She stood up, the chill of the night air swirling around them. “You’re right. I’m...”
“Don’t say ‘sorry,’” he interrupted, not wanting her to feel the tiniest sting of rejection. “’Cause I’m not sorry. I just think we’re a little...off-kilter at the moment, and need to be careful.” He reached out to brush a curl out of her eyes, startled by how temptation all surged back the minute he touched her. There was only a tiny thread of control keeping him from sweeping her into his arms again and soaking in that glorious energy she had. “Are you going to be okay?”
Melba leaned back against the door. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” She hugged herself. “I don’t really know.”
“I think this is one of those things that don’t work themselves out quickly. I’ll pray for you.” He surprised himself with that, especially now. How could he pray for a situation he was actively making worse? But how could he not pray? He wasn’t a prayer-warrior kind of guy, but really, what else could be done in such a complicated mess? “I’m bad at prayer, but God hears even the bad ones, right?”
That pulled a thin laugh from her. “It can’t get any worse, that’s for sure.”
Oh, Clark thought darkly, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. “Call if you need me? No matter what time it is? I’m used to being interrupted, you already know that.”
“My hero,” she said with half a smile. She yawned, and he took that as a good sign. Clark allowed himself one small kiss on her cheek, memorizing the scent of her hair before pulling away to walk back into the darkness toward his car.
You should have told her, his conscience argued with him as he drove back down the narrow road. The irony of all of it struck him: she’d discovered she wasn’t her father’s daughter, but he’d discovered he was his father’s son.
Chapter Sixteen
Melba placed the envelope on the table between her and her father. He’d seemed unusually lucid this morning, and she’d prayed for an hour before deciding it was time to talk about this. “Do you recognize this letter, Dad?”
“It’s addressed to your mother.” Melba couldn’t tell if Dad’s answer was evasive or just vague.
“It’s a letter explaining who Danny Baker is.” She felt it best to leave out the question of the author until she had a better idea of what Dad knew and what he was willing to admit. “That a man named Danny Baker is my biological father.” Dad looked away, twisting the napkin at his place setting. “I know you know that, Dad. Can we please talk about it?”
Dad made no reply, nor did he meet her eyes.
“You’re my dad. You’ll always be the only dad I’ve ever known.” At some point the previous night, she’d realized that that was true, and it felt good to say it. “But I need to sort this out and you’re the only person who can help me with this,” she continued. “I want you to help me with this.”
After a long moment, Dad’s face crumpled like the napkin. “I love you. You’re mine.” It was an angry declaration, daring the world to take away his little girl. It cut through her with such force it took Melba a moment to find her breath.
“I am,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Nothing changes that, Dad. None of this changes that.” The relief that it was finally out, that he was her ally instead of her obstacle in this, sent tears down her cheeks. “You’re my dad.” He shook her hand a bit, gripping tightly, as if to bind them to each other all over again. “I’m your Melbadoll, still, okay?”
“Okay.” He blinked, a little confused, as if he was in the process of resetting his version of the world. “Now you know,” he said quietly. “Now you know. Maria never wanted you to know.”
“You tried to tell me that in the hospital. Did Mom make you promise not to tell me?”
Dad wiped his eyes. “Oh, what an argument that was. The only big one we ever had.”
“Why didn’t she want me to know...when I was old enough to understand? Surely she could see why I should know. In this day and age, it’s not like...” Not like what? Melba really wanted to ask, “how could someone with Mom’s faith act so deceptively?” but that wasn’t a useful conversation right now.
“Your mom’s father—your grandfather—wasn’t a loving man. He was harsh and cold. She wanted you to live in a world where fathers adored their daughters, rather than abandoned them.” Dad looked up at her, suddenly intense. “Your mother, you know how impulsive she was. The army sent word I’d been badly wounded, and she got scared. She was an emotional mess and she went to the wrong place looking for comfort. She made a mistake. The war was unpredictable—I was deployed so fast and no one knew for how long. We didn’t have God in our lives back then, Melba. We were young. You can’t hate her. She loved you so much. She wanted such a perfect world for you.” He smiled. “She gave you those sheep, remember?”
