Oceans Apart (Kingsbury, Karen)

by Kingsbury, Karen

  The first thing he wanted to think about was Buddy. Max was pretty sure the old dog would love camping, especially the fishing part. Buddy got pretty excited whenever he smelled fish. But also the tent part, because Mommy used to say Buddy liked being a watchdog for him. He could probably even keep Mr. Evans safe.

  Sunshine was out that day and it was hard to see over the water. Max made a shield with his hand and put it over the top of his eyes. Right away seeing was better, so Max kept his hand there.

  The other thing in his head was something his mommy had told him in that letter, the one Mr. Ogle read him. Not the part about being brave and strong and remembering that she loved him. The part about having a daddy somewhere out there. At first he didn't want to think about that thing. He wanted his mommy back, not a daddy he didn't even know.

  But now, after being with Mr. Evans, the idea of a daddy was in his head a lot. Sometimes he woke up thinking how it would feel to have a dad like Mr. Evans, someone strong and nice who would love him for always. 'Lizabeth and Susan were lucky to have Mr. Evans for a dad, but Max wasn't sure they knew they were lucky.

  He remembered how he used to think that way before his mom died. But back then the thinking lasted only a minute because he didn't need a daddy, not really. His mommy was all he needed.

  But now she was gone …

  Plus she must have wanted him to find his daddy someday. Or else she wouldn't have put that part in the letter, right?

  Max's hand was tired, so he let it fall back to his lap. He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes. How was he supposed to find his daddy when the world had so many dads all spread out everywhere? Or maybe his daddy was looking for him and one day he'd walk up to Ramey's door and knock and there he'd be. The daddy his mom had told him about. He squinted his eyes and looked up at the sky where God lived.

  God … Hi, it's me. Max. He kept the words in his head. I was thinking about my daddy somewhere out there. The one my mom told me about. Do You think maybe You could ask my mom where I should look for him? Because there's a lot of dads and what if I don't know what he looks like or what his voice is? He thought for a minute. And tell my mom I miss her. The missing doesn't make my stomach hurt as much, but well, my heart still hurts. I think it always will. A'course if I find my daddy that would help.

  Max kept his eyes closed and decided this was a good time to sing his mommy's special song. That way she would feel close again. He opened his mouth and let the words come quiet and small. “I love you, Max, the most … I love to make you—”

  “Max?”

  He opened his eyes speedy quick and turned around. It was Mr. Evans, and he had worry in his eyes. Max hopped off the big rock and looked at his mommy's friend. “Hi.”

  “I saw you sitting up there.” Mr. Evans put his hands in his pockets. “I don't know. I thought maybe you might want to talk.”

  Max made a line in the sand with his big toe and then made his eyes find Mr. Evans again. “My brain had some thinking in it.”

  Mr. Evans nodded. “That happens to me a lot.” He looked out at the water. “Especially lately.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So …” Mr. Evans looked at him again. “What thinking was your brain doing today?”

  Max leaned back against the big rock. He didn't like talking about the thinking in his head unless it was with his mommy. But Mr. Evans was her friend, so it was probably okay this time. He put his hand over the top of his eyes again so he could see better. “About my daddy.”

  Surprise went across Mr. Evans's face. He turned around and rested against the rock, too. Max liked how their arms were side by side, the way he was sometimes side by side with his mommy when they had their talks. Mr. Evans made a long breathy sound. “What do you know about him?”

  “Well”—Max felt his pocket to make sure the rock for Ramey was there—“Mommy said he's out there somewhere, and that one day maybe I'll find him.”

  Mr. Evans waited. “That's all? That's all you know?”

  “Mm-hmm. Mommy just told me about him in her letter, the one Mr. Ogle read to me after … after she didn't come home.”

  “I see.” Mr. Evans squinted at the sun a little. “So that's what you were doing? Thinking about your daddy?”

