Beneath a Southern Sky

by Deborah Raney

  He took her hand and led her to the living room, pulling her down on the sofa beside him. “Okay, let’s talk.”

  While he listened, she poured out all her anger, all her doubts, and especially her chagrin at the fact that the blowup had occurred in front of the Camfields. “You couldn’t have handpicked anyone worse to humiliate me in front of, Cole,” she moaned.

  At that he bristled. “I could say exactly the same thing to you, Daria. From day one those people have made me feel unworthy to be Natalie’s father. I can understand why it might be hard for them to see me with their granddaughter, but I don’t deserve their resentment. There is nothing I want more than to be a good dad to Natalie. And I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in hoping that Nate’s parents might even feel grateful that under the circumstances I’ve made Natalie’s and your life a little happier, a little more secure. I admit that I took my frustration out on Jack and Vera. That wasn’t fair after they drove all this way. But I truly felt it was important that we not give in to Natalie.”

  Daria sat silently, refusing to look at him, mulling his words over in her mind.

  After a few minutes he spoke again, “I am sorry, Daria. I was wrong. And I’ll call Jack and Vera and apologize to them.” He paused a beat, then muttered, “Much as it will pain me.”

  She gave him a tiny smile.

  “Oh, Cole,” she said finally. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so focused on myself that I didn’t even think about how this affects you. You are Natalie’s father. And you’re a wonderful father. But—” She hesitated, not wanting to start another argument.

  “Say it,” he urged.

  “Well, it wasn’t fair for you to just make the decision yourself. You should have talked to me about it before you came down with your verdict.”

  “I’ll give you that,” he said with a meek, sideways grin. “But can we agree right now that we will start being more consistent with her? She’s a little toughie—I have a feeling we have one of those textbook strong-willed children on our hands—and she’s going to play us against each other every chance she gets if she sees that we’re divided on this.”

  “I’ll try, Cole. It won’t be easy, but I’ll try. And I’m so sorry this turned into such a huge fight. I said some horrible things—and thought some even more horrible things. Things I didn’t even mean. I need to ask your forgiveness too.”

  “You know you have it.” He took her hand, and they both sat in silence for several minutes. Finally he turned to her. “So what horrible things were you thinking?”

  She shook her head firmly. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Then don’t tell me,” he said, leaning over to kiss her gently. He drew away and then laughed softly. “Man,” he said, shaking his head in feigned bewilderment, “I thought we were going to see steam coming from Vera’s ears.”

  Daria giggled at the vision of the prim and proper Vera literally letting off steam, and for now their shared laughter drew her into the circle of her husband’s arms.

  Twenty

  Early in October, autumn finally made a reluctant appearance in Kansas. Daria bent to retrieve another damp pair of Cole’s work jeans from her laundry basket. She snapped them briskly and pinned them to the clothesline. A hint of crispness was in the evening air, and though it was a welcome respite from the heat, she thought with regret that it wouldn’t be long before she’d have to go back to using the dryer. She clipped the rest of the clothes to the line in a neat row and straightened to flex her aching muscles. Doing a veterinarian’s laundry was no small feat. She sometimes had to run Cole’s grimy coveralls through the washing machine three times to get them clean. For him she would have made lye soap and scrubbed his jeans on a washboard. She smiled to herself, realizing that she had never expected she would gain such deep satisfaction from a tidy row of clean laundry flapping in the wind.

  But it was the view beyond the clothesline—the stretch of backyard that ambled to the creek—that took her breath away. The trees on their land were beginning to turn, a glorious kaleidoscope of gold and scarlet against the rolling green pastureland. When she’d first returned to the States, especially that first winter, she had sometimes longed for the predictable, balmy tropics of Timoné, but after a year of living on this sweep of Kansas prairie, she realized how much she cherished the beauty of the changing seasons, and especially how much she loved the winter snows.