The sheep were Mom’s idea. Melba actually hated them at first, all clumsy and smelly. She’d asked for ponies or ducks.
“You asked your mama over and over to keep sheep. ‘Like little Bo Peep,’ you said.”
He was drifting away from her. Melba squeezed her father’s hand. “I wanted ponies. The sheep were Mom’s idea, don’t you remember?”
“She loved you so much. That was the worst, she used to say. She was okay with going home to heaven, but she hated leaving you. She wanted to live to see your wedding.”
Melba hadn’t even been in a relationship when Mom died. The cancer was spreading fast by the time she found out the truth; it wasn’t like she had any chance of hanging on for some upcoming nuptials. Still, Dad’s tone made it sound as though if only Mom could have just hung on a while longer... The way his mind twisted facts could be so cruel sometimes. “Dad.” She squeezed his hand again, but his gaze was already far away and fuzzy. “Dad, who is ‘G’?” She pointed to the return address on the envelope in a last-ditch effort to pull the facts from him. “Do you know who this letter is from?”
Her father ran his hand over the faded address as if his fingers might be able to feel the answer. Then his fingers fisted and he pushed the letter back over the table to her.
“Do we have any more cake left?”
If he knew, he wouldn’t tell her. Worse yet, she couldn’t even be sure he knew. More fighting with shadows. “Yeah, Dad,” she said, feeling like her frustration would rise up and choke her. She swallowed it back. “Barney left some in the fridge. Cake would be nice.”
* * *
Clark looked up when a shadow fell over the air compressor he was testing. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes to view Chad’s stern face blocking out the slanted sun. Chad wasn’t that much older than Clark, but there were days when it seemed like decades yawned between them. Today, as Clark sweated through his grey GFVFD T-shirt while Chad stood in a crisp white shirt and dark blue trousers, the difference felt huge.
“Take a walk,” Chad said tightly.
Clark fumed. That was one of Chief Bradens’s favorite euphemisms, GFVFD-speak for “I’m about to chew you out.” Funny, Pop never bothered to take him into private when it was a family-related chastisement—he did those anywhere, anytime. “I’m not done here.”
“It’ll wait.” That was decidedly not Chief Bradens that Chad was echoing this time. According to Pop, everything could wait until the equipment was correctly stowed—the next fire could be in ten minutes or ten hours.
“Okay,” Clark said slowly, really not liking Chad’s expression. He rolled the compressor to the side of the engine bay and narrowed his eyes at his friend. “But only because you still outrank me.” That would be one of the more awkward pieces of Clark’s ascent to chief; technically, he’d outrank Chad and all their life it felt like Chad outranked him.
Chad settled onto the wrought-iron bench outside the firehouse, but Clark motioned for him to keep going. He had a pretty good idea what was coming and quite frankly, he wasn’t sure
he’d be able to keep it all in if Chad prodded too hard. When Chad hesitated, glancing at his watch, Clark shot him a look. “What? Do you need to be home for dinner?”
“I need to know what’s going on.” Chad’s accompanying glare told Clark what he already knew; his temper had gotten the best of him this morning. Maybe it was better to get someone else’s head in on this. Having lost his fiancée in a fire that he’d always viewed as preventable, Chad had closed himself off for years before Jeannie had cracked his heart open. Yes, he knew a thing or two about dark secrets and how they messed with a man.
“It’s not a short conversation,” he told Chad.
“I got time enough.”
Clark led Chad all the way down to the riverbank and the footbridge over the Gordon River. Leaning heavily on the railing, Clark watched sticks and leaves float by on the current and fished for someplace to begin a conversation he didn’t want to have.