  “Not just thinking.” Max made his bottom lip wet with his tongue. It gave him a little nervous feeling talking about this, but Mr. Evans was a good listener. “I asked God about it, too.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep. Because so many dads live out there, I don't think I'll ever know who he is unless God shows him to me. So I asked God.”

  For a minute it seemed like Mr. Evans might hold him close with both arms, the way he'd seen the man do with 'Lizabeth and Susan. But then instead he felt the man pat his head and watched him move away from the rock. “Max, I think God's going to answer your prayer.”

  “Really?” A happy feeling filled Max inside. If a smart man like Mr. Evans thought God would answer about helping him find his daddy, then maybe that's exactly what God was going to do.

  Mr. Evans turned and looked at him. “Really.”

  Max moved his head up and down, and then he remembered the rock. “Look what I found.” He used tight fingers to pull it from his pocket, because he didn't want to drop it into the lake. Then he held it up for Mr. Evans to see.

  “Hey, that's a beauty.” Mommy's friend leaned close and looked at it. Sometimes grown-ups looked real fast when a kid had something to show. But Mr. Evans really liked the rock because he looked at the top and bottom and even at the sides. “Who's it for?”

  “For Ramey.” Max put the rock back in his pocket. “I always give her special rocks.”

  “I see.” Mr. Evans looked at him for a long time. “Ready to try some fishing?”

  Max still had more thinking in his head, but he liked Mr. Evans a lot. “Would you show me how again? I messed up last time.”

  “Sure.” Mr. Evans held out his hand. “Come on, we'll walk together.”

  Max reached out and took hold of Mr. Evans's fingers. On the walk back they talked about rocks and tides and what kind of worms fish like best. But Max wasn't thinking very hard about that stuff, because he kept thinking about how his hand felt in Mr. Evans's, and how he hoped one day when he found his daddy that the two of them could hold hands, too.

  In fact, he hoped his daddy would be just exactly like Mr. Evans.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Connor knew the score from the moment they set out on the camping trip. A week with Max—teaching him to fish, taking walks along the shore, watching him play with the girls—would make it impossible not to bond with him.

  But he hadn't expected it to happen so fast.

  The girls had set their poles down and taken their water noodles down to the lake. He could see them floating in the roped-off swimming hole, so he directed his attention to showing Max how to bait a hook.

  “You can't kill the worm, because the fish need to see it moving.”

  “That's how you trick 'em, right?”

  Connor stifled a grin. “Right.”

  When Max's hook was out in the water a ways, Connor baited his own rod and cast out a few yards away. They fell into a comfortable silence, fishing side by side with the girls splashing and playing a ways off. Connor took his eyes off his bobber and let them settle on Max.

  The feelings he had for Max went beyond anything he'd imagined. Marv Ogle had been right, his son was easy to love. Not just for him, but for the girls, too. Before the trip, Michele had pulled him aside one last time and warned him to be careful of the girls' feelings.

  “Elizabeth is suspicious of him.” She kept her voice low so the children wouldn't hear her. “You need to respect that, Connor. Don't force them to be friends.”

  He'd done nothing of the sort. Instead, the children had found their way all by themselves. The first night Max was struggling with his sleeping bag, an older bag Connor and Michele had kept in the storage closet. Connor was still unloadin
g things from the car, but when he peeked in the tent, what he saw made his heart sing.

  Elizabeth had stationed herself next to Max, and she was showing him how to guide the zipper.

  “The cloth gets in the way sometimes,” she told him. “So push it away with one hand and then it'll zip up just fine.”

  Max did as she said, and when it got stuck two more times, Elizabeth helped him get it back on track. When the bag was zipped up and smoothed out in the middle of the tent, Elizabeth patted Max's back. “Good job, Max. You'll be a camper before you know it.”

  They were midway through the trip, and that type of scene had played out dozens of times each day. The night before, Max announced he was making s'mores for each of them. Susan and Elizabeth exchanged a giggly smile, but they nodded their approval. “Okay, Max. Thanks.”

