Lost and Found Groom

by McLinn, Patricia

  “If I’d been around, you wouldn’t have had to give up your career.”

  “What do you mean give up my career?” she demanded in mock indignation. “I still have a career. I’m still a reporter.”

  The line of his mouth eased. “I meant network television–your chance to crack the big-time, the way you dreamed of.”

  She’d thought that herself at first. Sometimes in anger, occasionally in self-pity. Now she felt only impatient at the thought. She busied herself with the dishes.

  “I had a journalism professor who said that if you knew you were down to your last day of life and being on the air wasn’t how you wanted to spend it, then network reporting probably wasn’t for you. It takes the kind of dedication and single-mindedness that would make you have to get the big story, even if the big story is the end of the world.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t have that kind of dedication?” Daniel asked skeptically. “I wished I’d known that when you were chasing Taumaturgio so hard.”

  “Oh, I wanted that story, all right. As a means to an end–the end being lifelong financial security.” She remembered lying in the hospital bed, alone with her son for the first time, could almost feel the curve of his newborn cheek under her fingertip. “That didn’t seem so important after Matthew came along. He changed my view. Don’t get me wrong, I still want security. It’s just that I’ve adjusted my view of what will make me secure.”

  *

  She pulled up next to Daniel’s car in the otherwise empty church parking lot. They had cleaned up the breakfast dishes in near silence. He’d said he could walk back to town, and she’d told him she had an errand in town anyhow. It wasn’t the truth but it kept him from arguing.

  “Listen, Kendra, I don’t know how to say–”

  “There’s no need to say anything.”

  “I feel like–like I spilled my guts.”

  “Now you know how I felt after Santa Estella.”

  He stared at her a moment. “I suppose I do.”

  He got out of the car. Then, with the door still opened, she called his name and he leaned back in.

  She didn’t stop to think about the words. “Are you still available for babysitting Saturday, Daniel?”

  His eyebrows rose slowly.

  “Yeah, I’m available.”

  He sounded almost as if he thought she meant to push him away somehow. But that made no sense when she’d offered what he and Fran had wanted–an opportunity for him and Matthew to be alone.

  Trying to puzzle that out must have left a gap in the conversation and some doubts in Daniel’s mind, because he asked, “Are you sure?”

  “About Saturday? Yeah.”

  He gave her a long, considering look, and she knew he understood how unsure she was about so much else.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me until you’ve survived the night.”

  His lips turned up–a faint smile, but a real one. No twists, not ironies to it.

  He straightened, but he didn’t move away from the open door. After a full minute he bent down, and she could see his face again.

  “Kendra–”

  “Don’t start in again about saying you’re sorry or saying thank you, Daniel.”

  “Okay, I won’t. How about if I say I owe you a steak dinner.”

  She smiled. “That you can say.”

  *

  “Daniel? This is Robert. Your brother.”

  “Hello, Robert. Everything okay?”

  “The purpose of my call is to ascertain that information. Is everything okay with you?”

  “Me? Fine.” If you didn’t count the fact that the mother of his son wouldn’t open herself up to his being in their life permanently and that his doubts about being a parent kept dripping acid in his gut. “Just fine.”

  “Then why have you told your supervisors that you won’t be returning after your leave?”

  “The exact words were I’d go back when hell froze over.”

  “Yes. So, everything is not fine.”

  “Sure it is. Only I’m not going back.”

  “Why? All your evaluations were excellent. You were obviously very good at your job.”

  So, Robert was high enough up to see his job evaluations. A connection that high up might have been useful information for Taumaturgio. Now it didn’t matter.

  “But it wouldn’t be good for my son, and maybe it wasn’t good for me.”

  Robert’s pause gave Daniel time to wonder why the hell he’d added that last part, and to Robert of all people.

  “How so?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The only thing you and my former supervisors need to know is I’m off the payroll as soon as my leave time runs out. And, even if I hadn’t earned every penny before, I earned it all over again by going through the grilling they gave me these last few days.”

  “A thorough exit interview is necessary.”

  Daniel snorted. “Hell, they’d already debriefed me from Santa Estella. This was for sport.”

  “They conducted the first debriefing with the expectation that they could call you in for further information. With your leaving the organization, we needed to be certain we had any potentially useful information you might possess.”

  “We?”

  After a slight pause came, “The United States government.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, you’ve covered every possible question.”

  “Ah, but the realm of possibility is not a fixed sight.” He gave a discreet cough, as if changing subjects. “You know, Daniel, your decision to leave the organization need not be final.”

  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.

  “Yes, it does need to be final. If that’s why you called–”

  “I also wondered how the situation with your son stands.”

  “I’m working on it.” He rarely had trouble keeping a guard on his words, but more words came out before he’d considered them. “That’s why my decision to leave is final. For Matthew.”

  “So you can be there for your son. I see.”

  And damned if Daniel didn’t think Robert really did see.

  *

  Ellyn arrived with Matthew at ten. She looked around as if she half expected to see Daniel. After Matthew burbled on about his stay at the Sinclairs’ he toddled off to inventory his toys.

