Dockside (11 page)

His eyes widened. “They quit the team?”

“Sure. It’s a game. Not school. To my way of thinking, if it’s not fun, why do it?”

“Because Max isn’t a quitter,” Greg interjected. “Are you, Max?” He caught Nina’s eye. “He’s always played sports. It’s good for him physically, and a kid in sports learns things, like persistence pays.”

“There’s a difference between persistence and beating your head against the wall.” She grinned at Max.

For a few seconds, Max’s mood lifted. “That’s right.”

Greg and Nina locked gazes for a moment, and he sensed the conversation’s undercurrent. He decided to bring it to the surface. “So I’ve been waiting to hear from you about my proposition.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“And—”

“Hey, darlin’.” The team pitcher showed up, sweaty but triumphant over their win.

“Bo, this is Greg Bellamy and his son Max.” Nina stepped back. “Bo Crutcher, our star pitcher.”

Damn, she did know every guy in town. That’s it, Greg decided. If he didn’t hear from her tomorrow, he was moving on.

“Let’s go, buddy,” he said to Max. On the way back to the car, they walked past a young family, the husband short and a little paunchy, balding prematurely. Yet as the man watched his wife playing with their two kids on the blanket, he had that funny look Jenny had mentioned earlier.
Love does that.

Greg realized Max was watching them, too, and the kid had no game face when it came to what he was feeling.

They got in the car, and Max said, “I hate the divorce. It sucks.”

Greg was at a loss, taken aback by his son’s comment. Should he let Max talk, question him, try to divert his attention—what? “Yeah, it sucks,” he said, opting for honesty.

“Then why did you let it happen?” Max demanded. “You told Nina I’m not a quitter, like that’s something to be proud of. But you quit on Mom.”

“It wasn’t just—” Greg stopped himself from objecting
It wasn’t just me….
That didn’t matter to Max, and maybe Greg was wrong. Had he single-handedly ruined his marriage, and could he have single-handedly saved it? Had he tried hard enough? “I can’t explain why,” he said. “I’m sorry, Max.”

“Everything reminds me of the way things used to be,” Max said. “Birthdays and Christmases, the four of us laughing all the time, feeling happy, like regular people. Now I think that was all a lie. Or that it turned into a lie because you guys split up.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Dad said. “The love—the happiness—that was real.”

“Then why didn’t it last?”

Why, why, why? “Lots of reasons. Mainly, we changed. Your mom and I, we turned into different people. It’s a cliché, but the truth is, we grew apart and didn’t realize it until it was too late.”

“Too late for what? Why didn’t you fix it? You made us all go to therapy over the divorce. Why didn’t you work that hard on your marriage?”

“Good question, and I don’t have an answer.” Or maybe Greg did, but it wasn’t something he’d say to his son. The fact was, Greg and Sophie had never been right for one another. The only thing that was perfect between them was the fact that they’d made a baby—Daisy, a golden child who had lit their world, obliterating the dark corners where the truth of their incompatibility lurked, banishing it. And a few years later, Max came along, another light, burning even brighter. Burning away doubts and darkness, causing a temporary blindness he mistook for happiness.

Greg hated that the divorce had hurt his kids, hated that he couldn’t give Max the answers he sought. Everything he came up with sounded like an empty platitude. “Son, I want you to believe me when I say things will get better. Here’s the truth—you don’t get one shot at happiness. You get a lot of shots. Second chances are everywhere. Sometimes the second chance works out even better than the first, because you learn from your mistakes. Trust me on this.”

“Right.” Max lapsed into grumpy silence. After a few minutes, he said, “I don’t even get it, Dad. I totally don’t see why people get married in the first place, if they’re only going to grow apart.”

“You don’t go into a marriage thinking that way. It’s hard to explain.” Greg turned at the sign for the inn. “You do what you need to do, and hope for the best.”

