“Yes, if you mean with Mother and Father. But . . . Have you found your son?”
On one level he wasn’t surprised, which was a little unsettling. “How do you know about that. Mother and Fa–”
“Know nothing. Though I am certain they would be most interested in their grandchild, especially since I have failed them in that regard.”
Daniel tucked away that last phrase and the vulnerability it might reveal for consideration later. He wasn’t going to be detoured now.
“How do you know?” he ground out.
“Between the circumstances of your determined search for a certain reporter named Kendra Jenner who had been on Santa Estella, recent inquiries about your bona fides all tracing back to Ms. Jenner and the fact that she had a son nine months after being on Santa Estella, it did not seem an unwarranted chasm to jump to reach such a conclusion. Do you know for certain that the child is yours?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Did he? Daniel doubted it. Robert Delligatti had been born to stable, staid parents. Even if his childhood had included extensive periods living in far corners of the world, he had always known where he came from, who his parents were, that they loved each other, and that they loved him. He’d had a family.
Daniel hadn’t had any of that for the first seven years of his life. Matthew hadn’t had the full package, either. Not for his first two years. But he was going to. No matter what Daniel had to do to make sure of it.
“Do you love her?”
Robert’s question was so unexpected the only sound that came out of Daniel’s throat was a strangled grunt.
“The mother I meant,” Robert added.
“I know who you meant. I just don’t know what business it is of yours or anybody else’s”
“I can understand your viewpoint, Daniel. And in consideration of it, I won’t pursue that line of inquiry, which would have proceeded to Does she love you? No–don’t answer.” Daniel had had no intention of answering, even if he’d had any hope of knowing the answer. “However, it is an important question because it could have great impact on certain other considerations.”
“Considerations?”
“I’m presuming that you want to be involved in the child’s rearing and to be a presence in his life?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would,” Robert said inexplicably. “So, how the mother views you is germane to the scope of your involvement.”
“Kendra won’t keep me from Matthew. She grew up without a father–he was a pilot. Air Force. MIA for a while before they found his crash site–and she won’t do that to her son.”
“That’s her feeling now, and perhaps that will remain her feeling. But people’s attitudes often undergo a transformation if their lives change drastically. Can you be certain of this attitude enduring if, for instance, she married another man who wanted to adopt Matthew?”
Daniel spit out a curse.
I don’t want my son to have a father who doesn’t come back–no matter how noble the cause. I know how that feels.
He’d tried to get her to talk about that, and she’d shut him off. She’d announced she had work to do, thanked him for lunch, reminded him of his scheduled stint at the babysitting co-op the next day, and exited his car practically before he’d come to a stop outside her back door.
Could that be what she’d meant–she was looking for another man to be Matthew’s father?
But nothing she did would ever change that he was Matthew’s father. Nothing.
Robert continued, his voice unruffled. “I have never met Ms. Jenner, so none of my observations are personal in any way. It is based on observation and my recent review of statistics from a study on family units ten years after the birth of a child out of wedlock. The study highlights an appalling number of fathers who do not attempt to remain in their children’s lives. However, an ancillary conclusion that I have drawn from the statistics is that a father who is interested in maintaining a role in his children’s lives should give careful consideration to safeguarding his legal rights.”
“Legal rights?” Daniel repeated, even as he recognized that Robert’s language became stiffer and more formal when he discussed a topic most people would consider emotional. Come to think of it, so did Robert Senior’s.
“Indeed. Perhaps most important is that you be listed as the father on the birth certificate.”
“I’m Matthew’s father,” he rasped out. “There’s no question.”
“Perhaps not between you and his mother, but the legal system can take an entirely different view.”
“I’ve got to go, Robert. Somebody’s at the door,” he lied.
“Very well. If I can be of any assistance be assured–”
“Yeah. Thanks. Goodbye.”
He’d hung up before he heard the answering farewell. Robert Delligatti Junior had given him some things to think about.
*
How long had their frenzy last? How long had they laid like this, still joined? Half discarded clothes wrapped into uncomfortable wads that neither of them moved to shift. She didn’t know how long. She didn’t care. She considered it only in an unfocused wonder.
Then he shifted against her, inside her, and her wonder focused anew.
This time was slower–at first–with moments allowed to remove the last of the clothing that had kept them from touching fully. She clung to him, holding on as tightly as she had held on to her balance against the storm as it tried to sweep her away.
But this time she didn’t fight the force that swept her away.
She heard the storm but it hardly seemed real.
Only he seemed real. Only . . .
“Daniel. . .”
Her own voice pulled Kendra out of the dream, yet not quite awake.
She blinked away the lingering images and saw the paint lines in the white ceiling. So different from their dingy refuge from the hurricane.
Turning on her side she considered her dresser. Early morning light softened the nicks and scratches, as if she saw her familiar room through a veil of chiffon. A huge, soft chiffon scarf drifting down across her naked body, covering her and Daniel–
Even as a shiver rippled across her skin, Kendra jerked her mind away from the image and into reality.
