The Good Father

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I hope you do,” she said. “I wasn’t even going to tell you so you wouldn’t leave. ’Cause I really love you guys.”

  I kept my eyes on Bella because I knew Savannah had just dumped something on me that she hadn’t meant to say and there was no way I was getting into any talk about love with her.

  “Yeah,” I said, reaching for another strawberry. “She loves you, too.”

  12

  Robin

  2006

  What my father didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

  That’s what I decided when Travis and I began sneaking around to see each other. It wasn’t easy. Daddy had pulled me out of school and set me up with a teacher who came to the house. I usually had no more than two hours between the time my teacher left and my father got home from work, but Travis would come over during that time. At first, we just listened to music or watched part of a movie and kissed a little—well, we kissed a lot, I guess, so much that one day my father asked me about the rash on my face when he got home.

  I texted Travis that night. We have 2 stop kissing so much. Daddy saw rash on my face.

  Don’t want 2 stop, Travis wrote back.

  Have 2 do things that won’t leave rash where he can see it. I smiled as I pressed the keys, then stared at the display on my phone, waiting for his reply. It took a little while to come.

  But your heart?

  He was worried about me. That was sweet.

  It’ll be ok, I wrote. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that. My heart was pounding in my throat from the texting alone. Tomorrow? I typed.

  Cool!!!!!!

  Condoms!!

  Not an idiot. I’ll bring 10. Enuf?

  I giggled. Can’t wait.

  We ended up going to his house instead of meeting at mine. I was too nervous about my father coming home, so I lied and told Daddy that Sherry had gotten back in touch and we were going to a movie. The worst part about lying was seeing his face light up when I told him. He was so happy I’d heard from one of my old girlfriends. He loved me so much and wanted me to be happy. Just not with Travis.

  Travis picked me up and we drove to his little house in Carolina Beach. His mom was at her waitressing job and would be gone for hours. His house smelled like smoke and fish, but you never saw a speck of dust anywhere. I loved it. He always called it a dump and the outside was falling apart, but inside it was full of knickknacks and afghans and feminine things that made my condo seem sterile. Like a hospital.

  Travis started kissing me as soon as we were in the door. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “Totally sure,” I said, though I didn’t think he’d be able to stop even if I said I was having second thoughts. I’d never seen him like that, so intense and hot. He grabbed my hand and nearly pulled me through the living room and hallway to his bedroom, but when he lowered me to the bed, he did it gently, like I was made of glass.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “You can just take it easy and I can—”

  “I want to do things.” My hand was on his belt buckle. The bulge in his jeans was right in front of me, close to my cheek. My mouth. I was breathing hard and I felt the muscles tighten around my heart, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to have him inside me.

  I knew it was supposed to hurt, but it didn’t. Not even a little bit. It was over so quickly I was disappointed. I’d wanted it to go on and on and he promised me the next time it would. Then he touched me with his fingers, slipping one inside me, pressing the others against me in some magical way that made me breathe so hard and fast I thought I might actually die, but still I didn’t care. I let out a shout and he caught it with his lips and then it was over. From start to finish, no more than seven or eight minutes. The best seven or eight minutes of my life.

  “Pretend I’m your father,” he said afterward, when he’d settled down next to me on the bed, his arm around my shoulders.

  “What?”

  “So how was the movie, Robin?” he asked in a voice that was nearly as deep and stern as Daddy’s.

  I laughed. “Amazing,” I said.

  “The sort of movie you’d go to see a second time?”

  “And a third and a fourth.”

  Travis rolled against me, hugging me hard to his naked body, his face buried in my hair. He whispered something that sounded like forever and I whispered the same word in return, and then I cried because I was so, so happy.

  * * *

  “I have some big news,” my father said at dinner the next night. It was my turn to cook, so we were eating stir-fried chicken and vegetables, which was just about the only thing I knew how to make.

  I looked up from my plate and he was wearing that smile of his that meant he wasn’t sure how I was going to react to something. “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve accepted a position at UNC-Chapel Hill.”

  I set down my fork. My heart did a little sputter in my chest. “What do you mean?”

  “I know the timing’s not great now that you’ve reconnected with Sherry and I’m sorry about that, but you’ll make new friends in Chapel Hill and the most important thing is that we’ll be close to the very best medical care for you.”

  “The medical care is fine here,” I said. “I don’t want to move.” I was already doing the calculations in my head. Chapel Hill was three hours away. When would I ever get to see Travis? I felt panicky.

  “I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when we’re closer to excellent care,” he said. “I know I’m springing this on you kind of suddenly, but I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for sure. Everything fell together today. Both the job and finding someone to rent the condo here. Plus I know of a condo there we can rent until I’m ready to buy it. That practically dropped into my lap.” He smiled again. “So we need to start packing right away. I’m having cartons delivered tomorrow and you can just begin putting your clothes and books and things into—”

  “When?” I said. “When are we moving?”

  “I have to call the movers, but I hope I can find someone to do it a week from Friday. I have to start work the following Monday.”

