Heart Echoes

by Sally John

  “What?”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Sorry.” She blinked, took a deep breath, shook her head, and exhaled. “Okay, I’m ready now.”

  The drama queen rolled her eyes.

  Teal smiled. “You said something about Baker.”

  “He gave me another birthday gift.”

  “Are you getting spoiled or what?”

  Maiya had become like the mascot of Happy Grounds. Lacey, Will, and his parents had heaped gifts upon her, everything from clothes to books to jewelry. That group of regular customers had given her gift certificates to a bead shop and a nail salon. Baker promised her dinner at a pricey gourmet restaurant, an evening out which she insisted was not a date.

  Maiya gave a wan smile. She’d been into wan all day. It fit heartbroken so well.

  Teal couldn’t help but grin. Yes, her daughter was lovable, even in the throes of adolescence.

  Maiya lowered her head and unfolded the paper she held. “If I can’t meet my dad, who’s the next best to meet?”

  The room tilted, Teal’s stomach with it, and her smile disappeared.

  Maiya looked at her. “My grandfather,” she whispered. “Baker found Dutch. It’s not that hard to do online.” She lifted the paper, the familiar print of Google directions clear on it. “Here’s the address. He lives just up the coast, ninety miles. He works at a golf course.”

  “Oh, Maiya.” She shook her head.

  “You don’t have to come. Baker will take me.”

  Teal kept shaking her head.

  Maiya cried, “He’s your dad! How can you not want to see him? Gran told me she couldn’t keep in touch with him when you were little. Owen wouldn’t allow her to. Maybe Dutch wanted to be in your life, but he didn’t have a chance.”

  “He could have tried harder. At this point, it’s water over the dam.”

  “Mom! At least you can think about it. I know you don’t want to, but what about me? Can’t you do it for my sake?”

  The verbal dart hit its mark. Teal felt a burning deep inside her mother’s heart. She cleared her throat. “I will think about it.”

  Maiya threw her arms around her. “Thank you.”

  Teal watched her hurry from the back room, her fist high in the air, a resounding yes whispered as she brought down her arm.

  Teal had no thought but to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. She ducked through the back door and ran down the alley. As if of their own accord, her feet carried her two blocks to the beach and onto Warrior Rock.

  She climbed, panting, her chest burning, her ears ringing.

  Go see Dutch?

  How could Maiya think of such a thing, let alone suggest it? Let alone find the address! How many times did she have to explain it to her? He had never been a dad. He certainly was not about to be a grandfather.

  The afternoon wind whipped her hair, the air cool despite the sunshine. Holding her cardigan shut, she crossed the deserted top of the rock to the far side and made her way down to the crook of the giant’s arm. She sank onto the damp ground.

  And then she fell apart.

  What had she done? How much longer could she inflict this pain on her daughter, hiding behind one excuse after another?

  The truth was . . .

  She wiped tears from her face and stared out at the ocean and forced herself to admit the truth she had been ignoring for almost a week.

  The truth was, Maiya had met her paternal grandparents the day William and Nora Janski arrived.

  And oh! They were everything Maiya could ever want in a grandma and grandpa. Nora surpassed Randi in all departments, from loving to creative. William was solid and he was there in person.

  “Oh, God, I am so sorry.” She blubbered. “I am so sorry.”

  Not only was she cheating Maiya, she was cheating the Janskis. She was cheating Will and Lacey.

  And she was cheating Cody Janski.

  He should have had a clue, though. No, it was not as glaring as the clue Dutch had carried with him for decades, but he had enough dots to connect and see the picture.

  Cedar Pointe fed on town gossip. He would have heard the latest. “Teal Morgan is pregnant. Nope, don’t know the father.” That was point B. He could have backed up to point A: “We had sex.”

  Once Lacey and Will dated and married, they would have fed him with family news throughout the years. “Teal’s baby girl is two. Teal’s a lawyer. Teal bought a house. Teal got married.” She herself got regular updates. “Cody and Dylan were in a car accident. . . . Cody is absolutely crazy now. He’s in jail for five months. . . . Cody got a military waiver; he’s a Marine. He’s a sergeant. He’s married. He’s got a son, named him Dylan.”

