Her eyes burned with tears. She needed Kip’s strength this weekend. She needed his sympathy. Why was he being so critical of her?
“Kip, please,” she said softly, unable to quell the tremor in her voice. “I don’t need this.”
“Yes you do,” he said just as quietly, his tone as firm and certain as hers was faltering.
She turned away, knowing it was a sign of defeat to do so but no longer able to meet his piercing gaze. Her anger seemed to drain from her, leaving behind only a hollow, throbbing pain as she absorbed the profound grief of Kip’s betrayal. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked querulously.
“Because I’m your friend,” he answered.
Her tears broke loose, spilling down her cheeks. Kip released her hand and she jerked away from him, rolling into a self-defensive position, her back to him and her head buried in her pillow to muffle her sobs.
She wouldn’t accept comfort from him, not when he’d been so determined to undermine her in the first place, not when he’d picked a fight with her so deliberately, at a time when she was so vulnerable. I’m fighting with you, he’d practically boasted—as if it were an act of heroism.
She and Kip never fought. They hadn’t had a single argument since he’d moved back into the house. They hadn’t argued three years ago, when Kip had returned to the island and found her living there. In fact, as she thought about it, the last time they’d actually fought was when they’d been children together, and teenagers.
When they’d been true friends, trusting each other so much they weren’t afraid to disagree.
Now, as adults, they discussed things, took each other’s feelings into consideration and treated each other with respect. They didn’t trust each other enough to risk their relationship on an honest fight anymore.
Hours later, after the lamp had been turned off and Kip had stopped shifting on his half of the bed, Shelley lay awake in the darkness, huddled at the edge of the mattress, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing. Why was he even in her bed? Why hadn’t she kicked him out of her room? She hated him for attacking her, tonight of all nights. She despised him. She had trusted him, and he’d let her down.
No. He hadn’t let her down. He’d forced her to face the truth, even though it hurt. Even though he knew she’d hate him for it.
Even though their friendship might not survive his honesty.
***
SHE AROSE AFTER a few hours of fitful sleep. The sky had faded from black to gray as the sun crept closer to the eastern horizon. Kip was still asleep, lying on his side, facing away from her. His disheveled hair appeared almost black in the early-morning gloom, stark against the white linen of the pillow case. Sometime during the night he had unbuttoned the shirt of his pajamas, and when Shelley circled the bed she caught a glimpse of his bare chest with its lean muscles and shadow of hair.
What she felt toward him no longer resembled anger—or even desire. Rather, she was dazed, and more than a little awed by his courage in taking her on last night.
His timing had been wretched, his words brutal. If he had intended to wound her, he’d succeeded. But he had spoken his heart. That was the important thing: he’d said what he felt he had to say. He had taken a chance. He’d goaded her, infuriated her—because I’m your friend, he’d said.
The room was warm, but she put on her robe before leaving. Silence filled the upstairs hallway. It was too early for Jamie to be bellowing for someone to get him out of his crib.
The door across the hall was open, the bed made.
Shelley glided down the stairs. She could tell from the angle of the shaft of light spilling into the hall that the lamp above the kitchen table was on. She entered to discover her father at the counter, stirring milk into a mug of coffee.
“Good morning,” she said.
He set the spoon down and turned to her. Once again she was shocked by the sight of him—his thin hair and bony face, his wan complexion, the deep shadows ringing his eyes.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, gesturing toward the coffee pot, which was filled with freshly brewed coffee. “Kip said I should help myself.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” She pulled a mug from the cabinet, filled it with the steaming brew, and carried it to the table. Her father took a seat facing her, lifted his mug to his mouth and sipped.
His fingers appeared almost fleshless. She felt her stomach tighten, not in resentment but in pity. But what could she say to him? When she didn’t even know what she was thinking, what on earth could she say?
He bailed her out by speaking first. “You’re a good mother, Shelley. Jamie is a fine boy.”
“Thank you.” She orbited the rim of her mug with her finger, groping for some clever quip, some all-purpose statement that would solve everything.
“I’m proud of you. What you’ve accomplished—I know it’s been hard. Putting yourself through school, having a baby, holding down a job... I’m very proud, Shelley. I don’t suppose I can take any of the credit for the way you’ve turned out, but...a father couldn’t hope for more.”
“A father could hope for his daughter’s love,” she whispered, aching to give him that, knowing she couldn’t.
“Not when he squandered it the first time around.” He exhaled. “You’ve got a lot of love in you, Shelley. Give it to the people who deserve it.”
She lifted her gaze. Her father’s eyes seemed animated in the pre-dawn light, dense and shimmering like mercury. She had seen that radiance in them before: when, at five years old, she swam the width of a neighbor’s pool, all by herself. When, at seven, she brought home a stellar report card. When, at three, she plucked a perfect buttercup and scampered across the grass to give it to him.
Back in ancient times, when the Ballards were a loving family, she’d seen his eyes glow for her. She was filled with a consuming hunger for the security of her father’s love once more, a hunger to know she was more important to him than money or professional advancement or extra-marital affairs.
“Maybe you won’t die,” she said.
Her father appeared bemused. “We’re all going to die someday.”
