A Father's Quest

by Debra Salonen

  She cleared her throat and let her hand fall to her side. “Let’s not assume anything, Jonas. All anyone—including you—can do is try. Okay?”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  “I hear you are a sweet ride. I mean, I hear you have a sweet ride.” She was so flustered, she nearly tumbled down the steps into his arms. He caught her but kept the contact to a minimum. Thank goodness. Because, technically, until proven otherwise, he was her half brother.

  “WELL, THERE,” REMY SAID, forty-five minutes later. She made a point of brushing her hands together as if to show the end of a difficult job. “That’s done.”

  The test had, in fact, been quick and painless. Sitting in the waiting room, thinking about what the results might mean to each of them was the grueling part. Jonas had clammed up and refused to talk about his daughter because other people were present, so Remy had resorted to bringing him up to speed on everything that had happened to her family over the past decade and a half.

  If he’d been bored, he’d done a good job of hiding his feelings. Something, she realized, he’d always been good at.

  “I don’t know about you, but I need beignets.”

  Jonas snickered. “Fried dough and powdered sugar always was your cure-all, wasn’t it?”

  He remembered. She tried to keep her response casual, even though she was melting inside. He remembered. “I figure if something works, why change it?”

  “Well, you won’t get me into N’Awlins on a Saturday. Too many tourists. But Catfish Haven still has the best pie in town. Would that do ya?”

  She nodded, surprised to hear him name a local diner that had become popular several years after they broke up. If the current owners had been operating it back then, the small, riverside café would have been her and Jonas’s favorite spot.

  “Wouldn’t Jonas love this place?” she’d thought the first time she went there. She’d immediately scolded herself—the way Jessie would have for being a sentimental dope.

  He clicked his remote to unlock the snazzy, still new-smelling car and opened the door for her. “I like your car,” she said.

  “Thanks. I bought it before I left on deployment. Probably sounds stupid, but I wanted to know it was waiting for me when I came home. I kept a photo of the car right beside the one of Birdie. I even made arrangements with a friend to put the thing on blocks and store it until Birdie turned seventeen, if I didn’t make it back.”

  She slid across the fine leather seat and pulled in her legs. The interior was a creamy ivory with gleaming wood accents. Rich and luxurious. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. As soon as he was seated, she said, “My first thought was this is way too elegant for a teenager, but then I noticed the small backseat. Smart dad.”

  She’d been thinking about her older sisters’ ongoing fears about their teens’ budding sexuality when she made the remark, but the serious look on Jonas’s face told her he’d read her comment differently.

  “Yeah, we came pretty close to breaking all the laws of man, society and God in the backseat of my mom’s old Thunderbird, didn’t we?”

  His tone sounded haunted.

  “We were kids, Jonas. Kids make out in the backseats of cars. It’s like a job requirement. A rite of passage.”

  He put the key in the ignition and touched his foot to the gas, making the engine roar impressively. As it idled a moment, he said, “Well, all I can say is it’s a good thing we didn’t start dating until we were seniors.”

  She’d thought the same thing many times, although a part of her secretly regretted not doing that most evil of deeds. She honestly did even though she knew how terribly wrong it was.

  “You were shy.”

  “You were too beautiful. All the guys were intimidated by you. I’ve heard that sometimes the most beautiful girls sit home for prom because nobody dares to ask them out.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up. She knew she was attractive, but beautiful? Hardly. She preferred to blend in—or, at least, hang out in the background. Jessie was the gorgeous one—bold, flamboyant, stylish. She’d always been comfortable in the spotlight—even before her big break in Hollywood.

  “That’s very sweet of you to say. I always figured your friends kept their distance because of my, um, gift.” She made air quotes and said the word with as much scorn as possible to let him know she didn’t consider herself gifted in any way.

  “I might have avoided you when we were younger—in say, junior high—because my male ego didn’t like to be reminded that a girl saved my life, but I never believed any of the things people said about you. That you were spooky or weird or you could put a hex on people you didn’t like.”

