A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  “Tell everybody I said thanks,” came David’s muttered reply. “It means a lot, you getting your friends involved. Maybe these will help.”

  “Missing,” the posters said a hundred times, spread out the way they were on the floor. “Samantha Linda Roche, Age: 8, Eye-color: Brown, Height: 4’4”, Weight: 68 pounds. Disappeared from camp July First or Second. May be heading to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.” Across the bottom of the notice, in blaring forty-eight-point Times-New-Roman type, the words read: NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION. NOTIFY PHYSICIAN IMMEDIATELY.

  Who can say if Braden would have noticed if not for a hundred identical placards laying in order on the floor? Who can say if Braden would have seen it if not for a hundred reproductions of her very precious, very familiar, grin?

  He stood over the stacks of posters, his baseball cap screwed in the direction of his left ear, small blond brows furrowed, small fists knotted at his sides.

  “Dad?” he asked after long minutes of studying. “Is this the girl you wanted me to help?”

  “Yes,” David said.

  “She has a dimple on her cheek, the same place as yours.”

  David said nothing.

  “Do you see it, Dad? It’s really funny. Look.”

  David bent forward in the chair as if he hadn’t really looked at the picture before, his adrenaline surging and stinging, making him dizzy. A meeting of gazes. A scant rush of breath.

  “Dad? How come she looks like you?”

  Brewster raised his head from his gigantic paws and looked at them both with liquid amber eyes.

  David’s attention dropped to his left thumbnail. He surveyed the quick of it, the small lavender half-moon, without turning toward his son.

  Braden waited for his answer. The air held an almost theatrical silence until David broke it by moving to his chair and patting his knee. “Braden. Come over here.”

  David set his mug on a tile trivet with the word “DAD” printed in green marker. Braden had made it when he’d been in kindergarten. Beside it stood a pottery alligator Braden had formed long ago with his own tiny hands, each of the six pointed teeth almost as big as the tail. For a breath, one refined moment after Braden climbed on his knee, David refrained from hugging him. Then, as completely and wholly as armor would encircle a warrior, as if to protect him from something he couldn’t be protected from, David curled his shoulders over Braden’s. No more lies, Lord. I can’t do it. No more.

  David spoke the words quietly, as simply as he dared. “She looks like me, Brade, because I’m her father. She’s your sister.”

  “She is?”

  “Yes.” An encouragement, a nod.

  Braden only waited. After a long time he said, “Wow.”

  There would be more questions later. Later, Braden would ask, “So she’s your kid, too?”

  And David would answer, “Yes.”

  “Does Mom know about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she’s my sister, why doesn’t she live in our house?”

  “Because she has another mom.”

  “How can she have another mom? Did you get divorced from somebody or something?”

  “No, sport. I’ve never been married to anybody except your mother.”

  Later they would discuss those uncomfortable things. And even in the eyes of his son, David might have to suffer an excruciating fall from honor. But for now they sat together in solemn quiet, with Braden absorbing this mysterious, unusual thought.

  A sister. He had a sister.

  Reactions came rushing out almost too fast for him to sort. His whole body went quivery, and the ceiling got misty in the middle from the tears in his eyes. He didn’t understand exactly why he was crying.

  “Is she like me?”

  “I think so, sport.”

  “Do you think we’ll find her, Dad?”

  “I hope so, son. I really do.”

  There weren’t many other questions Braden could ask that couldn’t be answered by the papers on the floor. There lay the pictures of her grinning up at them, with a listing of vital statistics everyone needed to know. Samantha Linda Roche’s face. Height. Weight. Eight-years-old. Brown eyes. NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION.

  Braden slid out of his father’s chair and gathered the posters into his backpack. “So, you’re really a dad to two people, not just me?”

  “How do you feel about that, sport? What are you thinking?”

  Braden stooped and gave Brewster a deep scratch between the ears. “That’s why I’m the one who can help her, isn’t it? That’s why I’m the one who can do that bone thing you were talking about.”

