“Sorry?” He set his hands on her shoulders. “Beth Lowell? You’re my daughter?”
“It’s Bethany Ann Lowell on my birth certificate.”
“Jan was pregnant?”
“Yes. Barely.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he exploded, his hands flying up into the air, then clamping down on his head, his fingers threading through his hair. “That’s…that’s unbelievable! She was pregnant, and she didn’t tell me? And my mother! Are you telling me my own mother knew all this? She was your babysitter? Why didn’t she say something to me? All that time? All those years?”
“It was a secret,” Beth told him. “They agreed not to talk about it to anyone. Mom said Nanny could babysit me as long as she didn’t tell you.”
“What?” he barked. “Why wasn’t I told? I had a right to know! I was the father. I went off to Sri Lanka and no one said anything! I wrote to Jan and she never even answered!”
“She didn’t write because she was too sick and confused. And everyone was upset with her for getting pregnant.”
“But I could have…I could have helped. I would have married her. I wanted to marry her.” He shook his head. “This is not right. They should have told me. My mother took this secret to her grave. Why did Jan do this? What did she think I was, some kind of loser? Did she think I couldn’t take care of her? Did she think—”
“I don’t know what she thought!” Beth cried out. “I don’t know anything. You should talk to her yourself, because you’re both blaming each other, and it’s not fair to me. I’m the daughter. I wasn’t there.”
He studied her. “You’re my daughter?”
Beth’s shoulders sagged. “I told you that.”
“But you came here with Miles Wilson. He told me he met you in the Nairobi airport. You’re his girlfriend.”
“No, I’m not. Not really. Well…one time he did say he was falling in love with me, but now he’s gone, so I have no idea how he feels. Miles helped me find you. He offered to bring me here. Are you upset with me?”
“With you?” Thomas shoved his hands into his back pockets and looked up at the night sky over Darjeeling. “Bethany Ann,” he said. His voice was deep, husky. “Bethany Ann. A daughter. I always wanted children, and I thought…Nirmala and I…it didn’t happen for us, and we…”
Beth frantically wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. Sorry about you and Nirmala. But I’m here. Is that okay?”
He focused on her again. “It’s more than okay, Beth. You’re precious…and sweet and…But this is just a lot to absorb, you know. I need to go back to my house and take some time to think it through.”
“Of course.” She recalled fleeing the lake house the first time she heard the news. And later she had yelled at her mother and run down to the water’s edge. Beth couldn’t blame Thomas for being in shock. But her secret hope—the small dream that he would throw his arms around her and welcome her into his life—was fading fast.
He was striding ahead of her now, toward the staff car he’d driven to town. Fewer people walked the winding streets at this late hour. A night breeze fanned down from the high peaks, sweeping away the smells of curry, tanned leather and animal waste. It was cold. Beth shivered as she slid onto the car seat beside Thomas.
“I can give you my mother’s address and phone number,” she said. He drove in silence out of Darjeeling toward the tea estate. She tried again. “She lives beside Lake Palestine now. After my father died, she taught school in Tyler until she could retire early. Then she sold the house that my brothers and I grew up in and moved to the lake. She paints and grows roses.”
Thomas shifted gears, maneuvering the narrow, rutted roadway. Beth could see his Adam’s apple moving up and down, as if he were trying to swallow something but couldn’t. She wondered if it was anger. Or sorrow. It certainly wasn’t joy.
“Mom kept the teapot in the bottom of a cardboard box.” Beth decided to keep talking. It was better than riding in the still emptiness between them. “I wasn’t supposed to find it until after her death. But one time when I was visiting, I noticed the box and I opened it. She had put a note inside the teapot. It had your name on it. Mom had written that you were my birth father, and she said you were a good man.”
“I see.” He fell silent again.
“We’ve had a rough time since I found out. Mom didn’t want to face her past. She had thought she could hide everything and pretend that we Lowells had been this perfect American family. But we weren’t perfect. No family is.”
