Anna Adams - Her Daughter's Father

As she’d struggled into clean air, she’d known—to go forward, she had to confront her past. Later, flat on her back with a broken leg, she’d had plenty of time to face the truth. Giving up her child had been the wrong decision for her to make. She couldn’t change the choice she’d made, but she needed to know Colleen hadn’t suffered because of her.

Now, adrenaline pushed her to snap a sharp reply to her father’s suggestion she put her daughter behind her. She swallowed old resentments. “I was looking to run away once and for all when I considered that Seattle job. I’m tired of running. For the same reasons I want to mend my fences with you and Mom, I have to know Coll—she’s safe.”

Grunting, he eased the car into gear and drove toward the wrought iron gate. “I know the accident changed things for you, but India, you’re looking back with hindsight. You have a master’s degree in library science. You have security I couldn’t provide for you when you got pregnant. You must know we were right. What would you have made of your life if you’d had to care for a child?”

“Dad, my heart still hurts for her. When I woke up in that hospital bed, I knew I had to make my peace—and not just with you and Mom.”

India turned her face to the window. Neither of her parents knew the guilt and shame that had haunted her as she’d carved out her competent life. She’d taken her degrees and then taken jobs in small towns and big cities close to a “home” that no longer felt like hers. Doing unacknowledged penance, she’d lived near her parents and hidden her true feelings—an easy feat, because she couldn’t bear to see them often enough to let them have a good look at her.

“I won’t meet her or talk to her. I don’t want to hurt her family, but I have to see she’s happy and safe.”

“You were sixteen years old. Forgive yourself. Forgive your mother and me. You need a family of your own. You need to let someone love you.”

“I can’t let anyone love me until I know she’s safe. I’ve believed I abandoned her. I just need to see she’s safe.”

For the first time, he backed down. “It’s my fault. If my business hadn’t failed…” Trailing off, he maneuvered the car into the street and anonymity.

“No, Dad.” India stared at his face, rugged and lined from the years he’d spent painting other people’s houses in Virginia sun and weather. “I made the final choice. It was easy to blame you and Mom, but everything changed when that plane skidded down the runway. I took the easy way out—with my baby and with you.”

“You’ve worked hard for everything you have.”

“I’ve worked at not getting hurt, at not letting anyone love me, including you and Mom.” India eyed the thick, wavy strands of his hair. “You didn’t have to come tonight.”

“I couldn’t let you come alone. I owe you this, and tomorrow, I’ll arrange for an ad in the Arran Island paper. Someone will need a housepainter.” Reaching across the gearshift, he patted her knee. “And his able apprentice. Your mother is going to manage the business while I help you—as long as I remember how to run the equipment after all this time in the front office.”

India splayed her fingers over the ache in her chest. To find her own way, she had to see she’d done right by the child she’d never even held. She’d looked back for too long. From today, she looked forward. No fear, no guilt.

Mick slowed the car for a traffic light. “If we can just get one house, we may find out everything we need to know.”

India’s smile took all her acting ability. She talked brave, but she felt wary. The huge chance she was taking could break her family apart all over again.

“What’s the matter?” Her father’s gaze searched hers in the dim light.

Twisting in the seat, she pressed the back of her head against the cool window. “I just made you an accessory to breaking and entering.”

Mick curved his mouth. “You got my wrench back, right?”

“HAYDEN, I DON’T NEED YOU and Nettie to help me raise my own daughter.” Jack Stephens pushed away from the worn kitchen table and his half-eaten lunch. His former father-in-law scraped back his chair, too.

“We know you’re a good father to Colleen, but she’s grown even more rebellious since we were here at Christmas. While you’re busy with the boat, let us help you.”

Intense March sunshine flooding through the window hurt Jack’s eyes. The boat. Two months ago, a storm like the hand of God had pushed his boat ashore. Since then, he’d worked on a friend’s boat during the day and made repairs on his own in the evenings. Maybe Colleen had acted up more since then, but his busy schedule hadn’t started her one-girl rebellion.

No, she’d changed when Mary died. Nearly three years ago. He shied from the uncomfortable truth. Colleen had stopped talking to him after her mother died.

Jack shoved his plate onto the counter. “You’ve worked up to this all morning, haven’t you? No wonder Nettie wanted a girl’s day out.” Hayden Mason’s diminutive wife had insisted she and Colleen needed new clothes for the spring festival tonight. “Did Colleen ask you to talk to me?”

“Of course not,” Hayden said, picking up his own plate. “Unless you approve, we won’t even tell her we want to stay.”

Like a living, breathing entity, Jack’s small kitchen seemed to squeeze him. “What if I don’t approve?”

Hayden narrowed his gray eyes, Mary’s eyes, but Jack wouldn’t let memories of Mary soften his impatience with her managing parents. His parents, too, after all these years.

“I don’t want you to stay. You and Nettie come between Colleen and me. When you’re here, she turns to you first, and I can’t reach her.”

“Maybe she needs us.” Hayden took Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you two can’t talk to each other anymore. You don’t understand each other.”

“She doesn’t have to understand me. She has to do what I tell her to do and be where I tell her to be. She forgets she’s fifteen, and I’m her parent.” Jack broke off. Tough talk, tougher than he meant, but his anxiety for Colleen made him feel weak, out of control. “How could you and Nettie do a better job? You pave her way with gifts. Look at that leather jacket Nettie bought her last weekend.”

Hayden sighed reflectively, as if the black and silver-buckled, biker-gang special clanged in his memory, too. “Now, Nettie made a mistake there. She swears Colleen showed her a different jacket. One with a velvet collar.” Hayden shook his head. “But Colleen also told her how much she misses Mary. Has she told you?”

“What kind of man do you think I’ve become?” Taking Hayden’s plate, Jack avoided his eyes. “I know how much Colleen misses her mother.”

“But has she told you? Has she cried in your handkerchief?”

At the sink, Jack stared out the window at the green-blue bay. Colleen hadn’t shed one teardrop in almost three years, not when the police called to say Mary’s car had gone off the road, not when he’d come home from Mary’s hospital bedside two weeks later to tell Colleen her mother was gone.

Colleen seemed to want him to believe she regarded her mother’s death with the same stone-cold apathy she extended toward every word he spoke, from “I love you” to “Call me before you stop at your friend’s house.”

“We’ll work out our problems.” He tried to sound sure. Colleen was his little girl. Why didn’t he know how to reach her? “Maybe you and Nettie should stop running interference for her.”

“You need time to get your boat back in the water. Colleen needs attention. We can give both of you exactly what you need. Let us stay, just until you finish repairing the boat and get your business back on track.”