  “Yes, that’s what we were thinking.”

  “Who was thinking it? You and Mom?”

  “Well, no. Me. I was thinking it. And Samantha’s mother. Somebody you don’t know. But she knows all about you.”

  Braden asked, “If they need one of my bones to help her, which one are they going to take?”

  “Oh, son. It isn’t—”

  “If they take one of my bones for her, Dad, can I still play baseball?”

  Oh, Father. Father. He puts me to shame. After all of my fighting, and look what he’d be willing to give.

  “It isn’t a whole bone, Brade. It’s some stuff inside your bones. Like blood. Only thicker.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “You’ll still be able to play baseball.”

  “Okay.”

  “You might need to think about this some, huh?”

  “Yeah. I need to think about it a lot.”

  Even though it was early morning, Braden left his father alone and went in search of his skateboard. He took a running start and slammed it with a clatter on the ramp his dad had built him, never intending to ride it all the way up. He backed off and flipped it again and again and again, the metal wheels grating and pounding the hollow plywood.

  What would it be like to have his dad be a dad to another person?

  What if his dad didn’t love him as much, now that he had somebody else to love, too?

  What would it feel like, having his dad divided?

  Braden didn’t know if he wanted to share.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time the sun had risen high, Samantha Roche didn’t feel good.

  Along the way, she had tried not to touch anything that didn’t belong to her. But after all those hours, her stomach felt like it might turn in on itself. She gave in to her empty belly and grabbed the first food she could find in the latched cabinet—a jumbo bag of Oreos. She’d planned to put most of them back. She was only going to eat a few. Only they tasted so good. She couldn’t help pushing whole cookies into her mouth and, before she knew it, the entire package of them had disappeared.

  They had to be in the mountains now, driving on meandering roads. Every time the trailer took a corner, the green-sprigged curtains flailed sideways toward the opposite side. The stainless-steel measuring cups that hung over the sink on intricate hooks swung out and clapped back against the wall like little hollow bells. The camper pitched first one direction around a curve, then the opposite direction around another.

  Sam wasn’t supposed to be eating sugar stuff. And, after all this, she just felt so tired. She couldn’t be sure whether the roiling in her stomach was from the winding roads or the entire package of cream-filled Oreos or from the choking fear that had lodged itself in her throat.

  Now that she’d gotten this close to Wyoming, she couldn’t help thinking about things she hadn’t considered before.

  What if her father had changed his mind? What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he didn’t care anymore about what happened to her? Or what if he met her and he was disappointed?

  Inside the rolling trailer, Sam closed her eyes. She had no idea how many more hours it would take them to get to where they were going. Her belly hurt, just thinking about it.

  She burrowed down in the pillows on the bunk again, anticipation keeping her awake. The letter, which she’d kept safely in the folds of he
r sweatshirt next to her heart, had now been tucked away inside her Camp Plentycoos backpack for safekeeping.

  She kept herself satisfied with this thought: even if her father didn’t like what he saw in her, she could have his words written on that page.

  That much, at least, would belong to her.

  “David?”

  “Hello, Susan.”

  “Did you get the posters?”

  “I did. I’ve already been to the Delta counter to pick them up.”

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “No, I didn’t. Did you?”

  “No.”

  David just kept talking about nothing because it was the only thing he knew to do. “I haven’t heard anything. Not one word.” A stutter-step of seconds, while he waited for her to echo his statement, which she didn’t do. “Why so quiet, Susan? Have you?”

  A long unbroken hesitation, which sent his hopes plummeting to his knees. Then, “Yes, David. I’ve heard something. But it’s nothing good.”

  He came out of his chair, gripping the telephone receiver against his ear as if he was trying to insert it into his head. “What? Susan? Oh, Susan, is she all right?”

  “I don’t know about that part, David. We still haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “But you said—”

  “It’s this, David.” Susan’s voice over the line trembled with irony and fear. “The tests. The doctor called a minute ago. Isn’t that something? It’s a national holiday, but he knew I’d want to know.”

