The Good Father. Diane Chamberlain

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СКАЧАТЬ spent most of my life wishing I had someone I could call Mom. Calling James “Dad” had been tougher, though. My own father had still been alive then, so I already had a dad. Plus James always held his distance. Oh, he was really nice to me and I knew he loved me in his own way, but he was such a politician. I was never certain if what was written on his face was what he was really feeling. I’d seen him smile warmly at too many people he’d later put down in private to trust him completely. I sometimes saw the same trait in Dale and it shook me up.

      “Alissa’s going to be so happy to see you.” Mollie brushed a speck of dirt from her khaki shorts. “That baby was up all night.”

      “Did she keep you awake?” I asked.

      She shook her head. “Ear plugs. I’ve worn them ever since I married James. I’m going to give you a pair as a wedding gift.”

      I laughed. I started to say that Dale didn’t snore, but thought better of it. I honestly didn’t know if they realized how often Dale stayed over at my apartment. Anyhow, it would be “indelicate” of me to say. I was learning a lot about what was tolerated in a family that needed to keep a polished public image. The word indelicate came up a lot. That’s why they dealt so openly and quickly with Alissa’s pregnancy, making lemonade out of lemons.

      I’d adored Alissa from the moment I met her. She’d been barely fifteen with silky-straight, long, dark hair and a wide, white smile. For the longest time, I’d thought what an amazing teenager she was. She seemed so together. Straight-A student. Popular, with a sweet, shy, lovable boyfriend named Jess. She was a whiz with anything to do with the computer. She set up the website for the bed-and-breakfast herself at fourteen. If anyone should have been able to see through a facade, though, it should have been me, and even I missed it. Only when she was five months pregnant did she tell her parents and Dale. Then, for the first time, I saw all hell break loose in the Hendricks family. When James and Mollie and Dale started talking about contacting Jess’s parents, Alissa owned up to the truth: Jess had been nothing but a cover. He was Alissa’s best friend, as gay as the day was long, and he’d been helping her sneak around to see Will Stevenson, a boy she’d been forbidden to go out with. Jess would pick her up for a “date,” then drive her to wherever she and Will were hooking up. I’d never met Will, so I couldn’t pass judgment on him, but the rest of the family seemed to hate him for reasons that still seemed small and wrong to me. I guessed there were enough small reasons that when you added them together, it was enough to equal one giant one. For starters, he was a high-school dropout doing custodial work for some businesses. His mother was a housekeeper—in fact, she’d been the Hendricks’ housekeeper when Alissa and Will were toddlers. His father was in prison for something to do with drugs. Plus Will was nineteen, two and a half years older than Alissa. The Hendricks all acted like that was a big deal. Since Dale was eleven years older than me, the age difference seemed like a pretty weak argument, but it was one of those family issues I knew I’d better stay out of. Anyhow, Alissa hadn’t been allowed to see him and when she announced he was her baby’s father, the shit hit the fan. We were all sitting in the living room when she told us the truth. James and Dale went ballistic. Seriously, I was afraid they were going to get the rifles from the gun rack in the den and hunt Will down.

      The family kept Will’s name out of the whole mess, simply painting him as an older guy who took advantage of their vulnerable daughter. “Please let us deal with this family matter in private and protect a young girl who made a mistake and is taking responsibility for her actions,” James had said in a statement to the press.

      I felt sorry for Alissa. She was sixteen years younger than Dale, a change-of-life baby, Mollie told me, and it was like she had three parents instead of two. They started monitoring her cell phone and computer to make sure she and Will had no contact, and I honestly thought she’d lost interest in him until she mentioned him in the labor room. I’d asked her about that once since Hannah was born but she said she was just “crazy” that day and that she really didn’t care about him anymore.

      It was strange that I never connected what Alissa was going through with what I’d gone through with Travis. Maybe because Alissa was so healthy and together and I’d been anything but. Maybe because she had two parents and a brother and I’d just had my father. Maybe because I’d never met Will, so it felt almost as though he didn’t exist. The one thing I knew, though, was that my sympathy was with Alissa more than with her parents or Dale. I was careful about ever saying that, but I hoped Alissa knew I was in her corner. I could hear Hannah crying as I neared Alissa’s room. The door was open, and when I walked in, Alissa was sitting in the rocker by the window while Hannah wailed in her bassinet.

      “Is she hungry?” I asked, walking to the bassinet to peer down at Hannah. I couldn’t stand it when she cried. I just wanted to fix whatever was upsetting her. “When’s the last time you fed her?”

      Alissa held up a bottle. “I was just going to,” she said, although it looked to me like she’d been pretty relaxed for a while in that rocker. “You want to do it?”

      “Is the bottle still warm?” I asked.

      “Yeah. I made it too hot and was waiting for it to cool down.”

      I bent over to lift Hannah into my arms. I could finally hold her without crying. That first day in the delivery room when I held her in my arms had opened up a whole part of myself I’d buried. Now I couldn’t get enough of her. I helped Alissa every chance I got, though Mollie had hired a nanny, an older woman named Gretchen, who came in several hours a day—hours I wasn’t needed and left me wishing I was. Everyone thought I was hormonal or something, the way I’d get so emotional around Hannah, and maybe that was it. I’d seen plenty of babies since my own was born four years ago, and I’d never had this reaction before. It was like I was ready now. Ready to let myself admit it had all happened, though I refused to dwell on it.

      Through the bay window, the sun fell on Alissa’s long, reddish-brown hair, and for the first time since Hannah was born, she looked strong and well and pretty. I took the bottle from her and settled down in the wing chair opposite the rocker. I could see Alissa’s desk from where I sat. The book I’d given her on baby care was tossed on a messy pile of other books and magazines. I doubted she’d even glanced at it, although I’d read it from cover to cover myself before I gave it to her.

      “Mom said she was awake a lot last night,” I said. I touched the nipple to Hannah’s lips and she trembled as she took it in her mouth as though she couldn’t get to the formula fast enough. It made me smile.

      Alissa rocked a little. “I couldn’t get her to settle down,” she said. “Gretchen said I should make little swishing sounds in her ear, but it didn’t work.”

      “Frustrating,” I said. Gretchen had told Mollie and me that Alissa wasn’t bonding well with Hannah. We were supposed to keep an eye on her. Make sure she wasn’t sinking into some major postpartum depression. I just thought she needed sleep, but maybe it was more than that. She was such a social girl and I knew she’d felt cut off from her friends, first by the pregnancy and now by the baby. She’d go back to school in another month and maybe that would help her mood.

      Hannah opened her eyes and stared right at me. I wondered if she did that with Alissa. I hoped so. How could you feel those dark eyes on you and not be hooked for life? “Hi, sweetie,” I said to the baby. “Is that good?”

      From her seat by the window, Alissa watched Hannah drink the way she might look at a puppy she hadn’t quite decided whether to take home or not. I smiled at her. “She has such a good appetite,” I said.

      “She’s so much better for you than she is for me.”

      “You’ll get the knack of it in no time.”

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