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She peered at her half-empty mug and scone with only a bite taken out of it. “I should probably head on over to the hospital.” Her words lacked any sense of hurry whatsoever.
Clark’s gut grew a black hole, and it wasn’t from gulping his coffee. He was leaving her hanging—again—and he knew it, but he also knew that the potency of that topic with this woman was a bad combination. He could not get so personal with her and keep it “friendly.” The goal here was to keep his focus on becoming the department’s new chief, and Clark’s terrible track record bore witness that any romantic entanglements would mess up the chance he had here in Gordon Falls. “No, stay, enjoy the sunshine. I just have to go... Appointment... Firehouse stuff.” He wanted to whack his forehead for how lame that excuse sounded. “Hope things go well for your dad.”
Her smile was polite but hollow. “Me, too. It’s been a rough couple of days.”
Clark made himself sit still a moment longer. “This is a good town, you know. People know your dad. They’ll want to help, so don’t be afraid to ask for it when you need it, okay? Barney knows everyone and Pastor Allen can have twelve casseroles at your house in under an hour—our deacons’ board is like a SWAT team.”
He was glad that got a laugh from her. He wanted her to get connected—it was just better if it wasn’t to him. “I’ve been meaning to get settled in a church here.”
With her words, a memory of high school Melba invaded his brain. A gawky, frizzy-haired teen girl heading up to the youth Bible study he used to make such fun of with his wild friends. How the world had changed for them both.
Chapter Three
“Okay, now, you’re settled.” Melba tucked the knitted afghan over Dad’s knees. He looked so old, the recliner’s worn cushions nearly swallowing his thin body.
“What a lot of work getting up those front steps.” She couldn’t tell if Dad’s remark was in annoyance or admission. Did he have any sense of how frail he’d become? “When did we paint them that awful green?” He glared out the window at them, eyes narrowed in the expression of a man gloating over a vanquished foe.
She could almost laugh. Maybe it was better if Dad blamed the steps. “Two years ago. And the green’s not so bad.”
“It’s all wrong. I liked them better when they were brown.”
The most amazing details from way back would pop into his mind like that. The steps hadn’t been brown for almost ten years—they’d been beige before they were green. Melba took her father’s coat and hung it on the bentwood coatrack by the door. “Maybe we’ll paint them this summer.”
“I’d like that.” The smile seemed to transform her father’s face, to roll back the years as it lit up his eyes. “I’m hungry. The food in there was lousy.”
“Nutrition is boring,” Barney declared, waltzing into the room with two sizable slices of chocolate cake. “So I’m banning healthy meals for the rest of the day.” She winked at Dad as she put the fork into his right hand. For a while they’d thought he’d lost his appetite, getting surly at meals, until one supper he let it slip that he couldn’t remember which hand to use. Now Barney slid the fork into his hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Barney was amazing at helping Dad without making him feel “helped.” Melba had run out of ways to thank her.
“Where’s your slice?”
Barney rubbed her hefty stomach. “Already gone. Someone had to make sure it was up to snuff.”
“You’re a doll,” Dad said behind a mouthful of cake. “Delicious as always.”
Picking up her handbag, Barney tapped Melba’s shoulder. “I’ll be at church for the women’s committee till four. I’ll be back to check on you and put the casserole into the oven at five so you all can eat at six. You all call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“We’ve got cake, we’ll be fine as can be,” Dad said.
Barney smiled, but caught Melba’s eyes with a silent “You going to be all right on your own?” raise of one eyebrow.
“Fine as can be,” Melba echoed, banning all sounds of worry from her voice. In truth, she was more than a little nervous, wondering if Dad’s fits of anger or anxiety would soon loom larger than she could handle. Looking back at him now, she saw just a happy old man eating cake in his favorite chair.
