A Father At Last (12 page)

He ordered another glass of pinot for her, and one for himself, and when she’d eaten the last of the succulent little scallops on her plate, he drew a deep breath.

“Kelly, sweetheart, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Julie Mac

Chapter 6

She looked up as sharp little nerves clenched in her stomach.

His tone was serious and worry showed in his eyes. This was it, the moment he would tell her about the crooked path his life had followed—her chance to set him on the road to redemption.

Frantically, she tried to remember all the pointers she’d jotted down in her diary at work today: counselling, mentor, rehab…something else…what was it? She wished she’d had a little less wine.

He reached across the table and took her hand in his, and she gave a little squeeze to reassure him. He lifted his wine glass, took a sip and cleared his throat.

Training. That was the other thing. Now she was ready. “Go on Ben,” she encouraged.

“It’s about your father—”

“Oh no, please!” Her tummy muscles clenched tighter. Everything had been going so well—the talking, the eating, the relaxing. And now this again.

She dragged her hand out from under his, and willed herself to stay calm. “I’ve told you—as far as I’m concerned…” She pressed her lips together and looked away from him, out into the darkening garden.

“As far as you’re concerned, your father’s dead?”

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper; saying it aloud shamed her.

The hand she’d pulled from his was still on the table, and he reached across again.

This time, he didn’t take hold of it, but instead laid his fingers gently across hers.

“He’s not dead, Kelly. He’s very much alive and he wants to see you.”

Some giant machine sucked all the air, all the blood from her body.

Dad wants to see me?

She stared at him across the table, unsure whether she’d said the words out loud or just in her head. Ben said nothing. He was simply watching, waiting for a reaction.

Fleetingly, she thought of getting up from the table, picking up her handbag and walking out, away from Ben, away from her father, away from the past, away from a million bad A Father at Last

memories.

But there were some good ones, too. She didn’t have to run and hide anymore. She was grownup. She could cope with this.

A picture filled her mind, the same one she’d seen down there by the pond earlier; Dad’s face, happy, smiling—healthy. And then other pictures crowded in: that awful photo they’d used in the newspapers when the court case was on, the one where he looked like a hunted, scared, skinny human being—a criminal. Dad in prison on that first and only visit she’d made, when he was gaunt and sad and shaking like a leaf. But despite all his own problems, he’d hugged her and told her to be strong.

And she had been.

And still was.

“Where is he?” She picked up her glass and drank some wine.

“Here in Auckland.”

She put her glass down too quickly and a couple of drops of wine splashed onto the white tablecloth.
Red drops like blood. His blood is running in my veins. His blood is running
in Dylan’s veins. He’ll always be a part of me, of us. I can’t change that.

“Where? How do you know? Have you been talking to him? Have you seen him?”

Her left hand still lay under his on the table, and now he turned her hand over gently to clasp it in his.

“He works for a non‐profit organisation dedicated to helping ex‐prisoners get back on their feet when they’ve left prison. The idea is to prevent re‐offending and—”

“I know what they do. Just tell me…tell me about him.” She was the little girl at the prison all over again, acting strong, but feeling shaky and scared inside.

But did she need to be scared? She could listen to Ben, absorb his information, store it away, walk away. Nothing had to change.

She lifted her glass and drank again. “Tell me about him.”

He squeezed her hand. “Are you okay about this?”

Okay? How could I be okay?
She shrugged. “I guess.”

He frowned slightly, examining her eyes, her face. Then he nodded once, and continued, “As I said, he’s working for the prisoner rehab organisation and has been for the last few years. They’ve got an office over in west Auckland, and he lives out that way, too.

By all accounts, he’s great at the job, and has a very good reputation for success with the people he works with.”

“And you’ve seen him?” Kelly could picture him, Dad, working with people, quietly encouraging them, patiently setting them on a better path. She hadn’t thought about it for years, but Ben’s words had conjured lost memories: Dad helping out with her hockey team Julie Mac

at school, Dad helping out at pony club.

