by Helen Conrad
“Hurt?” The doctor had overheard him. “Good heavens, no.”
Carly smiled in relief. “We did promise that we would stay with him the entire time. He had rather a bad experience with the last testing.”
The doctor waved a hand in the air. “No problem. Shall we begin?” He rose and ushered them from his office into the examining room.
An hour later they were back in the office, sitting just as they had sat before. Dr. Kenton cleared his throat and shuffled papers before looking across his desk and smiling.
“From the preliminary tests, I think I can state with some confidence that Jeremy does indeed have damage to his hearing.”
Carly found Jeremy’s hand curling into hers and she held it very tightly and reached over to pull him closer.
“Tell us the truth, Doctor,” Joe said. “Don’t hold back. We want to know everything so we will know what we can do to deal with it.”
He nodded and took off his glasses. “There are obstructions in the middle-ear canals in both of Jeremy’s ears. This looks like a congenital defect to me, though further tests may prove me wrong. I’m sure this has caused him much trouble hearing. Although his hearing isn’t totally gone, evidence suggests that it varies according to the time of day, the temperature, his mood, etcetera.”
“Yes,” said Carly, nodding. “That was what it seemed like to me.”
Joe shrugged and put out his hands, palms up, all his fears and hopes right there in that gesture. “What can we do?”
Dr. Kenton leaned forward. “There is a delicate surgical operation that may help restore his hearing to seventy-five or eighty percent of normal. There is some risk involved. I’ll go over the details with you at our next meeting, when we have all the results in and can talk more confidently. For now, let me just say I think we can do something to help Jeremy. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
Carly hugged Jeremy to her, looking over his head into Joe’s eyes. They smiled at one another, and Jeremy’s arms came around her neck. Tears threatened. She had to blink fast.
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said shakily. “Thank you very much.”
Surgery was scheduled for the week after Jeremy’s birthday. Carly knew she would be staying at least that long. But staying for what? Sometimes she wondered. There were days when Joe was the lover most women could only dream of—gentle, kind, loving and passionate. And then there were days when his eyes were distant and he answered questions with grunts or shrugs. When he was like that, she had no idea what he was thinking.
She loved him with a depth and a conviction that she hadn’t known was possible. There were times when she was sure he loved her too, though he never said it in so many words. The strange thing was, though she was closer than ever to the children, Joe seemed to be receding from her more and more some days.
He brought in his avocado crop with no real problems and it did beautifully on the market. He was gone for a few days, setting up the sales, and when he came back, he seemed distracted. She began to notice frequent absences. She couldn’t understand it. They were so happy when they were together. But so often he was gone, and he didn’t seem to have any good explanation for where he had been or what he was doing. Where was he going?
She had no idea. But now and then she would catch him looking at her with a strange, questioning look. If he would just go ahead and ask her the question that was bothering him, she would have tried her damnedest to answer it. But he never came right out and said what he had to say.
As Jeremy’s birthday moved closer, a feeling of dread began to build in the pit of her stomach. How much longer could she stay? How much longer would he want her?
Joe was cleaning out his closet. He pulled each one of Ellen’s dresses off its hanger and stuffed it unceremoniously into a big plastic bag. The Goodwill had been called. These last remnants of Ellen and her reign of terror were about to be tossed out on their collective ear.
Once these rags were gone there would be very little left to remind him of Ellen. When you came right down to it, she hadn’t exactly put her stamp on this place, or their lives in it.
He turned and looked at the big double bed where Carly often met him late at night when they were sure the children were asleep. Things happened in that bed now that he had never dreamed of when Ellen was sharing it with him. Having Carly made him feel whole again. She’d changed his life.
But if she left... The thought brought on pains in his chest so severe that he sometimes wondered if he were having a heart attack. He couldn’t lose her. She couldn’t leave.
She was proving to him by the day that she wasn’t like Ellen, that she could stick it out here. In fact, she claimed she loved this life, and he almost believed her. If only he could just let go of that last bit of distrust.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but every time he got ready to say the words, they stuck in his throat. He couldn’t just tell her. Words meant nothing. Ellen had taught him that. Words were cheap. He had to do something to prove it to her, to show her—to make him worthy of having her stay. He’d made a bargain with himself. If he couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t ask her. It was as simple as that.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Millie announced as she barged into the kitchen, her arms full of a beautifully decorated sheet cake. “This is the third cake I’ve baked for this boy. I am not baking another one, no matter what happens to it.”
Carly helped her put it down on the kitchen table. “What happened to the others?” she asked.
“The first one I set down on the kitchen counter to cool. Before I’d even iced it, Trevor’s pet raccoon found it. Little paw prints everywhere. You should have seen my kitchen.” She shook her head in sad remembrance.
“I went right to the store and bought more eggs and flour, went home and started on another one. This time I locked up the raccoon. I frosted the whole thing, wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ and everything, and was carrying it out to the car about ten this morning to bring it over. I had to put it down on the ground while I cleared some stuff off the back seat, where I was going to put it. And Skippy, that damn horse, backed right into it. Squashed it flat.”
