Lost and Found Groom

by McLinn, Patricia

  “Wait.” When his brother obeyed the order, Daniel wasn’t sure how to follow it up. “Uh, do you have to leave right away?”

  “No. The next flight to Denver doesn’t leave until 9 p.m.”

  “In that case, why don’t you come to dinner. I’m grilling steaks at Kendra’s. You can meet her and Matthew–” Daniel stood and met his brother’s gaze. “–your nephew.”

  A smile spread across Robert’s unremarkable features, slowly and completely. “I’d like that.”

  As they walked toward the cars, for the first time he could remember, Daniel clapped a hand to his brother’s shoulder.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was unlike any evening Daniel had known.

  Kendra reacted to his bringing Robert as if he’d bagged the biggest trophy ever created. In an odd way he felt the same way.

  Robert had insisted on stopping for a bottle of wine, and Daniel had felt like a bumpkin for not having thought of that himself. He might have felt more that way as Robert and Kendra debated with relish the fine points of a political race that took place while he was in Santa Estella, except at one point Kendra met his eyes, and totally lost her train of thought. After that, Daniel was satisfied to sit back and listen.

  Matthew had clung to his mother. He’d called Robert first Luke, then Daniel. By the end of the evening, he had mastered a version of Robert that a close listener could understand. And Robert turned out to be a very close listener.

  He sat on the floor building an unrecognizable structure with Matthew from blocks. Matthew would jabber for a while, then Robert would reply with an elaboration on the structural benefits of various designs, and each punctuated his listening with serious nods as though he’d understood the other’s point completely.

  Somehow Robert maneuvered it so Daniel put Matthew to bed right before it was time to leave to get Robert to his flight. As he returned to the kitchen, Daniel heard the tail end of Robert’s words to Kendra.

  “. . . all extremely grateful for your influence in settling Daniel. You have been extraordinarily efficacious in bringing out the best in him. I have never seen him so happy. And with this new employment, he has an opportunity to settle permanently.”

  “New employ–?”

  Daniel hurried around the corner. “Robert brought along papers that should satisfy any questions on my credentials for the search and rescue job.” He met Kendra’s gaze, and saw the realization sink in. “Thanks again for doing that, Robert. I’ll get them to the sheriff first thing in the morning.”

  “I do believe that will settle all these unresolved matters in your favor, Daniel.”

  “I hope so.” But from Kendra’s expression, it was a thin hope.

  That didn’t diminish her farewell to Robert, but she would have backed away when Daniel reached for her–if he’d let her. He held her face between his palms for an intended brief kiss. Her immediate response lengthened it.

  “I’ll call you after I get Robert on the plane,” he promised when he released her.

  Even as she waved them off, she didn’t meet his eyes, and a half dozen tries that night reached only her answering machine.

  *

  “Daniel, I think someone’s here to see you,” Rufus said from the other side of the single-engine four-seater they were checking out the next morning.

  He came around the nose of the plane, and saw Kendra getting out of her car. He’d tried her phone again between getting the paper’s to the sheriff, and later receiving word that all was in order, and the job was his. Still only Kendra’s machine answered.

  They met inside the main gate.

  “Kendra.” He reached for her, she stepped away.

  “No, Daniel. Let me say this. I’ve been up since you and Robert left, and I’ve thought this through. You would walk into the teeth of a hurricane to help someone. You fly into hell to help people.

  “Those are choices you make, Daniel. Choices between staying home safe with your family or flying off to the rescue of strangers. No–don’t say anything. I respect you for what you do. Respect you more than I can say. But I’m not as noble as you are.” A tear slipped free and her lips trembled, but her chin firmed and she kept speaking. “I want you safe and by my side. And when you’re not . . . I can’t let myself love you. I can’t take that pain.”

  “Anything you wanted to know about me, I’ve told you. I’ve followed all your rules with Matthew. I quit my job. And now you’re asking me to give up flying?”

  “No. I’m not asking that. I couldn’t do that to you. I know you can’t give it up. I do know that now, Daniel.”

  “Then what are you–? Matthew?”

  “No, I’m not saying to give up Matthew, either. I don’t have that right to take that away–not from either of you. But the only way I can . . . if something happens to you, I have to know that I won’t be so lost in grieving that I can’t help him.”

  “And you think not loving me will do that?” The misery in her eyes was the only answer. “Dammit.” He rubbed his hand across his eyes, trying to erase an ache behind them. He stared away a moment before facing her. “I won’t give up on what’s between us.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry, Daniel.” Her fingertips brushed his arm, then were quickly withdrawn. “Please try to understand.”

  She backed away a few steps then turned and walked toward the parking lot. At her car, she looked back and saw him watching her. He thought he detected a moment of weakness in her resolve. Then she slid into the car and drove away.

  Understand?

  Hell no, he didn’t understand. Nobody could who wasn’t convinced he was going to crash every time he took a plane up.

  But she’d come to her senses.

  She had to.

  *

  Marti had browbeaten Kendra into coming up to the home ranch to watch old home movies of her youthful summers at Far Hills.