  Yada, yada, yada.

  How could she tell anyone before telling him?

  Now Maiya had stopped asking to know his name. She was holding Teal to her promise to reveal his identity after they got home.

  After they got home. After her daughter had spent weeks with her family, not knowing who they were.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?”

  No answer came.

  Why would one? If it were true that God could not look upon sin, then He could not look upon her, could not hear her. She was sin incarnate. A despicable excuse for a human being. If the giant flung her into the sea, it would be a good thing.

  Teal pulled her knees up to her face and wrapped herself in the cardigan. The bottom of her jeans and the back of her sweater were damp. She shivered, chilled to the bone, chilled to her very soul. She sat like that, waiting for the tears to stop.

  They always did stop, and her giant had yet to toss her into the ocean.

  Chapter 37

  LOS ANGELES

  “Teal, love . . .” Just in the door from the airport, cell phone at his ear, River dropped his duffel bag on the family room floor and sank onto the couch. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do.”

  He stretched out his legs and leaned back. Teal had phoned him as he drove home. He had listened without comment to her talk about Maiya’s latest request and their plan to visit Teal’s father, Dutch Morgan.

  Why hadn’t he followed his gut feeling and insisted the three of them get in the car and start driving back that very day?

  He said again, “No, you don’t have to do this.”

  “River, it’s the least I can do for her.”

  “Why not do the most? The best?”

  Teal said nothing.

  “It’s simple. You set her down and tell her the circumstances under which she was conceived. You tell her his name. Anyone else involved is not your responsibility.”

  Still she did not respond.

  Which was fine with him. The entire weekend she’d been aloof, preoccupied, and even nervous. Now on the phone, he had begun to hear a coldness so icy it sent a chill through him.

  He wanted to blame the intensity of facing her past head-on, but her voice was not the one spoken in determination. Nor was it her confident business tone that exuded a trace of warmth no matter what.

  No, this came from some deep, dark part of herself that he did not know.

  That he did not want to know.

  It wasn’t like Bio Dad’s identity was all that difficult to figure out. Why the big deal? She had indicated it was because other people were affected.

  Which meant Mr. Secret Dude was close to them figuratively and literally, as in the same room. The Janskis fit the criteria.

  Only one question remained: was it Cody or the dead cousin, Dylan? Dead would have been easy to tell Maiya years ago. Dylan’s parents were not in Cedar Pointe. Dylan had no relationship with Lacey.

  Three strikes.

  He’d give it one more shot. “You don’t even have to tell me. Just talk straight to Maiya before it’s too late.”

  “We’ll go up tomorrow.”

  “Teal.” He tilted the phone so it would not catch his exasperated grunt. He raised an
arm and let it drop heavily to his thigh.

  “Sorry, River, I can only do the least.”

  He heard the ice in her voice again and bit back a sharp rebuke. What she needed was heat. “I love you. I feel bad that I can’t be there, but you know I’ll be praying.”

  “Yeah, thanks. I better go. I have a million things to do before tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Bye.”

  “Good night.”

  He did not move from the couch. Again he felt like he had on the day of the earthquake when he lay on the garage floor and could not move from the bins on top of him. What pressed against him now were waves of emotions.

  He truly did love Teal. He loved her with every fiber of his being. He would never stop giving her one more shot. But he was powerless to convince her to trust him with her grief.

  “Lord, take care of her. Please.”

  Why wouldn’t she tell Maiya about Cody? All that nonsense about others being involved was just a plain old excuse.

  Ohhh, no. Something else was at work here.

  Apparently none of those others had a clue. Cody did not inform them that Teal’s baby was his. Throughout the years, Cody never mentioned it, not even after his major turnaround into the good guy who paid his dues. From what River had heard about him, he would have gone back to pick up the pieces of his life. He would have contacted Teal and said, “I owe you.” He would have wanted to apologize to Maiya.

