by Pamela Bauer
“He’s over there,” she heard Alex say, then she looked behind them toward a shed where a man was sawing a fallen tree into logs.
In the blink of an eye, Alex was out of the car and sprinting toward him. “Stay with your brother,” Frannie barked at Emma, then went after Alex.
She was no match for her son’s youthful speed. She watched him run up to the man, who wore a denim shirt and jeans. The chain saw stopped.
With his back to her, Frannie couldn’t see whether the man was Dennis Harper. He appeared to be the same height, and he had the same dark brown hair as her ex-husband. But when he turned and looked in Frannie’s direction, she felt as if someone had delivered a swift blow to her stomach. He did look like Dennis, even with the plastic goggles over his eyes. She paused, suddenly feeling as if her knees might buckle beneath her.
It can’t be him. She stared at the man, not wanting to believe she could be looking at her ex-husband. It can’t be, she repeated to herself.
“Are you lost?” he asked, the question directed more at her than at her son.
Not only did he look like Dennis, but he sounded like him, too. Frannie’s limbs shook so much, she thought she might fall to the ground. With great difficulty, she swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and walked toward him. This time she moved slowly, but her mind raced. How could it be him? Why would he be here?
When he removed the protective goggles and let them dangle around his neck, she saw that his eyes were brown—the same as Dennis’s—yet these eyes were looking at her as if she were a perfect stranger.
Again he spoke, “Do you need directions?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. All she could do was stare at him.
Alex, however, had no trouble finding his voice. “You thought we wouldn’t find you, didn’t you?”
“I think there’s been some mistake,” he began, only to have Alex cut him off.
Like a preacher in a pulpit, the boy wagged his finger to emphasize his words. “Yeah. You’re the big mistake. Mom never should have married you. You’re a deadbeat. It’s bad enough that you didn’t want to stay married to Mom and be our dad, but you don’t even have the decency to be any kind of dad at all—not even a rotten one. You just hid so you didn’t have to pay anything.”
Frannie found her voice. “Alex, that’s enough.”
“No, it’s not.” He defied her, continuing on with his sermon. “He needs to know that you had to work two jobs most of the time to pay the bills. When Luke was sick, we had to go to the food bank to get stuff to eat. But Dad didn’t care. All he wanted was to forget about us.” He turned back to the man who looked so much like his father. “Well, I’m not going to let you forget. I’m going to go to the police and tell them who you really are, and they’ll make you pay.”
Alex’s cheeks were red and his chest was heaving by the time he’d finished his tirade. Frannie knew he was close to tears, yet he stoically stood his ground, his head held high. Frannie thought it was strange that not even a bird chirped or an insect buzzed. All she could hear was Alex’s breathing. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and squeeze away all his heartache. She knew she couldn’t.
Alex finally broke the silence. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”
The man looked at Frannie, and she knew what his next words were going to be. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “I’m not your father.”
“YOU LOOK LIKE HIM.” A female version of the boy who’d just verbally blistered him approached Joe with curiosity in her eyes, but not hostility.
“Emma, I told you to wait in the car,” the woman said to the girl. “Where’s Luke?”
“He fell asleep. I left the windows down.”
That information had the woman hurrying back to the battered old station wagon parked next to his SUV. “Are you two brother and sister?” he asked the pair now standing before him, gazing at him as if he were the villain in a horror film.
“As if you don’t know,” the boy said with derision.
“We’re twins,” the girl said.
“Do you think we wouldn’t recognize our own dad when we saw him?” the boy continued.
“I may look like him, but I’m not him,” he replied, as the pair continued to scrutinize him. “My name is Joe Smith.”
“That sounds like a made-up name to me,” the boy said.
“It’s not. If you wait just a minute, I’ll go inside and get my wallet. It has my driver’s license in it,” he told them.
“It’s probably a fake,” the boy countered.
“If you’re not going to take my driver’s license as proof, what will satisfy you?”
The little girl whispered something to her brother, who then said, “Take off your shirt.”
“What?” Joe almost chuckled at the absurdity of the request.
“I said, take off your shirt,” the boy repeated.
“Look, I told you I’m not your father,” Joe said, trying not to lose patience with the kids.
“Then take off your shirt and prove it,” the boy challenged him. “Or are you chicken?”
Joe could hardly believe what was happening. He was being confronted by two kids who were accusing him of being their deadbeat dad and demanding that he take off his shirt. “No, I’m not chicken, but I’m not your father, either,” he said evenly.
“Then, why won’t you take off your shirt?” the boy persisted.
Joe decided to humor the kids rather than stand there arguing with them. If it took revealing his bare chest to convince these two that he wasn’t their father, he’d do it. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, leaving him bare-chested and the object of their wide-eyed stares.
“Oh my gosh! It is him!” The little girl stared at him as if she’d seen a ghost, then went running back to the car.
“And you said you weren’t him!” the boy accused him before racing after his sister. They met their mother, who was coming toward them with an even younger child in tow. The two jumped up and down excitedly and pointed in Joe’s direction. Joe couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was enough to stiffen their mother’s shoulders and put a frown on her face.