“That’s true,” he mumbled.
“She’s starting to soften about it now. I think she might even regret having kept you a secret from me. At first she didn’t want to talk about you at all. But now she tells me things.”
“Like what?”
“She told me she had loved you, but she was only nineteen and very afraid. You chose to go overseas even though she asked you not to, and she believed you were choosing that life above her. She wanted to protect herself…and me. So she chose security. My dad was a history professor. They loved each other a lot. He knew everything, yet he treated me like his own daughter.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
“So I didn’t…I didn’t really need to find you. It was something I wanted to do. Mom told me you were dead. She thought you had died in the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in 2004. She had looked for your name in the list of the dead, and she found a Wood.”
Glancing at Beth with a frown, he said, “No, I wasn’t living there then.”
“I know. After I met Miles Wilson in the airport, he ran a search on his company’s employee list and found you in Darjeeling. Mom begged me to abandon the idea of meeting you, and I thought I could. But then I called Miles and came to India anyway.”
Thomas had pulled the car up to the front of the guesthouse. With the engine still running, he set the brake and leaned back in the seat. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, massaging his temples with his thumb and forefinger.
“Beth,” he said, exhaling the word in a deep breath. “I’m a quiet man with an insulated life here. I guess I’m like your mother in that I tried to put my past away. Part of becoming a Christian was repenting…of Jan…of the way I had been with her…the things we had done…the fact that I left her…my selfishness, immaturity, immorality. All of it. I wanted it behind me, and God helped me put things into place.”
He dropped his hand into his lap and looked at her. “Now you’re here,” he said. “A shock. A miracle.”
Shaking his head, he battled an obvious struggle against a tide of emotion as he continued speaking. “I’m sorry, Beth. I wish I knew the right things to say to you. A daughter. My daughter. But I don’t have a plan in place for this. I don’t…I don’t know what to do.”
Beth set her hand on the door release. “It’s okay. I didn’t know what to do when I found out, either. I’ll let you go home now. I’m leaving in the morning, so…it was nice to meet you, Thomas. Thank you for the dinner. I’m glad we talked.”
He nodded, his lips trembling as Beth left the car and shut the door behind her. By the time she had unlocked the guesthouse door and stepped inside, he was gone.
Beth walked into her New York apartment, kicked off her high heels and glanced at the blinking light on the answering machine. Not again. Her mother must have called her five times a day since she got back from India. Finally Beth had to ask her to stop using the cell phone and just leave messages at the home number.
Things weren’t going the way they ought to. Applicants for the new positions at work didn’t have the right qualifications. Beth had hoped to hire employees who had traveled extensively or lived overseas. She needed intelligent, adaptable, eager young souls who could be shaped into copies of herself. But they were turning out to be shy or undereducated or just plain flaky. Most agreed to travel to certain countries, but not just anywhere. The Middle East was off-limits. Most of Africa seemed too chancy. And certainly they wouldn’t go to
places where political unrest, economic instability or climate extremes might cause a problem. No one wanted to get caught in a riot, an earthquake or, heaven forbid, a dirty hotel room.
Beth dropped her bag on the floor and headed for the phone. No doubt her mother’s voice would pipe up about something inconsequential. Did Beth remember the words to the poem that had always hung in the guest bathroom? Was she still suffering from that little bout of intestinal discomfort after her India trip? Did she think Jan ought to find a way to limit Jim Blevins’s visits to the house? On and on.
The real reason for all the calls was, of course, Thomas Wood.
No matter how many times Beth repeated every detail of their few conversations, her mom wanted further clarification. How had Thomas looked when he said such and such? What was the exact wording when she told him this or that? Did he happen to mention so-and-so? Beth had decided this was the inevitable result of failing to end a relationship properly.