“No—I mean, your cancer. Maybe the chemotherapy will work. More and more people are surviving cancer these days.”
His lips spread in a crooked grin. “You’re still an optimist, aren’t you.”
The observation brought her up short. She had been so bitter for so long. Yet perhaps, buried beneath the layers of cynicism she’d accumulated over the years, a spark of optimism still burned.
Deciding to give birth to Jamie had been illogical and impractical. A realist would have terminated the pregnancy or put him up for adoption. But Shelley had become Jamie’s mother as an act of faith, and her faith had been rewarded. Jamie had renewed her idealism. He’d proven to her that it was all right to hope, and that things sometimes did work out.
“All I’m saying,” she explained, “is that some people go on and on for years after they’ve been diagnosed. Some people go into permanent remission. Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”
He issued a short grunt of a laugh. “I haven’t been lucky in a long time,” he reminded her.
“You were lucky to find out you had a grandchild. You were lucky to come here before it was too late.”
He studied her for a wordless minute, his smile fading from his lips. “I don’t know, Shelley. Is it too late?”
“I don’t know, either,” she said, ignoring the quiver in her voice. “I want to forgive you, but I don’t know if I can. I need more time. You can’t die, Dad. I need more time.”
The light in his eyes grew brighter. For the first time since he’d set foot in her house, she had called him Dad. “I’ll give you as much time as I’ve got,” he promised.
She suddenly felt reckless. If her father was willing to give her time, maybe he could also give her answers. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you do what you did to us?”
He sighed, then drank s
ome coffee, his eyes never leaving her. “Which part of it?”
“The adultery. The embezzlement. Any of it. Just tell me why. I loved you so much, Dad. I idolized you—”
“I wasn’t God, Shelley. I’m a human being. I made mistakes.”
“Mistakes,” she echoed sardonically. “Forgetting to put a stamp on a letter before you mail it is a mistake. Giving Jamie a box of crayons and leaving the room is a mistake. Cheating on your wife and stealing money from the bank where you worked—that’s a little different.”
“What do you think, these things happened in a vacuum?” He scowled, gazing out the window at the drifting morning mist and collecting his thoughts. “I loved your mother, but I couldn’t be what she wanted me to be. She was a working-class girl who wanted to move up in the world. She pushed and pushed and pushed. I couldn’t keep up. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“Not legally, anyway.”
Her father turned back to her so she could receive the full force of his frown. “I gave her what she wanted, but it was never enough. I worked as hard as I could. I clawed my way up the ladder for her. But it wasn’t enough.” He let out a weary breath. “Did I stop loving her? Yes. Did I have an affair? Yes. I wanted a woman who would love me without making those kinds of demands on me.”
“And you went and bought her a condominium, and—”
“Look at me! I don’t know how to love a woman without giving her things. Your mother had me convinced that a woman expects these things, so I did them. I bought her what she needed. At least she never asked for them, not the way your mother did. There weren’t contingencies and unwritten contracts. She was divorced, and she needed a place to live. I helped her out.”
“Mom was divorced and she needed a place to live, too,” Shelley retorted. “You didn’t help her out.”
“I was under indictment,” he reminded her. “I didn’t want a divorce, but your mother did, so I went along with it. I didn’t want any of it to come out the way it did. What can I say, Shelley? I’m lousy at human relationships. So now I live with a cat.”
Shelley tried to lift her mug, but her hands were shaking too much. Clasping them together, she hid them in her lap. “I don’t know what went wrong with you and Mom,” she conceded in a low, tight voice. “But I never did anything. I was an innocent bystander.”
“I know,” her father said, his frown transforming into a rueful smile. “I know. It probably doesn’t matter if you forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself for the way you got hurt.”
She felt her a sob rising up, filling her throat. She unfolded her hands and lifted them to her cheeks.
To her relief, her father remained in his chair. She didn’t want him to comfort her. She wanted to weep until her tears eroded the small, stony node of pain deep inside her, dissolved it and washed it away.
“What can I do?” he asked sadly. “Tell me, Shelley. What can I do to make it better? What can I give you to make up for everything I took?”
“A gold necklace,” she blurted out, then succumbed to a fresh spate of tears.
“A necklace? You want jewelry?” He sounded surprised—and disappointed.
She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “It was a simple gold chain—you probably don’t even remember it. You gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday, and I loved it. Not because it was expensive, but because you gave it to me.”
He nodded, his eyes sharpening as he remembered. “It was a little choker, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. And when—” she sniffled and steadied her voice “—when you were sentenced, and there were so many debts and we had to sell everything...” She didn’t want to seem petty, but it had meant so much to her at the time. It had symbolized every sin her father had committed, everything she had lost. “Mom had to sell it for the money. She brought it along with all her jewelry to a broker who dealt in estate sales, and he gave her a few thousand dollars for the whole lot. I don’t remember the exactly amount—it all went to the bank and the I.R.S.” She wiped away the tears that lingered on her lashes. “It was just a little chain, I know it couldn’t have been worth that much...” Except that her father had given it to her, and that had made it priceless in Shelley’s eyes.