  She’d heard every insult imaginable over the years, but she’d learned to laugh them off. “Did you know Serena Sedgwick once offered to pay me a hundred bucks to make Lilly Smiley fail a math test? Apparently the two were in hot competition for some sort of award. Talk about weird.”

  He put the car in gear and pulled onto the street. “Did you do it?”

  He was kidding. She could hear the teasing quality in his voice. She relaxed into the seat and adjusted her sunglasses on her nose. “I thought about it, but, honestly, I didn’t want either one of those girls to win the thing. They were stuck-up brainiacs, who talked down to everybody they considered less intelligent…which was probably everybody.”

  His low, wonderfully masculine chuckle filled the car and settled quite uncomfortably in her low belly. That old attraction—the one Jessie was worried about—blossomed to life like one of those dormant diseases that never truly left your body. Her chicken pox of love had returned as shingles of lust.

  She wiggled to alleviate an itch that lacked one single focal point. Jonas probably noticed her squirming but was too polite to comment. Instead, he pointed out the window. “Hey, isn’t that your mom’s beauty shop? Looks different. New owners?”

  “My sister, Rita Jean, and her husband took it over and gave it a face-lift last year when Mama got sick. It looks nice, doesn’t it? Fresh and pretty. Mama would have liked the changes.”

  They exited Baylorville a few minutes later, pulling onto the highway with a powerful but muted roar of the engine. The car definitely suited him.

  “I saw my first naked breast in Marlene’s House of Beauty,” he said, his tone wistful.

  She turned in the seat to face him. “I beg your pardon?”

  His smirk told her she’d misconstrued his words. He’d probably intended that. “Your mom had more magazines than the library. Including quite a few copies of National Geographic. Do you have any idea how many young boys offered to accompany their moms to the hairdresser simply because of the August 1986 issue?”

  Remy laughed. “I don’t know. One?”

  “Okay. Maybe. But it was a life lesson I’ve never forgotten.”

  Neither spoke for a few miles, until Jonas said, “Your mom was quite a bit younger than my mom, wasn’t she? How’d she die? Cancer?”

  “E. coli. By the time she saw a specialist, the damage to her kidneys was irreversible.”

  “Was she a candidate for a transplant?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but not a great one. She had high blood pressure and diabetes and some chronic arthritis issues she’d never mentioned to any of us. Apparently she had a very high tolerance for pain. Like Jessie.”

  “So, I guess they weren’t able to find a match?”

  “Jessie and I were the closest, but I’d picked up a topical infection at work that would have killed Mama like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And Jessie had all those blood transfusions and skin grafts after the fire. They told us the antibodies she’d developed would have been lethal in Mama’s body. We both felt pretty useless, let me tell you.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  She sighed. “The worst part was the timing. Jessie was in Japan with her stunt team, doing an extreme-sports competition when Mama’s condition worsened. The Bullies were calling and texting her every f
ew hours pushing her to get tested. Jessie didn’t want to risk doing something that might weaken her body when everyone on her team was working so hard to win.”

  “Bummer. Tough call.”

  She looked at him sharply. “Listen, Mr. Judgmental, everyone came down on Jess for not selflessly dropping everything and rushing to Mama’s side, but the fact is Mama ordered her to stay in Japan and finish the competition. Ordered. I was in the hospital room. I heard the whole conversation.”

  “Sorry. But, I always got the impression Jessie and your mom didn’t get along.”

  She relaxed a tiny bit, her temper passing. “That’s true, but, in the end, love trumps old grievances. Jessie came as soon as she could. Some people even accused her of throwing the contest so she could leave Japan, but I think she was so in tune to my pain, she lost focus. I saw the video. It wasn’t pretty.”