  Ellyn wasted no time: “So, what happened?”

  “I gave him dinner.”

  “And?”

  “No and.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. What makes you think anything would happen?”

  Ellyn rolled her eyes. “History. Chemistry. Having eyes in my head. My God–he looks at you and my temperature goes up.”

  “Those are all fine reasons to not let anything happen. Making lo–” She switched to the less emotional term. “–sex just confuses things.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Don’t give me that dense act, Ellyn. Sex makes it difficult to think things through logically and come up with the most reasonable and practical approach.”

  Ellyn gave her a disbelieving look. “Kendra, honey, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think the human heart was designed for logic. But if it’s logic you want, let me point out the logic of taking advantage of any opportunities that come your way when you have an energetic two-year-old around. In fact–”

  The door opened after a short knock, admitting Marti and Emily.

  Saved by the knock. Kendra thought. Nothing else would have stopped Ellyn from completing her lecture on the human heart.

  Marti held her questions until the kids had settled in the den with a puzzle, blocks and a fleet of rubber trucks.

  “So, what happened?” Marti demanded.

  Ellyn started to laugh, and Kendra glared at her.

  “As I’ve already told the other Ms. Nosy here, we talked, I fed him dinner and nothing
else happened.”

  Marti sat down with a sigh, shaking her head. “Most folks around here have a live-and-let-live attitude, but not one hundred percent. I’ve already had phone calls this morning from Helen Solsong and Barb Sandy reporting you drove away from the church with Daniel in your car and his car remained parked at the church all night. It means it’s already being spread around town that you fed him breakfast as well as dinner, and they won’t hesitate to speculate about what came in between.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Ellyn.

  “What? Did they have Daniel’s car staked out?”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Marti said. “They went on about how scandal has sullied the Susland name before and they were calling out of friendship so I would be prepared.”

  Anger burned through her, but Kendra touched Marti’s arm. “I’m sorry you’re getting fallout over my actions–”

  Marti caught her hand. “I don’t care about those two. I don’t care about any of it except you.”

  Kendra had been accustomed for so long to carry things on her own. She’d had no close girlfriends growing up–even if she’d been of a confiding nature, her mother had moved them too often to let any of her acquaintances become friends. Only to Amy had she told her secrets. First during summers, and then through long letters. They had gone to the same college and roomed together all four years, so she’d needed no other confidants.

  Her nature and her career had kept her from forming close friendships after college. Since Amy’s death, she’d grown closer to Marti, and Ellyn had become a true friend. But even with them she’d shared daily life rather than her thoughts or dreams or fears.

  Only with a stranger in the middle of a hurricane had she opened that part of herself.

  “We talked at the church about Santa Estella,” she started slowly. “Then I brought him back here. You saw him, Marti.” She waited for her aunt’s nod. “I gave him dinner, and he fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, I gave him breakfast and drove him back to his car.”

  Kendra drew a deep breath and took a plunge.

  “I’ll admit–” An admission to herself as well as them. “–I’m very attracted to him. I don’t suppose that’s a big surprise considering what happened between us on Santa Estella.”

  “That feeling could have died,” murmured Ellyn. “It happens.”

  Kendra remembered how she’d felt being held by Daniel, even asleep. “It hasn’t died. But even if I had any thought of acting on that feeling–which I don’t–it wouldn’t have happened last night.”

  She searched for a way to make them understand.

  “You’re right, Marti, that he’s got a lot of pain in him. He’s carrying a lot of guilt that he didn’t do more in Santa Estella–that he didn’t do everything.”

  Ellyn’s disbelieving tsking sound reminded Kendra why she liked the other woman so much.

  “–But I think it started much earlier. He had a horrible childhood, until he was adopted when he was about seven. And–” She hesitated, knowing this would win their instant sympathy. “–He’s worried he doesn’t know how to be a good father. He doesn’t feel he knows much about families.”

  “But he wants to be a good father?” Marti asked.

  “Oh, yes, he wants to be.” With elbows propped on the table to either side of her coffee cup, she dropped her chin to her palms. “I suppose that’s part of why he proposed. I was so angry at him for sweeping in here like the masked crusader, that it didn’t register at first that he thinks getting married will automatically make us a real family. He doesn’t realize–”

  “Wait a minute. Back up. What was that?”

  “He proposed,” Marti supplied. “You said he proposed to you.”

  Kendra straightened. She hadn’t meant to let that out. “Ye-es.”

  “And you didn’t bother to tell us?”

  “It wasn’t anything I seriously considered,” she protested. Except for a few crazy seconds.

  “Why not?”

  She might have expected that from Ellyn, but Marti? Kendra gaped at her aunt. “Why not?” she repeated, dumfounded.

  “Kendra, you keep your heart under such close guard. Too close.”

  The surprise of those words carried a sting. Or maybe the words themselves held the sting.

  “Professional hazard,” she said shortly. “Can’t let your emotions get involved with the story.”

