The Atonement Child (19 page)

“Just like old times, isn’t it, princess?”

Douglas watched his daughter’s wan face closely as she smiled at him and nodded. He wanted to believe her, wanted to be convinced, but he knew his daughter almost as well as he knew himself. She was flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. And something was wrong, terribly wrong. He could feel it. Something was bothering her. No,
bothering
wasn’t strong enough. She was plagued. He saw it in her eyes, felt it in his gut, and no amount of avoidance on her part, or his, made it any better. It was there, like a growing cancer eating away at their relationship, making them strangers to one another.

Hannah knew what was wrong, he was sure of it. She’d probably known two minutes after being with Dynah. She’d known the night he called from Los Angeles. She’d known last night. And this morning. And she was keeping it secret.

Why couldn’t she tell him? Did she think anything could destroy his love for Dynah? But there it was again. Hannah’s distrust. And now its seed was planted and growing in his daughter.

Douglas held in his anger until Dynah was in bed. Asleep, he thought.

“When are you going to tell me what’s going on around here?” he said, proud of the calm he managed as he spoke quietly through his teeth.

Hannah’s gaze rested on his face, and he could swear she looked nearly panicked. “Promise me you’ll stay calm.”

“I am calm.” On the surface. Like a thin layer of blackened stone covering molten lava.

Hannah sat down on the far end of the couch, her hands clasped nervously. He wondered how long it would take her to get it out. It didn’t take long at all.

“Dynah’s pregnant.”

A fissure opened. “Ethan?”

“No. Not Ethan.” She let out her breath slowly and looked at him, shattered. “She was raped.”

“Raped?”
He couldn’t take it in. He thought of Dynah, pretty, blue-eyed Dynah, his little angel. Who would want to hurt a girl like her? “When?”

“January.”

“How did it happen?”

She told him every detail Dynah had related to her. The car in the garage undergoing repairs. The cold night. The bus ride and walk up Henderson Avenue. The man in the white car with Massachusetts license plates. The park.

“Jesus,” Douglas said brokenly. “Jesus. God!” Leaning forward, he covered his face.

“She doesn’t want an abortion, Douglas.”

His head came up. “Well, she’s going to have to have one whether she likes it or not.”

Hannah stared at him, and he saw the disbelief in her eyes. “What are you saying? She has no choice?”

“You tell me what choice she has!” he said, angry, wanting to lash out. If the man who’d done this to his daughter were to suddenly appear in the room, he’d kill him. With pleasure. Slowly. As painfully as possible. Ways flashed in his head, a dozen of them, each more horrific and satisfying than the next.

“It’ll be difficult,” Hannah said slowly, as though trying to sort through all the ramifications at once.

“Not as difficult as if she doesn’t do it. Think about it,” he said.

“It’s all I’ve been thinking about!”

“Who’s going to want a girl who had a baby by some . . . some unknown assailant?”

“It’s not her fault!”

“I didn’t say it was!” Getting up, he paced, too agitated to sit. He wanted to break something, smash it beyond recognition.

“But she has to suffer for it?”

“Should I?”

“What’s this got to do with you?”

“Who do you think will have to take responsibility if she does decide to have it? Me! How’s she going to finish school or get a job with a baby? You’re going to be babysitting. You like that idea? You want to give up all your community work? I’m going to be paying the bills. Well, no thanks. I’m retiring in a few years. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life taking responsibility for a child forced on my daughter by rape. And neither is she!” He glared at her. “It might be different if it had been someone she loved.”

The barb struck deep. “You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” Hannah said, and he saw her tremble. “It always comes back to that.”

“Because you make it that way.”

“She doesn’t want an abortion!”

“So what’s she going to do?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants to do, Doug.”

“Then help her figure it out! You know more about handling these situations than I do.”

She flinched as though from a blow.

Douglas ignored her reaction, riding on his wrath. “Do you think she really wants this child? You’re out of your mind if you do. You just told me she never even saw the man’s face. What if he was black? What if he had AIDS? What sort of human being is it going to be? Who in their right mind would want it?”

“Lower your voice. She’s upstairs.”

He came closer, leaning down, jaw jutting. “If she refuses to have an abortion, people might even start wondering if it
was
rape. Have you thought of that? They might start thinking she and Ethan Turner went a little further than they intended.”

He saw the jab hit home, watched it sink deep, twisting. Old wounds were ripped open, and she was bleeding again.

“No, they won’t. Not about Dynah.”

“Yeah, right. Haven’t you listened to the hens in our own church? They’d think it. They’d delight in thinking it. Especially about Dynah. She can kiss her reputation good-bye.”

Hannah watched him pace. “Are you worried about Dynah’s reputation or your own?”

He stopped and turned his head, glaring at her. “What’re you talking about?”

Her eyes were cold. “Try this on for size. People would look at you as the father of an unwed mother.”

He clenched his fist. “Is that what you think worries me? Don’t you dare compare me to your father. I’m nothing like him. You didn’t even trust him enough to tell him, not up to the day he died.”

“From where I sit, you look the same. I should never have told you. All I did was give you a weapon! Why do you think I’m the one telling you instead of Dynah?”

“Because you got in the way!”

“Yes! I did! Because I knew what would happen! Because I can take it better than she can! I’ve had practice! Plenty of it!” He saw the tears come to her eyes—accompanied by rage. “I know what you think. I know how you feel. Don’t you think I know? I’ve lived with it for twenty-seven years!”

Douglas glared at her, cold with wrath. “Oh, no, you don’t, Hannah. You’re not dumping that horse manure on my doorstep again. You were living with it long before I ever came on the scene. You want to blame somebody? Fine. But don’t blame me.”

