The Real Father. Kathleen O'Brien

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      Maybe that’s what she was, Molly thought. A fool. But she wouldn’t be rushed into this decision. Once, ten years ago, she had allowed herself to be pressured into doing something foolish, something she knew in her heart was wrong. The consequences had been staggering, life altering.

      The consequence had been motherhood.

      On the day she had learned she was pregnant, while she sat on that cold, metal examination table with her tears barely dried on her cheeks, she had made a promise to herself. She had vowed that no one would ever again force her to act against her own judgment.

      Beginning in that frightened moment, with grim, blind determination she had taken control of her life and Liza’s. She wasn’t about to turn over the reins now.

      Lavinia would have to wait. There was something Molly had to do before she could commit to this project. Something she had to know about herself—and about exactly how far she had come in the past ten years.

      Had she come far enough that it was now safe to come full circle? To come home?

      “I’m meeting Lavinia in a few minutes,” Molly explained, wishing in spite of herself that she could take that disappointment from Janice Kilgore’s face. “I think she said you wouldn’t mind letting Liza stay with your class, just for an hour or so?”

      Jan’s grin broke through. “You know I’d love it. Look at her with the little ones. Why, it’s as good as having another teacher’s aide.” She chuckled. “A great deal better than our last one, who liked to sneak off and smoke cigars in the closet.”

      Molly picked her way across the winter-brown field of laughing, twirling, seesawing children to kiss Liza goodbye. As she breathed in the fresh, soapy scent of her daughter, enveloping her in a long bear hug, she assured the little girl that she’d be back very soon. As usual, Liza nodded with untroubled acceptance, quite content to be left in her new surroundings.

      As Molly headed toward her waiting rental car, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Liza was fine. Her confidence was a gift, and Molly didn’t want to undermine it by communicating insecurity. It was just that Molly’s own childhood had been quite different. She had dreaded new places and strange people, sensing that the world was unpredictable. She had always felt just one slippery step from some nameless disaster.

      Living with a family like hers could do that to a person.

      Molly knew that Liza sometimes longed for a daddy—and the knowledge often filled her with a sense of failure. But then she reminded herself of the truth she’d learned so long ago, listening to the sound of her father’s drunken rages: No father was a thousand times better than a bad one.

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Molly stood in a churchyard, tightly gripping a velvety cluster of deep-purple pansies. The cemetery was only five miles east of Radway School by car. Emotionally it might as well have been in another world.

      Where Radway had rung with the laughter of a hundred children and teemed with young, vigorous life, this place was almost preternaturally quiet. Black-armed oaks, drooping willows and barely budding dogwood crowded together, blocking all sound from the street. The winter sunshine fought its way through the tangled branches, but at a price. It lay like a broken thing on the grass, a fractured mosaic of white-gold light amid the olive-green shadows.

      Molly hadn’t visited Woodlawn Cemetery in almost ten years, but she had no trouble finding the Forrest plot. It lay deep in the center of the seven acres of gray marble headstones and mildewed angels, deep enough to signify that the Forrest family had been in Demery since its founding.

      Ten generations of Forrests lay beneath these silent trees. The carvings spoke of brave Confederate soldiers, some only sixteen years old when they were delivered here straight from battle. Headstones told of young mothers who died bearing Forrest infants, who then were brought here, too, lost to influenza or typhoid fever. More-modern graves were less tragic, reflecting long lives and easy passing. The natural ebb and flow of life.

      Until she came to one of the newest graves, where someone had recently placed a bouquet of sweet peas. Until she read the headstone. Placed here less than ten years ago, its letters still formed fresh, sharp angles in the sparkling granite.

      Beaumont Cameron Forrest. Cherished son, beloved brother.

      Twenty-two years old the day he died.

      Just twenty-two. For a disoriented moment Molly couldn’t make sense of it. Her handsome Beau, her older, more sophisticated hero…just twenty-two?

      She had idolized him ever since she was eight years old, when he had chivalrously paused in his majestic twelve-year-old pursuits to rescue her doll from the creek. And yet Molly now was older than Beau would ever be. His twin brother, Jackson, was older now, too—almost thirty-two. No longer the identical twin.

      Molly fought back an unfair flash of resentment that Jackson should have lived, aged, prospered, while Beau…

      But this was what death did. It warped perspectives, inverted relationships, rendered obsolete concepts of older, younger, bigger, smaller. It froze you in time, forced others to go on without you.

      She squeezed the flowers so tightly she could smell the sharp scent of broken stems. Her legs felt suddenly soft, as if the weight of her body would sink through them, driving her to the ground. She wondered irrationally if the earth would still be damp from all the tears she had cried in this spot ten years ago.

      “I thought you might be here.” The dry, husky voice came from a mere three yards behind her, and Molly turned with graceless shock. She had believed she was alone here. She had certainly felt alone.

      Lavinia Forrest, Beau’s aunt, stood there, watching. She looked exactly as she had looked ten years ago—the way she’d looked, in fact, for as long as Molly could remember. Tall, lanky, square-jawed. Dressed as always in slacks and jacket of no-nonsense navy blue, her straight white hair bobbed for maximum efficiency. She eyed Molly with her familiar candid scrutiny.

      “You’re not crying,” Lavinia said matter-of-factly. “That’s good. No use crying over him, not after all these years.”

      Molly smiled, strangely reassured by the older woman’s crusty manner. Though the whole world might tilt and sway, though strong, glorious young men might die too soon, some things, apparently, never changed.

      “I was just about to head over to the church to meet you,” Molly said. “Am I late?”

      Lavinia shook her head. “No. I finished early. I decided to let the other volunteers arrange the flowers for once. They could use the practice. Never saw so many women with five thumbs on each hand.” She dismissed the volunteer guild with one wave of her own long-fingered, capable, quintessentially Forrest hand. “But what is this sudden formality, little Miss Molly? No hug for an old friend?”

      Molly murmured a wordless apology as she held out her arms and let herself be enfolded in Lavinia Forrest’s comforting embrace. Lavinia was unusually tall—it was a Forrest trait—so even though Molly herself was almost five-eight, she felt childlike beside the older woman.

      It felt like coming home. Lavinia’s scent was so familiar—a mixture of clean soap and the natural earthy perfumes of a woman who loved to work with flowers. Through the years, Molly had enjoyed more hugs from Lavinia Forrest than she had from her own mother.

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