Читать книгу The Real Father - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 9

IT WAS A TYPICAL late-winter morning at Everspring Plantation—dull, lifeless, the doldrums season for gardeners. Too late for the red blush of berries, too early for the yellow splash of bulbs. Brown grass slept, still exhausted, under gray skies.

But Molly, standing on the mossy brick steps of the old plantation kitchens staring down toward the banks of the slow-moving river, didn’t see winter. Everywhere she looked, she saw flowers. She saw spring days banked high with azaleas, sprinkled with candy-colored tulips, crocus and lilies. She saw green summer acres bordered with pink phlox, white candytuft, blue columbine and crimson dianthus. She saw fall afternoons lit by chrysanthemums as fiery gold as candles.

And if she closed her eyes very tightly, she could see Beau, too, walking across those flower-filled lawns, coming toward her with the summer wind ruffling his silky blond hair, the sun lighting the intense green of his eyes. And a smile on his lips.

“Mom! Come quick!” Liza’s eager voice broke into Molly’s yearning daydream. “It’s a maze, just like in the puzzle books!”

Opening her eyes, Molly shook away the images, forbidding tears to even think about forming. How absurd of her to give in to maudlin sentimentality the very first moment she set foot on Everspring earth. This was why she had left Demery in the first place, why she hadn’t come back in ten long years. She knew that here at Everspring, where Beau had lived, where she and Beau had loved, the memories would be as overpowering as quicksand.

But she could resist it—and she would. She refused to live in the past, no matter how beautiful its gardens might have been. She was lucky. She had a life, a career, a future….

She had a child.

And she intended to give that child her full attention.

“Mom!” Liza stood at the opening to the thick, six-foot high maze, her fists planted on her boyish hips with exaggerated impatience. “Come look! It’s so cool!”

Molly smiled. “It’s boxwood,” she said. “Little-leaf box, actually. It’s from Japan.” She always used playtime to teach Liza about plants. And at least half the time, Liza listened.

This wasn’t one of those times. Ignoring the botany lesson, Liza grinned as her mother drew closer. Her eyes sparkled with mischief. Suddenly, she reached out and tapped Molly’s arm.

“You’re it!” she cried triumphantly, and then she started lithely into the maze, disappearing immediately behind its leafy walls.

Molly hesitated only a second before taking off after her. Liza’s legs might be younger, but Molly had the advantage of familiarity. She knew every twist and turn, every blind end, and every secret pass-through. At eleven, she had cleverly eluded Jackson, who was always chasing her through the maze with a tree frog, a lizard or a garter snake in his hand.

And at sixteen, she had allowed Beau, sexy, laughing Beau, to catch her.

She heard Liza just ahead, giggling. The sound was infectious. She laughed, too, giving herself over to the pleasant adrenaline rush of the chase, the cool, invigorating feel of wind across her cheeks.

“You can run, dearie,” Molly called out in her best movie-villain voice as she rounded the second left turn, scuffing the boxwood with her shoulder in her haste, “but you can never hide!”

An answering squeal told her Liza was just around the next turn. She turned up the speed, and she was already stretching out her hand for the capture when she heard a sudden thump, and a small, high shriek of fear.

“Liza!” She took the corner with her heart knocking at her throat. Liza…

She froze in her tracks, which, she realized with numb horror, was actually quite fortunate, because if she had kept running she would have collided with the man who stood there, holding a shocked Liza in his arms. Just as Liza had obviously collided with him.

She looked at Liza first, caring only if her daughter was safe. Then she looked at the man.

A small, breathless voice in her mind whispered the name on a sudden leap of joy.

Beau.

Her dreams had seen him just like this. The vivid-green eyes, the dark, proud arch of eyebrow. The squared chin, the shining thickness of waving blond hair. The long, capable fingers. She felt a sudden, familiar lurch of pure physical desire.

But finally, probably in no more than the space of a heartbeat, common sense clamped down on the wishful madness.

Of course it wasn’t Beau. Beau was dead. It would never be Beau again.

It was Jackson.

Her gaze clearing, she began to see the details. Like Beau, Jackson had always been devastatingly handsome. It was his birthright. Forrest males were always glamorous far beyond normal men.

And today he was, if anything, even more attractive than he had been at twenty-two. His athletic body was still lean and rangy—a runner’s body. While Beau had been the football hero, Jackson had been the high school track star. Quite natural, the gossips had suggested. He got plenty of practice running from sheriff’s deputies and outraged fathers.

He smiled now, watching her study him. The grin was as deeply dimpled and rakish as ever, but it was subtly different. It was as if the years had erased just a little of the defiance that had once been his hallmark.