  But he could not do any of those things because he did not know. Teal never told him.

  She was just digging a deeper hole for herself.

  And why the fixation now on Dutch? What could she possibly gain from confronting someone who walked out of her life when she was three years old?

  River remembered a photo Randi had shown him of Teal as a little girl. She was cute and appeared feisty even then, her head tilted in the way so familiar to him.

  Something must have died in her the day her dad left.

  Like Maiya, a piece was missing. Maybe once she found it, she could help Maiya find hers. Maybe then she would get off this delusional path where she thought she could control everyone and keep herself intact.

  “Did You get that, Lord?”

  He shut his eyes. Already the house felt too empty of life. He had nowhere else to turn but to God.

  “I want my girls back.” Preferably the way they were before the earthquake.

  Secrets and all?

  “Maybe.”

  Chapter 38

  NORTH OF CEDAR POINTE

  According to Maiya, Sea West Golf Resort was a fairly recent development. It was located ninety-three miles up the coast, midway between two small towns, filling a large tract from the highway to the ocean. They should be there in a couple of hours.

  Teal drove. The feel of the steering wheel under her white knuckles gave a sense of control on a day that was in reality totally out of her hands.

  Not far outside of Cedar Pointe, Maiya must have picked up on the tension. “Hey, no worries, Xena.”

  Teal grimaced. Xena? Warrior mode was out of the question. Even grown-up-woman mode seemed beyond her reach. Her stomach was a knotted fist. Her mind was shut down, unable to respond to Maiya’s enthusiastic chatter. She drove on autopilot.

  “Remember, Mom, everyone’s rooting for us. Baker, Aunt Lacey, Uncle Will, William, Nora, Riv, and Gran.”

  Maiya had told the others the previous night while Teal, alone in the cottage, worked on the Walton case, avoiding everyone’s reactions to her crazy decision.

  “And Gran!” Maiya said in astonishment. “Can you believe her being excited about this? I bet she probably still loves him in a way. You know, I absolutely hate, hate, hate Jake Ford right now, but I’ll always have a soft spot for him. That’s love, isn’t it?”

  “Mai, can we not talk for a while?”

  Maiya leaned forward to look Teal in the face. “You okay?”

  “I’m a mother who just asked her teenager to quit talking. No, I’m not okay.”

  “Well, let’s just soak in some good thoughts, shall we?”

  Teal gripped the steering wheel more tightly. She had heard Nora Janski say that exact same phrase the other day when Randi was going off on some negative tangent.

  Maiya popped in a CD of worship music, quit talking, and sang along, her voice as soothing as any mother’s to a child.

  The two hours passed. Teal’s stomach remained knotted, but her knuckles turned pink.

  Maiya pointed to a sign. “There it is.”

  Teal flipped the turn signal, slowed, and considered making a U-turn at the wide entrance. There was no traffic either direction.

  Maiya turned off the CD player. “How you doin’, Mom?”

  Teal blinked and drove onto the pristine asphalt drive. No clubhouse or fairway were yet in sight, just cloudless blue sky and rolling hills of grasses and conifers painted every shade of green. “I’m okay.”

  “Way to be, Xena!” She chucked Teal on the shoulder.

  Teal gave her a small smile. The whole thing could be over and done with in twenty minutes.

  At the top of a rise, the ocean came into view, white water and distant ultramarine. A golf course lay above it. Tucked off to one side was a castlelike stone structure with wings.

  Maiya let out a low whistle. “Wow. Uncle Will said this place makes him want to take up golf. I get it now. I want to take up golf, and it seems like the dumbest sport in the world.” She was back to magpie mode. “Mom, valet parking is that way.”

  “We’ll park ourselves.” She was not about to give up her keys. The only other thing she could control was being able to make a hasty retreat.

  They found their way from the visitors’ parking lot along a path through exquisite grounds to the main entrance. Inside was a maze of shops, restaurants, nooks, and crannies.

