Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

She went toward him slowly, the beeping of the monitors timing her own pulse, the anger like a weight around her heart.

How could you do this to me? Is this it, then, the ultimate punishment? To leave me with your death on my head, and everything between us so wrong? Will I have to find a way to live with this now, too?

She was struck by how small he seemed, this man who had loomed like such a giant in her life. This man whose love she’d craved, whose approval she’d yearned for, this man she’d rebelled against and finally tried to run away from, only to find that his specter would dog her every day of her life. This man she’d tried so hard to prove herself to that she’d actually made a success of her life against all the odds.

How many times, when the struggle had seemed beyond her capabilities, had she flogged herself onward with the thought that she could not go back, would not go back until she’d succeeded, until she’d made something of herself beyond even her father’s expectations? And that someday… someday …she’d come back here and show him?

He waited, all those years, for you to come home…

“Oh, God, how ironic,” she whispered.

How terribly ironic that when she finally did come back to show her father the successful woman and respected attorney she’d made of herself, it was to discover that all that time, her greatest failure had been in staying away.

“I didn’t know…I didn’t know,” she said in the voice of a heartbroken child. “How could I know you’d do such a thing? You never even told me you loved me…”

And suddenly she knew that that was the reason for the anger. And that it always had been.

“Don’t you dare die,” she whispered fiercely, just as a tear surprised her by sliding off the end of her nose and dropping with a tiny plip onto her father’s blue-veined hand. It seemed to her a betrayal of the vow she’d made never to cry in front of him again, even though he was sound asleep and would never know. She jerked around, swiping at her eyes with a furious hand.

She froze. Her mind, her emotions, her body processes… everything stopped. Someone was there, outside the glass partition, a tall young man, watching her with familiar eyes, red rimmed now with fatigue, and fear, and fury. She knew him instantly, from the photographs on her father’s mantlepiece. He was the toddler with the floppy-eared dog, the boy with the baseball glove, the proud graduate in his cap and gown.

He was her son.

October 18, 1977

Dear Diary,

Well, it was a big night for Mourning Spring High School. It was Homecoming, and we played Parksville and won. Bobby made two touchdowns and Richie even made one, which is pretty good considering he plays mostly defense. The way it happened was, he intercepted a pass and ran it all the way back for a touchdown. It was really bitchin’. Kelly Grace got junior princess-I knew she would. So she and Bobby get to be in the Queen’s Court at the dance tomorrow night. I’m going with Richie, natch.

I should be really happy, right? Well, I’m not. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to anybody about this. I haven’t even told Kelly Grace. I know I have to, eventually, but…you know what? Sometimes I think I’d rather die.

I have to tell Colin. (Oh, by the way, the marching band did really well tonight, too. They did a whole medley from Grease, since this year’s theme is the fifties. It was bitchin’.) I haven’t seen much of him since school started. We don’t ever talk anymore like we used to. Guess I’m going to have to pretty soon, though, huh?

Thought for the Day: I guess there’s nothing like sex to screw up a good friendship.

She’d imagined it a thousand times. Dreamed about it. Made up romantic scenarios in her head. Especially in the early years, when she was still young and naive enough to believe in happy endings. Then had come the working years, when the struggle to get through college, then law school, bar exams and her first, dreadful job with the public defender’s office had kept her too busy and physically and emotionally exhausted to dwell on personal heartaches.

But in the past few years, when adoption stories were so often in the headlines and searches for both adopted children and birth parents seemed to have become the latest yuppie fad, she’d begun to think about it again. She’d even gone so far as to consult one of the senior partners, who had given her the names of a couple of lawyers he knew of who handled such matters, and also the names of some reputable private investigators. She’d carried the numbers around in her briefcase for weeks, waking up in cold sweats after nightmares filled with anguish, rejection and shame. She discovered that somehow in growing up she had lost the ability to tell herself those fantasy stories wherein she composed both sides of the dialogue, and could always count on things to come out the way she wanted them to. In the end she’d thrown the numbers away.

Maybe someday, she’d told herself. But first she had to go back to Mourning Spring. After that…she’d see.

But oh, God, in her wildest dreams and worst nightmares she had never imagined this.

My son. Mine and Colin’s.

Colin Stewart Phelps.

Cutter. He’s called Cutter.

The ICU nurse was talking to him now, touching his arm, guiding him away from the glass partition. Charly could hear his voice, muffled but tense with anger. She could see the tension in his strong, young body, the flush of anger on his smooth cheeks, the shadows of exhaustion and fear around his eyes-Colin’s eyes -as he twisted around to stare back at her.

Flinging her father a last, desperate look, Charly started after her son. But she seemed scarcely to be moving. Oh, God, she’d had this nightmare so many times-her body weighted and weak, her heart trying to leap out of her chest as she strained to run, to reach out, to pursue! Her throat aching with the pressure of her own voice screaming his name…and making no sound at all.

But she must have made some sound, because just as he reached the waiting-room doorway he turned his head and saw her. For a moment he seemed to freeze. Then he pivoted and came back a few steps, holding up a hand like a traffic cop to stop her in her tracks.

It worked. She halted, and a few feet away from her, so did he. Even with that distance between them, she could feel his body shaking. Her heart melted, aching for him.

Dear God, she thought, I’ve already hurt him so much. What am I doing here?

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded in a cracking voice. Such a young voice. “This is family .”

“Cutter,” Charly said in a sticking voice, trying out the name for the first time. “I’m-”

“I know who you are,” her son cut in. He had his grandfather’s voice, Charly thought. And his manner, too, as he bulldozed right over her feeble attempt to respond. “What the hell are you doing here? Haven’t you done him enough hurt? You want to kill him, is that it?”

“ Cutter !” Dobrina stood just inside in the waiting-room doorway, her face the color of old ashes, her eyes shooting fire from the shadows of their sockets, a high priestess about to call down the wrath of the gods upon all their heads. “Cutter Phelps, you mind your language and your manners, you hear me, boy?”

Cutter stood his ground, his eyebrows lowering in a way that reminded Charly so much of the judge it almost made her smile. “She’s got no right,” he muttered, riled and furious. “He wouldn’t want her here.”