Man of His Word

by Cynthia Reese

  All he had to do was say the word.

  Since that day in the ER, they’d been stiff around each other, nervous and formal. Whenever she’d been near him, Daniel would stare at her, through her.

  Maybe he was regretting what they’d said to each other. Maybe he thought she was some clingy woman who fell in love too quickly.

  As for her, common sense told her that the last person her paranoid, übercautious self should be involved in was a firefighter.

  She’d get over Daniel. She’d get used to being alone again.

  She had to.

  Rufus dutifully brought the worn tennis ball back to her. Kimberly just as dutifully tossed it out into the pasture. As she shielded her eyes to watch the way Rufus’s brown coat gleamed in the late-afternoon sun, she spied Daniel’s truck coming up the long driveway.

  He saw her, too. She could tell he was a man on a mission the way he jumped out of the cab and barreled toward her.

  “What’s wrong?” Kimberly asked.

  “I wanted you to know—I asked, Kimberly,” he blurted out. “I tried to explain about Marissa and how she needed the medical records, and that you didn’t even need the name, only the information.”

  “If you’re talking about Judge Malloy, I got off the phone with him a few minutes ago. He’s not releasing the records detailing Marissa’s delivery or the birth mom’s care after she got to the hospital.”

  Daniel frowned, his eyes squinting in concentration. “Huh?”

  “He turned me down. Your wonderful family friend, the judge, called me and told me, sorry, no can do.”

  Daniel swore softly and put his hand to his mouth.

  “Don’t act so surprised,” she said with more bitterness than she should have. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “What I wanted? You make it sound like I’m part of some sort of grand conspiracy to keep you from finding out. All I ever wanted was to be able to follow the law and keep my word!” Daniel retorted.

  “Well, now...” She ticked off the items one by one on her fingers. “You blocked me with Tim. You blocked me with Pax. You would have blocked me with Hiram Sullivan if you’d thought about it. You blocked me with Judge Malloy—which meant you effectively blocked me with Gail, who was there, Daniel. She could tell me what we needed to know.”

  “What if we’d given you the info, huh? What if we blabbed every little detail, and it still didn’t help? What if it still didn’t give doctors what they needed to figure out what Marissa has? What then?” he bellowed. “We’d have broken the law and our promise—”

  “Don’t you talk about the law. You aren’t bound by—”

  “I’m bound by a higher law!” His words rang out, sharp and steely.

  She shook her head in despair. “You don’t get it, do you? You will never get it.”

  “No, you don’t get it. That girl has reasons—good reasons. She is afraid, Kimberly, in a full-blown panic. And you would be, too. I’ve thought about it and thought about it—”

  Something in what he said caught Kimberly’s attention. Disbelief mingled with white-hot anger. “Wait. You’ve talked with her?” She took a step closer to him. “Daniel Monroe, you have talked with Marissa’s birth mother?”

  “That’s what I was telling you. I called her. I tried to explain, tried to get her to see—”

  “Explain what? How we needed family medical history? Then, why don’t you give me the chance to explain it to her, huh? What right do you have deciding whether or not we can contact her?”

  Daniel laid a hand on her shoulder in a move to calm her down, but she jerked away.

  “Kimberly—she’s worried. You have to see it from her perspective. She was in a terrible situation, with nobody to stand up for her—not her parents, not that sorry excuse of a boyfriend, even if he is cold and dead in the ground now. She’s afraid that there might be a custody dispute—”

  “You talked with her. About me. But you don’t give me the common courtesy of at least asking her to talk with me,” Kimberly stormed, not wanting to hear all the excuses he had.

  Behind them, the screen door creaked in protest. “Stop!” Marissa yelled. “Just...stop.”

  They both wheeled around to see Marissa standing on the steps, fists clenching and unclenching by her sides.

  “Honey—” But when Kimberly would have stepped toward her, Marissa slashed through the air with her fist.

  She didn’t even look at Kimberly. Instead, she stared at Daniel. Her eyes shone with tears.

  “You’re not my dad?”

