Sherryl Woods - The Backup Plan

The minute Dinah got home she headed straight for her father’s den. He kept all sorts of phone books around. There was bound to be one for Atlanta. The bank probably did a lot of business there.

She was sitting on the antique Aubusson carpet, pulling phone books out of a credenza and piling them haphazardly on the floor, when Maybelle came in.

“What on earth are you doing in here?” the housekeeper demanded, looking dismayed. “Besides making a mess of your daddy’s stuff, that is. You know how he likes everything in order. Never known a man to be so set in his ways.”

Dinah grimaced. Maybelle was right about that. When he noticed them at all, Marshall Davis liked his life and his surroundings to be orderly.

“I’ll put it all back,” Dinah promised, then grinned. “How many times do you suppose you came in here and had to set things to rights before Daddy came home and pitched a fit?”

“Once a day from the time you could walk,” Maybelle responded at once, a tolerant smile on her face at the memory.

“And how many times did he find me out, anyway?”

“Most every one,” Maybelle said, grinning. “That daddy of yours surely did dote on you, though. If your mother or me got so much as a paper clip out of place in here, he’d raise the roof. If it was Tommy Lee, he’d paddle his behind. But if it was you who turned things upside down, he’d just smile and say one day that curiosity of yours was going to pay off big-time. Turned out he was right about that.”

Even so, Maybelle frowned at the chaos Dinah had created. “You’re too big for me to be following around after you and cleaning up your messes, young lady. You put those things back before your daddy gets home, you hear. He might not be so tolerant these days. You’re a grown-up woman who ought to know better than to mess with someone else’s things.”

“It’s a few phone books, Maybelle. Not top secret files.”

“In his mind, there’s not much difference.”

Dinah laughed. “Stop fussing. I can handle Daddy.”

After the housekeeper left, Dinah finally found the current Atlanta phone directory and flipped through the pages. She found two Robert Beauforts and one Bobby, but after calling all three numbers, it was evident none was the right man. She called information to see if there happened to be a more recent listing that hadn’t made the directory, but she struck out there, too.

That left hotels and motels, she concluded with a sigh. She dragged over the Yellow Pages and started with the downtown hotels. It was a mindless, tedious task, but that was just about all she could cope with.

She’d made at least a dozen fruitless calls, when she heard her father’s voice escalating in the foyer. It was countered by her mother’s equally exasperated response. Dinah sat there in shock. She’d never heard either of them raise their voices. It wasn’t that they hadn’t had disagreements. It was just that her mother especially had been brought up to believe that a raised voice was unseemly. She soothed and placated when it was called for. She certainly didn’t shout.

Listening to them now, but unable to discern what the argument was about, Dinah sat frozen in place. She’d always assumed that her parents’ marriage was calm, if not passionate. She’d seen nothing since coming home to change that view. So, what had she missed? Was this heated discussion an anomaly or was it a significant symptom of a problem they’d been hiding from her? Did they feel free to argue now because they thought she was out of the house? Or were they so furious that they simply didn’t care if she overheard? Whatever the explanation was, hearing them was an unwelcome shock.

She was tempted to open the door and step into the hallway, but concluded that would only embarrass all of them. She stayed where she was and hoped that her father would go upstairs to change clothes, rather than stepping directly into his den as he usually did.

Luck wasn’t with her. The door to the den opened and he stalked into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. When he spotted Dinah, he stopped short. Embarrassment sent a tide of red flooding his handsome, patrician face.

“You heard, I suppose,” he said, looking chagrined.

“Just that you were arguing,” she said. “Not what it was about.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s good, then.”

“Can I help?”

His lips curved slightly. “Your mother and I have been working out our own problems for a lot of years now. I don’t think we need counseling from you.”

He said it without rancor, but somehow it stung. Dinah busied herself with putting away the phone directories to avoid having him see the hurt that was in her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t been around for years now, but she still considered herself to be a part of this family, not some intrusive outsider. Her father finally muttered a curse under his breath, then hunkered down beside her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Dinah. I was just trying to say that there’s no need for you to get all worked up over this. Your mother and I have been doing this a long time now. We’ve survived so far.”

Dinah regarded him with disbelief. “I never once heard the two of you argue.”

“Because we didn’t want you to,” he said reasonably. “Sounds as if we did one thing right.”

She studied him curiously. “You did a lot of things right. You were great parents.”

“Thanks for saying that, though it seems like you’re revising history a bit,” he said, his eyes suddenly sparkling with amusement. “Didn’t you tell us we were smothering you right before you left for New York and college?”

“Of course I did,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “How else do you think I’d have gotten out of here without drowning the two of you in tears? There was a part of me that wanted to stay right here in my safe little cocoon.”

His expression sobered and he gave her a penetrating look. “Is that what you’re doing now, hunkering down someplace safe?”

Apparently Dinah had always sold her father short. It seemed he had more intuition than she’d ever given him credit for. “Maybe just a little,” she admitted.

“Did something happen over there?” he asked. “I mean something worse than the obvious mayhem you must have seen on a daily basis?” He searched her face, a worried crease in his forehead. “Dammit, Dinah, did someone hurt you?” he demanded angrily.

She winced at his sharp tone. “A lot of things happened over there,” she said a little too lightly, hoping to change the entire tenor of the conversation. She knew the kind of things he must be imagining and she didn’t want to go there.

“You know what I mean, Dinah,” he chided. “If there’s something on your mind, if you were hurt in some way— any way—you surely know that you can talk to me or your mother about it. Does it have anything to do with what happened a few months ago? Were you just covering up when you said you were fine so we wouldn’t worry?”

“I am fine and I do know I can always talk to you.”

He lifted his brows at her quick response. “Of course, you should know that, but just in case you’d rather talk to someone else, I do know a few people who are good listeners and more impartial than your mother and I.”

She gave him a startled look. “You mean a shrink?” It was the very last thing she’d ever expected to hear her father suggest.

He seemed amused by her surprise. “Yes, a shrink. There’s no shame in asking for help, Dinah. I imagine a lot of folks coming home from that war over there could use professional counseling to deal with what they’ve been through. When I came back from Vietnam, I wish I’d done that, rather than wrestling with all those demons on my own.”