  She felt the car begin to slow. Sure enough, she’d been so busy talking she forgot where they were going: Catfish Haven. She’d brought a date here once for breakfast, but he’d balked. “I’m not eating fish for breakfast. That’s disgusting.” That was the last time they went out, actually.

  “I love this place,” she said. “How’d you hear about it? Mostly only locals come here.”

  He looked hurt. “I’m local. I stay in Mom’s house whenever I come for a visit. For a while, I’d sign her out of Shadybrook for a week or two, so she could spend more time with her granddaughter. But there came a point when that wasn’t doing anybody any good.”

  She blew out a low whistle. “I know exactly what you mean. Convincing family members of that is another thing.”

  “Did you interact directly with patients while you worked there?”

  “My official title was Activities Director. But I wore a lot of different hats. The job was never boring, I’ll tell you that much.”

  He got out, opened her door and didn’t speak again until they were seated at a tiny table with two mismatched chairs and a Red Stripe bottle filled with sweet peas on it. He looked over the small menu that every diner was handed when they walked in the door. The availability of certain choices changed, depending on who caught what and when.

  “Sweet tea and a crawfish po’boy, Suzie,” Remy told the waitress, who arrived a few seconds later. “I missed breakfast,” she added for Jonas’s benefit.

  “I’ll have the same,” he said, then turned his attention entirely on Remy.

  She fiddled with the thick, hand-stitched cotton napkin. The place might lack decor, but it had its values straight: good food and nice, big napkins for wiping your hands and mouth. Very little went to waste here.

  Suzie delivered their drinks, along with a plastic basket filled with a golden mound of onion rings and hush puppies. Remy’s favorite. “We didn’t—”

  “On the house,” Suzie said. “We missed you, girlfriend. Where you been?”

  “In South Dakota, actually. With Jessie.”

  Suzie made a horrified face. “At least she brought you home in one piece. Did you see the video of her rolling an SUV?” The waitress, who had been a year or two ahead of the twins in school, shivered. “Holy moly, that girl’s got balls of steel.”

  Remy grinned. “I’ll tell her fiancé you said so.”

  Suzie’s eyes went wide and she squealed loudly. “Fiancé? No way. Do you have any idea how many people in the Bouchard Twins Wedding Pool are going to lose their asses if she gets married before you? You’ve always had better odds. Even after you and—” She looked at Jonas, her eyes widening in recognition. “I’ll shut up, now.”

  Remy reached for an onion ring. “Small towns, what can I say?”

  He didn’t reply. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at her. His attention seemed stalled on her chest. She looked down, wondering if some crumbs had caught in her cleavage or something.

  “Oh,” she said with a small peep.

  He wasn’t studying her breasts like some sort of lecher. He’d noticed her necklace. Or more to the point, the small, oval medallion hanging from her necklace.

  She wiped her greasy fingers on her napkin and caught the medal in her fingers, holding it out so she could see it, too.

  “You still have it.”

  “I never take it off.”

  He seemed surprised, maybe a little perplexed. She didn’t know why. “You gave this to me the day your mother brought you over to say thank you. You told me it was your father’s.”

  He nodded. “I was tossing it down the well when I fell,” he said. “I didn’t mention that part because Mom would have asked why.”

  She waited, hoping he’d tell her why.

  “Dad gave it to me a few months earlier in exchange for my not mentioning to Mom that Dad visited a woman in Morgan City.”

  “A client?” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

  He gave her a look.

  “Dad said she needed his advice about buying a new car. He went into great detail about how she was a divorcée, trying to get her life back together after her lowlife husband took off with all their savings.”

  “But you didn’t believe him.”

  “I believed him…until he gave me his St. Christopher and made me promise not to say anything to Mom. He said this lady was proud and didn’t want people gossiping about her at Marlene’s House of Beauty.”

  He reached across the table and very carefully took the medal in his fingers. “Even at age eight, I knew that was a lie. I knew this woman was the reason my parents fought, and he made me feel guilty, like I was part of this grand deception.”