“Oh no!”
“You wouldn’t believe what it looked like! I left it right there in the middle of the driveway and went back into the house and started again. But Carly...” She gripped her arm. “This is it. There won’t be anymore.”
Carly laughed and turned to help Trevor who was bringing presents in from the car. She loved to watch him, the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he flipped his hair back off his face. He was a part of her in a way no other human being would ever be. She found him utterly fascinating.
He’d calmed down a lot, though there were still times when he was moody and she was sure the roots of the emotion lay with the new things he had learned about his mother and father.
“I want to find our dad,” he’d told her one day. “I don’t know where to start looking, though. Do you have any ideas?”
Carly had recoiled from the very thought. “I don’t want to find him,” she’d told her brother. “I figure if he wanted to find me, he would have done it by now. And after all I’ve learned about him, I’m not sure he would be someone I would want to know.”
She could see that he wasn’t convinced, and she didn’t try to argue any further. After all, she of all people should know that you had to do what you had to do about your background. If he had to search, he would.
Millie was outside stringing Chinese lanterns and balloons. Carly smiled. The two of them were almost back on the friendly footing they had enjoyed from the first. There were things Carly would probably never understand. But she wasn’t about to let them stand in the way of a friendship with her brother’s mother.
“Carly, dear, could you please get this necklace? The clasp is too delicate for these old fingers.”
Carly turned obligingly. She was “dear” to Phyllis these days. She suspected it was more a case of “if you can’t beat them...” than
anything else, but she appreciated it. As long as she was here in this house, she knew there would always be something of a tug-of-war between her and Phyllis for Joe’s attention. But the animosity was gone. And that was a relief.
“Beth is going to sing,” Phyllis told her confidentially once her clasp had been fastened. “It’s a surprise she and I cooked up. A little program.”
Carly held back a full expression of her gratified response. This was just what she had been hoping for, that Phyllis would give Beth the benefit of her experience. “Great,” she said, forcing herself to answer casually. “She’s got such a good voice.”
“Of course,” Phyllis replied. “She has my blood in her veins.”
Funny how Phyllis could turn good feelings around in an instant. But Carly didn’t care. Beth was happy, and that was all that was important.
“We’re about to start,” Millie called in. “Where’s Joe anyway?”
Where was Joe? Carly frowned and looked toward the driveway again, wondering that very thing. He’d gone out mysteriously the night before, but he’d promised to be back in time for Jeremy’s party.
Jeremy and what seemed like a couple hundred friends were shrieking and dashing through the yard, making sorties past Beth and Sunny who disdained them with all their might. They were ready for games and ice cream and cake and the opening of the presents. But nothing could begin until Joe got home.
She sighed and walked out into the front yard, looking at the flowers. There were rows and rows of them now. The yard looked quite presentable. And there was a painter hired to begin doing the house next week. Things were changing. Things were getting better.
All except her relationship with Joe. They seemed so near—and yet so far. She loved him so. What was she going to do if it all fell to ashes?
The sound of wheels on gravel brought her head up. Joe’s car was barreling up the drive. She watched it come with her hands on her hips, ready to read him the riot act for this crazy performance.
But there was someone in the car with him, so she knew she was going to have to hold back most of her choicer comments until they were alone. The car came to a stop and Joe got out. He smiled at her, then said something to the man in the passenger’s seat. The passenger door opened and a slender, distinguished-looking gentleman with silver hair got out. But he didn’t come toward her. He stood very still, staring at her, and slowly, she began to realize who this was.
Her hands went up and covered her mouth and she stood as though she were frozen, staring at him. He finally left the protection of the car and walked closer, stopping before her.
“Hello, Carly,” he said in a rich, low voice that triggered a thousand memories from her past. “How are you?”
She looked at him with wonder—his eyes, his ears, the square cut of his fingers, it was all so familiar. And yet it had been so very long since she’d seen him. But there it was—the quirky smile... Trevor had a smile just like that. The way his eyes squinted a little just before he said something—she did that herself. Friends were always commenting on it.
No matter how much she wanted to hate this man, she couldn’t do it.
“Daddy?” she asked softly, her voice trembling, her eyes filling with tears. “Daddy? Is it you?”
His arms came around her and she closed her eyes waiting for heaven to envelop her. How many times had she dreamed of seeing him like this? She’d wanted her daddy’s arms around her, protecting her, loving her. She needed it. Oh, how she needed it.
Great, wracking sobs shook her, and she wasn’t sure why. She was happy. Why was she crying like this? But cry she did, on and on, with the one man in the world who knew how to give her the comfort a little girl needed patting her, holding her, giving her all he had.
“Oh, Daddy.” It was all she could say.
He was crying too. When she finally drew back she could see the wetness on his face, and that made her laugh through her own tears.
“Carly, honey, I never thought I would be able to see you again.”
“Why didn’t you ever try to find me?” she asked, feeling like a little girl, but needing an answer.