She let out her breath slowly. “This isn’t doing any good,” she said quietly, but it was clear how shaken she was. It always shook her to get this close to it. She wanted to retreat—he was sure of it—but she couldn’t. Because this time she was fighting for Dynah. Her daughter.

His teeth clenched.
Their
daughter.

“We have to help Dynah,” she said brokenly. “I don’t want to watch it happen all over again. I can’t—” Hunching over, she covered her face.

Douglas stared down at his wife and felt bereft. Why did he always come out feeling in the wrong, as though he were to blame? He’d had nothing to do with what had happened to her or what she’d done. Still, it made no difference. He remembered Hannah’s asking him once if he would have taken her out a second time if she’d had an illegitimate child in tow. He had said, “Probably.” It hadn’t been the answer she needed, and amendments had never been enough to alter the damage done. She couldn’t forget. Or she chose not to.

“I can’t deal with it, Hannah. I’m not going to—”

“Daddy . . .”

Douglas turned, his face going hot when he saw his daughter standing in the archway, a quilt wrapped around her. Her eyes were puffed and red from weeping. She looked at him beseechingly and then at her mother sitting hunched over on the couch.

“I’ll go,” she said in a choked voice. “I promise I’ll talk to someone at one of those clinics. I—” She shook her head, her eyes spilling over with tears, her mouth trembling. She clutched the quilt more tightly. “Only please, don’t yell at Mom anymore. It’s not her fault. It’s not yours, either. I never meant to be a burden. . . .” Turning, she fled up the stairs.

Feeling sick with shame, Douglas stood silent in his family room.

Hannah stood up and walked slowly across the room without looking at him. He wanted to say he was sorry, but for what? For hating the man who had raped his daughter? For not wanting to see this pregnancy ruin her life? Granted, his emotions had gotten out of hand, and the past had reared its ugly head again, but was that entirely his fault? Maybe if Hannah had led into the news about Dynah instead of hitting him square in the heart. . . . He felt set up for the fall. A convenient scapegoat for all her problems.

Douglas put his hand on her arm before she could pass. “Tell her I love her.”

“Take your hand off me.”

The coldness of her words struck him full in the gut. He gripped her harder, wanting to hold on to her, wishing just once she’d understand how he felt about all of it. “I love her as much as you do.”

Raising her head, Hannah glared at him. Jerking free, she walked away from him and went up the stairs.

Douglas didn’t leave early for work the next morning. Even after a long, hot shower, he felt like he was suffering from a hangover. Dressed for work, he sat at the breakfast nook table overlooking the small backyard flower garden, while Hannah, with the air of a martyr, stood at the stove scrambling his eggs. He hadn’t expected her to come downstairs and fix breakfast for him. He almost wished she hadn’t. He would have felt better if she’d stayed in bed with the covers pulled up over her head, the way they’d been when he went into the shower. Instead, he had to look at her rigid back and feel the glacial air in the room.

“What time did you finally come to bed?” he said, sipping his coffee, the
Wall Street Journal
still sitting unopened beside his place mat. He had no stomach for news this morning.

“Two.” She scraped the eggs onto a plate, put the frying pan into the sink, and delivered his meal to him without so much as a glance. His toast popped up. Returning to the counter, she buttered both slices, put them on a small plate, and delivered them along with a metal carrier containing three small porcelain pots of strawberry, grape, and plum jam. He could have his choice.

Douglas bowed his head, as was his habit, and said a silent prayer. Rote words:
Thank You for the food, Lord, and the hands that have prepared it.
When he finished, he looked at her bleakly.
God, help us! Help us! What good does going to church do if it all comes back to this?

Hannah recognized the bruised expression. Regret. Weariness. She was sorry, too, but what good had it ever done?

He looked at the bare space before his wife. “You going to eat?”

“No.” She always felt sick to her stomach after a fight. It took a few days to climb out of the pit of depression; the lingering aftereffects were like a conditioned response. She always wondered what she’d done to start it, what she’d said to bring on the deluge, what she could do to mend her armor now that the demons were loose again.

Douglas let out his breath softly. So, she was going to play it that way. Fine. Annoyed, he ate in silence, refusing to feel guilty.

Hannah sat quiet, swallowing resentment with her coffee, stomach churning. She knew what was ahead. Things would get worse before they got better. Assuming, of course, that they would get better.

It was Douglas who broke first. His temper was quick to life and death, unlike her endless grudges.

“How’s Dynah?”

“She’ll be fine.” The words came out stiffly.
Don’t worry about it. We’ll solve the problem, Douglas. You don’t have to dirty your hands.
Unable to sit still, she got up, gathered his dishes, and went to the sink, anger choking her. It came up from deep down inside her, hot and black, deadly.

“Is she okay with what she has to do? After you talked with her, I mean?”

“She’s not okay with it, but she’ll talk to the doctor. And I didn’t tell her about what happened to me, if that’s what you meant.”

“Why not? Don’t you think it’s time?”

A chill swept over her. “I didn’t see the point.” And she’d been afraid, afraid of what her daughter would think of her, afraid of losing her respect, losing her love.

“It might help her to know you’ve been through it.”

Misery loves company, was that it? “I can’t.”

“You didn’t have any more choice about it than she does.”

She gripped the edge of the sink. “Why do you always see it that way the day after an argument?”

“I wasn’t the one throwing blame last night. You hurt me, too.”

They’d become good at that over the years, hurting each other in ways that were subtle and swift. Coming to Christ had brought an idyll. For a time. Now, it had begun again. Somehow, it was more devastating the second time around. She was less prepared.

She stared down into the sink at the dirty dishes and frying pan. “I don’t want her to know. Can you understand that, Douglas? Or at least try. I don’t want anyone to know. I wish to God I’d never told you.”