Which was why Miles Wilson was driving her crazy. Or rather, the absence of the man. Though it nearly killed her not to see him, she had decided against phoning Miles when she passed through London on her way home. He hadn’t called her, and she felt it was his responsibility to remedy the situation. The fact was, she had to admit, he had turned out to be a boor, after all. A cad. A rogue. Awful! How could he have run off like that? Abandoning her in India, alone with her birth father for the first time. Unconscionable! She regretted ever calling him the first time. Why had she let the man into her life at all?
And Thomas Wood was no better. All that expense and effort to find a man who couldn’t bother to show up and say goodbye to his own daughter. Beth had left Darjeeling without getting even a last glimpse of the man. And just as well. He clearly had gone into some kind of shell—hiding himself from pain and reality, trying to protect his “insulated life” just the way Jan had so many years before. They were two of a kind.
Fuming, Beth plopped down onto the sofa and reached for the phone. It rang just as her fingertips touched the receiver. She dropped her hand in her lap and stared at it. Did she really have the energy to talk to her mother? Did she really want to hear more questions about a man who obviously had no interest in the woman he had put out of his mind and the daughter who was too much trouble to deal with?
But what choice did Beth have? She couldn’t very well cut off her mom and tell Jan to shut up, the way she had once before. With a sigh, she started to pick up the phone, but she had waited so long that the answering machine kicked on.
“Yeah, uh, this is Thomas Wood.” The voice sounded like it was in the next room. “From India. Darjeeling. Well, I just wanted to speak to Beth and say—”
She jammed the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Oh, you’re there.” Silence. “Well, this is Thomas Wood, your…um…father. Birth father.”
“Yes. Hi.”
“Listen, Beth…I don’t want to take up your time, but I did want to say I’m sorry I didn’t make it over to the guesthouse before you left. That was wrong of me. I was…uh, still kind of reeling, I guess.”
She picked up the pillow beside her and held it tight. “It’s all right.”
“I’ve done a lot of thinking and praying…I should have called you sooner.”
“Really, it’s okay.”
“I want to tell you that I’m…” He went quiet for a moment. When he came on again, his voice was choked. “I’m thankful. I’m so thankful for you.”
“Really?” She sounded squeaky and fragile, like a shy little girl.
“You’re a gift I never expected. I don’t deserve you. Not after what I did to your mother. How I behaved. The way I lived my life. And yet God brought you to me. It’s…it’s grace, you know? Unearned favor. God granted me grace, and I’m overwhelmed by it.”
“I figured you might be thinking of me as the unfortunate consequence of sin, or something like that.”
“Unfortunate?” He gave a low laugh. “Bethany Ann Lowell, you are the prettiest, sweetest, smartest, best daughter a man could hope for. I’m just having trouble believing that a man like me could have played any part in creating you.”
By now, Beth was a puddle on the sofa, and she couldn’t make herself say a single word. This was what she had ached to hear. This was what she had craved—this blessing, this affirmation. He didn’t stop.
“I’ve been trying to think how I can make it up,” Thomas said. “How can I get back the lost years? What can I do for you? I need some way to show you how grateful I am that you came to India to find me. Such a long distance. And the way you told me. It was just right, Beth. It was fine. The best possible situation to convey information like that. We already respected each other as fellow Christians. And we had enjoyed our dinner together. I just…well, that’s all I’ve done for you…. All I did was pay for the meal. One meal. I wish I could do more. I guess you’ve already been to college.”
“Yes. I got some scholarships. My parents helped with the rest, and I worked.” Trying to sniffle down tears, she sounded like a drain unclogging. “Don’t think about that, okay. Please? That’s not why I wanted to meet you. I don’t need anything like money or gifts. Just…a phone call now and then. Or a letter. Maybe when you have vacation time, we could meet somewhere. And talk.”
“I’d like that. I’ll plan on it.” He hesitated. “Do you think you might send me a photo or two? Maybe from when you were younger, and also one from now? I’d really like to show you off. I know Lawford met you and so did some of the Christians in the prayer group, but no one realized you were my daughter. People were focused on Miles, him being the owner and all. He’s a wreck, by the way.”
