Margot Dalton - A Family Likeness

Jan had been slim and blond, with a delicate, almost angelic beauty that belied her determined nature. When they were first married all those years ago, he’d been surprised and a little taken aback to learn just how formidable—and stubborn—a woman she really was.

But even Jan’s strength had been no match for the crippling illness that was hidden in her body, biding its time, waiting to claim her.

He shook his head moodily, still watching as the last of the twilight glow faded beyond the horizon and the first stars began to glimmer over the waters of the bay. He found his mind returning to the old hotel on the lake and the young woman who apparently owned it. She’d been in his thoughts a lot these days, more than he liked to admit.

Slowly Alex sank into an armchair by the window and allowed himself to reconstruct the image of Gina Mitchell’s face. Everything about the woman was appealing. He liked the open frankness of her expression, the level brows and calm hazel eyes, her dusting of freckles and that cropped curly mass of dark hair. He even admired the boyish athletic look of her body.

He smiled, recalling the way she’d emptied her pockets and solemnly lined up those delightful little objects along the top of the stone wall. At that moment he’d been completely enchanted by her. He would have liked to reach out and touch the skin of her bare arm, ruffle her hair, maybe—

Alex shook his head abruptly, the smile fading.

Not a very attractive line of thought, he told himself, for a man whose wife had been dead for little more than three months.

But Jan had been lost to him for a long, long time. When her symptoms had become too obvious to ignore and she’d finally allowed herself to be examined, the diagnosis itself had been a sentence of death. Both of them knew it. But before death had finally claimed her, the illness had been lingering, so excruciatingly painful both physically and mentally that it had drained every bit of strength from all three of them.

For the last three years, Alex and his wife had no physical relationship apart from the care he gave her and the comfort he could sometimes provide by holding her in his arms. Toward the end, even his touch was too painful for her to endure.

Alex didn’t like to dwell on his own suffering, because he knew that his daughter had endured far more pain. As a girl just entering adolescence, growing into the knowledge of her own womanhood, Steffi had watched her mother fade from strength and beauty to utter dependence. She’d witnessed the deterioration of that lovely body and powerful mind, and gradually come to understand that nobody in her life, not even her father, could protect them from this horror.

He and Steffi had once been so close. Alex was desperately concerned about his daughter’s moody silence and increasing withdrawal. No matter what he did, she seemed to retreat farther from him every day into a place he couldn’t follow.

He put the worried thoughts from his mind and returned to his computer, forcing himself to spend a couple of hours in concentrated work on the final column before his trip to Azure Bay.

At last, when he was too tired to see the computer screen clearly, he got up and pulled the draperies across the darkened window, then went into the kitchen to make coffee and help himself from the bowl of cold pasta salad left in the fridge by his housekeeper. Finally he cleaned up the table and climbed the stairs, stopping outside a closed door in the upper hallway.

“Steffi?” he called softly. “Are you awake?”

No answer. After a moment he pushed the door open and went inside, pausing by his daughter’s bed to look down at her. She was in her long plaid nightshirt and sleeping soundly. Her lips were parted, hands curled under her chin like a small child, and she was bathed in the soft pink glow of a night-light shaped in the form of a rosebud, which had been in her room since she was a baby.

Alex smiled at the delicate cluster of glass petals. Every year or so, Steffi declared that she was old enough to sleep without a light. But after a couple of days the rosebud would reappear, and nobody would comment until her next attempt to leave it behind.

Nowadays he cherished any little habits of childhood that still clung to her. They helped to reassure him that he hadn’t completely lost her. At fourteen his daughter almost had the face and body of a woman. Only when she was sleeping like this could he see traces of the enchanting little girl she’d been.

There were people who’d considered them irresponsible for having a baby when they were aware of Janice’s illness. But those people, of course, didn’t know the truth about Steffi’s birth.

He felt a painful lump in his throat as he remembered how he’d adored that red-haired baby they’d brought home from the hospital all those years ago. What a miracle she’d been to him and his wife. Their lives had been transformed. The growing tensions between him and Janice had almost disappeared, replaced by happy sun-flooded years of laughter and absorption in the growing child they both so dearly loved.

A few years of heaven, Alex thought grimly, followed by years of utter hell. Life had a harsh way of balancing things out.

He could bear it for himself. But he hated his daughter’s having to endure those cruel checks and balances, Steffi, who had never done anything to deserve the kind of suffering inflicted on her family. During all her growing-up years, Steffi had been a pure delight, a ray of sunshine. How he missed that happy generous loving little girl.

Now she was as tall as her mother had been, with a curving figure and a sulky hostile expression that chilled him. Her lips, which were exactly like his own, were usually pressed together in a taut line, and her smiles were rare. He hardly knew what to say to this beautiful stranger, how to fight his way past her anger and pain to the child still living in there.

He reached down gently to brush a strand of hair back from her sleeping face, then adjusted the blankets. As he did so, he saw that Steffi had gone to sleep clutching her old stuffed bunny.

This favorite toy had once been soft pink plush, with a yellow velvet waistcoat and a jaunty expression. But years of love had worn the plush almost bare in places, and the long ears were limp and droopy from constant handling.

As far as he knew, she hadn’t slept with the bunny for eight or nine years. The sight of it now, cradled in her arms, was almost unbearably painful to him.

How lonely and distressed she must be feeling!

If only she would talk to him, even yell at him. Maybe then, Alex and his daughter could start to breach this grim wall of silences and be a family again. But Steffi was so cold and remote. After school and on weekends, she hiked by herself along the trails near their home, fished for hours down in the cove, tramped alone through the woods or sat up in her room with a book.

He should probably be glad she was spending the first two weeks of the summer with Angela Sanders and her parents on a long-planned trip to Disneyland.

As far as Alex knew, his daughter had almost as little to do with her school friends these days as she did with him. Steffi had once been such a bubbly gregarious child, but now she was usually solitary. Maybe a couple of weeks with her friend would be a good thing, though he yearned to have her with him at Edgewood Manor.

But she’d be home from California in a couple of weeks, and then they’d have the rest of the summer together.

Again he thought of the old hotel on the shore of Okanagan Lake. Alex hoped that the tranquillity of that lovely old house and the beauty of its setting would work a miracle, that somewhere within the sun-dappled walls of Edgewood Manor, he would find the touch of magic that would bring his daughter back to him.