  She hadn’t been in the mood for company, not even after a week of being a virtual hermit, but Matthew had a fine time forming a chorus of “Who dat’s” with Emily before they both drifted off to sleep. Meg and Ben, on the other hand, said little, but avidly watched the movies of their parents as youngsters–especially their father.

  Ellyn had been totally silent until another reel started. “I don’t remember seeing these before.”

  “You might not have. You remember them, don’t you, Kendra?”

  Yes, she remembered them. She remembered her mother watching them hour after hour, night after night. “Mother had copies.”

  “Not copies. These are your mother’s.”

  “No. I threw those out when we cleaned out after mother died.”

  “You put them in the trash, I took them out.”

  A solidly built young man in an immaculate uniform, with a crewcut the same color as her hair strode into the frame. He put an arm around her mother’s waist and said something that made her grin. Then the two of them waved to someone still off camera. A girl in a frilly green dress ran into view, and was scooped up in one motion by Ken Jenner. Her. Her father holding her with the same casual strength that Daniel showed in holding Matthew. And with the same almost fierce expression of adoration. He tightened his hold on his wife, and the three of them smiled into the camera.

  Kendra’s focus shifted from the dashing young man to that youthful, happy version of the mother she remembered.

  I understand why you loved him.

  She’d blamed her mother for falling in love with a man who didn’t take the safe route. She’d blamed her mother for giving her a father who didn’t come back. Now she understood. And forgave.

  Something Ellyn had said the day Daniel arrived drifted into her mind. About why she’d chased the Taumaturgio story.

  To find a man who showed up against all odds–in an airplane, by the way–to help children in need of rescuing. Haven’t you ever wondered about that?

  She never had. Now she saw it. She’d been a child who’d needed rescuing from an unhappy reality, a rescue th
at could only be accomplished by a father who had gone off in an airplane and never returned. By chasing the story–some might say searching for her lost father–she’d found Daniel. Had she blamed him for being like her father? Or for not being her father?

  She made hurried excuses to leave.

  Marti followed her to the door, with Matthew vociferously objecting to the prospect of going to sleep, even as his eyelids drooped.

  “Have you ever noticed that the tireder they are the harder they fight?” Marti asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Some of us–” Marti’s significant look left no doubt who she meant. “–never outgrow that. The closer they come to giving in, the harder they fight.”

  But Kendra didn’t have time to consider Marti’s pronouncement. Back home, she tucked Matthew into bed, and went to the drawer where she kept important papers. She found the sheaf Daniel had given her weeks ago, and filled out the certificate to amend their son’s birth certificate.

  *

  Daniel smoothed the paper and stared at it.

  He hadn’t believed first Ellyn, then Marti when they’d said Kendra had spent this week he’d left her alone to stew instead convincing herself that defining her relationship to him strictly as Matthew’s father was the only practical decision. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  What kept ringing in his head was Marti’s question: “What are you going to do about it?”

  *

  One minute she was answering a knock to find Daniel on her back doorstep with the sun barely up. The next, she was in a small airplane, belted in.

  “I’ll be right back,” Daniel announced, then disappeared.

  It was her first real opportunity to think. Her first chance to consider her options, not just his orders.

  He’d barged into her house, declaring, “The least you owe me is a chance to prove you’re wrong.”

  “But–”

  “No buts. Every but’s covered. Ellyn’s here to take care of Matthew. Your boss knows you won’t be in. And here–put this on.”

  “What is this about, Daniel?”

  “Not time to talk about that yet. We have all day.”

  And he hadn’t budged from that stance as he’d bullied her into putting on the jacket, then whisked her off to the airfield and into an airplane. But now that the power of his will was absent . . .

  She had her hand on the seatbelt buckle when the door opened.

  “Just checking if you’re belted in safely,” announced Rufus.

  He pushed aside her hand from the buckle and tugged it snugly.

  “That’s good. Daniel’s in checking the weather–updates, since he’d called the Flight Service Station before he picked you up. Wouldn’t have gone up if there’d been anything. He’s real careful.”

  “Rufus, I–”

  “Here.” He shoved a paper into her hand. “Thought you could follow along on the pre-flight checklist. Daniel’s a stickler. It’s a pleasure to watch him.”

  She stared at the list, some items recognizable, others more like a foreign language. Before she could react, Rufus closed the door and gave it a thunk, the way people patted a horse’s flank.

  Through the cockpit window she saw Daniel striding toward the plane, his movements controlled yet easy. A breeze riffled the dark waves of his hair. Determination showed in his jaw, anticipation in the up-slanting corners of his mouth. A man in his element.

  He didn’t enter the plane, though. Instead, his voice drifted through the open door on his side, the phrases unfamiliar, the tone businesslike.

  Then, the voice seemed to shift timbre somehow, no longer Daniel’s, but another’s. A voice she hadn’t known she remembered. Yet, this voice resided in her heart the same way Daniel’s did.

  Now, Daddy? Are we going to fly now?

  Not yet, angel. Have to make sure everything’s ready to go on this bird.

  So we can fly?

  That’s right, so my angel can fly and then come back to earth safe and sound.

  “Kendra?”