She approached him cautiously, carrying a sleepy child in her arms. She looked like a mother hen about to do battle for her chicks.
He put his shirt back on, unsure what it was that had triggered such a response in the kids. “If these are your biological children, you must know that I’m not their father.”
From her expression, he could see that she didn’t.
“Dennis, if you’re playing some kind of joke with these kids, it’s not funny.” A shadow in her eyes told him that whoever this Dennis was, he’d hurt her badly.
“I’m not Dennis and I wouldn’t play such a cruel trick on any children,” he answered a bit impatiently. “My name is Joe Smith. I don’t have any kids. If I had, I wouldn’t deny their existence. Surely you, their mother, must see that I’m not the man they think I am.”
“Stop lying!” she shouted. He could see that she was close to losing control. “You’ve been running and lying all your life. Just for once tell the truth.”
He ran a hand over his hair in exasperation. “I’m not their father. Whatever it was they saw when I took off my shirt…it doesn’t mean I’m their father.”
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him. “They saw your tattoo.”
Suddenly he realized the reason behind the children’s demand. It had been to see if he had a tattoo on his upper arm. He wasted no time in explaining. “You can’t possibly think I’m their father because I have the same tattoo as he does on my arm. Do you know how many sailors get tattoos while they’re in the Navy?”
“Let me see it,” she said quietly.
This time he didn’t take off his shirt, but pushed up the sleeve until the anchor with the letters USN could be seen. She took one glance, then looked away, her teeth tugging on her upper lip.
“If it’s the same as your husband’s—”
“My ex- husband,” she corrected defiantly, as if reminding him she couldn’t stand to be around him. “Ex-husband,” she repeated like a warning.
“If it’s the same tattoo, it’s a coincidence.” He stared into deep blue eyes. What he saw in them was contempt, and it annoyed him that those beautiful eyes contained such venom toward him because of what another man had done. “Look. All you have to do is come inside and I’ll show you proof of who I am.”
“Now that is something I will not do,” she said through clenched teeth.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Joe glanced at the sky, then said, “I think you’d better come inside just the same. There’s a storm moving in. You’re welcome to stay until it passes.”
“I will not stay anywhere with you. All I want is to get as far away from here as possible,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. She called to her kids, “We have to get in the car. It’s going to rain.”
“Are we going to call the police?” Joe heard the boy asked.
Police. Joe knew he needed to convince this woman that he was not her ex-husband. What he didn’t need was for some kid to mistake him for a man who was in trouble with the law. He had his own past to haunt him. He didn’t need another man’s.
“Would you people listen to me?” he said in frustration as big raindrops began to pepper the earth. “I am not the man you’re looking for.”
A gust of wind sent the boy’s baseball cap sailing through the air. He went chasing after it, but it kept tumbling on the wind.
“Don’t worry about the hat, Alex. Just get in the car,” the woman said, as a sudden downpour pelted them. She herded her kids toward the station wagon.
Joe watched them struggle to reach the car, the gusty winds impeding their progress. Then he took another look at the sky and knew he couldn’t let this woman and her children leave. He caught up with her and grabbed her by the arm.
She flinched when he touched her, and he immediately let go. “You can’t drive in this,” he said as large raindrops stung his cheeks and dampened their clothing. “Please. Come inside. Your children will be safer in the house.”
As if emphasizing his words, lightning lit the sky and thunder cracked around them. Even with rain plastering her blond curls to her head and running down her face, she looked as if she were about to refuse.
Then the boy hollered, “It’s starting to hail!”
“Are you coming inside or not?” Joe asked.
To his relief, she didn’t protest. “Yes, we’re coming.” Then she turned to her children and said, “Emma, Alex…follow this man.”
Joe noticed she didn’t call him their father. He wanted to see that as a good sign. As he led them toward the house, however, the only thing that kept going through his mind was that he hoped he wouldn’t regret being a good Samaritan.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’LL GET YOU some towels,” Joe said, then disappeared down a hallway.
Alex tugged on Frannie’s shirtsleeve. “It’s him, Mom, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, which was the truth. Joe Smith looked like her ex-husband, but it had been almost four years since she’d seen Dennis. And even though they’d been husband and wife and had had three children, they’d spent less time together than most married couples. The U.S. Navy had seen to that. During their short marriage, overseas duty had taken him away from his family, leaving Frannie alone with two kids. At one time she’d believed him when he’d told her he volunteered for overseas duty because he wanted the training provided on those assignments. Now she knew it was because overseas he could forget all about the wife and children who waited for him back home.
“It is him,” Alex insisted. “I know it is.”
“Why is he pretending to be somebody else?” Emma asked.
“I’m not pretending to be anybody else—”
Joe Smith’s return startled Frannie. He handed her a stack of towels, his eyes pinning hers with a look that warned her he didn’t appreciate their accusations.
“My name is Joe Smith.”