It was simply a hangover from the dream. It had happened before he arrived in Far Hills. There was no significance that it had happened now.
Especially not now.
Now that they’d started to work out the logistics of daily life to her satisfaction. She saw no reason not to take advantage of Daniel’s presence in Far Hills to free up more of her time to work on the special section. He’d said he wanted to be involved in Matthew’s life. He’d said he didn’t mind filling in for her shifts at the babysitting co-op. So why shouldn’t she let him? Especially since it was in the midst of all the other kids and adults at the co-op. Daniel wouldn’t be anyone special to Matthew.
She wasn’t avoiding Daniel–no matter what Ellyn said.
It simply worked out better that he was with Matthew while she was working.
So for the past two weeks she’d seen him mostly in passing, when she dropped off Matthew and picked him up at the co-op.
The times they had overlapped, she’d observed what Ellyn and Fran never tired of telling her–how much more comfortable he was becoming with Matthew.
“If he’d relax a little more, he could be a natural,” the usually down-to-earth Fran raved.
That was going a bit far, to Kendra’s mind. But she would acknowledge Matthew had taken to him, even mastering a version of Dan’l in his first recognition that Luke was not a synonym for man.
She remembered her own first awkward hours, days and weeks trying to cope with the terror of having absolute responsibility for every need and wish of this scrap of humanity whom she loved more than she’d thought possible.
It should have been that hard for Daniel.
She rolled onto her other side.
One day when they’d stood in the church basement watching Matthew play with another little boy, she’d tried to find out more about his relationship with the Delligattis.
“How about your parents? Do you get along with them now?”
He’d frowned, but answered readily enough. “Yeah, I get along with them.”
“See them much?”
“They’re retired, living in Florida. I see them when I can.”
“Do you love them?”
“They’ve been very good to me,” he’d said stiffly.
“But you’re not willing to say you love them?”
“What’s this about, Kendra?”
“I’m trying to get a feel for your relationships with your family. I think that could be important for Matthew–for how you deal with Matthew, don’t you?”
“Are you complaining about how I deal with Matthew?”
“No, but your parents are the only grandparents Matthew has–it’s natural for me to wonder about your relationship with them.”
“I suppose,” he granted, but then he’d changed the subject.
And she’d let him. Because her mention of his parents as grandparents to Matthew had reminded her that the sort of Norman Rockwell image those words conjured up would never happen.
Daniel was a pilot, a pilot with a government job with an unnamed agency that took him far away for unpredictable stretches of time–when he wasn’t spending years at a time masquerading as a masked crusader and various supporting characters.
Once he left Far Hills and returned to his “regular’ job, he would drop out of their lives. Oh, she supposed that for a while, there’d be occasional visits, probably cards and calls. But over time–long or short–he’d fade away from their landscape. As so many men her mother had hoped would be her next great love had done.
The chance of the Delligattis ever entering the small orbit of the life she and Matthew lived here in Far Hills, especially long enough to function like grandparents, was slim.
She simply had to get through these months while Daniel played at being father. She had to protect Matthew from getting overly attached and she had to keep her own head on straight. Then, eventually, everything would return to normal.
Normal. Just like today.
Time to get up. Time to get Matthew ready for another day. Time to get ready for work herself, then drive them into town–Matthew to the co-op and her to the Banner.
Time.
She swung her legs out of bed and sat up.
Only in the shower, scrubbing a body that seemed to tingle from caresses that occurred only in her dream–or maybe her memory–did she realize that this time the dream had not ended with her turning around to find Paulo gone, then shouting his name into an echoing silence.
This time the dream had ended while they were still wrapped in the fragile safety of their shelter and each other, as she’d whispered Daniel.
*
It was that kind of day.
First, she’d risked dressing Matthew before feeding him breakfast. Naturally, he had a particularly far-flung meal, requiring a complete change of clothes.
Then she decided she had time for a final sip of her nearly cold coffee–and spilled it down the front of her navy slacks.
She changed into a red skirt in record speed, but had to put on stockings now instead of socks, and switch from her navy loafers to black flats. Then she exchanged the baby blue blouse she’d started in for a white blouse, which was when she noticed a run in her stockings. So they were running late.
She dropped Matthew off at the co-op with barely a wave to Fran Sinclair and a kiss to the top of her son’s dark head.
Daniel looked up from building a mountain out of blocks with some of the kids, but she pretended not to notice him.
After this morning’s dream it seemed safer.
Not until she arrived at her desk at the Banner did she realize she had the tote with the boxes of animal crackers for her share of the day’s snacks and not the tote with her notes for the special section.
That’s why she was back at the church basement within twenty minutes of having left it.
As she opened the door, she heard her son’s voice raised in his favorite chant: “No! No! No!”
Daniel was crouched down, eye to eye with the face so like his own, while a blonde-haired boy named Jason stood nearby with tears sparkling on his lashes and his thumb stuck securely in his mouth.