  Maiya squeezed her elbow. “Mom, he’s director of golf-tournament sales in a place like this. He’s gotta be a decent guy, don’t you think?”

  Teal saw expectancy in her daughter’s beautiful eyes and pushed aside her own anxieties. She was doing this for Maiya, but . . . but what if Dutch Morgan was a decent guy? Could there be the teensiest possibility that he would be interested in seeing his daughter? She had never imagined such a thing.

  A small bubble of hope fizzed in her chest.

  The information desk attendant sent them to a grouping of offices where a receptionist greeted them. She was a friendly young woman wearing a headset.

  “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Morgan?”

  “No.” They had decided against phoning ahead. If he were an ogre, he’d deny them a meeting and they’d miss the chance to at least see him in person. “We’re family visiting from out of town and just wanted to pop in and say hello.”

  “He’s in a meeting but should return in half an hour or so. May I have your name?”

  Teal hesitated. Her own name would warn him. The surname would catch his attention. “Maiya Morgan.”

  The woman wrote it down. “If you’d like, there’s a coffee shop across the way.”

  “We’ll wait here.” If she ducked out now, she’d surely lose the momentum that had gotten her this far.

  “That’s fine. I’ll let him know you’re here so he won’t head somewhere else. He’s a busy man.”

  Teal smiled. Evidently for thirty-four years.

  They sat on a couch and tried to act normal. Maiya picked up a golf magazine and Teal breathed one shallow breath after another.

  Why had her father never come back? How could he not come back to the three-year-old clinging to his leg? “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Memories flooded her. He had strong shoulders, and she rode on them when her legs tired as they hiked up and down the trails and to the top of Warrior Rock. He showed her how to gently handle the starfish exposed at low tide. He taught her to ride her yellow bike with training wheels. He was a good whistler.

  She should tell Maiya these things. Maybe after today s
he could.

  Her stomach hurt.

  People came and went from unseen offices. Miss Receptionist spoke on the phone.

  Teal checked her watch. She straightened her black jacket, her skirt, her mauve silk shell. She picked a piece of lint from Maiya’s flouncy brown skirt. They had dressed up for the occasion.

  She checked her watch.

  An eternity passed.

  Thirty-four minutes later, one minute per year of separation, he walked in, Dutch Morgan, in the flesh.

  Teal’s heart boomed.

  He talked with the receptionist, his back to them. He was stocky, not as tall as she remembered. His hair was still black, cut short in business style. He wore an emerald-green polo shirt and khakis. When he turned around, she would see her own gray eyes.

  Teal elbowed Maiya, who was already staring at him as if she intuited who he was.

  He turned, and she saw her gray eyes and her long nose and her broad cheeks and her easy-to-look-at face.

  He walked over to them, a half smile on his face. “Megan Morgan?” He extended his hand toward Teal. “Do I know you?”

  She stood and pointed to Maiya. “This is Maiya.” She smiled and held out her hand, overwhelmed with a sudden urge to touch her father, to feel his hand around hers. “I’m Teal.”

  His hand and his smile dropped. The brows drew together. “Is this a joke?”

  “Excuse me? Why would anyone joke about being me?” Teal spoke in her distinct, polite tone of voice, the same one that carried well in a courtroom.

  He glanced at the receptionist, who hurriedly looked down, and then he motioned for them to follow him.

  She exchanged a curious look with Maiya.

  He ushered them into a sizable office, shut the door behind them, and stepped over to stand beside his desk, as if he needed the barrier. Behind him a huge window framed a breathtaking view of golf course and ocean.

  Arms crossed, he did not invite them to sit. “What exactly do you want?”

  A dozen replies scrambled in her mind, but Teal went speechless.

  Maiya said, “I wanted to meet my grandfather.”

  “And you think I’m him?”

  “I know you’re him. You’re Duane Upton Morgan, my mother’s biological father. You were married in Cedar Pointe to Miranda Simpson Morgan Pomeroy.”