  “Dad!” I said again. “You should have told me. You should have given me some warning!”

  “Peace and calm, honey,” he said, and I felt like throwing my fork at him but of course I didn’t. “I suppose I should have let you know what was going on, but I didn’t want to get you upset and then have it fall through. Until this morning, I thought it might not work out.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I set down my fork and stood up. I had to call Travis. I had to tell him what was happening.

  “Sit down,” my father said. He spoke in that calm voice he used to try to settle me down. I didn’t dare walk away, but I didn’t sit down, either. “I know you’ve been seeing Travis,” he said.

  “I have not.” My cheeks burned. How could he know? How much did he know?

  “Don’t lie to me. One of our neighbors—who shall remain nameless—told me he’s been here several times while I’ve been at the university.”

  “It was only a couple of times,” I said. “He brought some…books over.” I stared down at the plate of stir-fry, afraid to look him in the eye.

  “Were you really with Sherry last night?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He sighed like he didn’t believe me but wasn’t going to push it. He didn’t need to. He was going to make sure I never saw Travis again. “Go ahead to your room,” he said. “Start thinking about what you want to take with you and what you can donate to charity.” He grabbed my hand as I walked past his chair. “It’s puppy love, honey,” he said. “You’ll find a more suitable young man one of these days. I promise.”

  * * *

  The move happened so quickly that I had no time to get away from my father to say goodbye to Travis in person. It was a horrible couple of weeks. I’m sure my father knew about the move long before he told me about it. Yes, I believed we were moving partly for his job and partly to get me the
best medical care, but I knew he was looking for a way to put some distance between Travis and me. He had no idea how close we were, though. How distance wasn’t going to put an end to the fact that we loved each other.

  Our new condo was smaller than the one in Wilmington, but it was in a very upscale building on a street near the university and students walked together outside our windows, chattering to each other, making me lonelier than ever. Travis and I stayed in constant contact by phone and text and email and I would have died of loneliness without him. I had a new home teacher but zero friends. How did you make friends in a new town when you were cooped up in a condo all day? My father finally figured out what was going on between Travis and me from the phone bills. He was more scared than angry and told me I needed to make new friends in Chapel Hill.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” I asked him. I told him how lonely I was and he got me involved in a support group with other sick kids, which was more depressing than anything else. After that, Travis and I stuck to email for our contact, and we began to make a plan. We picked a Tuesday early in January, when I knew my father would be at the university for the entire day. Travis would ditch school, come pick me up, and we’d go to Jordan Lake to spend the day together. It would be chilly, but we wouldn’t care. For the first time since the move, I walked around with a smile on my face.

  “I knew you’d like it here once you settled in,” my father said as we watched TV together that night.

  “Right,” I said. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I hadn’t stopped to think it might hurt me.

  13

  Travis

  Sometimes, life didn’t give you much choice.

  My landlord gave me three days to get out of the trailer. It wasn’t like people were dying to rent the thing now that it was fall. He was just being hard-assed and although I told him I would pay the back rent once I started working again, he didn’t want to hear it. I guess he knew what I knew deep in my gut: “working again” wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. So I told Savannah I’d take that job with her friend in Raleigh. “Roy’ll know someone who can watch Bella for you,” she said. “He knows everyone. He’s totally connected.”

  I was building Roy up to be my savior. Construction workers were a dime a dozen, but this guy was holding a job for a stranger. He was taking a chance on me just because I was a friend of Savannah’s. And to make things even better, he had connections to child care? It felt like I didn’t have anything to lose.

  I had an old mattress in the back of the van that had been there from when I’d carted around sheets of glass for a job, and I was glad now that I’d never taken it out. Bella and I were going to have to live in the van until I got a paycheck and could find an apartment or room or something. For the first time ever, I thought I could be in danger of losing Bella. If someone knew how screwed up my circumstances had become, could they do that? Report to social services that I didn’t have the money to take care of her? I didn’t. It was the truth. But I was going to get by somehow. I’d never let Bella be taken away.

  “Do you ever think that maybe you should give her to her mother?” Savannah asked me the night before we left. We were drinking beer on the steps of her trailer while Bella slept inside on the couch. Savannah had set up an interview for me with Roy for the day after tomorrow and given me his phone number to find out where to meet him. I was going to have to buy a prepaid cell phone so I’d have a number to give him.

  “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that,” I said.

  “I know you love her and you’re a great father and all that.” She brushed a strand of her amazing hair over her shoulder. “But let’s face it. You can’t really take care of her now and maybe her mother, Robin, maybe she could—”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I cut her off.

  “You’re being selfish,” she said. “Couldn’t Robin at least take her till you get on your feet again? Or if that didn’t work out, maybe she’d be better off in foster care for a while. She could have so much more than you can give her right now.”

  I was royally pissed off. “You really know how to kick a guy when he’s down,” I said.

  “I just wondered,” she said.