Chad took the lead. “Jesse told me you were a mess out on the call this morning. That’s not like you. Your father would tell you how you can’t afford that right now.”
“Oh, yeah, Pop would have lots to say about that.” Clark didn’t bother keeping the snarl out of his voice.
Chad leaned against the railing. “This is going to be hard enough without the two of you getting into it. George looks as bad as you today. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
Clark let his head fall toward his hands. “It’s a mess.”
“What isn’t?”
Clark grappled for a simple way to explain the knot of lies. Pop and Chad were close—he wasn’t sure how much to reveal.
“Look—” Chad pushed back off the railing “—I’m not going to stand here and yank it out of you if you don’t want to talk.”
“Maybe you should,” Clark surprised himself by firing back. “Somebody’s got to help me make sense of this. Only it’s...complicated. Private. Stuff that can’t really get out, you know?”
Chad slumped against the railing again. “For crying out loud, Clark, what’d you do now?”
“Ha!” For the first time in forever, it wasn’t about getting Clark out of some trouble he’d caused. That struck Clark as funny, and he let out a dark chuckle that made Chad raise one eyebrow. “Believe it or not, this one’s not about my bad behavior.”
“Delighted to know it. I think.”
“Hold that thought.” Clark turned to look straight into his friend’s eyes. “I need your discretion in this. There are some dark secrets in all of it. I don’t really want to involve you, but I could sure use your help to think it through.”
Chad held his gaze, absorbing the seriousness in Clark’s words. “Okay.”
Slowly, Clark told the story. Parts of it came out in great, angry gushes, the hypocrisy of his father’s words and actions boiling Clark’s temper all over again. Other parts, like his powerful feelings for Melba and the secret of her parentage he wasn’t sure it was even right to share, came out in slow, cautious words. “I hate telling you her secret,” Clark admitted, “but it’s so much a part of why this is crazy that I can’t leave it out. It’s all such a mess. Now is the worst possible time for all this.”
Chad nodded, taking the whole situation in with the gravity it deserved. Chad was never one to spout platitudes or even be especially optimistic, although he had lightened up considerably since, as he put it, “God shoved Jeannie into my life.” “It’s so catastrophic I can’t help thinking God is up to something huge. Neither you nor Melba knew any of this before yesterday?”
Clark shook his head. It felt oddly affirming to hear someone else call his current situation “catastrophic.” For a guy who spent his days in continual crises, this one was pulling the rug out from under him in new and unnerving ways. “Melba said her father talked about it when he was out of it at the hospital. And you should have seen the way he roared at me.” A new wrinkle occurred to Clark. “That means he must know. He must’ve thought I was Pop. They’ve never been cozy, Pop and Mort, and now I know why.”
“Maybe not,” Chad replied. “Just the rivalry for Maria could have been enough to keep them at odds. Mort may not know your dad did...what he did.” Chad shook his head. “This doesn’t sound like the George I know. Your dad is one of the most upstanding people I’ve ever met.” Chad offered him a sideways glance of sympathy. “Even if he did ride you hard as a kid.”
Clark pushed off the railing. “That’s just it. He was always riding me about honor and character and all that. How could he stand there and do it, knowing he’d done something this underhanded?”
“People make mistakes. Huge things you can never take back.” The shadow over Chad’s face reminded Clark that his friend knew a bit about regret. “They change your focus forever.”
Clark knew all this, but still couldn’t stop the burning in his gut. “You’re taking his side?”
“No, I’m not. I’m just trying to work out how the George I know could do what you’ve told me.” After a pause, Chad added, “And what you need to do now with what you know. With what you feel.”