“Hi, Molly,” he said, using that voice that was so like Beau’s—and yet so different. He bent down to Liza. “Are you okay? That was some crash. You must have been going about a hundred miles an hour.”

Liza grinned up at him. Molly winced at the sight of that familiar, dimpled grin. “Yes. I’m a fast runner,” she said proudly. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

He massaged his ribs dramatically. “I think I’ll live.” He straightened and met Molly’s gaze over the little girl’s head. “It’s been a long time, Molly. How are you?”

Her throat felt strangely dry. It seemed to take away her powers of speech to look at him like this. It was like looking at a ghost. A ghost who made her tingle, remembering things that hadn’t ever happened—at least not with him.

“Liza,” she said, touching her daughter’s hair softly. “Would you go out to the car, please, and get my purse?”

Liza looked confused. “What do you need your purse fo—”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Molly interjected, her voice still soft.

Liza got the message. She looked from Jackson to her mother once, curiously, but without anxiety. She smiled. “Okay.”

Molly watched her disappear back through the maze, and then, clearing her throat, she turned to Jackson.

“I was so sorry,” she said. “So terribly sorry about Beau.” She knew that wasn’t the best way to begin, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She hadn’t expected to find Jackson at Everspring. Lavinia had hinted that, as Jackson’s main address these days was New York—where he’d moved as soon as he’d been released from the hospital—he probably wouldn’t be in town during her own stay here. She wondered now whether Lavinia had deliberately misstated the case.

Whatever the reason, she had no speeches ready. Still, why was this so hard? It was just Jackson, the boy she’d played with since she was a child, the boy whose shoulders she had soaked in tears whenever Beau’s careless ways had broken her heart.

“I can’t appreciate the magnitude of your loss, of course, but I—” She took a deep breath, hating the stilted expressions that seemed to spout unbidden from her lips. “I loved him, too, Jackson. I loved him desperately.”

He nodded. “I know you did.” His eyes took on some of the old sardonic quality. “And blindly, too, if I remember correctly. But hey—” he cocked that disarming smile at her, and suddenly the mockery was gone again “—didn’t everyone?”

The sound of Liza’s favorite nursery rhyme jingle broke into Molly’s response, the little girl’s high, clear notes making their way like birdsong through the boxwood wall.

Jackson looked toward the sound, then slowly turned his gaze back to Molly. “I don’t have to ask if she’s your daughter, do I?” He smiled. “She’s exactly like you at that age.”

Molly took a deep breath. She knew the similarity was dramatic. Molly had been lanky, too, always outgrowing her clothes just like Liza. And both of them had identical wispy blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, and fair cheeks that pinked at the slightest breeze.

“Do you think so?” As Molly tried to think of what else to say, Liza’s song changed to a show tune, her young voice swaggering with a pretty good approximation of early Madonna. Molly couldn’t help smiling, meeting Jackson’s raised eyebrow. What an amazing kid she had. Where did she learn these things?

“As you can hear, though, the similarities are all on the surface,” Molly said over the noise. “Liza’s nobody’s clone. I never could carry a tune. And she’s got tons more gumption than I ever dreamed of.”

Jackson tilted his head and let his gaze settle on Molly’s face. “Maybe,” he said, answering her smile with one of his own. “But, you know, M, I sometimes thought you might have underestimated yourself in that department.”

“Are you kidding?” Molly shook her head incredulously. It felt surprisingly nice to hear Jackson’s old nickname for her. “I was a mess. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

Jackson shrugged. “I think you’re still selling yourself a little short. After all, your daughter must have inherited all that confidence and charisma from somewhere.”

She stared at him, realizing, suddenly, just like that, the moment of truth had come. This was where she should say, quite casually, “No, actually, she inherited that from her father.” Jackson obviously was expecting that, waiting for it, as if he had planned it.

Perhaps he had. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been running through a conversational maze, and now she had hit the dead end, the unanswerable question that rose up between them as insurmountable as a thick, thorny hedge.

The big question. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one no one ever quite spoke out loud.

The question Jackson had nonetheless been leading her deftly toward since the first moment he set eyes on Liza.

If these lucky genes had not come from Molly, then where?

Who was Liza’s father?

ORDINARILY LIZA WOULD have been in no hurry to get back to the grown-ups, who talked about the most boring things on earth. Meeting new grown-ups was the worst, because they always wanted to ask her the same dumb questions, like what subject do you like best at school, or how did you get so tall?