Matthew defined defiance, from the tilt of his chin to his rigid stance to the truck clutched in a fist held behind his back.
“Matthew, give Jason back the truck.”
“No! Mine!”
“It’s not yours. It’s to be shared, and Jason had it.”
“Mine! Mine!”
“Matthew–”
But even as Kendra stepped forward to intervene, Daniel reached around and took the truck from his fist.
“NO!” he shrieked. “Mine!”
At that moment Matthew spotted his mother, and hurtled across the room. Automatically, she bent and opened her arms to him, feeling the wetness of his tears and the shudders of his sobs.
“Mommy” was the only totally coherent word she caught amid his sobs–that was enough. She straightened with her son in her arms, cuddling him close.
“You can’t jerk things out of his hand like that, Daniel.”
Part of her knew her tone had been too harsh, but the part of her holding her sobbing child–no matter what the cause–didn’t care.
Still half crouched, Daniel regarded her with no expression and gave no answer.
“Kendra, I’d like to see you and Daniel in my office in five minutes,” Fran Sinclair ordered briskly. “For now, why don’t you take Matthew outside until he’s calmed down.”
The words were framed as a suggestion; that didn’t fool Kendra.
As she started out with Matthew, she caught a look between Fran and Marti that left her oddly uneasy about this impending meeting in Fran’s office.
Matthew calmed quickly. In fact, he soon requested a return to playing with “Ja’on,” apparently his new best friend, truck or no truck. And that left her with no reason to delay going to Fran’s office.
Daniel was already there, half slouched in a chair.
“Kendra, you know better,” Fran said without preamble. “You can’t undermine the authority of another co-op adult supervising play like that or we’ll have bedlam. It’s especially important for the parents of a child to provide a united front. Otherwise any child–and especially one as bright as Matthew–will start working one against the other. Turning to Mommy when Daddy gives an order and vice versa. That might not be so bad when he’s little and cute, but believe me, you and Daniel don’t want to be the parents of a thirteen-year-old doing that.”
At one level Kendra had known Daniel’s relationship to Matthew would become common knowledge. Someone considerably less astute than Fran Sinclair could spot the connection. Yet to hear it acknowledged so openly and so off-handedly disconcerted her.
Had all of Far Hills recognized the major points of her folly on Santa Estella?
“He’s not used to me giving him orders,” Daniel offered, filling in a growing silence.
“Then he better get used to it. He needs to obey his father as well as his mother.” Fran accompanied those frank words with a stern look aimed at each of them in turn.
“Matthew doesn’t know Daniel,” Kendra said stiffly. “It’s natural he’d be upset, so I–”
“That’s easy enough to fix.”
“–tried to calm–What?”
“I said, it’s easy enough to fix. Let Matthew get to know Daniel better. Give the two of them time alone together. That’ll do it.”
“Alone?” she repe
ated numbly. How could she protect Matthew from getting too attached to Daniel if she left the two of them alone? How could she make sure Daniel didn’t make promises he wouldn’t keep? How could she make sure Matthew didn’t get his heart broken?
“Sure alone. Matthew will learn he can’t use you as a court of appeals over what Daniel says.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“It’s a fine idea. Daniel’s real good with the boy–when you’re not around,” Fran added darkly. “And it’s not like Matthew’s not used to being with other people now, so it won’t rattle his cage. How about some time next week.”
“No. Fran, I–”
But the other woman didn’t read her signals to drop this topic. Or, if she read them, she ignored them.
“Then the week after. Hey, I’ve got it. Marti told me you’re having trouble finding a babysitter for the night of the country club honors dinner. The regulars are all taken, Ellyn’s promised Meg a girl’s night-out for her birthday, and Marti and I are going to Billings that weekend. That’s ideal!”
“But–”
“Is that okay with you, Daniel? That’s a week from Saturday.”
From the corner of her eye, Kendra saw Daniel’s nod.
“So, it’s all set. Now, don’t you need to get back to your office, Kendra?”
Kendra opened her mouth to deny anything was set.
Then closed it.
To stop Fran’s runaway train at this point would require going into issues of false identities, masquerades and lies that she had no intention of exposing. Whether she meant to protect Matthew or herself or even Daniel, she couldn’t have said.
And so she found herself driving back to the Banner, with the animal cracker tote deposited where it belonged and the tote with the notes on the seat beside her. Leaving behind her son, his father, and a plan to leave the two of them entirely on their own less than two weeks in the future.
*
The day didn’t improve.
None of the sources she called was available. She felt as if she’d left messages at phones machines from the Montana border to Casper. And none of them seemed in any hurry to call her back.
Then Larry Orrin, editor/publisher/owner of the Far Hills Banner, not only nixed her suggestion that someone else cover the country club reception and dinner a week from Saturday, but gave her a news release to fashion into a passable brief about the event.
Lost and Found Groom Page 11