G
reg kept an eye on Nina Romano, making sure she didn’t pull any more stunts like sneaking into a cadet ball. What was it he’d said to her when he’d driven her home? “I might surprise you.” Man, he never should have said that. Their age difference might not matter at all when they were older, but at the moment, it was an impenetrable wall between them. She was still a kid, he told himself. End of story.

It was the day after closing at the summer camp. The kids were all gone for the season, and all that was left was to close the place up until next year. Nina was helping her mother bring equipment out of the kitchen to hose down. Greg was supposed to be draining hot water heaters in all the cabins and bunkhouses, but he kept getting distracted by her and getting pissed all over again about that dumb-ass cadet at the country club.

He spotted some of the other counselors checking her out and had to threaten them to back off. He’d heard she had several brothers. Where the hell were they when she needed them?

For her part, Nina acted as though he didn’t exist. Maybe she didn’t see him. Or maybe she was embarrassed by the whole incident with the cadet.

“Surprise.” At the main pavilion, Sophie Lindstrom got out of the van driven by Terry Davis, the head of maintenance. Her smile was both dazzling and uncertain. Given the bitterness of their parting after Christmas, Greg could easily understand her uncertainty.

He believed he and Sophie had been in love. They’d met in econ class the past fall. Over the course of the semester, they had gone from flirting to dating to sleeping together to imagining a future together. Sophie was perfect for him. She was smart, funny, kind, beautiful and ambitious. She came from a Seattle family of lawyers, diplomats and department-store magnates. Greg couldn’t wait until Christmas, to bring her home and introduce her to his family.

It never happened, though. For reasons that weren’t clear to Greg, their relationship turned turbulent and painful. Sophie had informed him that since they would both be spending the ensuing semester abroad in different countries, they shouldn’t allow themselves to be held back by “emotional ties,” whatever the hell that meant.

As Nina Romano had so aptly put it that night in the car, Sophie had dumped him. Greg hadn’t seen or spoken with her since that painful conversation before Christmas break. Yet now here she was. He had no idea what that meant—or how to greet her. He had to reorient himself. He’d anticipated helping the camp workers and his parents with the final chores—clearing out cabins, removing all the perishables from the kitchen and dining hall, securing the boats and sports equipment—and then heading back to the city, ready for the next year of college. He certainly hadn’t expected a visit from his old flame—and first love.

“Surprise is right,” he said. Stiff with self-consciousness, he briefly hugged Sophie. They bumped awkwardly, no longer knowing how to fit themselves together, though the action had once been so effortless. She felt different in every way. Even her smell was different. And he could swear she was bigger…damn. Had she gotten a boob job?

He let her go and stepped back. They’d been apart for months; they didn’t know each other anymore. He didn’t know what to say, either. He was debating between “Good to see you” and “I thought we were broken up” when she reached back into the passenger side. Poker-faced, Terry Davis went to the back of the van to get her bags.

Great, she had bags, he thought. Clearly she was planning to stick around, at least overnight.

“How did you know where to find me? And why didn’t you call first?” he asked, catching himself checking out her butt as she reached inside the vehicle. He always liked her butt, and today it looked particularly fine. Maybe she’d put on a little weight during her studies in Japan. It looked good on her.

“Your roommate told me where you’d be. And I decided not to call first because I didn’t want to chicken out,” she said over her shoulder, and then she emerged from the van, straightened up and turned.

For several seconds, Greg stared at her in complete and utter incomprehension. In her hands, she held two gray plastic handles that were attached to some sort of hooded basket. In the basket was a wad of pale, soft-looking blankets.

No, he thought. Just…
no.
It roared through his head, a denial so powerful that he couldn’t even hear Sophie speaking. He could see her lips moving, but not one word penetrated the frantic howl inside his head.

Okay, he thought. Deep breath. He forced himself to focus.

“…that look on your face,” Sophie was saying. “That’s the other reason I didn’t call first.” She paused briefly to thank Mr. Davis for the lift in the van, then turned back to Greg. “Is there someplace we can go to…”

“Over here.” He grabbed her wheeled suitcase, picking it up over the bumpy path that led down to the dock in front of the main pavilion. In the wake of the campers’ departure, it was deserted. Evening was descending, and a warm breeze rippled the surface of the water.