  She heard voices and knew that Cole and Natalie were coming up the lane from their nightly stroll to retrieve the mail. She went to the corner of the house where she could watch them without being noticed. Nattie was chattering away about some little object she held in her hand, and Cole was listening intently, as though what she was telling him was the most important thing in the world. Daria couldn’t make out their words, but Nattie’s voice was like the song of a little bird, her twittering peppered with an inflection of adoration wrapped around two repeated syllables: “Dad-dy, Dad-dy, Dad-dy.”

  Natalie said something Daria didn’t catch, and Cole laughed uproariously and scooped the little girl up and threw her over one broad shoulder like an unwieldy sack of potatoes. She squealed with delight until he finally swung her back to the ground with a tender pat on the head.

  Watching them together, hearing their dear voices, Daria was overcome with gratitude for the life she’d been given. Like the tears that pooled behind her eyelids, a prayer of gratitude welled up in her, and she poured out the words without thinking. “O Lord, I’m so blessed. Thank you, Father,” she whispered. Her words wafted away on the evening breeze, and she was suddenly overcome with the realization of how rare communion with her heavenly Father had become lately. She felt so unworthy of the blessings he had heaped on her. Her heart was filled with a piercing mixture of gratitude, and of sorrow that she had kept God at such a distance. A brief glimpse of understanding flashed through her mind, and she realized the origin of that distance. It had begun when she’d fallen in love with Cole. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she hadn’t sought God about her decision to marry again. Anyone with eyes could see now how very right that decision had been. Still, it had been wrong of her to shut God out as she had. A feather of remorse tickled her conscience, but she brushed it away.

  “I am sorry, Lord,” she whispered, meaning it, but knowing there was more she needed to say—much more. She hadn’t confronted the whole truth, and deep in her heart she knew it.

  Cole and Nattie were on their way into the house and were calling for her, but she promised herself that she would make things right with her Creator. Soon, she would seek out a time to get alone before him, to fall to her knees and set things right. She would find her way back to the precious relationship she had once shared with the God of the universe.

  Cole’s pickup bounced along the dusty country road that led out to Bill Wyler’s farm. He’d been called to check on some sick cattle, and he was grateful for the time away from the clinic. He needed to sort out some things.

  Immediately a picture of Natalie formed in his mind, causing him to smile. He loved that little girl with a love he’d never experienced before in his life. He loved his wife deeply. Daria had brought him a happiness and a wholeness he’d feared he might never know again. But the love he felt for Nattie had come as a staggering, amazing surprise.

  He wanted to adopt her. In every sense of the word, he was Nat-tie’s father, and he didn’t want there to be any doubt in anyone’s eyes, especially hers. He wanted her to have his name.

  Late one night after Natalie had gone to bed and he and Daria were sitting on the porch in the dark, Cole had found the courage to broach the subject. “I want her to have my name, Daria,” he said, after he’d pled his case.

  “Cole, I just don’t know if that would be right to the Camfields. Or to Nate,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not suggesting that we take away the Camfield name, Daria. She could still use it. A lot of kids go by two last names these days—or hyphenated ones,” he told her.” Maybe I’m being t
oo sensitive, but I still remember what it was like to grow up the only Hunter in a house full of Bradshaws.

  “But that’s not the most important thing, Daria. You know that—” A lump rose in his throat, catching him by surprise. He swallowed hard and went on. “You know if, God forbid, anything ever happened to you, Jack and Vera would swoop down to get custody of Natalie so fast I wouldn’t know what hit me.” The thought almost paralyzed him. He had never been close to his stepfather and had lost contact with the man after his mother’s death. It broke his heart to think of the same thing happening between him and Natalie.

  “Oh, Cole, that would never happen. Besides,” she assured him, taking his hand in hers, “nothing is going to happen to me.”

  But he couldn’t be so sure. He’d lost too many people who were dear to him. It would kill him to lose Natalie along with Daria. Her vulnerability and, perhaps most of all, her adoration of him caused him to love her with an emotion that was almost painful. He and God alone knew the source of the pain. It ate at him like a cancer.