  “How about letting your emotions get involved with your life? I do worry that you’re overly cautious in emotional matters.”

  “You’re basing this belief that I’m too emotionally cautious on the fact that I didn’t jump at the chance to marry him as soon as he popped back into my life? That’s–”

  “I’m basing it on the way you’ve lived your life. It took such extraordinary circumstances–my God, you thought you were going to die!–to open yourself up to a man. Maybe it took an extraordinary man, too,” she added thoughtfully.

  “I never knew you felt this way about me, Marti.” Her words sounded strange, as if her lips had gone stiff.

  Marti laid her palm over Kendra’s wrist. “Honey, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time, but. . . Well, you were so busy showing how strong you were that nobody dared even mention that you walked around like a porcupine at constant alert.”

  Kendra glanced at Ellyn. Sympathy showed in her eyes but she nodded.

  In a stiff voice she barely recognized as her own, Kendra started, “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult–”

  Marti waved that off. “Difficult is what you’ve made it for yourself. All your life I’ve watched you do it. So busy being strong and independent that you wouldn’t let anybody in. Kendra, I know watching your Mom bothered you a lot, but you must let that go.”

  “The way she let my father go? Apparently not letting things go is one trait I inherited from her.”

  Bitterness flowed from the words, a bitterness she couldn’t remember expressing before . . . except during a hurricane to a man she’d thought didn’t understand.

  Is this about you not wanting to turn into your mother, the way you said on Santa Estella? You were hard enough on her.

  “There could be worse things to inherit. Tenacity didn’t hurt you any in that network job.”

  “Tenacity.” Kendra tested the word. She’d never thought of her mother in that light. Foolish, silly, weak, but tenacious? “I’ve always thought of you as tenacious, Marti. Not Mother.”

  “Oh, yes, Wendy was tenacious. Tenacious in a lot of ways, and especially in loving Ken. Your mother and father truly loved each other, you know. You might have been too young to see that, to remember it. They glowed with it. When your father went missing. . .” Clouded memories dimmed Marti’s eyes. “That was the absolutely worst thing to happen for Wendy.”

  Kendra fought a tug of sympathy for her mother with sharp words. “If loving my father hurt her so much, she would have been better off never letting herself love him at all.”

  “That’s the coward’s way out. And Wendy never was a coward. Because she was tenacious in her hope, too. Even after she had to accept that he wouldn’t come back. Wendy had experienced such wonderful love that she couldn’t believe those few years with Ken were all she’d have. She became desperate to find another love like Ken.” She shook her head. “Instead, her heart was wounded again and again.”

  “And she never learned her lesson.”

  “No, she never did. When she lost your father, Wendy traded in the problem of her desperate loneliness for all the problems you saw growing up–the problems you vowed never to have. And you haven’t. Only I worry you’ve traded in the problems your mother had for the very loneliness she was running from.”

  A silence stretched out as Kendra absorbed Marti’s words.

  Had she completed the circle her mother started? Run away from the troubles she’d seen in her mother’s life, and in the process run right back to where her mother had started?

  “Your
blood will be alone.”

  The words were so soft, Kendra might have imagined them.

  “You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone,” Ellyn repeated. Then she spoke more forcefully. “That’s what the curse said: You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone. That’s what Marti is saying happened to your mother, and I’ve seen it happening to you, Kendra.”

  A soft gasp opened Marti’s lips.

  “That’s absolute nonsense,” Kendra snapped. “It’s a stupid legend. It has nothing to do with me. Or Daniel. Or real life.”

  “It has to do with real love. I’ve wondered . . .” Marti said in a strange voice. “Only when someone loves enough to undo your wrongs will the laughter of children live beyond its echo in Far Hills. Charles Susland’s first wrong was turning his back on his children. Daniel sure isn’t doing that. You said so yourself, Kendra–he wants to be a good father, he wants to make the three of you a family. That sounds like real love to me. Maybe love enough to undo that wrong. If you let him.”

  “That’s ridiculous. All of it. Listen to the two of you, carrying on about this legend. No more. We have work to do. It’s–”

  “But–”

  “No!” The syllable might have crossed the line from emphatic to strident, but it silenced Marti. Kendra continued more calmly. “We’re going to work on this supplement, and no one’s going to say another word about legends or curses or any other nonsense.”

  And not another word was spoken about the Susland legend, or undoing wrongs with love, or Daniel.

  But Kendra could not regulate thoughts–not even her own.

  *

  The back door of Kendra’s house was open when Daniel walked up to it at four o’clock Saturday afternoon.

  He saw no one in the kitchen, but he heard Ellyn saying, “Great dress.”

  Kendra answered, “Thanks. It’s my post-pregnancy goal dress. I could get into it before, but it’s only now that I feel right in it.”

  “Is that because you’re not eating now that Daniel’s around?”

  “I’m eating. That’s–”

  What’s the old saying about hearing things you didn’t want to hear? He sure didn’t want to hear that having him in her life had made Kendra lose her appetite. Daniel knocked loudly.