She searched those dark brown eyes, hoping to find some truth in them, some explanation for what was happening right now, but they revealed nothing. She wondered if Dennis Harper could be so cruel as to deny his own children’s existence, then realized that’s exactly what he’d done when he’d left them. She dropped her eyes and gave her attention to her children, handing each of them a towel.
As she ran the soft terry cloth over Luke’s head, his tiny feet danced on the floor and he clutched his shorts. “I have to go potty.”
Frannie hoped he hadn’t already done the deed, as his only pair of dry training pants was in the car.
“The bathroom’s the first door on your left,” Joe told her, motioning toward the hallway.
“Thank you.” She turned to the twins and said, “Just stay here and don’t touch anything.”
“They might as well come in and sit down,” Joe suggested.
“No. Their shoes are wet.” Frannie didn’t want her children making themselves comfortable in this man’s house. “They can wait there.”
She took Luke into the bathroom, but not before giving the twins a look that said if they dared to move from that spot, they would have to answer to her. It did no good. By the time she’d returned, both were seated on wooden stools at the island counter in the kitchen.
Alex was quick to leap to his own defense. “He told us to come away from the door because of the glass.” The “he” to whom her son referred was not Joe Smith, but a silver-haired man at the kitchen sink. He wore a pair of dark slacks and a white dress shirt, as if he’d just come home from the office.
“It’s not safe to be near windows when there’s lightning,” the older gentleman said without turning around.
Frannie looked at the twins and mouthed, Who is he?
They both shrugged. Emma whispered, “He just came out here and starting peeling a potato.”
Frannie wondered what had happened to their host. Noticing her perusal of the room, Alex said, “Dad went to make sure all the windows are closed.”
Although Frannie didn’t like the fact that he had called Joe Smith “Dad,” she didn’t correct him.
The man at the sink turned around. “You know what they call this?” he asked the twins, holding up the pared vegetable.
“A potato?” Alex answered, as if he were seated at his desk in school and his teacher was the one posing the question.
“A poor man’s apple,” the silver-haired man corrected him with a grin. Then he took a bite of the raw potato, relishing its taste as he chomped on it. He walked past the island, shuffling his slippered feet. As he passed Alex, he paused, his eyes narrowing. “Have you done your homework?”
“We don’t have homework. It’s summer vacation,” Alex answered.
“That doesn’t mean you stop learning,” he said, wagging his finger. “The smarter you are, the better you’ll do in the Navy.”
Alex looked at his mother, his eyes wide and full of questions. Frannie doubted she had the answers to any of them.
“You are going to enlist in the Navy when you grow up, right?” The old man stared at Alex, waiting for an answer.
Before Alex could utter a word, Luke discovered the aquarium in the living room. “Fishies!” he cried out in excitement, running across the wood plank flooring to press his nose to the glass.
The old man followed him. “Aren’t they pretty?” He bent down beside Luke, pointing out the various fish by color rather than by name as he, too, pressed his face close to the glass. “See? There’s a blue one and a purple one…”
Emma joined them at the tropical display, but Alex stayed at the counter.
Nature was putting on its own show in the stormy sky, with lightning flashing as rapidly as a strobe light.
Alex turned to his mother. “It looks pretty bad out there, doesn’t it.”
Frannie watched the trees bend in the wind and a curtain of rain move across
the lake. When thunder clapped around them, its force so great it seemed to reverberate in the walls, Luke let out a yelp and came scurrying back to his mother’s side.
“I think we should go into the basement,” Joe announced as he came into the room. He went straight to the older man’s side. “Come with me, Dad. We’re going to go downstairs until the storm passes.”
Dad. Frannie realized they were father and son, which only added to her confusion. As far as she knew, Dennis had been estranged from his father ever since he’d been a teenager. Frannie supposed it was possible they’d been reunited, yet judging by the comments she’d heard her ex-husband make about his father, she thought it unlikely. Still, the possibility existed, which meant that this elderly gentleman could be her children’s grandfather.
She wasn’t the only one thinking such thoughts.
“Is he our grandpa?” Alex asked, as Frannie shepherded her kids down the stairs.
Joe heard his question and said, “No, he’s not your grandfather.”
“I think he’s lying,” Alex whispered to his mother.
She didn’t respond, but led her children into the basement. A couple of bare bulbs dangled from the wooden beams. Concrete walls and floor made the room cool and damp. Like most basements, its function was utilitarian. In one corner was the furnace and water heater; in another, old furniture and household items. Along the walls were stacks of boxes and storage containers.
“There’s no place to sit,” Emma remarked as she eyed her surroundings cautiously.
Joe pulled out a couple of folding chairs and set them up in the middle of the room. He was about to get two more, when the lights went out.
Emma shrieked. So did Luke. Frannie lifted her youngest child into her arms and whispered in his ear, “It’s okay. Mommy’s here.”
One of the metal folding chairs clanged as it toppled to the cement floor, and the older man cried out, “Joe? Joe, where are you? I can’t see! You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“No, I won’t,” the strong, reassuring voice filled the air. “It’s scary when the lights go out, isn’t it, Dad. You stay right where you are, and I’ll get a lantern. I have one on the shelf next to the furnace.”