Evidently her father understood the necklace’s significance. “I can’t ever give you that again, Princess. I wish I could. I could go right out now and buy you a necklace ten times prettier and more expensive. But I can’t give you the necklace you want.”
She nodded. When she’d lost that necklace she’d lost her faith, her trust, her youth. They were gone forever. No one, not even a father desperate for his daughter’s forgiveness, could bring them back.
“I can’t give you anything as good as what you have now,” her father continued, his voice gaining strength and conviction. “You’ve got a son, and this fine house on Block Island. You always loved Block Island.”
“I used to nag you to spend more time here,” Shelley recalled. “Maybe it would have done you some good. It would have kept you out of trouble.”
He chuckled grimly. “I doubt it, Shelley. But it did you good, that much is clear. It’s still doing you good.” He extended his arm across the table, and slowly, hesitantly, Shelley slipped her hand inside his. His grip was stronger than she’d imagined, his skin warmer. “You’ve got a man here who’s doing you good, too. I remember Kip as a scrappy little kid with big eyeglasses. But he’s grown up, Shelley. He’s a good man.”
“I know.”
“He’s a better father than I ever was.”
“I don’t know about that,” Shelley debated him, feeling a shy smile shape her mouth. “He’s only been a father for two years. The jury’s still out.”
Her father smiled, as well. “I look at you, Shelley, and I think maybe your mother and I did something right. You didn’t turn out so badly.”
Outside the bay window, the mist was brightening from gray to white as the sun broke over the eastern edge of the island. From upstairs came Jamie’s shrill command: “Gemme out! Mommy gemme out!”
“My master’s voice,” she joked, sliding her hand from her father’s and mopping her damp cheeks as she stood.
“Can I come with you?” he asked.
She didn’t forgive him. She hadn’t stopped hurting. One intense, tear-soaked early morning conversation couldn’t undo years of sorrow and anger.
But even though her father hadn’t cheated her out of it a few years too soon, she would have lost her youthful naïvete eventually. She would have come of age, like the heroes and heroines of the books she and Kip had read one summer during their youth. She would have learned that even in the best of circumstances a person underwent metamorphosis, that even the happiest of people lost their innocence, and that one could have one’s optimism crushed—but sometimes it came back in a new shape.
For years she had dwelled on her losses. But in the opalescent light of an early midsummer morning, everything she’d lost seemed no more valuable than a gold chain necklace.
What she had now was infinitely better: a man who had cared enough to pressure her into facing her father, and the child she and that man had brought into this world.
“Mommy!” Jamie hollered impatiently. “Gemme out!”
“Yes,” she murmured, taking her father’s hand. “Come with me.”
Chapter Fifteen
AT FOUR O’CLOCK she drove her father to Old Harbor. It was their final time alone, their last chance to say whatever remained to be said. “I’m glad you came,” she admitted as she stood with him on the dock, waiting for the ferry to begin boarding. “At least, I think I am.”
Her father smiled. “As visits go, it could have been worse.”
“I still don’t know if I can forgive you,” she said. “I just can’t erase everything that happened—”
“It’s our history, Princess. You don’t have to forgive me or erase anything. All you’ve got to do is keep the memories in the past, where they belong.”
“Maybe I’m just not a
ble to do that.”
“Try harder,” he said. A dock worker began to collect ferry tickets. Shelley’s father gave her a quick, awkward hug. “I’ll send you a necklace.”
“A piece of string will do,” she told him. “And don’t send it. Bring it.” Then, before she could retract the invitation, she spun on her heel and jogged back to the Blazer, parked in the lot by the dock.
Unspoken words hung between her and Kip throughout the evening. He didn’t comment on what had occurred to change Shelley overnight. He didn’t ask how her farewell with her father had gone. Both he and Shelley concentrated on Jamie as they usually did, cutting his pizza into tiny pieces and taking turns refilling his cup whenever he shouted, “Deuce! Deuce, pleeeeee.”
The questions hovered, though, deafening in their silence. Kip’s questions and Shelley’s confessions. All through Jamie’s bath, through his futile attempt to use the potty, through his bedtime story and lullaby and good-night kisses, thoughts of her father, Kip, and her own life lurked like shadows, haunting her, waiting until she mustered the courage to acknowledge them.
After bestowing a final kiss on her slumbering son, she left the nursery. She reached her bedroom door just as Kip approached it from inside the room. He was holding his pajamas. “I left these here,” he explained.
She and Kip had to talk. She had to tell him that, because of him, she had begun to shed the oppressive burden of her hatred, that because of what he’d done to her last night she was a better person today. She had to tell him that, while she could not exonerate her father, or even understand why he’d done what he’d done, she could accept him.
She had to thank Kip for being her friend.
What she said was, “Make love to me.”
As soon as the words slipped out she shrank back a step, astonished. Why had she said that? Where had it come from? She had meant to talk to Kip.
But staring at him across the threshold of her bedroom, her vision filled with his tall, athletic body and his square face, the strength and beauty of his deep-set brown eyes meeting hers, and behind him her bed, the bed she’d shared with him so chastely and angrily last night... She had spoken not her mind but her heart.
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