  Though Daria seemed to understand his feelings, she still had deep reservations about what the Camfields’ reaction would be. He thought she might be softening though. Just last night when he’d brought up the subject again, she’d said thoughtfully, “I know it would save her a lot of explaining. I don’t want her to have to tell the whole story every time someone discovers that her name is Camfield and ours is Hunter. And that will be even more of an issue when she has brothers and sisters.”

  A twinge of anxiety came over him, just thinking about Daria’s words. As much as he wanted to persuade her on the adoption, he’d been noncommittal on the subject of having their own children. The subject was one he could scarcely bring himself to think about, let alone discuss with Daria. During their engagement, he had humored her with all her talk about having three or four more children. Nat-tie had been such a handful that having another child seemed to be the furthest thing from Daria’s mind. But he knew he couldn’t put her off forever. The thought filled him with dread.

  Sometimes, when he and Daria were feeling especially close, when the sense of being a family filled him with gratitude, he could almost put the fears of the past aside, could almost allow himself to dream that they might have a child together someday. But then a glimpse of his secret would bring him up short, and he would be afraid to examine it more closely.

  He came so close to pouring out the truth to Daria during those times. But something always stopped him. When things were good he didn’t want to spoil them, and when things were strained between them, he wasn’t sure Daria could forgive the truth. It was a thing he should have gotten out in the open before he ever asked Daria to marry him. It had certainly not been his intention to hide anything from her. In fact, he’d tried to tell her several times when they’d first begun dating, but something always seemed to stop him before it was out. And when he finally knew that he needed to share this ugly, secret part of his past with her, he loved her too much to risk losing her. He’d justified keeping it from Daria, convincing himself that it had nothing to do with her. But if that were true, why did it hold him in such a tight grip now? Why was it such a huge weight on his heart?

  He realized that it was part of the reason he was pushing Daria so hard to agree to the adoption. Maybe if he was bound by law as Natalie’s father, Daria would have no choice but to forgive him—not only for the failings of his past, but for keeping them secret from her as well. And he did fear now that keeping the secret was more unforgivable than the secret itself.

  Again he reminded himself that God had forgiven him everything. Long ago the sins of his past had been wiped away “as far as the east is from the west.” But it felt wrong to have secrets from Daria, and he knew that this skeleton in his closet had come between them in ways he probably didn’t even realize.

  The Wyler ranch appeared over the crest of a hill, and he pushed the disturbing thoughts out of his mind. He pulled into the drive and parked the pickup near the barn. In his rearview mirror, he saw Mary Wyler emerge from the farmhouse, her silver-white hair mostly covered by a bright red bandanna. He managed to find a genuine smile to greet one of his favorite clients.

  But he knew from experience that, like a lump of yeast dough, he’d only temporarily punched his anxieties down. They would bubble and ferment and rise again in his consciousness.

  Eventually he would have to deal with them before they destroyed something precious.

  She had left the windows open upstairs, and now it was chilly in their bedroom. Daria was grateful that the bedding in her arms was still warm from the dryer. She unfurled the sheets and smoothed them over the mattress, finishing with neat hospital corners.

  When the bed was made, she surveyed the room with satisfaction. She loved its coziness. The sconces beside their bed cast a warm glow over the walls, and she smiled to herself as she remembered the night they had hung the wallpaper. They’d had their share of arguments and adjustments since then, but they’d come a long way and things were good.

  She was about to switch off the lights and go downstairs when she heard Rufus barking beneath the open window. She crossed the room and leaned out to see what he was barking at. Her eyes followed the noise and traveled beyond the ripening field of milo to the hedgerow that bordered the property behind their house.