  She started. She hadn’t noticed Daniel get in the plane.

  “You okay? You’re pale.”

  Like she’d seen a ghost? Or heard one?

  “I’m fine. Other than wondering why I’ve been kidnapped.” The words should have cut, but she couldn’t pull it off.

  Her father. . . Was it a memory or a hallucination?

  “It’s not time to talk about that yet. I won’t keep you up long, but you are going to try this.”

  He closed his door and concentrated on the instruments before him. Absolutely matter-of-fact, he explained each move. His words–or maybe his voice–so absorbed her that she barely noticed until the plane lifted off the ground.

  Panic jolted her back against the seat, hands clenched.

  So my angel can fly and then come back to earth safe and sound.

  Her eyes popped open. The voice had been so close. . .

  A trail of cloud drifted in front of them. Closer, closer–the propeller would shred it. But it didn’t. The cloud flowed around them, uninhibited by form or space.

  “When I took Marti up,” Daniel started, “she said flying in a plane like this lets the hills look curvy. That’s why I don’t like jets. They flatten everything out. Make it look like a two-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, instead of some place people live and breathe and work.”

  “Daniel, I–”

  “When you go up in a jet, you’re detached from the earth. You’re above the clouds. Where the skies are always blue. I like this kind of flying because I’m on top of the world, but still part of it. With birds as next door neighbors.”

  Is this what the birds see, Daddy?

  It’s exactly what birds see.

  She shut her eyes, not in panic, but to hear the voice better.

  It’s so blue! Like the ocean. Like we’re on top of the waves.

  A chuckle rumbled in her memory.

  Exactly like being on top of the waves. That’s one of the reasons I love it up here, Angel.

  Better than you love Mommy and me?

  Not better, sweetheart. Different. I miss you and Mommy when I’m away from you. But flying’s my job. And it’s my duty to go when they tell me to.

  You could get another job.

  I suppose I could. But it wouldn’t be a job I loved. You see, just like I miss you and Mommy when I’m away, I miss flying when I’m away from it. I hate leaving you and Mommy, but I love doing my job. I hope someday you’ll understand, Angel. That’s why I brought you up today, so you could see what flying’s like and so you’d think of me doing something I love while I’m away.

  But you’ll come back, won’t you, Daddy?

  Yes, I’ll come back.

  Only he hadn’t.

  And all these years she’d forgotten about the first time she’d gone flying. The only time her father had taken her flying.

  Or had she forgotten?

  Did it explain her aversion to small planes and tolerance of jets, even though her father had gone down in a jet? It made sense if her five-year-old self had connected that single small-plane trip with her father with his failure to return. At least she knew now that he had loved them, her and her mother. And he’d loved flying.

  Just like Daniel, he’d taken every precaution to make what he loved safe. But he hadn’t come back.

  She opened her eyes to his profile, the straight, strong nose, the solid chin, the defined cheekbones. A swell of love as strong as any of Aretha’s blasts swept through her, leaving her shaken.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “Daniel, I–”

  “About flying–just flying. We won’t stay up much longer. But it’s not time to talk about the rest of it yet.”

  The rest of it was the big part. The rest of it was them.

  “But there’s one thing. Kendra, I admired your courage during the hurricane. But the courage you have every day in raising Matthew–raising him alone for so long.” Their eyes met, and she saw his regret. �
�That’s a special courage.”

  “Daniel–”

  “Not yet. After I land, then we’ll talk.” He sounded grim. “You can say all you want about how impractical it is to think we can be a family. But before you start, I want to say a couple things.”

  “Okay.”

  Her calm agreement earned a sharp glance, but he was all business as he communicated with Rufus over the radio, then maneuvered the plane into a pattern around the runway that led into a descent to earth accomplished with barely a bump. Off the runway, he stopped and turned off the engine.

  The silence roared around her head as he helped her from the plane.

  “After all your questions, Kendra, it’s my turn. And I want you to answer with the truth–not what you think is the truth, but what you feel is the truth.”

  With each beat, Kendra’s heart lunged against her chest painfully. Her breath came short and sharp. “Okay.”

  “If you knew this was the last day of your life, if you knew you were walking into another hurricane tomorrow and this time you knew–you knew you weren’t going to walk out–who would you want to be spending today with?”

  The answer came–immediate, clear and simple.

  Daniel and Matthew.

  With one day left to live, with one minute left to live.

  Daniel and Matthew.

  Her lips parted, but the words didn’t come–not yet.

  And with one year left to live?

  Daniel and Matthew.

  Her heart lunged again but it didn’t hurt.

  And with two years or seven years or decades to live?

  Daniel and Matthew.

  The two people she loved most if this were the last day of her life, or the most ordinary day of her life.

  Daniel and Matthew.

  Every day.

  “Taking this long, you’re thinking instead of–”

  “With you and Matthew,” she said. It felt like a shout in her throat, but it came out a whisper. “Oh, Daniel, with the two people I love more than life.”

  The dark depths of his eyes lit, but the rest of his face remained stern. “With Matthew and–”

  “Daniel! Hey, Daniel!” Rufus’ shout carried across to them.