family.

  She made the turn onto Lilac Hill Road. She hated the thought of that big empty house. No Rafe. No Jessy. No Jinx. Nothing but four thousand square feet of broken dreams.

  Not like the carriage house.

  Forget about the carriage house. That part of your life is over: It's time to move on.

  He hadn't even bothered to come after the truck. She'd kept an eye on the rearview mirror all night, expecting an irate Rafe to come swooping down on her for stealing his pickup; but she supposed he had other things on his mind now. Like the daughter he'd left behind.

  The first thing she noticed was the strange car in her driveway. A late-model Caddy with New Jersey plates. She didn't know anyone who drove a car like that She parked next to it then climbed down from the truck. Had Robert decided to retaliate by sending somebody around to scare some sense into her? She felt more angry than scared. She'd lost as much as she was willing to lose without a fight. She had started up the walkway when she realized what she was seeing. A small candle flickered at the living room window. The curtains were pulled wide, and she could make out the shapes of the sofa and chairs behind the candle.

  Fear and anger and elation all filled her heart, Only one person would place a welcoming candle in the window. Only one man knew what it meant.

  The door was unlocked. That didn't surprise her. He always thought of everything. Well, almost everything. He had forgotten to tell her about his daughter.

  She stepped into the foyer. He was standing to the left of the staircase in the same spot she'd first seen him months ago.

  "Here," she said, as she tossed him the car keys. "Thanks for the lift."

  "I brought you your purse and house keys," he said. His voice was level, his tone neutral. "They're on the kitchen table."

  "Thank you," she said.

  She started toward the kitchen. He stepped in front of her.

  "Don't," she said, her voice low. "It's too late."

  "I'd been trying to find a way to tell you," he said. "I didn't expect Miriam would do it for me."

  "'Molly, I have a daughter. Molly, I walked out on her.'" She met his eyes. "See? That wasn't so hard. Eleven words, and you've told me everything I need to know."

  "That's not how it was."

  "I heard the whole thing, Rafe," she snapped. "You didn't even know where your daughter was until this afternoon."

  "There's a reason for that."

  "I'll bet there is," she said with a harsh laugh. "Indifference. Disinterest. Fatherhood. Pick one."

  "I made a mistake."

  "Of course you did," she said, pushing past him. "That's a good way to describe it. A mistake. Robert tried that one with me. It didn't work for him either."

  "I want to tell you the story."

  "I don't want to hear it."

  "Don't shut me out, Molly. Don't do this."

  "Shut up," she said, storming into the kitchen. "I don't give a damn about your story. Your story doesn't mean anything to me."

  "I'm admitting I made a. mistake. If you'd stop and listen to—"

  She grabbed her keys and purse from the table. "I put a new tape in the answering machine," she said, gesturing toward the telephone. "Leave a message, and maybe I'll get back to you."

  He reached for her, but she darted past him and hurried toward the front door. If he touched her, she didn't know what she would do. Hit him. Cling to him. Either choice was wrong. If she touched him, she'd be doomed. She wanted to put as much distance between them as she possibly could and she wanted to do that now, before she could think or wonder or long for all the things that were impossible right from the start. Nothing was forever, not love or hope or happiness.

  She swung open the front door.

  "It's easy to leave, isn't it, Molly'?"

  She tried to leave, but his words stopped her cold. She heard him walking toward her and yet she stood with her hand on the doorknob and she didn't move.

  "Nothing hard about walking out the door." He was so close she could feel his breath against her cheek. "Nothing so tough about leaving."

  "Shut up," she whispered. "I don't care what you have to say."

  "Staying is what's hard, Molly."

  The baby kicked hard against her left ribs, and the surprise pushed her into action again. She stepped out onto the front porch.

  "Karen was pregnant when we got married."

  Why wouldn't he let her go? Why was he still talking and talking when she'd told him she didn't care?

  "I loved her and was glad to find a reason to get her to finally accept my proposal. We were both too young—I can see that now—but I thought I was in love enough for both of us."

  She gripped the porch railing. "I know that feeling," she whispered, despite herself. She'd believed that she loved Robert enough to make up for the fact that he didn't love her the way she'd dreamed about being loved.

  Rafe had been overjoyed by his wife's pregnancy. He'd shared doctor's visits and Lamaze classes, he'd been there in the labor and delivery rooms, coaching and breathing and exulting when his baby daughter came into the world and he cut the cord then held her slippery body in his trembling hands.

  She could see the blood and the triumph. She could feel his love and his joy. He was describing her own dreams with one important difference; she never would have left them behind.

  "You still walked away from her," Molly said as he joined her on the porch. "For all of that, you still walked out the door. How much does that bond mean if you were able to leave your wife and daughter? You're no different than my father or Robert. You say all the right things but sooner or later, you all walk out that door."

  "You've got it all wrong, Molly." He took her hands in his.

  "The hell I do." She tried to pull away from him but he held her fast. "I heard what the lawyer said, Rafe. Your daughter must be what, ten years old by now? You didn't even know where she was. Miriam had to hire a private investigator to find her. She had to force you publicly to reconnect with your own child."

  "Karen walked out on me. She took the baby and she walked. I wanted my child, I wanted to hang onto my daughter, but Karen told me I was being unfair. Sarah wasn't
even a year old yet, she said. Karen had another guy waiting in the wings. She wanted to build a life with him, and I'd only complicate matters for Sarah."

  She doesn't even know you, his wife had told him. She'll never miss you. She doesn't need you.

  "You should've known better," Molly said, as her eyes filled with tears. "How could you believe such a thing?"

  But that was all he knew of family life. His mother had killed herself when he was a little boy, and his father's position in the family was one of resentment and anger. It was hard to believe you mattered when all you'd heard your entire life was how worthless you were, how unimportant, how goddamn good for nothing.

  "I couldn't give Sarah any of the things this other guy could give her. I lived on a broken-down ranch. I had no prospects: My life was going to be the same as my old man's and his old man's before him. Karen wanted better than that for herself and Sarah. Hell, I wanted better for them.. How could I blame .her for that?"

  He'd seen enough kids pulled between parent's after a messy divorce. They ended up straddling two homes, two sets of expectations, and failing both.

  Molly saw herself in his words. He was describing her adolescence, her teen years, when she'd needed a stable family life and had to marry in order to achieve it.

  "I thought I was doing the right thing for Sarah,— he said. "I thought she'd have all the things she deserved, the kind of life a little girl dreams about. That's why I did it. I thought I was doing the best thing for her."

  A year later Karen had moved on to husband number three and had headed west toward California with Sarah in tow.

  "She used to send me one photo a month. That stopped once she got to California. I never heard directly from her again." A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched as he obviously struggled for control.

  "You could have hired a private investigator," Molly said. She knew she sounded harsh, but there was so much riding on his answer. Three lives hung in the balance.