  Each marshmallow caught fire before Max had a chance to back it out of the heat. But he went ahead undaunted, and for each girl he placed the gooey black-and-white mess on top of a piece of chocolate, sandwiched between two graham crackers. “Here!” He handed a s'more first to Elizabeth, then to Susan.

  Connor half expected them to give the boy a stiff thank-you and then dump his creation in the nearest trash can. Instead they each hugged him and remarked that his was the best s'more they'd ever seen. And they ate the entire thing. Both girls.

  If only Michele could see them. If only she'd let her guard down enough to give Max a chance. Connor was convinced she'd fall in love with him, the same way he and the girls already had.

  He studied Max, the intensity in his young face as he made slight movements with his fishing pole.

  Max shifted his eyes to his and smiled. “Like this?”

  “Perfect.” Connor had told him to keep the bobber moving, because that meant the worm would move. And moving worms were the kind that attracted fish. “I'll bet every fish in the area is thinking about that worm right now.”

  The boy turned back to the lake and once again studied his bobber. Connor understood the reason Michele didn't want to be around the child. It was one thing for her to know he'd had an affair, but to see living proof of his betrayal …

  So far she hadn't been able to look past that part to Max himself. In the past few days, that had become Connor's prayer. That Michele would see what she was doing, and by the time they came home, she might understand how well Max could fit in their family.

  He cocked his head and watched his son's mannerisms, the look in his eyes. No wonder Michele struggled. As much as he could see the Evans family resemblance there, he was definitely Kiahna's son.

  He remembered the photograph Max kept tucked in his Bible. Yes, Kiahna had been as likable as Max. Their time together had been wrong, wracked with the kind of life-strangling sin that still sucked the life from his relationship with God. Nothing about his time with her had been right. But he'd gotten a glimpse of the woman's heart that weekend. A look he remembered even after years of trying to forget.

  Except on rare unguarded moments, Connor didn't go back. But here, now, he felt time slip away, felt his heart going down the old forbidden roads, following a trail to that stormy evening in Honolulu. Back to a time when he broke the most important promise he'd ever made.

  The meal had been the icebreaker.

  Once Connor and Kiahna combined tables to eat together, conversation moved quickly from surface talk about their similar tastes, to formal introductions, to Kiahna and the reason for the sadness in her eyes.

  Most flight attendants stayed together in groups, moving across the concourse, visiting the rest room, or grabbing a bite to eat. They were easy to spot, slim and fit, sharply dressed in their pressed airline uniforms, hair pulled back, makeup just so. Each pulling a smart-looking bag behind them.

  They'd laugh and talk while they walked, waving animated hands, catching up on the latest passenger story or the way one of them had stumbled over the preflight preparation talk or some irresistible tale from back home. Where pilots might never make emotional connections with each other, flight attendants quickly moved beyond the surface details of their job. They shared about family and children, broken romances and budding relationships.

  Rarely did they keep to themselves the way Kiahna was, and the picture she made—sitting alone at the table—intrigued Connor.

  “Where's the rest of the group?” He caught his straw between his thumb and forefinger and took a long swig of iced tea. The conversation refreshed something in his soul, something that had been gasping for air in light of the troubles in his life.

  “The other attendants?” Kiahna set her fork down and smiled. “We go our own ways.”

  “Oh.” Connor cocked his head. “How come?”

  “They're too fast for me.”

  “Too fast?”

  Kiahna gave him a sad smile. “Surely you know Western Island Air's reputation?”

  Connor thought for a minute. “Maybe not.”

  “My crew flies nights, Captain Evans.”

  “Connor.” His response was quick. For some reason it mattered that the girl sitting across from him drop the formalities. “Call me Connor.”

  “Okay.” Her smile was utterly guileless. “My crew flies nights, Connor. It takes more than Diet Coke for most of them to stay awake.”

  The truth of what she was saying sank in. “Drugs?”

  “Cocaine.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Cocaine before the flight, and men after. I do better to stay by myself.”

