Diane Chamberlain - The Good Father

Alissa rocked a little. “I couldn’t get her to settle down,” she said. “Gretchen said I should make little swishing sounds in her ear, but it didn’t work.”

“Frustrating,” I said. Gretchen had told Mollie and me that Alissa wasn’t bonding well with Hannah. We were supposed to keep an eye on her. Make sure she wasn’t sinking into some major postpartum depression. I just thought she needed sleep, but maybe it was more than that. She was such a social girl and I knew she’d felt cut off from her friends, first by the pregnancy and now by the baby. She’d go back to school in another month and maybe that would help her mood.

Hannah opened her eyes and stared right at me. I wondered if she did that with Alissa. I hoped so. How could you feel those dark eyes on you and not be hooked for life? “Hi, sweetie,” I said to the baby. “Is that good?”

From her seat by the window, Alissa watched Hannah drink the way she might look at a puppy she hadn’t quite decided whether to take home or not. I smiled at her. “She has such a good appetite,” I said.

“She’s so much better for you than she is for me.”

“You’ll get the knack of it in no time.”

“But you never had a baby and it’s natural with you. It’s totally not natural to me. Gretchen said I need to relax when I hold her, but I get all tense.”

“Be patient with yourself,” I said.

She looked out the window toward Taylor’s Creek. “Maybe you and Dale should raise her,” she said, without glancing back at me.

“We’ll be right there to help you with her, Ali. Don’t worry.”

She let out a long sigh. “I am so trapped,” she said.

“But soon you’ll be back with your friends.”

“With a baby.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said, but I knew she had an uphill battle in front of her. Things would never be the same between her and her old friends.

I stayed with her another hour, until it was time for me to get back to the B and B to check on the housekeepers and answer messages. I’d burped Hannah, changed her and settled her back in her bassinet when Alissa grabbed my hand.

“I’m so glad you came along,” she said. “I’m so glad Dale ended up with you instead of Debra.”

Dale had told me about Debra, his former fiancée, early on, when we were just getting to know each other. He’d been crazy about her and she’d told him she’d never been serious about anyone before. Some reporter, though, wrote an article about the Hendricks family in the local paper and he’d dug up the fact that Debra’d been married before. Not a crime. The crime was that she’d never told Dale about it and he was hurt and humiliated by her deception. I saw it in his eyes when he told me. The pain had still been raw then, and I’d felt sorry for him.

I bent over to give Alissa a hug. “I’m glad, too,” I said. “Call me if you get lonely.”

I left her room and was nearly to the front door when I spotted James and two well-dressed men in the living room. “Here’s our Robin!” James boomed, and I slowed my pace to a more ladylike walk.

“Hello.” I smiled.

“Come in, come in!” James held out an arm to motion me into the room. I walked in, and he introduced me to the men, whose names I quickly forgot. Dale told me I was going to have to do better with names. I just couldn’t keep everyone straight the way he did.

“Robin’s going to be the newest member of the Hendricks family,” James said. He sounded proud of me and I tried to look worthy, but in my shorts and T-shirt with a little bit of baby spit-up on my shoulder, I doubted I was pulling it off. I hoped he wasn’t upset that I was such a mess.

One of the men held my hand in both of his. “All my wife can talk about is your wedding,” he said. “She said it’s been too long since she’s been to one. You’ll have to meet her beforehand so when she starts crying, she’ll at least know the person inspiring her tears.”

“I look forward to meeting her,” I said. I was getting so nervous about the wedding. It seemed like everyone in town was being invited. I’d had almost nothing to do with the plans. Mollie took over, picking out the invitations and the flowers and the cake. Well, I did say I wanted chocolate, but she picked the style. She also picked out my dress, but since it had been hers, I couldn’t criticize her for that, and it was beautiful. Just amazing. I was trying to think of the event as a dream wedding, but I kept waking up around two in the morning, feeling as though it was more of a nightmare. My life these days seemed a little out of my control.

“I have to run,” I said to James. “Need to see how things are going next door.”

“Of course, of course,” he said, and I heard him say to the men as I headed out the front door, “Isn’t she lovely?” The words made my eyes burn. The people in this family were sometimes two-faced, sometimes back-stabbing, sometimes calculating. But one thing I felt sure of: they loved me. And as I walked across the yard to the B and B, I had to ask myself if a lie of omission was just as bad as the outright lie Debra had told Dale.

In the B and B’s kitchen, I started putting together the casserole for tomorrow’s breakfast, thinking of James’s sweet words and what a miracle my life was turning out to be. My girlfriend Joy, whom I’d known from the cardiac rehab center where we’d both been patients, had been the one to tell me about the job opening at the B and B. She’d been working as a waitress at a Beaufort restaurant and she encouraged me to leave Chapel Hill and move in with her in Beaufort. I’d been at loose ends. Dad was pushing me to go to college. But while college was definitely in my plans, I wanted a taste of freedom. I felt as though I’d been locked in a closet of a life for years, first by my illness, then by my recovery. After my year of rehab, I didn’t feel like studying. I just wanted to enjoy being alive for once.

After the family hired me, Dale gave me a crash course about Beaufort so I’d at least know more than my guests about the area. He walked me along the waterfront, introducing me to every shop owner, pointing out the boats, telling me about their owners. In the distance, we could see a few of the ponies standing in the surf on Carrot Island. Dale and I fell in love on those walks. I was moved by how much he adored Beaufort and how much he wanted to do for its people. Even then, he was planning to be mayor one day, though I didn’t realize he’d be running so soon. I was so attracted to him. I’d forgotten that part of myself while I was sick. The sexual part. It’s so weird when your entire life is consumed by illness. Sometimes I’d felt like a heart instead of a person. With Dale, I felt the rest of me coming back to life. When he took my hand, I felt every cell in my fingers as though I’d just noticed them for the first time ever. And his beautiful gray eyes! I hadn’t yet seen those eyes turn stormy back then. Oh, wow, could you see thunderclouds in his eyes sometimes! Dale had a gentleness to him, a real honest warmth, but there was steel behind it. He didn’t bend easily, and I was learning that if I wanted to do something he didn’t want—to change the way we handled something at the B and B, maybe, or even to watch a movie he wasn’t crazy about watching—I had to approach the subject carefully and slowly if I stood a chance of breaking through that stubbornness. But there were compromises in any relationship. I’d learned that growing up with my father. This was nothing new.

My father was thrilled when I told him I was seeing Dale Hendricks. Since he taught political science, my father had always been tuned in to state politics and he knew exactly who Dale was: heir apparent of the Hendricks empire. Daddy had wanted me to be taken care of. He knew if I became a Hendricks, he’d never have to worry about me again.