Virginia McCullough - Girl In The Spotlight

“Why don’t you go home, Lark?” he’d asked many times, genuinely confused about her refusal to confide in her mother.

“Impossible,” she’d insisted. “My parents will be fighting each other in court for months to come.” On the day she was with Miles in that hospital room in Minnesota, her parents were in Wisconsin locked in a struggle over custody of her younger brother, who was constantly acting out. Her dad had wanted to ship off Dennis to military school, but her mother refused, so the fight went on and on. Simply making it through Christmas at home would be a miracle.

She and Miles had covered that ground before. Lark preferred to keep this chapter of her life completely private, even from her mother. She would put it behind her.

When the hospital released Lark, she and Miles had gone to the shoe box of a studio apartment she’d rented near the campus. She’d spent the previous months studying, working in the library and pretty much keeping to herself as she slogged through the days.

Still weak, she’d settled into bed and watched Miles heat tomato soup on her two-burner stove and crush crackers on top.

“This is the champion of comfort food,” she’d said, feeling her mouth turning up in a smile for the first time since they’d left the hospital.

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. But he hadn’t met her eyes and his mouth was set in a grim slash.

“You should go back to school right away,” she said. “I’ve got to study for my last two finals, anyway.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re really going to take finals.”

“You are, aren’t you?” she shot back, her voice sharp.

“I didn’t just go through what you... I didn’t have a baby. And I’m not driving back to Stevens Point today, or tomorrow. I’m staying here.” He pointed with his chin to the tiny stove. “I’m going to keep heating up soup and when you’re ready I’ll go out for pizza or Chinese food.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you don’t nag me about resting.” She felt surprisingly okay, physically, anyway. She’d been terrified of childbirth, but bringing their baby into the world hadn’t been all that grueling. Lark had prepared herself to face much worse. Even one of the nurses said she’d sailed through it. If she had anything to be grateful for, and at that time it was difficult to count her blessings, she’d been thankful for her strong body.

Over the next day and a half, Miles had kept his word and had seen to it that she ate regularly. He’d made a couple of trips down the street to the Hot Wok, the second time bringing enough egg-drop soup, vegetable shrimp and chicken-fried rice to last through her finals.

Most of the time they avoided talking about what they’d done. When he tried to express regret, she waved him off. They’d been careful, responsible. But they’d realized too late that nothing was completely safe.

“I’m sorry,” she’d finally said, hoping to end the conversation once and for all, “because we never should have let things go that far between us. It’s not like we were in love or anything.” She’d exhaled with a soft groan. “It was all supposed to be casual...you know, fun and games.”

Now, so many years later, Lark ran that conversation through her head. It had ended when she’d convinced him to head back to his apartment in Stevens Point. Then she’d carried out her plans to the letter. She took her finals and passed her classes, and dutifully went home for Christmas, where no one had any inkling that she’d had a baby a couple of weeks earlier. On New Year’s Day, she’d boarded a plane in Green Bay for the first leg of her trip to Dublin, where she’d spent her next semester.

Sitting at her kitchen table on a cold, clear night eighteen years later, she concluded that Miles must be going through some kind of flashback and for some reason wanted to acknowledge the years that had passed. But she wasn’t ready to talk to him. Monday was soon enough to return the call. She rubbed her forehead. She was accustomed to these solo trips into the past and unsure if she could handle a companion walking the same path.

She turned off her kitchen light and carried her mug of tea into the living room, where she stared out the window at the expanse of Lake Michigan visible from her picture window. The sliver of a moon vaguely illuminated the whitecaps dancing erratically across the water’s surface in the strong wind. The scene mirrored her unsettled mood. She couldn’t shake off Miles’s call. Maybe something important had happened. What if he had information about their child? Or, what if he wanted to find their daughter? She let her mind drift to another place. Impossible as it seemed, could their daughter have found him?

She’d never sleep until she talked to him. She went back to the kitchen to retrieve her phone.

* * *

HE WAS GETTING way ahead of himself. Like an observer of his own thoughts, Miles had watched his mind take so many twists and turns he hardly knew how to go back to the starting point. He stared at his phone, desperate to hear it ring. All evening the house had seemed painfully empty. Pushing away from the table—with his phone in his pocket—he wandered to the doorway of Brooke’s room and studied the shelves overflowing with stuffed animals. She had yet to outgrow the desire for them—a dopey-looking whale, a couple of grinning giraffes, a kangaroo with a baby in her pouch and a white horse with a red-and-white-striped ribbon braided in her tail. His little girl had named the horse Magic, the same name Brooke reserved for the real one she longed for.

Brooke’s collection of knickknacks, mostly ceramic and wooden horses, lived in her room at her mother’s house, which she called home. She talked about going to Daddy’s house, as if visiting, but then said she was going home when it was time to leave. That stung a little. But he consoled himself with the knowledge of how lucky he was to be deeply involved in Brooke’s life.

What was Perrie Lynn’s room filled with? Medals? Were those sparkly skating costumes hanging in her closet? What had she been like ten years ago when she was Brooke’s age?

Slow down. You can’t be sure Perrie Lynn is that baby, your little girl. Young woman, really. Odd that the possibility the young skater wasn’t his child sat heavy with him now. Before he’d seen Perrie Lynn earlier that afternoon, thoughts of the child he’d given up had receded more and more over the years as being a good dad to Brooke became priority number one. It was as if he’d put the past behind him once and for all. Now, another voice in his head nagged that he’d betrayed this first child, a stranger.

His phone chimed. Finally. The screen ID confirmed it was Lark.

“Hello,” he said, “thanks for getting back to me.”

“What is it, Miles? Is something wrong?”

Detecting an edge of apprehension in her voice, he said, “Oh, Lark, it’s nothing bad. No need to worry.” He put his hand on his chest, hoping to slow the pounding of his heart. “It’s just that I believe it’s possible, not a certainty, but possible, our—our child, our daughter...is a figure skater. Sort of a rising star.”

A sharp intake of air. Then silence.

“Lark?”

“I’m—I’m here, Miles.” A loud exhale followed. “I don’t know what to say—or what to ask first.”

As he walked away from Brooke’s room and back to the living room, he heard her gulp, or choke, he wasn’t sure which.

“Are you okay? I can tell you—”

“Yes, yes, tell me how—” her voice quavered “—how this came about. Your speculation.”

He cleared his throat. “Again, nothing is certain. But something happened earlier today. Brooke, my eight-year-old, is a skating fan.”