  Pain tore across Daniel’s face, twisting his mouth. “Marissa, I—”

  “Answer the question. Yes or no. Are. You. My. Dad.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, glanced sideways at Kimberly. “No. No, I’m not your biological father.”

  A wrenching sob racked through Marissa. “I’m not a Monroe? You said—you said I was a Monroe kid. You said— I thought I belonged.”

  “I—I meant, you know...” Daniel closed his eyes, swallowed. Kimberly looked first at him, then Marissa, with the helpless feeling a person has watching a head-on collision.

  “And my dad—my real dad—he’s dead?”

  Daniel pressed his lips into a thin line. After a beat of hesitation, he nodded curtly.

  “Marissa—” Kimberly took another step toward her.

  But Marissa glared at her. “I hate you! I hate you both! I never want to see either of you again!” she shrieked.

  And with that she blew past them, running across the pasture, past the big oak tree and disappearing into the thick pine woods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DANIEL PARKED THE four-wheeler inside the barn and pocketed the key. He took in the dim expanse of the barn’s interior, the shadowy hayloft. Could she be here?

  “Marissa?” he shouted. “Marissa! Come on, now. Your mom’s worried about you.”

  Empty silence was the only response. Still, he climbed up in the hayloft and checked one more time.

  Nope. No sign of her.

  After Marissa had run off, he’d urged Kimberly to let the girl cool off. “She needs some space,” he’d told her. “Let her run off some steam in the woods. She’ll be back.”

  For once, Kimberly hadn’t argued with him, though he could tell she wanted to. Instead, she’d nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  Then, as she’d turned back in the house, her face awash with misery, she’d spun on her heel. “Daniel—I didn’t know she thought that about you. I had no idea.”

  He hadn’t, either. The idea that Marissa had believed—had wanted a dad so badly that she’d fashion him into one...

  The thought ate at him as he stepped back out into the darkening evening. As dusk had crept closer, even he’d gotten worried when Marissa hadn’t turned up, wearing her usual sheepish expression after a blowup.

  And Kimberly—Kimberly was out of her mind with worry.

  He’d sent Rob and Andrew out looking for Marissa, with orders for Kimberly to stay put at the house and call them the minute Marissa turned up. They’d divvied up the property and looked everywhere they could think: at DeeDee’s to see if Marissa had gone to ground with Taylor, the tree house, even Maegan’s stable.

  But Taylor hadn’t heard a word from her—and she was worried, too, because Marissa wasn’t answering any of her texts.

  In a moment of desperation, Daniel had taken the four-wheeler down to the mill house to see if maybe Marissa had gone there.

  But the mill house had been deserted—empty of everything except for the bittersweet memories of his day with Kimberly.

  “Where are you?” he asked aloud.

  The lonely sound of a whip-poor-will was his only answer.

  He started across the pasture toward the house, his feet heavy. Facing Kimberly, telling her that he’d struck out at the last place he could possibly think of, was not on his top-ten list.

  Rufus ambled out from under the low branches of the oak to join hi
m, falling into step beside Daniel. The Labrador carried his favorite tennis ball in his mouth and a hopeful expression in his soulful brown eyes.

  “Hey, buddy.” Daniel stopped to stroke the dog’s massive brown head, then scratched him under the chin. “You got your ball for me, huh? Sorry, fella. I don’t feel much like playing catch.”

  Rufus’s tail slowed to a dispirited wag as he apparently gathered that even his most dependable human couldn’t be conned into throwing a ball. As Daniel approached the house, he realized that the dog had stopped.

  He called over his shoulder and clapped his hand on his thigh. “C’mon, Rufus. I’ll get you some supper.”

  But the magic words didn’t work. Rufus didn’t come. Instead, he wobbled his head first toward Daniel and the house, then toward the oak. His decision made, the dog moseyed back to the oak. With a sigh Daniel could hear from halfway across the field, Rufus flopped down at the base of the old tree.

  Daniel frowned. It wasn’t like Rufus to ignore his supper.

  The dog’s tail fanned the sandy soil as Daniel neared him. But Daniel didn’t take too much notice. Instead, he gazed straight up at the floorboards of the tree house.

