A Hickory Ridge Christmas. Dana Corbit

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СКАЧАТЬ plea tore at his heart. Clearly, they had more to say to each other, but maybe now wasn’t the best time. He was still too shocked, too confused to make any decisions that would affect their lives. Three lives.

      “I won’t stay gone, you know. I’m living in Milford now, and I’m sticking around this time.”

      Either she didn’t hear him or she refused to answer, but Hannah hurried him toward the door and closed it behind him. As the cold enfolded him, this time seeping to his very core rather than only touching his extremities, Todd realized that Hannah was right about one thing: None of them would ever be the same.

      It wasn’t until Todd was back at his Commerce Road town house and eating chicken noodle soup that refused to warm his chilled insides that he realized he’d never apologized to Hannah. After traveling from the other side of the world in miles and in years of effort, he hadn’t even managed to do the most important thing he’d come to town to accomplish.

      “You were too busy trying not to swallow your tongue to remember anything else,” he said to the stacked boxes around him.

      Sitting at the new glass dinette in the kitchen, he stared down into the soup bowl and stirred the noodles into a whirlpool. His thoughts traveled in a similar circular pattern, but unlike the liquid, they wouldn’t stop spinning.

      A child. His child. Of course, he should have considered the possibility that Hannah could have become pregnant. He knew the textbook mechanics of reproduction and the potential consequences of unprotected sex, but he’d never once considered that they might have made a child together. He and Hannah had only made love that one time. Apparently, it only took once.

      The returned letters and unanswered calls made sense now. Not only had he left her alone with her guilt over what had happened between them, but he’d also left her alone with his child.

      Alone. He felt that way now as he sat with only the bare walls and the truth to keep him company. He suddenly felt a stronger need to connect with his parents than he had at any time since he’d hugged them goodbye in Kranji a week earlier. But what would he say to them if he called? He could just imagine how that conversation would go: “Hello, Mom and Dad. Or should I say Grandma and Grandpa? I have just the best news.”

      He shook his head. No, that conversation would have to wait for another day when he was prepared to hear disappointment of that magnitude over international phone lines. He wasn’t ready for that when he hadn’t digested it himself yet.

      But there was one call he could make now. He pulled out the phone book, looked up the name and dialed. He didn’t even identify himself when the man answered on the second ring.

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” Todd said simply.

      Andrew Westin sighed loudly into the line. “Todd. I had an idea I would be hearing from you.”

      “You could have saved yourself the call by telling me before.”

      “You make it sound so easy.”

      His jaw was so tightly clenched in frustration that it took Todd a few seconds to be able to answer at all and a few seconds more to answer civilly. “It was easy. The first time I called the church, you could have said, ‘Hey, Todd, it’s good to hear from you. Just thought you should know, you’re a dad.’”

      “Sure, I could have done that.”

      “Then why didn’t you?”

      “It wasn’t my place. Then or now.”

      Todd stalked over to the tan striped couch, dropped onto it and sank into the backrest. “Then or now? What do you mean by that?”

      “Hannah never told anyone who the father of her baby was. Until now.”

      “Until now?” Todd straightened in his seat. There could be no slouching after a comment like that, one that crushed as much as it confused. Hannah had been more ashamed of him than she’d been of being an unwed mother. He didn’t know what to do with that information.

      “Wait. Then how did you know?”

      “I told you Serena and I had guessed you two were more than friends when we saw you together.”

      Todd swallowed. “Oh.”

      “So, when Hannah became pregnant, we suspected. Then when little Rebecca arrived, we…well knew.”

      The image of those pretty green eyes filled his mind again. If Andrew and Serena had already been suspecting, he could easily see how they’d connected the dots to solve the puzzle. They’d probably put it together faster than he had.

      “What about Reverend Bob?”

      “If he knows, he’s never mentioned it to me.” Andrew paused. “Bob was always more concerned with supporting his daughter than tracking down his grandchild’s father.”

      “Another reason I never found out the truth.”

      “Todd, I always thought she would open up eventually, that she would tell you. But she didn’t. So when you called looking for answers, I figured God was suggesting that I help the truth along.”

      “I don’t know whether to say thanks or not.” Todd shoved his free hand through his hair.

      “But you know now, right?”

      Todd blew out a breath. “Yes, I know.”

      “And how do you feel about that?”

      “Don’t use all that psychobabble on me, okay Reverend?”

      “Fine. But she’s a cute one, your daughter.”

      Emotion filled Todd’s throat with a speed that surprised him. Rebecca was his daughter, and she didn’t even know him.

      “Yeah…she’s beautiful,” he choked out finally.

      Andrew chuckled into the line. “Spoken like a true father. I do have one more question for you.”

      “What’s that?”

      “What are you going to do about it now that you know?”

      What are you going to do? Todd didn’t have an answer for the minister’s question or for his own as they said their goodbyes. He clicked off the phone and laid it on the end table. It was a given that he would take some responsibility for the care of his child. His parents would expect that, and he expected that of himself. He didn’t even want to remember all the other things he’d expected to happen when he returned to Milford.

      Disquiet had him pushing off the sofa and crossing to the light wood bookshelf he’d just purchased and already had crammed with books. His fingers closed over a heavy cloth-covered album his mother had insisted he take with him on the plane at Changi International Airport. He took it back to the table and plunked it next to the bowl of soup that had already congealed.

      He sat and opened it to the first page. It was as he predicted: a tribute to the lives and loves of the McBride clan. He would expect nothing less from Sharon McBride than a maudlin display, sure to cause more homesickness than to cure it.

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