* * *
They passed the afternoon without incident, Dad napping while Melba formatted half a dozen digital catalogue pages for work and plowed through the pile of emails left unattended during the hospital stay. “I’ll need to learn to give myself wider margins on deadlines,” she wrote her boss, Betsy, in the email that submitted the catalogue pages, thankful that she’d had the cable company install wireless internet a week ago. “Life can get upended on a moment’s notice over here.” It annoyed her that the pages were a day behind schedule—usually Melba managed to get things in early. “On time is late for Melba,” Betsy used to joke. She doubted anyone would say that anymore.
“Melba?” Dad’s voice startled her, it was so clear and strong.
“Right here, Dad.”
“It’s four-thirty, isn’t it?”
She glanced at the clock above the kitchen table where she’d been working. “Four twenty-eight, to be exact.”
“Aren’t I supposed to take one of those enormous pills now?”
Melba pulled the huge, multi-compartmented pill sorter toward her—recently refilled with some new additions—and consulted the list. “Wow, Dad, you’re good. Yep, it’s one of those big yellow ones.” She filled a glass with water and brought him the pill with two others in the “Afternoon” compartment.
Dad made a face. “These are monsters. They used to be small and white.”
They did. His memory was still there, peeking out, holding on. “Well, Doc says you need a double dose for the next few weeks.”
“Let him choke ’em down, then.” He slid the collection into his mouth, grimaced, then swallowed. “I might need more cake to ease the way.” Dad grinned up at her like a mischievous child.
“You’ll spoil your supper.”
“Fine by me.”
He seemed so here, so alert and happy. “How about a cup of tea instead?” Some huge part of her wanted to sit with him right now and make him tell her all of whatever he’d begun to say back there in the hospital. Another part of her wanted to run, to put her fingers in her ears like a disobedient child, and pretend she’d never heard a thing. Mostly, she craved the connected gaze of his eyes, the true conversation he seemed capable of right now. The urge to hoard his salient moments, to stockpile his wisdom and affection, surged up until she bent over the recliner and gathered him in a fierce hug.
“What’s this fuss?” His words spoke surprise but his eyes told her he knew what was behind her embrace.
“I’m just glad you’re home,” she managed, blinking too fast.
“You and me both, Melbadoll.”
She laughed. “I think it’s been fifteen years since you’ve called me that.”
“You told me you hated it back in high school.”
“What did I know back in high school?”
He laughed. It sputtered into a small cough, but it was a laugh just the same. Melba jumped on the tiny boost of courage it gave her. “Hey, Dad, guess who I ran into this morning from my high school days?” It felt safer not to start with Clark’s visit to the hospital room.
“Who?”
“Clark Bradens. It took me a minute or so to recognize him, he’s changed so much. I never thought he’d clean up his act. He’s going to be fire chief when George retires next month, right?”
The mention wiped the smile from Dad’s face. “So they say.” He reached for the television remote.
She couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know what had caused the strong reaction to Clark’s visit at the hospital. “What’s he like?”
“How would I know? I don’t see that boy.” He turned on the news and turned up the volume. The conversation had been declared over. She wasn’t really surprised that Dad had said “that boy” with the same tone people had used to refer to Clark in high school. Usually around the phrase “stay away from that boy.” Clark was no hero back then.
Melba was opening her mouth to try again when Barney pushed open the back door. “Lord, save me from church committees!” she declared as she shucked off her coat and set her handbag on the table. “A lot of good may get done, but a whole lot of not-good creeps in around the edges. Some town gossips ought to just hush up and stay home.”
Melba left her dad to his television news and leaned against the kitchen doorway. “Tough day at the office?”
“Talk, whisper, talk. And then they wonder why the young people leave this town.” Barney shook her head. “We’ve known for two weeks since the town council meeting, but the yammering hasn’t stopped yet. You’d think there’s never been a second chance given in the whole wide world the way some of them went on about Clark Bradens this afternoon. Ain’t too many of us could stand up to judgment by who we was in high school.” She gave out a trio of disapproving tsk-tsks as she moved the casserole dish from the fridge to the oven.
“Clark Bradens? Why’d he come up?”