  The barest flicker of movement gave Marissa away.

  Relief surged through Daniel. She must have doubled back and hid up here after he’d checked earlier. Hoisting himself up on the lower branches, he began the slow, awkward climb to the tree house, the rough bark stinging his palms, and the ache in his thighs telling him loud and clear that he wasn’t ten anymore. Carefully, he pulled himself over the railing.

  Marissa greeted him with a sour, “So I guess I’m grounded for a month— Oh, wait. I forgot. You’re not my dad.”

  The remark cut, exactly as she’d intended it to. Daniel kneeled down in front of her, took in her swollen, tearstained face. His heart ached.

  “I may not be your biological dad, Marissa, but, if I were, I’d be proud to call you my daughter.”

  She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “My real dad wasn’t. He left me, Daniel. And my real mom—she dumped me out and forgot about me. I don’t belong anywhere.”

  “Your real mom is at the house, going out of her head, wondering where you might be. She may not be blood kin, but she was the one who got up in the middle of the night to check on you, who cooked you supper, washed your clothes and—”

  He broke off when he saw her head droop all the lower.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I meant my biological mom. I—I wanted to be a Monroe kid so bad, Daniel. I wanted—I wanted to fit in. I wanted you to be my dad.”

  “Hmm...someone told me just a few hours ago that she hated me and she never wanted to see me again. Apparently I stink at this dad business.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “It takes some practice. But you’d get the hang of it.”

  “Would I?” His insides ached for the chance. It wasn’t going to happen, though. Kimberly was going to pack her and Marissa up and head back to Atlanta and forget all about him.

  Maybe that was for the best, because she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around why he couldn’t talk about Miriam. Maybe once she left, he could kill off this hope that something would happen to magically fix Marissa’s health problems so that Miriam could stay lurking in the shadows.

  He knew that wouldn’t happen, and even if it did, Kimberly couldn’t forget that he knew who Marissa’s birth mother was—he knew and wouldn’t tell her. It simply wasn’t in her nature to forget.

  “You really aren’t my dad?” Marissa asked him again.

  “I’m really not. But if I could pick any kid to have as mine, it would be you.”

  “Taylor—Taylor was sure I was a Monroe. I mean, I’ve got the cleft in my chin, and the light eyes, and even the twisty elbows.” She demonstrated her double-jointedness.

  “Huh, you do have twisty elbows,” he commented.

  “But if you say I’m not... I guess I’ve got to go back to Atlanta, huh?”

  “That’s where your mom will be.” The thought ripped through him. He didn’t want to contemplate how empty and quiet the house would be with just him and Ma and Maegan rattling around, without Kimberly and Marissa there.

  He didn’t want to contemplate how empty his heart would be.

  “You sure I can’t live with you and Ma?” Marissa pleaded. “And go to school here? I’d work hard—I’d earn my keep. I know how to shell butter beans fast now.”

  Daniel couldn’t stop his hand from ruffling her strawberry blond hair. “Wouldn’t you miss your mom?”

  “Maybe she’d miss me enough to move down here,” she replied.

  “I don’t think that’s an option right now. She’s got a job and a house. People can’t just up and move.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Marissa fiddled with a branch, stripping it of its tender green leaves and shredding them into bits. “But it was worth a shot, right? Because...because it’s not that you don’t want me.”

  His heart twisted as if she was squeezing it in her hands. “We all want you. Me, and Taylor and Ma and Maegan and everybody. But especially your mom. She really loves you, you know.”

  Marissa sniffled again. “I know. I love her, too. She can be all...Helicopter Mom and all, but I love her. She kept me. When nobody else wanted me, she kept me. You think she’ll forgive me for being such a brat? I know it was wrong, what I said. But it—it hurt so bad.”

  “She’s already forgiven you. And you’ll come back and visit us, right? Maybe next summer? After all, Maegan’s gotten used to you helping her exercise the horses, and Ma could always use help with the beans.”

  He could see hope flood her face, and then the instant she squashed it deep down inside her. “Yeah. Maybe. But it won’t be the same.”