“I’ve seen him,” said Ben, simply. “He’s healthy and he looks well—in fact he looks very fit and well. He told me he’s been running marathons for the last few years.”

“Dad running marathons?” Kelly found herself smiling. “I remember him talking about that when I was a kid. He always wanted to train but he never had time, with the business and everything else.”

“Well, he’s doing it now and looks to be in great shape. How old would he be? Early fifties?”

“Something like that.” She looked away from Ben’s knowing gaze. She had no idea how old her own father was. And how embarrassing was that?

Sipping again from her wineglass—more for something to occupy her hands and fill the awkward gap, than for any great desire for the wine—she made some quick mental calculations. Mum would have been fifty‐two this year, so that meant…

“He’s fifty‐three.” Kelly looked back at the man sitting across the table from her; smart, capable, good‐looking Ben Carter, who’d had the world at his feet a few years ago, and was now well into the process of chucking it all away. Where would he be at fifty‐three?

Would his nefarious activities bring their inevitable consequences? Would he spend the best years of his life in prison?

And then there was Dylan, fatherless, and quite content to be so at present. But what would happen when he was a teenager, and needed some strong male guidance? The thought was like a punch in the stomach. Dylan would miss out on having a father in his life for those important years, just as she had.

How would she cope when he demanded answers—real answers—about who his father was? Could she go on telling convenient little white lies?

Her father and Ben—they’d both let her down, both put her in a situation where she had to avoid the truth for Dylan’s sake and her own. Really, she was dumb to even think about including either of them in her life, or Dylan’s.

“He wants to see you. Soon. I’ll come with you.”

Ben’s words, quiet but firm, smashed through her thoughts. His eyes were still watching hers, steady, unrelenting, boring unbearably into her head, seeing her weaknesses. If he looked any harder, he’d see the truth—all of it.

She swung her head to look across the veranda, out into the gardens cloaked now in dusk’s velvet. Somewhere a morepork called; she waited for the little native owl’s mate’s answer, but none came.

“No!” The word was a ragged whisper, but she felt as if she’d shouted it. “I won’t. I can’t. You can’t make me.” She pushed back her chair clumsily and started to rise, but he moved faster. In a flash he was on his feet, on her side of the table, still holding her hand.

“You can do this, sweetness. Don’t run away now.” He leaned in and kissed her A Father at Last

cheek, then gathered her into his arms. “I’ll be with you, by your side. We can do it together.

It will be all right, you’ll see.”

Raising her eyes to his, she let herself hope, for just a fleeting few seconds. In the safety of his arms, basking in the warmth and confidence of his eyes, it was tempting to believe him, to believe it would, somehow, be all right.

But life was not a fairy tale. Her heart thudded in her chest and her mouth felt dry.

She wriggled in his arms, but he held tight.

“Let me go.” She said it quietly, because she didn’t want to make a scene, and she was glad there were no other diners at the veranda tables, and that the crowd inside were noisy.

“Why? So you can disappear on me again? So you can avoid facing your father after all these years?”

He’d pulled her in even closer, and now he looked down at her, his dark brows creasing. She could see the steady rise and fall of his chest, as he breathed, in, out, deep and strong. Her breathing had sped up ridiculously.

“If I want to leave, I will.” She was pleased she sounded reasonably in control. “If I want to leave and not see you again, I will.” She saw the quick flash of pain in his eyes, and then she thought she must have imagined it because when she blinked and looked again, his gold‐green eyes were steady and cool.

“And do you? Want to leave?”

“Yes.” It hurt to say the word, more than she would ever have thought possible. But it had to be this way.

He released his arms. In the garden, closer now, the lone morepork called again.

“Go then, Kelly. But see your father—for his sake, if not for your own. And for Dylan’s.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket, and produced a business card.

“Here are your father’s contact details.”

He laid the business card on the table, and she stared at it. There was her father’s name, engraved in bold black type on a crisp white business card—not on a gravestone as she’d pretended to anyone nosy enough to ask.
Gerry Atkinson.
My father. Daddy.
Director,
Auckland New Start Society.

