Diane Chamberlain - The Good Father

“There she is!” Bella shouted loudly enough for the two girls at the corner table to look over at us. They were close to my age. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. One of them smiled at me, then went red in the face and looked away. I hardly glanced at her. I only saw the thirtysomething woman sitting in the leather chair. I felt like hugging her.

“Hey,” I said, like it was any other morning. “How’s it going?”

“Good.” She reached out to run a hand down Bella’s arm. “Good morning, honey,” she said. “How are you today?”

“We had Tic Tacs for breakfast,” Bella said.

“Well, we’ll get something a little better here,” I said, embarrassed.

“Did you?” Erin asked. “Were they yummy?”

Bella nodded, her bangs falling over her eyes.

“We need to use the bathroom, don’t we, Bell?” I said, then I looked at Erin. “You’ll be here a minute?”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“These are for you.” I held the flowers toward her and wished I’d thought to tie them together with something, but with what? “Bella picked them for you this morning.”

“How pretty!” She took the flowers from my hand, sniffed them and then put them on the table. “Thank you, Bella.”

I spotted a kids’ book on the table next to the flowers. “Looks like Miss Erin has a new book to read you,” I said, hoping that was true. A book would keep Bella busy while I … I couldn’t think about it.

“I got to go potty, Daddy,” Bella reminded me.

“Right.” I reached for her hand. “We’ll be back in a sec,” I said to Erin.

In the restroom, I rushed through the teeth-brushing, the going potty and the face-washing. My hands were like a guy with DTs and I mostly let Bella brush her own teeth. It was all I could do to brush mine. I didn’t bother to shave.

Erin had moved the book to the arm of the chair by the time we got back.

“I think you’re going to love this one, Bella,” she said. She held her arms out to my four-year-old daughter, who climbed into her lap like she’d known Erin all her life. Thank you, God , I thought. What I was going to do tonight was as wrong as wrong could be, but the fact that Erin had been put in my path this week made me think maybe it was supposed to happen.

“I’m going to grab my coffee and our muffin,” I said. “Can I get you anything, Erin?” I asked, like I could actually afford to buy her something.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I picked up an OJ for Bella.”

I knew—and had known from day one—that it was Bella she was into and not me. That was fine. Perfect, actually. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

I ordered my coffee and a muffin and a cup of water for Bella. When I went to pick up the water from the counter, I knocked the damn thing over with my not-so-fine tremor. “Sorry!” I grabbed a handful of napkins from the holder on the counter and started to mop up.

“No problem,” said Nando, the barista who waited on me every morning. He called to a girl in the back who came out and cleaned up my mess while he got me another cup of water. He put the cup and the coffee and muffin in one of those cardboard carriers, and I lifted it carefully and took it back to my seat.

Erin and Bella were deep in their story. Bella asked her questions, pointing to things in the book. She rested her head against Erin’s shoulder, looking kind of sleepy. That dream had gone on and on last night, she’d said, and we woke up so late. She looked as totaled as I felt. I’d use some of the money I’d make tonight to find a clinic and get her checked out. She wasn’t exactly eating a great diet these days, either. I was about to break the muffin in half to split with her, but decided to give her the whole thing instead. I didn’t think I could eat this morning, anyway.

I sat down on the couch, wondering how to time things. I couldn’t wait too long. I had no idea when Erin would leave the coffee shop. I sipped my coffee and it felt like acid going down. You suck as a father , I thought to myself.

Erin came to the end of a chapter and said they’d take a little break while Bella ate her muffin.

“Come over here to eat so you don’t get it all over Miss Erin,” I said to Bella.

“Oh, she’s fine here,” Erin said. “Just set the water on the table.”

I did, although I wanted Bella back right then. Yeah, I was glad she was so happy on Erin’s lap and all that, but I wanted to hold her right now. I’d scare her, though—holding her too tight the way I’d squashed her hand when we walked across the parking lot. It was better this way. Now, how to make my graceful exit. I hadn’t quite thought through that part. Maybe I’d say I needed to use the restroom again, but they’d be able to see me if I left the restroom and went out the door.

“So, just a couple more days till you go back to work?” I asked Erin. I needed to make sure she didn’t need to go back to the pharmacy any sooner than that. I hoped I’d figured this out right.

“Don’t remind me.” She rubbed Bella’s back. Bella had blueberry stuck in her teeth and I was glad I’d remembered to put her toothbrush in her little pink purse.

“Do you ever feel, you know, tempted being around all those drugs all the time?” I asked. Why the hell did I ask her that? I had no idea. Nerves. I was a frickin’ mass of nerves.

She gave me a look like I was a total lowlife. “Not even a little bit,” she said. “And please don’t tell me you would be tempted.”

I tried to smile. “No way,” I said, “It’s not my thing.” Why’d I even go there? I worried she could see how I was shaking today and think I was using something. Suddenly, I knew how to handle the next few minutes. “I’ve got another interview today,” I said.

“Great! You found something on Craigslist?”

“No, my friend came through.” I tapped my sweaty fingers on my thighs. “I hope this one works out.”

“Oh, me too, Travis. I guess it’s in construction? Is it for a business? Or residential? Or—”

“I’ve got the info in my van,” I said, getting to my feet. “Can you watch Bella a sec and I’ll go get it? I can tell you the address and maybe you can tell me how to get there.”

“Sure,” she said. I couldn’t move all of a sudden. I wanted to take Bella back into the restroom and hug her so hard, but I had to get this over with. Just do it. I bent over and kissed Bella’s head, then walked away fast. Out the door, across the parking lot, into my van. Fast, fast, fast, before I could change my mind. I turned the key in the ignition. I couldn’t leave the van here where Erin and Bella would be able to see it when they came out of JumpStart. I drove all the way to the other end of the lot, nearly crashing into parked cars, my foot jerking all over the gas pedal, the whole wide world a blur in front of me and one word on my mind.

Bella Bella Bella .

Six Weeks Earlier

Carolina Beach, North Carolina

YOU KNOW HOW EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE happiness kind of comes over you like a bolt of lightning, surprising you so much it makes you laugh out loud? That’s how I felt as I worked on the molding for the kitchen cabinets of the oceanfront house. I’d been doing construction four years and always thought of it as a job I hated, just something I had to do to put food on the table for me and Bella and my mom. But construction jobs were hard to find at the beach these days, especially in Carolina Beach, which wasn’t exactly overflowing with high-end properties even though the ocean was just as blue and the sand just as white as the rest of the coast. Plus, it would always be my home. The foreman on my last job watched me work on a deck addition for a few days and he must have seen something in me because he asked me to do some custom work inside the house. He was teaching me stuff, like the detailing on this molding. He was grooming me. I didn’t know I was learning skills that, on this late August day, would make me laugh out loud when I realized I was actually enjoying the work. I was glad I was alone in the kitchen so I didn’t have to explain my reaction to any of the guys.