But this new grown-up was different. She’d been looking for someone to be King Willowsong for nearly a year now. She’d almost given up. But it was as if the maze had led her to him, as if she had banged into him for a reason. When she had looked up into his awesome green eyes, and seen his hair shining all silvery in the sun, her first thought had been that maybe, finally, she had found a King for Planet Cuspian.

But it would take more than silvery hair and green eyes if he was really going to be King. The true test was much harder. If he was truly the King, he had to be able to recognize that her mother was the Queen.

So she had to hurry. She’d noticed a funny look in his eyes when he had said hello to her mother. It might have been the right look, the look a king should give a queen. But her mother had sent her away before she could be sure.

She was almost at the entrance to the maze when she heard people coming up the walk behind her.

“Hello?”

For a minute Liza wished she could just pretend she hadn’t heard the lady calling out. But that wasn’t nice. The Princess of Cuspian didn’t do things like that. At least not very often.

She turned and saw a woman about her mother’s age, but sexier, like someone on TV, and not quite as soft, with her tight shiny black belt and tight blue pants. Still, somehow Liza knew that the lady wasn’t a Mudbluff. She might smell like too much hair spray, and her lipstick might be the color of a really bad bruise, but she wasn’t a Mudbluff.

Her mom thought it was weird, but Liza always tagged everyone right away using the different species from her imaginary planet. Everyone was either a Willowsong or a Mudbluff. A good guy or a bad guy.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between made-up and real. It was just that tags made life simpler. Mostly, she had discovered, people were Willowsongs, which was kind of a relief, kind of comforting, when you thought about it.

Most of the Mudbluffs she’d seen were in the movies. Well, there was Mrs. Geiger who taught piano and hurt your fingers trying to make them reach the keys—she was a Mudbluff. And once Liza had watched a woman at the grocery store squeezing her kid’s arm until he cried. Definitely a Mudbluff.

But mostly Liza’s world was made up of Willowsongs.

As Liza slowed down to see what the lady wanted, she noticed that a little boy slouched along behind the woman, scuffing his sneakers across the brick walk. Liza looked closely at his blond hair. She knew him. She had seen him at the Radway School when she’d gone to visit a couple of weeks ago.

Tommy, maybe? Yes, she was pretty sure he was Tommy.

Tommy was hard to forget. He’d spent the whole day in trouble with the teacher. At first, Liza had thought Tommy was a Mudbluff for certain. But then she had looked into his eyes, cool eyes the color of rye grass, and she hadn’t been so sure. Those were the tricky ones, the people who did Mudbluffy things, but their eyes were sad, or tired, or scared, and you suddenly could tell they had reasons, big reasons, for the bad things they did.

“Hi,” the woman said as she drew closer. “I’m Annie Cheatwood.” Her blue eyes swept Liza’s face, smiling and frowning at the same time. “I guess you’re Molly’s little girl, aren’t you? Good grief, look at you! Is this déjà vu or what?”

Liza nodded. She knew what the lady meant—her grandmother said that all the time. And she’d seen pictures of her mom as a little girl, so she knew they looked alike. Especially the ones where her mom was smiling. There weren’t very many of those, as if her mother had always been hiding a missing tooth or something.

“Yes,” she said, curious to think that her mother had ever known this lady, who, now that she was up close, smelled of hair spray, Juicy Fruit gum, and, most surprisingly, wood chips.

It was actually kind of a nice smell. Nothing like her mom, but still. Definitely not a Mudbluff. “I’m Liza,” she added politely.

“Well, it’s great to meet you, Liza,” Mrs. Cheatwood said, sounding as if she meant it. “It’s really kind of a kick. This is my son Tommy. I guess you two are probably about the same age.”

Liza looked over at Tommy, who had his hands behind his head, stretching his head back to stare at the sky, thought there wasn’t anything happening up there, not even an airplane. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying “hi.”

“Actually, we’re looking for Jackson,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. “Jackson Forrest. He lives here, but nobody answered the door up at the house. Is he around?”

“Maybe,” Liza said. “My mom just met a man in the maze, but she didn’t say his name.”

“Hot damn, he cornered her in the maze, did he?” Mrs. Cheatwood shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe how funny that was. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘damn.’ That’s what comes from selling lug nuts to guys in dirty shirts all day. Anyhow, was it a tall, gorgeous guy? Blond? Green eyes to die for?”

Tommy groaned. “For crying out loud, Mom.”

Liza flicked a look at him. He’d begun tearing the leaves from a low-hanging oak branch, and he still didn’t acknowledge her presence.

“I guess so,” she said to Mrs. Cheatwood. “He had green eyes. I think they’re still in there.”