Tears welled in her eyes. Before, she could pretend he didn’t exist. But seeing his name written, in black and white on that little business card, somehow made him real.

Ben’s hand ran down the length of her arm and squeezed her fingers. Then his hand came up to cup her chin.

“I’m with you on this, darling. Say the word and I’ll do anything I can to help.”

She nodded slowly and sniffed hard. “I’ll just go…to the bathroom.”

Julie Mac

She picked up her handbag, pulled out a tissue and her lipstick, and placed the bag back on her chair. She wouldn’t disappear again on Ben. Not right now, anyway. She had no desire to hurt him—anymore than she already had—and besides, he was trying to help her.

If she left her bag here, he’d know she wasn’t going to leave him sitting here alone.

She looked around, saw the bathroom sign at the end of the veranda, and made her way towards it, hoping it was unoccupied.

She desperately needed a few moments alone. Thankfully, the ladies’ room had only one cubicle, and it was empty. She turned the lock on the outside door, and leaned back against it, her eyes closed. She breathed deep, several times, then she turned to the mirror.

Carefully she mopped the moisture on her lashes, and wondered what on earth was happening to her.

Crying wasn’t part of her repertoire. Crying was for babies. Crying was for people who couldn’t cope with life, and she could cope. Of course she could. She’d coped all these years on her own, hadn’t she?

And then Ben Carter turned up, and the waterworks started. She managed a wry smile at her reflection. She refreshed her lipstick and wished she’d brought her handbag in with her. Her eye makeup could do with a quick repair job—for the second time this evening.

She reached up her hand and patted her hair. It was starting to revert to wild curls again, despite the best efforts of her straightening irons.
Must be the humidity.

Her dad had liked her curls. He used to call her ‘tatty head’. She stared at the mirror and her eyes misted again, and a strange thing happened.

In the mirror, through her teary haze, she saw a little girl looking back at her, with red frizzy curls and unbearably sad blue eyes. And then she heard a voice, so real, she jerked her head to look over her shoulder.

But of course, no one was there. She’d heard her mother’s voice before, often on the breeze as she walked on the beach, or in the few magic moments between wakefulness and sleeping, as real as life itself and just as ephemeral. Usually, Mum’s voice was happy; this time, it was stern and sharp.

Kelly! Go and see your father.

She blinked hard. The little girl’s face disappeared from the mirror, and the room was silent.

In the distance, in the building beyond the walls, came the happy sounds of the big group of diners in the restaurant: the family group, complete with a pair of elderly grandparents, a middle‐aged couple she’d decided were the parents and a bunch of young people in their twenties—the couple’s children and their partners, she guessed.

And out on the veranda, Ben was sitting, alone, waiting for her to return.

Ben and she would never be a middle‐aged couple sitting at a restaurant table, A Father at Last

celebrating someone’s birthday with a grown‐up Dylan and his girlfriend. But maybe Dylan could enjoy just such an occasion with his grandfather.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror and made a decision.

“I’ll do it. I’ll see him.”

Ben was there when she emerged from the ladies room, leaning on the veranda rail, looking into the darkness of the garden, his black hair burnished bronze under the soft light of the deck lamp, his heartbreakingly handsome face in profile.

He turned to smile, and she felt a warm rush starting deep in her stomach and working its way up.

Now she stood close to him, and couldn’t resist the impulse to reach forward and kiss him fleetingly on the lips. “Thanks,” she whispered.

“I’m glad,” he said simply, before returning the kiss—over almost before it started, but not before she’d tasted his passion, and for an instant, she wished they were on their own, in the dark of the garden perhaps, or in a quiet room where…

Where what?

Quickly, she turned and slipped into her seat at the table, and he followed suit. She saw that someone had cleared their mains plates while she’d been gone, and topped up her wine. Ben had obviously ordered dessert for them both; two plates had arrived, containing dark, rich‐looking chocolate brownie topped with big dollops of cream.