“Miles Wilson?”
“That’s how I got your number. It was just what I told you. He got cold feet. Says he figured out during the prayer service that he wasn’t worthy of you. Thinks he’s a loser. Boorish, I think, is the word he used. He’s struggling, but he’s crazy in love with you. Can’t say as I blame him. He’d be more than boorish to let you go—he’d be a fool. I told him that. He said he knew.”
Beth kept wiping tears, and they kept flowing. “It’s good to know why he left. But neither of you should put me on a pedestal. I’m not that great. Really. Just ask my mom. I’ve acted awful toward her, especially since all this came out. I’ve yelled at her, accused her, blamed her. I keep trying to figure out the Christ-like way to handle this, and I run into a wall. There’s just no excuse for the secret she kept.”
“Yeah, there is. You think about your mom, Beth. What kind of a girl is she? Jan is a homebody. She used to make me fresh lemonade. She could bake cobbler like nobody’s business. And when she drew or painted, it was always the same thing. Roses. She loved Tyler and her family. She loved that old house where she grew up. She was created to be a wife and mother in a little house with a white picket fence and laundry drying on the line. I was a tornado that tore through her world and blew everything to pieces. I was just so different—wild and ornery. Each of us had a little bit of what the other was missing, and we fell in love. But it was a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Me. I was what happened.”
“Not you!” His voice grew harsh. “You’d better hear me say this, Beth. Your mother and I did a lot of wrong and foolish things in our relationship. But you—the child God allowed to be born—you are not a mistake. You are not a sin.”
“I’m a sinner.”
“But not because of Jan and me. Not because of how you came into existence. God permitted your existence. And you are a blessed gift.”
Beth nodded, trying to stem the tears. “Mom says that, too.”
“Good. Mom is wise. So…uh, how is she? Your mother.”
“She’s fine.”
“Jan left Tyler? She moved to Lake Palestine?”
“Yes. She bought a little house and fixed it up. She planted roses.”
He chuckled. “I could have guessed that. I…uh, I was wondering if she was happy. Did she have a good life?
So far, I mean?”
“I think so. I don’t know if she married my dad out of fear, or what, but they loved each other. They had a happy relationship.”
“And you have two brothers?”
“Bob and Bill.”
“Your mom…what did she say…what does she think of me? Did you tell her you met me in Darjeeling? Did she say anything?”
Now this. Beth suddenly had to restrain herself to keep from laughing. She felt exactly like she had in the sixth grade while acting as a go-between for a timid girl and a bashful boy. Does she like me? What did he say? It was crazy!
Beth unfolded her legs from the sofa and stepped to the window. “I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve been telling my mom,” she said. “If you want to know about each other, why don’t you talk? Call her. Here’s her number.”
After reading it to him, Beth glanced at the framed family portrait on the table beside the sofa. Jan and John Lowell sat surrounded by their three children: Beth, Bob and Bill. Did Beth really want her mother to talk to Thomas Wood again? What about her dad? John Lowell was dead, but would this reconnection violate his honor and his memory? He had been such a great father. And how would Bob and Bill feel if their sister let this stranger into their mother’s life?
“Thanks,” Thomas told Beth, “but I’ll probably just call you now and then. Not that I’m upset with Jan for keeping her pregnancy from me. I think I’m past that. I understand the choice she made, and I’ve made peace with it. I’d just prefer to visit with you, and you can let me know how your mom is doing.”
Beth rolled her eyes. More phone calls filled with questions about each other, no doubt. “All right. That’s fine with me.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll let you go,” he said. “But Beth, I just wanted to…I learned a lot from Nirmala, you see. From her life and also from her death. I know not to take anything for granted. So, I want to say…right now before I hang up…I want to tell you that I love you.”
Leaves of Hope Page 22