“Great. I hate to bust up a party, but I need to see Jackson ASAP. He’s going to help me get this little devil of mine under control.”

“Damn it,” Tommy muttered with feeling. He swatted violently at the denuded branch. “Goddamn it.”

“And maybe he’ll wash that filthy mouth out with soap while he’s at it,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. She stalked toward the maze, assuming without even looking back that her son would follow her.

Which, after a long, tense second in which his hard green gaze locked defiantly with Liza’s, he did.

Liza hung back a moment, but her curiosity overcame her hesitation, and she decided to tag along.

Green eyes, she mused as she followed the woman’s pointy heel marks that dug a string of small circles in the earth, like a connect-the-dots game. That’s what King Willowsong should have.

Green eyes to die for.

AS NOISES CARRIED toward them through the maze, and the irregular pattern of thudding footsteps grew loud enough to announce the imminent arrival of at least three people, Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t even ask herself who it might be. She just closed her eyes and thought that she’d never been so glad to hear anything in her life.

Hurry, she implored mentally. Someone, anyone, to break up this awkward moment.

She still hadn’t answered Jackson’s unspoken question.

But she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She had a lie ready. A good lie. Carefully thought out, embroidered with so many little homespun details that sometimes she half believed them herself. A lie good enough to fool the entire population of Demery, South Carolina, if necessary.

But this wonderful lie, which she’d practiced a thousand times, training it to issue confidently from her lips, had simply refused to be spoken. It had lodged like a chicken bone in her throat, and, while Jackson stood there watching her in growing bemusement, she had been able to manage only a few stupid syllables of stumbling evasion.

“Molly. You can tell me. Who—”

But he didn’t have time to finish. The approaching hubbub separated into individual voices. One adult—a female, clearly irked by something. One disgusted little boy objecting sulkily to everything the woman said. And then Liza’s voice, breaking in politely, instructing the others to take the next left.

“Thank goodness!” A voluptuous brunette emerged from the opening like a diva making her grand entrance.

She pressed the heel of her hand dramatically to her forehead. “I swear, Jackson, if you don’t make this little rascal see reason, I’ll—” She ducked her head to Jackson’s collarbone and went limp against him. “I don’t know what. Toss him into the volcano? Grind him into hamburger meat and have him for dinner?”

Jackson grinned, but over the woman’s bent head he tossed a quick wink to the little boy, who had come sulking in behind her. “Why don’t you just sell him to the Gypsies? Make a few bucks while you’re at it.”

The woman moaned. “They won’t take him.”

Jackson put his hands on the woman’s shoulders and eased her erect again. “Then I guess we’re stuck with him. We’ll have to see what we can do to straighten him out.”

He rotated her slightly. “Annie, say hi to Molly.” He tilted his head. “You remember Annie Cheatwood, don’t you, Molly? She was ahead of you in school—she graduated the same year Beau and I did.”

Reaching out with his right hand, he touched the little boy’s shining blond head. Molly noticed that the child, though still noticeably surly, did not pull away. “And this is her son Tommy, who, though his mother seems to have forgotten it, is a pretty cool kid.”

Molly recognized him immediately. It was the little boy from Radway School. The mischievous blond child who’d been wheeling another student around by the ankles. The one who had reminded her of—

Suddenly Molly’s brain began to blink and spin, like a computer being violently overloaded. So much was going on in the scene before her—so many complicated nuances, so many unspoken implications. She hardly knew where to begin processing it all.

Out of the chaos, one bewildering question pushed to the fore, blinking in a neon urgency.

Could Jackson be this little boy’s father?

Bluntly stated like that, it seemed absurd. Annie’s son, he had said, not “mine.” And somehow, to Molly, it was inconceivable. Could Jackson have a child he refused to acknowledge? A pregnant lover he had refused to marry?

Surely not. But still… Look at the boy. The lanky limbs. The silver-blond hair. Those Forrest green eyes. That straight, high-bridged nose with slightly flared nostrils…

It could be true. That moment on the playground hadn’t been an illusion. In a few years this handsome little boy would definitely possess the arrogant Forrest profile.

“Hi, Molly.” Annie was smiling at her warmly.

“Good to see you. It’s been years. You grew up nice, kid.” Annie poked Jackson in the ribs. “Didn’t she grow up nice, Jack?”

Somehow tearing her gaze from the mysterious child, Molly smiled back. Of course she remembered Annie Cheatwood. Beautiful, sexy, brassy Annie, who had entertained a steady stream of the school’s most popular boys in her ancient yellow sedan. The Yellow Peril, the boys had called it. Molly had been officially horrified but privately awed. She’d never known a girl whose car was infamous enough to earn a nickname of its own.