  “The tests? Tests?” For one helpless moment, he struggled to remember what the tests might be, just as he’d struggled once to place Susan’s name. The tests. Braden’s test, for Samantha.

  “They came back late yesterday afternoon. He didn’t realize he had them until today. It’s over, I think. Braden doesn’t match. He’s farther off than you.”

  Words failed him. There was nothing that could be said, only the deep sense of loss that crashed over David like a breaking wave. “Oh, Susan.”

  “So that’s it,” she said. “Just like that, David. There isn’t anything you can do to help her.”

  Every year, the July Fourth celebration in Jackson Hole kicked off with a pancake breakfast in the square. Members of the Jackson Hole Jaycees donned red chef’s aprons donated by the Silver Dollar Grille and stood in line behind a sizzling outdoor griddle that must have been a good fifteen yards long. They artfully flipped flapjacks, hash browns, bacon and sausage, and massive slabs of scrambled eggs that looked like they’d been run over by a John Deere tractor. By nine in the morning, striped awnings had been erected on the grass, the Bar J Wranglers were tuning up their fiddles on the flatbed trailer parked in front of The Gap, and the Teton Twirlers Square Dance Club was making their first official grand-right-and-left of the day.

  It was a day for commemorating and honoring freedom in the United States of America, with what seemed like an entire nation of tourists who had come together to see one of its greatest treasures. It was a day for hanging red-white-and-blue bunting from the balcony of the Rancher Billiard Hall and Sirk Shirts, and waving flags from the doorways of the little shops lining Broadway and Millward Street. It was a day for children to roam in herds, devouring homemade scones while honey butter dripped from their chins, and snicker at the square dancers’ goofy clothes while secretly wishing they could join in.

  Because of his upstanding community rank as an officer of the bank, David Treasure had been invited to sit in the reviewing stand that day and judge the floats during the annual July Fourth parade. He fiddled with the knot of his patriotic tie just as he heard Abby passing in the hallway behind him, as lightly and as carefully as a shadow.

  “I can’t do this, Abby,” he said, his voice sounding gruff and hard, resounding with a huge echo in a house that more often now remained futile with silence.

  David felt, rather than heard, her pause behind him.

  “Can’t what?” she asked. “Can’t tie your tie? Or can’t go judge a parade with everything going on in your head?”

  “Can’t—” As he said it, the knot of his tie tightened pitiably somewhere below his shirt’s third button. David gave up and stared at the dilapidated thing in the mirror. “Either of them, Abby. I can’t do any of these things anymore. It’s all so hopeless.”

  He saw Abby’s face appear behind his left shoulder in the mirror. She stared at his tie without raising her eyes. This woman, whom I’ve married and who trusted me. Even the things I’ve tried to do right, I’ve done wrong.

  “Turn around,” she said. “Turn around and let me work on you.”

  He balked at first, his mind on his daughter and all he’d been unable to do.

  All You asked of me, Lord, and it came to nothing.

  He turned his body toward his wife so she could fix his tie.

  Abby didn’t raise her face the entire time she struggled with his neckwear. He could only see the top of her head the way a bird would see it, the crooked part she’d combed into her hair, the double cowlick she’d gotten from her grandfather and was always trying to style away.

  His skin went prickly with the nearness of her. He ought not to swallow. Thinking about not doing it made him need to do it so badly, he had to give in.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. He could tell by the way her hands hesitated against the hollow of his throat, even through the starched cotton of his shirt, that she knew why.

  “Abby—” he began.

  “Don’t, David,” she said. “Don’t do this to me. Not now. Not with all these people who are needing us.”

  “Abby.”

  “You have hurt me. That isn’t going to go away.”

  “Look at me.”

  “I’ve made a choice for now, David. I’ve made the choice to grit my teeth and get by. And that’s all I’m going to do. I can’t do it any other way.”