“Some folks want to throw him a nice party when George retires and he takes up as fire chief. I say it’s a fine thing to celebrate a son coming home like that. Others, well...they don’t see it that way. All they can see is a young high school punk coasting on his papa’s coattails. Honestly.” Melba wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “How many years has it been, and since when isn’t a man allowed to grow up and get it right?”
“Who says he’s grown up and gotten it right?” Melba could hardly believe Dad was standing behind her. He’d gotten up out of the recliner all on his own?
“He seemed nice enough to me.”
“When’d you meet him?”
Dad was fine, Dad wasn’t so fine. It was like living on an emotional Ping-Pong table. “I just told you I ran into him this morning.” Her frustration ran away with her better sense, because she heard herself add, “You yelled at him last night when he brought me food in your hospital room.”
“I couldn’t have yelled at him. He’d have no business visiting me.”
“I just said he was bringing me food. I met him in the hospital cafeteria and he offered to get Dellio’s for me but a fire alarm made him late.”
Dad shuffled into the kitchen and plopped himself down on the nearest chair. “He’s going to be fire chief.” He did not say it like a person pleased with the idea. In fact, his words had a “there goes the neighborhood” tone.
Melba started to say “We just talked about that,” but shut her mouth in resignation. Instead, she caught Barney’s eye over her father’s head, and they shared a split second of silent concern.
“Did you really holler at that boy? Or rather, since he is older than your daughter, did you really holler at that man?” Barney asked.
“I just said I didn’t yell at that Bradens boy,” Dad snapped.
“Have the world your way, then.” Barney huffed. It was what she said whenever Dad’s version of the world didn’t line up with reality. Melba hoped she’d someday acquire the ability to let it roll off her the way Barney did. “Get on out of this kitchen, you grumpy old man. Dinner won’t be ready for another fifty minutes.”
Melba reached out to help her father out of his chair, but he brushed her off. With considerable effort, Dad pushed himself up and shuffled, grumbling, back to the recliner. She stared after him and shook her head. “Should I be glad he’s moving around, or annoyed at his mood?”
Barney laughed and pulled a package of brown-and-serve rolls out of the freezer. “Both.”
Melba got a cookie sheet out of the cabinet and took the package from Barney. “He really did haul off at Clark in the hospital room,” she said quietly as she broke apart the rolls and arranged them on the cookie sheet. “It was scary, actually. Came out of nowhere. He yelled at Clark like they knew each other.”
Barney leaned back against the counter. “You know George Bradens and your father have never gotten along—not for a long time, anyway. Too easy to get a flood of bad water under the bridge in a small town like this. I heard they were close when they were younger.”
A thought struck Melba. “Clark looks a lot like his dad, doesn’t he?”
“With all that Bradens red hair, I expect he does. I ain’t ever seen a photo of young George but I can picture it easy enough.”
Melba moved closer. “Dad kept thinking I was Mom last night. Do you suppose he thought Clark was George, thought it was back then?”
“Could be.”
“The question is, then, what could have happened in the past that made Dad so angry at George?”
“Who knows?” Barney nodded in the direction of the living room. “But take care, hon. Sometimes it don’t pay to dig up past hurts like that.”
Too late, Melba thought. The digging’s been started for me. Only I don’t know if Dad realizes he’s the one who picked up the shovel.
* * *
Melba pulled on her robe and padded downstairs like a woman about to face the noose. She’d been up half the night, her mind a storm of questions about what her father had said at the hospital when they’d been alone. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, knowing Dad didn’t want to talk about it. Help me let it go, she’d prayed nearly hourly since Dad had come home, but to no avail. With the thin pale rays of dawn came the realization that it could no longer be avoided.
She knew as she smelled coffee that there would never be a better time. He was up, sitting with coffee in his recliner. She was still up, having barely slept. And Barney wasn’t due for another hour. Give me the right words, Father. This is going to need so much grace and I’m running on empty.
“Morning, Dad.”