But now the placid beauty of the evening meant nothing to him. He didn’t care about the sheet of light upon the lake, or the gentle lapping of the water at the dock’s pilings. It was just someplace to go, a secluded spot to freak out as everything he thought about his life was turned upside down, or inside out, or into something he didn’t recognize.

With painstaking care, Sophie set down the podlike carrier.

Greg still couldn’t speak. He kept his eyes on Sophie—if he didn’t look at it, he didn’t have to acknowledge it, and then it wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t be happening.

She was staring at him with relentless steadiness. “When we broke up last Christmas, I didn’t know I was pregnant,” she said. “I swear I didn’t. I thought—I just assumed—I was coming down with something, a stomach bug or flu. It never occurred to me…” She looked away, cleared her throat. “There was a lot of stress. I had finals to deal with, and you and I weren’t getting along.”

Understatement. By the end of their relationship, being together was like peeling the skin off a blister. The knowledge that they’d be on separate continents during semester abroad—he in Granada, Spain, and she in Nagoya, Japan, turned out to be the ideal way to heal from the hurt. Greg assumed he and Sophie would return in the fall as cordial strangers. One by one, memories would fall away. They would forget things about each other—the names of childhood pets, favorite colors, the song that had been playing the first time they made love. Eventually they would forget what they’d once been to each other, or if they did remember, then the memories wouldn’t hurt.

Now he realized nothing was over between them. Something was just beginning. He still couldn’t look at the bundle of blankets in the carrier seat. But neither could he ignore it any longer. “So it’s mine,” he said. It wasn’t a question. Sophie might be a secret-keeper, but she wasn’t a liar. And she wouldn’t have subjected herself to the pain of coming here if she hadn’t been a hundred percent certain of what she was doing.

“
It
is a girl,” she stated, and Greg nearly cringed, remembering that acid tone Sophie was so good at. She’d always had the unique ability of making him feel about three inches tall. “And yes,” Sophie went on, “she’s your daughter. I came to tell you on my own, because I want us to figure out what to do without anyone interfering.”

“By ‘anyone,’ I assume you mean your parents,” Greg supplied. Both Anders and Kirsten Lindstrom were partners in one of Seattle’s most prestigious law firms. And this was classic Sophie. Simply by bringing up the subject, a particular pressure was applied. “So they’re your backup plan, right? I mean, if I try to deny any responsibility? Which goes to show you, they don’t know me at all. Maybe that goes for you, too.”

To his surprise, Sophie looked close to tears, her face blurred by vulnerability. “Oh, Greg. I wish I’d told you sooner, but I was just so scared.”

A sound came from the baby carrier. It was a sleepy mew, almost inaudibly soft, yet it thundered in Greg’s ears. Sophie seemed to be transformed by the tiny sound. Her soft uncertainty firmed into pure pride as she said, “Her name is Daisy.”

Greg felt a jolt, followed by a rush of feeling he couldn’t explain. Suddenly it wasn’t an “it” but a girl. His daughter. And she had a name—Daisy.

With awkward, wooden movements he hunkered down beside the carrier seat. He couldn’t figure out how to move the accordion-pleated hood back, so Sophie bent and did it for him. The golden light of evening fell across the bundle inside. With one finger, a shaking hand, Greg moved the soft blanket aside, and finally the bundle took on human form. He found himself unable to breathe as he looked down at her, at a fragile, tiny child, sound asleep like a creature in a fairy tale. He stared at the round, perfect face, the impossibly little fist tucked beside a slightly flushed cheek. The baby’s face flickered in sleep, then softened and resettled.

And just like that, the world shifted. Greg’s chest felt as though it was about to burst. From a place in his heart he didn’t know he had, he started to love the tiny child. The love crashed over him, as unexpected and intense as a sudden storm, the kind that leaves the landscape forever changed. And then he looked up at Sophie and he knew he’d damn well better figure out how to love her, too.