Annie had lived just down the street from Molly, in that modest neighborhood just on the wrong side of the tracks. Molly’s mother had always looked down on Annie’s family, who didn’t care if crabgrass took over their little square of lawn, who let the paint peel on their walls and slats droop in their shutters. “Thank God we’re not as tacky as the Cheatwoods,” her mother had always said, sniffing with the desperate superiority of the chronically insecure.

Molly hadn’t been friends with Annie, exactly. In high school, four years made a huge difference, and besides, Molly was too diffident, too prissy and far too uptight to interest the dynamic older girl.

But Molly had always admired her and had secretly wished to be more like her. Annie wasn’t ashamed of being poor, and she obviously didn’t agonize over what the neighbors thought. Even as a teenager Annie had believed herself the equal of anyone, somehow aware that human value wasn’t measured by whether a man had spindly crabgrass or lush boxwood hedges in his front yard.

It was an enviable level of wisdom that Molly herself hadn’t found until much later in life.

“Thanks, Annie,” she said. “You’re looking wonderful yourself.” Molly intensified her smile, hoping that Annie might sense a little of that longstanding respect.

Maybe, Molly thought suddenly, it had been Annie who had refused to acknowledge the father of her child—not the other way around. That would be like her. She’d no doubt consider little Tommy just as “legitimate” as a Cheatwood as he could ever have been as a Forrest.

“Sorry to bust in on you guys, but I need Jack’s help with Tommy.” Annie cast a daggered glance toward her son, who simply looked away, feigning boredom. In that pose of deliberately casual defiance, he looked more Forrest than ever.

“This one’s in big trouble. Huge.” Annie turned back to Jackson. “He broke Junior Caldwell’s nose, and now he won’t go over there and say he’s sorry.”

Tommy raised his pointed chin. “I’m not sorry. You want me to lie?”

Annie narrowed her eyes dangerously. “You bet I want you to lie, buster. It’s called good manners. It’s called do it or your sorry behind is grounded for the rest of your sorry life.”

Tommy’s chin didn’t waver, though his voice did, just a little. “I won’t apologize. He deserved it. Junior Caldwell is a big, fat, stinking parasite.”

Jackson made a sound like a muffled laugh, and Annie jabbed her elbow in his ribs. “Straight off this week’s science vocabulary list,” she said, and Molly could hear strangled mirth in her voice, too. “Talk to him, Jack. The Caldwells are raising Cain. They’re trying to get Tommy kicked out of Radway.”

“I don’t care,” Tommy said firmly. “Radway stinks. It’s just a bunch of snobs and mamma’s boys.”

“Some things never change,” Jackson observed cryptically. He slid his arm around Annie’s shoulders. “Okay, cool down. Tommy and I will talk.”

Annie let out a groan of relief. “You’re an angel of mercy, my friend. And maybe, while you’re at it—” she pointed toward her head with two fingers and made a scissoring motion “—this, too?”

Jackson glanced toward Tommy, as if assessing the need. Tommy, who Molly realized was plenty smart enough to know what his mother was talking about, simply stared off into space. Only the unnatural stillness of his body indicated any interest in the outcome.

“Sorry, Annie. Can’t help you there.” Grinning, Jackson chucked two fingers under Annie’s chin.

“You got to learn to pick your battles, sweetie.”

Strangely mesmerized, Molly watched the two of them, still unable to come to grips with what she saw. Jackson and Annie were so comfortable together, so clearly partners in the awesome task of rearing this bright, handsome, willful little boy. Their communication was relaxed, largely nonverbal, and yet amazingly complete.

Molly had to pinch off a trickle of envy. It would have been nice to have someone like that, someone to bring your troubles to, someone who would help you sort out the mountains from the molehills. Molly had always been alone with her worries, sometimes struggling from bedtime until dawn to find the simple perspective Jackson had been able to offer Annie in a matter of minutes.

She felt a small hand creep up toward hers, and she looked down with a smile to find Liza standing close, her expression wistful. Molly’s heart ached, recognizing that wordless longing. Never mind that the threesome in front of them weren’t really a family, the couple not man and wife, the boy’s background murky.

In every way that mattered, they felt like a family.

Molly and Liza were like children pressing their faces against the candy store window. She didn’t know what to say to take that look from her daughter’s eyes.

“I love you, honey,” she said, for want of anything more inspired.

“I know,” Liza answered softly, but she didn’t take her eyes from Jackson even long enough to blink.