He turned toward her, and she marveled at the health in his features. He looked like Dad again, not that ghost of Dad who’d thrashed around his hospital bed. “Mornin’ Melbadoll.” He smiled, and she fought the urge to just let the day slide into peaceful normalcy.
It won’t. It can’t until you talk about this, she argued with herself while she fixed a cup of tea and dragged herself into the living room to perch on the ottoman by Dad’s chair. “I need to ask you something, Dad.”
He raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee. “Shoot.”
She’d rehearsed twelve ways to ask this, but couldn’t think of one. “I know people say stuff when they’re sick, and you had a high fever, but you said something to me in the hospital.”
“Okay, maybe I could be nicer about that Bradens boy, but...”
“No, Dad, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” She couldn’t resist adding, “But yes, you could be nicer.” She stirred her tea, trying to come up with the right words. “This is...something you said to me. Actually—” this hurt to say “—I think you thought you were talking to Mom, the way you said it.” When his eyes grew anxious, she added, “You were pretty sick and on a lot of medication.”
“You look so much like her.” He said it with such tenderness, then shifted his gaze away from her to out the window.
“I like that, you know? It used to bug me in school when everyone would say, ‘Oh, you must be Maria’s daughter,’ but I like it now.” Melba squinted her eyes shut, pulling up a thread of courage from the place deep inside her chest that hadn’t settled since the hospital. “Dad, you looked at me, called me Maria, and said ‘She ought to know she’s not mine.’”
Melba watched her father’s body take in the words. Even with his face away from her, it was like a shock wave, hitting his shoulders, flinching his fingers, pushing on his chest. Part of her wanted him to not remember, to dismiss it as another of his “gone away” moments, but the telltale movements left no doubt. She was almost afraid for him to turn toward her.
When he did, his face was so full of pain and heartbreak it pummeled the breath from her lungs. “I didn’t say that.” It was a last-ditch denial.
“Yes, Dad, you did. And I think we should talk about it, don’t you?”
He turned away from her again. The fingers around his coffee cup began to twitch. “I didn’t say...” The coffee cup tumbled out of his grasp before she could catch it, spilling coffee on his lap. He yelped at the heat, the flash of anger she’d grown to fear surging up in him. “Don’t give me hot coffee like that!” he snapped at her, forgetting it was he who’d served himself this morning. To think she’d been pleased at his self-sufficiency.
By the time Melba had gotten Dad cleaned up and calmed down, they were both exhausted and irritable. When she arrived, Barney’s frown told Melba they looked as bad as they felt. Melba looked up from her third cup of tea as she clung to her last nerve while Dad shouted things at the news broadcasters from a too-loud television in the living room.
“Last night not go so well?” Barney said, nodding toward the blasting news headlines on the other side of the kitchen door.
“No, the night went fine. This morning, not so much.”
“Did he fall?”
“No. It’s my fault. I tried to get him to explain something he said to me in the hospital and it...” Melba pushed out a breath that felt like concrete in her lungs. “It didn’t go well.” She hated that she felt tears twist up her throat. “He’s so...here sometimes, and then the next second he’s...” She swallowed, unable to come up with a suitable alternative to “gone.”
Barney sat down. “I know,” she said, putting a hand over Melba’s. “This is hard. For you most of all. You gotta have faith God’s going to walk you through this, and I know you do, but that don’t mean it isn’t tough to see some mornings.” She frowned at Melba’s face, asking, “How much sleep did you get last night?”
I must look a sight, Melba thought. She was still in her pajamas and hadn’t put her contacts in or brushed her hair. “Not a whole lot.”
Barney patted Melba’s hand. “Why don’t you go upstairs and nap a bit. I’ll take care of Mr. Personality in there and see if I can’t lighten the mood.”
“Actually—” Melba stifled a yawn “—I think the best thing for me would be a run. A little sunshine and fresh air ought to do me a world of good.”
“Never could see the point in that, but if that’s your ticket, then by all means. Go burn off stress.”