  The truth was, once or twice since the fire, I had wondered if I’d screwed up Bella’s life. I never used to feel like I’d made a mistake when I derailed Robin’s plans for Bella to be adopted. Let her go to a couple who can give her everything, people argued with me when I told them I was going to fight for her. Maybe someone else could have given her every material thing she could ever want, but they couldn’t give her me. Her father. Growing up, I cared about having my father, not about what he could give me. I cared about those walks with him on the beach and all the things he taught me. My mother had agreed with me about taking Bella and supported me all the way. But since the fire and my lack of money, I’d lie in bed at night and feel a boatload of guilt pour down on me. Now I was going to uproot her again just when she was getting used to the trailer and Savannah, and I was going to take her—and me—inland. When I traveled thirty minutes from the coast, I always felt like I was fighting for air. Three hours from the beach, I’d suffocate. But lots of people had to rearrange their lives for work, so it was time to get a grip on myself and go. Savannah loaned me fifty bucks for gas, and I had another fifty in my pocket for food and the cell phone. Maybe this Roy guy could give me an advance. I’d work my butt off for him if he could help me out.

  “Stay over tonight,” Savannah said as I got to my feet.

  I shook my head. “I have some things to get ready before we take off tomorrow.” Mostly, I didn’t want some drawn-out, sloppy goodbye with Savannah. Ever since that day she’d said she loved us, I’d been nervous that she’d press me to say something back to her. That she’d want promises I was never going to keep.

  “Okay,” she said, and I was surprised she didn’t put up a fight.

  We went inside and I picked up my sleeping daughter and carried her back to our trailer. I tucked her into the double bed. A week ago, I’d been upset that we were moving into this pathetic tin can. Now I was moving us into my van. I only hoped the next step wasn’t the street.

  * * *

  “We’re going on a trip today, Bella,” I said the next morning as I poured the last of the Cheerios into her bowl. “An adventure.”

  “Where?” she asked, reaching for her spoon.

  I sat across the small table from her. “A city called Raleigh,” I said, “where I can find a job. For a few nights, we’re going to live in the van. Won’t that be cool? Kind of like camping out.”

  “Like when we slept in the tent?” She didn’t look happy and I realized camping had been a stupid word to use. During the summer, I thought it would be cool to take her camping, so I set up my father’s old pup tent in our backyard. Bella had hated every minute of it and begged to go inside until I finally gave in.

  “No, not like camping,” I said. “Totally different, actually. Just like having Moby Dick be our little house on wheels for a few days until we find a real house. Or apartment.” Or whatever.

  “Are we going where Nana is? Is she in the Raleigh place?”

  I let out a breath. “No, baby. I told you. Nana’s in heaven. We can’t see her anymore.”

  She poked her spoon at her Cheerios. “Until I’m an old lady and go there, too?”

  “Right,” I said with a sigh, and I stood up to begin packing her collection of shells.

  I’d hoped we could have one last walk on the beach, but it started to rain. It was a chilly rain that fit how I was feeling. I would have walked on the beach anyway if I’d only had myself to think about, but the last thing I needed was Bella getting sick.

  I packed up the rest of our stuff. There wasn’t much of it. I helped Bella buckle herself into her car seat, then dodged the raindrops to knock on Savannah’s door to say goodbye. She came out and hopped in the van, scrambling across the backseat to give Bella a hug. She ran a hand over Bel
la’s fine hair and said, “I’ll miss you, cutie pie,” and she looked so sad I thought she might cry. She really did love Bella, I thought as I stood in the drizzle next to the van. I gave Savannah a hug and thanked her for everything. I owed her.

  “Maybe I’ll see you in Raleigh sometime,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said, but I knew that the moment the economy picked up, I was coming back to Carolina Beach. There was no doubt about that in my mind. I wouldn’t tell her that, though. She needed to be able to convince this Roy dude that I was trustworthy and motivated. Someone he could count on.

  Bella and I waved to Savannah as we drove away, and once we pulled onto 70, I started singing “You Are My Sunshine” and she joined right in the way she always did, and I tried to convince myself that we were heading for a future that would be a whole lot better than what we had now.

  14

  Robin

  “So I think we’ll put the Delaneys at table seven and the Beckers at eight.”

  Mollie had spread her chart out on the dining room table and it covered nearly a third of the surface. Dale and I sat on one side of the table staring down at the dozens of circles that represented seating for the guests at the wedding reception and the long rectangle reserved for the small wedding party. Alissa would be my maid of honor, of course, and my friend Joy, who’d recently moved to Charlotte, would be my bridesmaid. Dale’s best friend, a guy he went to college with and who now lived up north someplace, would be his best man, and one of his fellow lawyers would be a groomsman. I didn’t have a lot of close friends. After I got sick, I never really had the chance to make them. I’d loved Joy like a sister, but even she and I had drifted apart since her move to Charlotte. Or maybe it wasn’t so much her move as my total adoption by the Hendricks family.

  Dale stretched back from the table with a yawn. “Are we done with this?” he asked his mother, who didn’t seem to hear him.

  “At any party,” she said to me, “you want to put the talkers and the quiet people together. The talkers will keep things moving and the quiet people won’t have a chance to feel awkward.”