  “I need you right now, can’t you see that? My life is in turmoil and I don’t have a wife beside me. I can’t take it day in and day out, you coming close to me and reminding me what I did. You even prayed for Susan, then you looked at me and accused.”

  While he held himself as unyielding as a timber post, she manhandled his necktie as if she were tying an outfitters’ knot on the rump of a horse. She lashed it through itself with fierce intention and tightened it with little nervous jerks of her hand. In one gliding motion, she slid the knot, a perfectly formed triangle, into the notch of his collar at the base of his throat. She took three steps back from him. David inspected the results in the mirror. His tie looked so right the way she’d done it, they could have used it on the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine.

  “Lay blame where blame is due, David.”

  “Just stop,” he said. “Don’t say it.”

  “You should have thought about needing a wife beside you on the day you started your affair.”

  For the past three days, the women residents and workers at the Community Safety Network had been baking together in the kitchen to make goodies to sell to the parade crowds in the Jackson Hole town square. Sophie Henderson had made her famous zucchini buttermilk bread along with several batches of ginger snaps and chocolate-chip brownies. Kate Carparelli had baked her long-standing family-favorite rhubarb pie, as well as sticky buns and four-dozen lemon chess tarts. Thanks to several of the other shelter residents, individually wrapped gingerbread men, apple muffins, and slabs of peanut brittle stood in enticing rows on the table.

  Sophie waved as she saw Abby weaving her way through the crowd. “Over here! We need you. We’ve made almost two hundred dollars so far.”

  “Great.” Abby waved back. Here she came, with three plastic boxes from the bakery at Albertson’s—chocolate cupcakes with industrial icing, pastel sprinkles adorning the machine-made, swirled tops. She set them down with an elaborate sigh. “And look at these. After everybody cooking all week, I didn’t have time to bake.”

  Sophie wrapped an arm around her. “I’ll bet those go faster than anyt
hing else on the table. Kids will always pay more money for things with sprinkles.”

  Abby hugged her back. “Go ahead, Soph. Make me feel better.”

  Kate had been watching them, her eyes somber, from across the booth. “Has anybody heard anything about David’s girl, Abby? Have they found her?”

  “No. Nothing new.”

  Hungry customers inundated them before they could finish the conversation. Quarters and nickels began to pile high in the cash box. Although Sophie had been a little off with her prediction about the Albertson’s cupcakes with sprinkles, several children did select them. Kate’s rhubarb pie brought a record seventeen dollars.

  Just as a lull came, a man with dark hair slicked back, runnels still left from the comb, strode toward the table. He smelled of hair crème. A burgundy Cattle Kate scarf was knotted like an ascot beneath his clean-shaven jaw, setting off blue eyes that were the same color as a mountain summer sky. The man clamped Sophie’s zucchini buttermilk bread in one huge paw. He fished a huge wad of bills and a snuffbox from his back pocket. “Here you go.” He handed the bills to Kate.

  Kate unfolded them and began to count. “Five… ten… fifteen…” She tried to return the rest. “You’ve given me thirty-five. This bread’s only fifteen.”

  “I see the price.” He poked his snuffbox back where it belonged. “But I say it’s worth thirty-five.”

  At the sound of that voice, Sophie lifted her gaze from the tin box where she’d been counting out pennies for a little boy. Her body went rigid, her face drawn and looking almost ill. Abby saw the box-lid slam on her fingers. Sophie didn’t even jump.

  He said, “Hey, Snooks.”

  At the sight of him, Sophie shrank a little. She lashed her arms across her chest and took a step backwards. “Mike? What are you doing here?”

  He touched the Saran-wrapped loaf to his belt buckle and Sophie physically flinched. Abby thought, I wonder if he hits her with that. “Oh, Sophie Darlin’. You know how it is,” he said sweetly while Sophie kept staring at his huge hands as if she could see them knocking her around. “It’s time to put this behind you and come home.”