  There she could see Cole and Natalie in silhouette against the deepening sky, ignoring Rufus as he bounded in a circle around them, yipping joyfully. Cole knelt in front of the little girl, pointing to the heavens and gesturing widely. Her tiny form was dwarfed by the endless prairie behind them. The night air carried their voices—Cole’s deep and serious, Natalie’s silvery and full of wonderment—but Daria couldn’t quite make out their words. A white sliver of moon had already appeared above the horizon. She guessed from his gestures that Cole was explaining the mysteries of the galaxy.

  The happy scene brought a lump to her throat. She had been so blessed. God had restored all she had lost and had given her a life full of small pleasures and deep joy. And yet sometimes when she gazed into a sky like tonight’s, alight with myriad stars, and sometimes when she looked into the depths of Natalie’s eyes, which were really Nathan Camfield’s eyes, memories of Nate would overwhelm her. There was still a knot of sadness inside her because of Nate.

  Though they rarely spoke of it, she knew that Cole also harbored some ghosts from the sadness of his life before he had met her. Daria had never wished to “undo” the life she’d had with Nate, especially the child he had given her. But Cole had told her once that he wished he had met her before he’d met Bridgette. He seldom spoke of his marriage to Bridgette, but she knew that there must have been some deep unhappiness and unresolved issues in his first marriage for Cole to have such thoughts. She suspected that he still carried some misplaced guilt for Bridgette’s death, or at least for her inability to find joy as his wife.

  She shook off the melancholy thoughts and put her hand on her stomach. Perhaps the secret she cradled there would be the medicine that would finally heal both of their pasts. They hadn’t planned to have a baby so soon. Dealing with Natalie took every ounce of energy she had, and Cole was still getting on his feet with the clinic financially, but she was happy about the baby. It was a blessing. She wasn’t quite sure why she had waited so long to give Cole the good news, but when she did, she wanted it to be a special celebration.

  She raised the window a few inches and shouted for Natalie to come in for her bath, then she started plotting how she would reveal her happy news to Cole.

  Twenty–One

  Daria dug in the kitchen drawer for some matches, then went into the dining room to light the five slender candles that graced the center of the table. The white linen cloth was set with their good china, and a bouquet of the last zinnias from her garden provided a rainbow of vivid colors. The aroma of roast beef filled the house, and a perfect raspberry cheesecake—one she’d spent half the afternoon baking—sat beside the flowers as part
of the centerpiece. Daria was lighting the last taper when she heard Cole’s truck coming down the lane.

  She suddenly felt as nervous as she had before their first date. Wiping her sweaty palms on a dishtowel, she ran to the bathroom and checked her hair one last time.

  The back door slammed, and she heard the familiar sounds of her husband’s work boots dropping in the mud room, Rufus’s bowl being filled with dog chow, and Cole’s ritual evening announcement, “Hey, babe, I’m home.”

  She heard his stocking feet pad across the hardwood floors. “Mmm, something smells good. Daria? Anybody home?”

  “I’m in here,” she hollered from the dining room, trying to sound casual.

  She waited by the table, hands clasped in front of her, with what she knew must be a silly grin on her face.

  He peered into the room and did a double take—first at the elegantly set table, and then at his equally elegant wife. “Whoa! What on earth?”

  “Hi!” she said coyly, smoothing the skirt of his favorite dress. She smiled at the befuddled expression he wore.

  “What is going on?” Suddenly a look of panic crossed his face. “This isn’t our anniversary, is it?”

  She burst out laughing and pulled him toward her by the collar of his flannel shirt, kissing the tip of his nose. “No, you goose. We got married on Valentine’s Day, remember? I did that on purpose so you wouldn’t have so many holidays to remember.”

  “Then what’s all this about?”

  “You’ll see,” she said mysteriously. “Now why don’t you go jump in the shower and change into something”—she looked his filthy work clothes up and down—“I’ll settle for something clean,” she laughed.

  He started down the hallway, shaking his head in puzzlement, then turned back to her. “Hey, where’s Nattie?”

  “She’s with my mom. Just go get in the shower.”