“What I feel? I don’t even know what I feel. I’m furious. My family feels like a sham—not as much as Melba’s, but at least her parents cared about each other. About her.” Clark leaned with his back against the railing, staring up as if the sky might drop a course of action down on him. “So now I’m supposed to add to her pile of pain by telling her my dad had a hand in all of this? Pop paid this guy to skip town on Maria. Offered to break up Melba’s mom and dad’s marriage even while he was my dad and married to my mom. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“They didn’t, you know.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Maria and Mort stuck it out and made it work, and your dad stayed with you and your mom. Even you have to know he loved her...eventually. I’m not sure everyone gets the full-out fairy tale, you know?”
“Even you?” Clark had given Chad no end of teasing on how love-struck the guy had been.
Chad sighed. “You know Jeannie and I came into our relationship with a whole lot of baggage to unload. Whether or not we did it to ourselves, well, I’m not sure it matters. I do know that there aren’t too many men who believe as strongly in grace as your dad. Maybe that’s how he came to be the way he is, by slogging through all the damage he did.”
“It’s not okay,” Clark blurted out. “I mean, I get what you’re saying, but I’m not ready to call it all water under the bridge. I still want to punch the guy every time I see him.” A thought struck him. “You know what I hate most? I hate that I finally meet someone like Melba and this whole load of damage comes flying up between us.”
Chad smirked. “I know a bit how that feels. And that’s really the issue, isn’t it? What are you going to do about Melba?” His smile faded. “You know you have to tell her. There’s a reason why you know the truth, and why you know now. She deserves to know, and I don’t think you can count on your dad or hers to tell her.”
“It’ll ruin everything between us.” Clark threw his hands in the air, frustrated. “And I don’t even know what it is that’s between us. I can’t hurt her like that, not when she’s still reeling from just knowing.”
“You know that’s not true. I think you know exactly what’s going on between you and Melba and that has you terrified. Hey, it’s the scariest thing there is to let someone in like that, and we’re supposed to be the brave ones.” Chad crossed his arms over his chest. “But think about one thing.”
Clark sank back against the railing, the first wave of surrender hitting him, sucking out the sourness of anger and replacing it with the cool quiet of resignation. “What?”
“If you tell her, yes, there’s a chance she’ll take it out on you and it’ll all go up in smoke. But if you don’t tell her, then you’ll never stand a real chance with Melba. It’s the one thing your pop got ri
ght in all this—he demanded that all the hearts involved knew the truth. Even if it hurt. Melba has to know, and even a dumb lug like you can figure out God’s placed you in the position to tell her.”
He was right. The old Clark would have taken any easy way out of this mess, but he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d come home to Gordon Falls for all the reasons he wasn’t that man anymore. Clark let his head fall onto the forearms he rested on the railing. “When’d you get so smart?”
Chad fingered his wedding ring. “About the time I got so dumb as to fall for the candy lady.” He leaned down on the railing so that his eyes were even with Clark’s. “It’s worth the risk. If you don’t start with the truth, there’s nothing to build on. I know, remember?”
“You’re talking about Nick?” Clark asked. Chad nodded. He had been in the painful position of having to convince Jeannie that her son was in serious danger of becoming an arsonist. The poor kid was reeling from losing his home to a fire and it drove him into some dangerous behavior. God had placed Chad in the position of recognizing the truth Jeannie refused to see.
“I won’t say it was fun, but we came through it stronger, closer to each other. If it’s real between you and Melba, the same will happen to you.” Chad’s blue-green eyes bore into Clark. “Is it real between the two of you?”
Clark thought about the way he couldn’t get her out of his head, the way her fragile strength cut through all his bravado, the way his soul seemed to settle beside her in a way he’d never known. “Yeah, it’s real. Really, really real.” He shivered. “God help me, I’ve no idea how to do this.”
Chad let out a sympathetic laugh. “That’s pretty much how it works. You’re at the top of my prayer list, Chief.”
That was the term Chad reserved for Pop. He’d joked about not shifting it over until the day Clark was sworn in as head of the department. Evidently Clark had just earned his stripes. Either that, or it was Chad’s tribute to a doomed man.
The Fireman's Homecoming Page 15