His blue eyes clouded. “I didn’t have the right, Carly. After what I did to you and your mother. I moved out to Cambria and started a little newspaper. That’s where I’ve been living ever since, helping run a local church and putting out a hometown newspaper.
She wiped her eyes. “You never remarried?”
He shook his head. “There were things that happened when I lived here that I couldn’t put out of my mind, Carly. I wasn’t able to work through them well enough to leave them behind. They still haunt me.”
She nodded. She liked him. She understood him. “Millie is here,” she told him.
His face clouded. “She won’t want to see me. I have no right to make her see me. I’ll go soon. I don’t want to bring back painful memories. But I would like to see...” His voice trailed off and he looked at Carly expectantly.
“Did Joe tell you about... Trevor?” she asked.
His eyes seemed to shine. “Yes, he did. Is the boy here right now?”
She nodded.
“I’d like to see him. You don’t have to tell him who I am. I’m pretty sure his mother would just as soon he didn’t know. But if I could just see him...” He touched Carly’s cheek, his eyes soft with unshed tears, his voice breaking. “That, along with seeing you, would surely make me a happy man. Happier than I deserve to be.”
She shivered. She did like him. There was no point in trying to fight it. “Come along,” she told him, leading him to the corner of the house, facing the backyard. “There he is, playing catch with that little boy. Why don’t you go on in and say hi?”
He started walking casually toward Trevor and Joe came up beside Carly, putting an arm around her shoulders and drawing her near. “Did I do good?” he asked softly.
Her smile was joyful as she turned to him, tears still spilling out. “You did good,” she said in a choked voice. “But how did you find him?”
He shook his head with a rueful grin. “My mother actually found him for me. You know her and all her contacts.”
“Phyllis? But...does that mean she’s finally accepted that you and Millie will never marry?”
“I couldn’t venture a guess. But she did help me. I got his address and tried to call him, but he didn’t respond. So I took a few trips up the coast to visit with him.” He sighed. “It took long enough to talk him into coming.”
“Why did he hesitate?”
Joe shrugged. “He didn’t think you would be able to forgive him, and he didn’t really know if you should.”
“I do,” she said promptly, surprised herself, but glowing. “He can forget all this guilt. We’ll start over again. I’ve got my father back, and that’s all I care about.”
Joe nodded. “I told him you would feel that way. But he was... afraid, I guess you could say.’’
She nodded, watching her father as he moved slowly across the yard, taking in every detail. “He doesn’t want to see Millie?”
“No. He was adamant about that. He says she deserves to live her life without having to think about him ever again. He thinks she won’t want to see him anyway. What do you think?”
Carly shrugged. “I don’t know. In some ways, I think she would just as soon never see him again. There’s just too much she’s kept secret for too long. But Trevor is another story... look.”
They watched as Trevor spoke to Howard, friendly at first, then suspicious. He turned and looked at Carly’s face, then looked at the tall man again, and realization broke across his expression like the sun clearing away a cloudy day. Howard put out a hand, and Trevor stared at it. Slowly, hesitantly, he accepted it with his own, then looked up into Howard’s eyes, wary, but somehow eager. Carly felt tears pouring out again.
A startled gasp drew the attention of everyone within earshot. Carly turned and saw Millie, standing on the porch, her face as white as a sheet.
She
was going to run. Carly could see it in her face. She looked quickly at Howard. He’d seen it, too, and since he’d said he didn’t want to face her, Carly was afraid he would turn back toward the car. She took a step forward, ready to try and stop him. But she needn’t have bothered.
Seeing Millie seemed to give Howard a surge of youthful power he hadn’t exhibited up to that moment. As Millie turned to escape back into the house, Howard strode quickly toward the porch, taking the steps in two bounds, and stopped her, hands on her shoulders.
“Millie,” he said. “Millie, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you again. But I just had to see Carly, and see... him...”
She stared up at him, her face mirroring her distress.
“Millie,” he said brokenly, his hands sliding down her arms as he began to back away. “Oh Millie, you’re so beautiful, just like you look in my dreams.”
His hands fell away from her and they stared at one another for a long moment.
“I’ll go,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I’ll get out of here, and I won’t bother you again.”
He turned blindly, lurching away, but Millie reached out, moving like a sleepwalker, and took hold of his arm.
“Don’t go,” she whispered, her eyes full of tears.
He turned and looked down at her, his expression becoming reluctantly hopeful. “Do you mean it?”
She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t leave me again, Howard,” she sobbed, and then she was in his arms, and they were both crying.
Carly reached for Joe. His arms came around her and held her tightly. She looked at Trevor, barely making him out through the dampness in her eyes. But she could see that he was grinning. It was going to be all right. They were all going to be all right.
Millie pulled away from Howard, called to Trevor, and the three of them disappeared into the house. Carly sighed and tilted her head back, looking into Joe’s face.
“Why did you do this?” she asked softly.
His arms tightened around her. “Because I love you, pretty lady, and I wanted to do something to prove it.”