  Connor sat back and studied her. “Strong convictions, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why?” He figured maybe she was married, living a quiet, conservative life in which there would never be room for the racy lifestyle her peers were living.

  “Faith, I guess.” She tugged on a slender chain she wore around her neck and pulled a simple cross from beneath her uniform. “I'm a Christian.” She let the cross fall back in place. “My parents used to say faith wasn't something you could pretend about. It wasn't real unless it looked like faith and acted like faith.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “I buried my mother three days ago, six months after we buried Dad.”

  A hundred questions fought for position, and he asked her the one that jumped out in front. “How did they die?”

  “Dad died of a heart attack. He was Irish; heart attacks ran in his family.” Her eyes fell and she stirred her straw in slow circles through her soda. “Woke up one morning and never made it to the breakfast table.”

  Connor wished he could take away the raw pain in her eyes. “I'm sorry.”

  “It's okay.” She shrugged and gave a quiet sniff. “They're in heaven, right?”

  “Right.” Connor didn't want to think about heaven. “Your mom?”

  Kiahna's eyes fell to her drink again. “She was Hawaiian, a strong woman who would've lived to be a hundred.” She looked up. “But the cancer got her first.” She hesitated. “I think her body gave up after Dad died. Her immune system shut down and cancer took over.”

  Connor had the strangest desire to walk around to her side of the table and hug her. He tried to guess her age, and figured she couldn't have been more than twenty-three, twenty-four at the most.

  He took another sip of tea. “Are you … are you married?” She wore no ring, but that wasn't proof. His own wedding ring was in his bag somewhere. He'd taken it off that morning before his workout and forgotten to put it on again.

  “No. I live with a roommate, a flight attendant for another airline.”

  “No siblings?”

  “I was an only child.” Her smile warmed some. “My parents used to tell me they had just one baby because they couldn't imagine ever loving another child as much as they loved me.” She lifted her eyebrows. “We were very close.”

  Connor was still stuck on the thing she'd said a moment earlier. She had no family? Only a roommate? A fiercely protective feeling welled up within him. How fair was it that a girl with such faith, such desire to live for God, had lost her parents
and didn't have anyone more than a roommate to come home to?

  She seemed to read his thoughts. “It's okay. I'm in school full-time. My roommate's a good friend.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Medicine. I'm going to be a doctor.” She gave a sideways nod of her head. “Maybe God will use me to cure cancer. So that people like my mother would have a chance to live.”

  Connor stared at her, speechless. She was amazing. Faithful, true, and with a determination that was all but extinct in the self-centered society they shared. He forced himself to focus. “How far along are you?”

  “A year away from my bachelor's.”

  Connor tried to do the math. “So you're what, twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-one.” She lowered her mouth and took a sip from her drink, keeping her eyes on his the whole time. “I know … most people think I look older.”

  “Definitely.” Connor was thirty-three that year, and the girl's age reminded him he had no business asking about the details of her life. Bad enough that he was married and having lunch with a young, single flight attendant. But a twenty-one-year-old? She was barely out of her teens.

  “I'm alone by choice, Connor.” She sat back. “I was in love once, a young professor at the college. But he didn't understand. He wanted to marry me and take care of me, have me drop out of school so I could be there for him.” Her eyes didn't waver. “But I don't want that, not yet. I'm going to be a doctor; nothing's going to stop me. Love and marriage, raising kids, all that can come later.” She softened some. “For now it's me and God and my studies. The flight attendant thing is the best way to pay the bills.”

  Their conversation shifted to the task of piloting a commercial aircraft, and Connor was impressed with how well she listened. He added intelligent to her list of attributes. Intelligent and driven.

  When they were finished eating, she insisted on paying for her own part of the bill. Together, they moved into the concourse, intent on finding out information about the approaching storm. They each had their pull-behinds, but their pace was unhurried.

  She gave him a smile that held no pretense, nothing flirtatious. “I like you, Connor. Most pilots are arrogant. But you're … you're easy to talk to.”