  “Hey, it’s getting dark. If you don’t hurry, you’ll miss your cookout.”

  “It’s for the Fourth, not for me.”

  “Best I recall, today’s your birthday, kiddo. And I think I happened to see Ma baking a cake for you.”

  “Really? For me?” Her eyes shone. “She made a cake for me? After I was such a brat?”

  “I think she’d started it earlier. She sure was bent on finishing it. She was certain no girl would want to miss her birthday. Still...” He shook his finger at her in mock solemnity. “It won’t be long before we have to head out for the fireworks, and you know Ma’s rule—no dessert if you don’t try at least everything on your plate. And that even counts for birthday cake for birthday girls.”

  Marissa scrambled to her feet. “What color is it? What flavor?”

  He lifted his hands. “How should I know? I’m a guy. Cake is cake to me. I do know she had Rob churning the ice cream to go with it.”

  Marissa clambered over the railing, intent on skittering down the tree. “I’ll bet it’s strawberry! I told her strawberry was my favorite—”

  “Wait, Marissa! Let me go—”

  Before he could get out the word first, her foot had slipped in the darkening twilight. With a screech, she scrabbled for a hold.

  He saw it unfold in slow motion, his hands reaching out and touching nothing but air as he tried to catch her. She slid down the main trunk, landing with a thud on her belly at the base of the tree.

  Daniel was down beside her in an instant, Rufus butting in and nosing her.

  “Uhh,” she groaned. “And I thought the sand would be soft.”

  “You okay? Are you hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two...wait—” She squinted. “Three now. What are you trying to do, trick me? Make up your mind, will you?”

  He laughed, sick with relief. “Wait, let me check you out.”

  Quickly he ran through a neuro and vital signs check and had her wiggle her arms and legs, fingers and toes.

  “Amazing. When I took a tumble out of that tree, I broke my collarbone and my arm,” he told her. “I can’t believe you just got the wind knocked out of you.”

  She gripp
ed his wrist. “Please—don’t tell Mom. She’ll worry, and I’ve already worried her enough. She’ll be sure to make me miss the fireworks and maybe even the cookout, and it’s our last night here. It’s my birthday, Daniel. Please?”

  He pressed his lips together, considering. “I don’t know—”

  “Please? As long as I’m okay? I mean, sure, if I get sick or something, but I won’t, I know I won’t. And promise me you won’t tell Mom I was up here. You know I’ll be in such hot water.”

  He sat back on his heels. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Absolutely positive.” To ram her point home, she rose to her feet and made a big show out of dusting herself off.

  Daniel’s gut didn’t sit well with keeping this from Kimberly—but Marissa was right. Kimberly had worried enough, and Marissa seemed no worse for wear.

  “All right. Here’s the deal,” he said. “I won’t say anything...unless something starts hurting. But if you feel anything—any little twinge, any dizziness, any nausea or headache or numbness or tingling—we have to tell her, deal?” He extended his hand. “Can we shake on that?”

  She gripped his hand and pumped up and down. “Deal. Now let’s go find out what flavor my birthday cake is.”

  * * *

  A BOISTEROUS COOKOUT was the last place Kimberly wanted to be. For one thing, she didn’t feel like celebrating, not with Marissa gone.

  Kimberly had tried to tell herself that everyone was right: Marissa needed time to cool off. She’d be back. She couldn’t have gone far.

  That worked as long as Kimberly put out of her mind all the things that could harm Marissa—poisonous snakes, a rabid raccoon, a black widow spider, the murky water of the millpond.

  Ma seemed to understand. Even so, it amazed Kimberly how she could calmly complete the final details on the three-layer birthday cake she’d made for Marissa. “I’m not trying to condescend or to downplay your concern.” She’d focused on piping a big fluffy rose onto the cake. “I know Marissa has her issues. But, Kimberly, I raised six kids myself on this farm, and none of ’em came to harm—nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Besides, they’ll find her, or she’ll come back—I feel that in my bones. Stressing over it isn’t going to get her back here one second sooner—and all it’s going to do is cloud your mind so you can’t think of other places to tell the boys to look.”