  She looked down again, frowning. “Darn. I thought of it as my only link to the father I never got to meet, but now I’m not sure I want to wear it anymore. How come you didn’t tell me that when we were dating?”

  He let it drop, but his fingers accidentally brushed her bare skin, and an electrical charge that she remembered all too clearly from their youth passed straight through her chest and down her spine.

  He rolled his neck as if to release any built-up tension. “Ironically, I didn’t want you to think less of me because my father cheated on my mother—and yours.” He gave a harsh, dry laugh, then took a drink of his iced tea.

  She was tempted to take off the necklace, but she didn’t. The cheap, little medal had been her most cherished possession since she was the age of his daughter. She’d had to change the necklace many times, but she always kept the silver oval close to her heart.

  Suzie brought their lunch a minute later.

  “Should I know her?” Jonas whispered as the woman walked away. “She looks vaguely familiar.”

  Her name didn’t ring any bells but she’d seemed to know a great deal about Remy. Of course, Remy had returned to Baylorville after her stint in Nashville, whereas Jonas only visited a couple of times a year.

  “Probably not. She was ahead of us in school. She and my sister, Pauline, play Bunko together.”

  “Pauline…Bing, right? I remember her. Does she still live here?”

  Remy chomped down on a mammoth bite and chewed quite a long time before answering. He had to force himself not to grin. She’d always been a big eater, which had amused him to no end. And yet, she remained as trim as ever, with perfect, lush curves he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes off. Accidentally touching her a few minutes earlier had caused a chain reaction of sensations in areas of his brain that hadn’t seen action in months.

  “Uh-huh. She and hubby number two bought a five-bedroom house across town in that development that nearly went bust when the economy tanked. Mom’s early passing helped her out a lot. Oops. That sounded mean. Bing’s always been toughest on me and Jess. I put it down to birth order. Jessie calls her a greedy bitch.”

  He laughed at that.

  “So,” Remy said between bites. “Tell me about Birdie.”

  Jonas had no idea where to begin. As corny as it sounded, she was the light, breath, color and joy of his life. “There was a big storm the night she was born. The hospital was using a b
ackup generator. The very second Birdie slid into the doctor’s hands, she let out this huge howl and the power came on.” He grinned, remembering the moment. “The staff and doctors all called her Wonder Baby.”

  “Wonder Baby,” she repeated. “I like that.”

  He watched her nibble a golden-brown onion ring. Normally, he could take down a couple of orders by himself, but he hadn’t had an appetite since returning stateside. In Iraq, everyone made long lists of the things they were going to eat or drink or do when they got home. He had one thing only on his list: hug Birdie.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Too long.” Despite all that had happened, he’d felt no rancor toward Cheryl and his marriage until this latest stunt occurred. He’d always told people the situation between them was so complex and overloaded with so many nuances that they both were responsible for how things had ended up. “We had a turbulent relationship that ended in divorce in 2007.”

  “But you shared custody.”

  “In theory. I was the one with the stable job and steady income. Birdie lived with me most of the time, but I tried to fit Cheryl into her life as much as possible.” He always felt like a failure when he talked about the choices he made where his love life was concerned.

  He made himself eat—exactly the way he had in the mess hall in Iraq. Over there, he’d needed his brain functioning, his reaction time hair-trigger and enough energy to sustain him no matter what. He needed to stay sharp for Birdie’s sake, too.

  In between bites, he tried to describe his daughter in a way that would make her real. “We used to have a cat named Marzipan.”

  “What kind of name is that for a cat?”

  “We read it in a book. Birdie liked the sound of it and she made me read that book over and over. When we went to the SPCA to get a cat, she spotted this older, golden tabby with a white tip on his tail and she said, ‘There’s Marzipan, Daddy. We have to take him home.’”

  Remy’s smile made him feel like a good father. He didn’t want to tell her the rest of the story, because it would burst that particular bubble.

  “Is Marzipan waiting at home for you?”