After the Rains (5 page)

Sara nodded and waved her off.

Evan was just coming back in from the hallway where the snack tables were set up. He smiled when he saw her approaching, and she recognized a warmth in his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before.
Oh, brother. What have I started?

“Hey, Nattie,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Want to dance some more?”

“Um … not really.”

“Well, you want something to eat?”

“Okay, sure.”

“They’ve got sandwiches and chips. I think there was still some pizza out there.”

“I’ll just go with you.”

She followed him back out to the hallway and filled a plate with food she had no appetite for. They took their plates outside, but a chill breeze soon chased them back indoors. Natalie pitched her plate into the trash can that sat by the door and waited while Evan refilled his plate.

When they went back into the gym, the lights were low and the DJ was playing a slow song. Without asking, Evan took her hand and led her onto the dance floor. She had to admit that it felt good to be held in strong arms, to feel cherished and desired. Evan was really a pretty nice guy. He was good looking, in a rugged sort of way, and he treated her with respect. But she knew he hung with a rough crowd sometimes and, well, he just wasn’t …

He just wasn’t
Jon
. That was it, plain and simple.

Four

S
o, come on … give me details, girl,” Aunt Betsy coaxed, her green eyes sparking with mischief. Betsy Camfield Franklin, Nathan Camfield’s sister, blew a wisp of short, brunette hair off her forehead and eyed Natalie suspiciously.

The two of them stood side by side at the kitchen island in the Franklins’ tastefully decorated home not far from the bustling, upscale Plaza in Kansas City. Aunt Betsy had inherited her cooking skills from Vera Camfield, and, like Grandma, Nathan’s sister was always luring Natalie into one of her baking marathons. Today they were making cinnamon rolls.

“There’s nothing to tell, Betsy,” Natalie said, kneading the smooth, elastic dough with the heels of her hands. “Honestly. It was one date.”

“You’re not holding out on me now, are you?” Betsy was wearing a chartreuse silk tunic over faded jeans, and the silver bracelets and earrings that dripped from her wrists and ears jangled pleasantly as she worked. “What’d you say his name was?”

Natalie laughed nervously. “Evan.”

“Ooh, that’s a nice name.”

Natalie elbowed her aunt good-naturedly. “Would you quit? I probably wouldn’t even go out with the guy again—if he asked.”

“So who
would
you go out with—if he asked?

“There really isn’t anybody.”

Natalie had always been able to talk to Aunt Betsy—her birth father’s sister—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into the whole thing about Jon. It was too complicated, especially now that things seemed to be heating up between Jon and Nicole. Ever since the homecoming dance six weeks earlier, Jon Dever had spent an inordinate amount of time at the Hunter house. Natalie had become resigned to the fact that her sister and Jon were “an item.” Still, it hurt deeply to acknowledge that her dreams of being with Jon had been crushed.

“How’s school going?” Betsy asked.

“It’s good. I’m ready for summer though.”

“Are you going to work this summer?”

“Yeah, I’ll probably work for Daddy at the vet clinic again. Oh, and there’s this summer class that the junior college over in Clayton is offering that I’m hoping to take. It’s in advanced Spanish, and they have field trips and stuff like that. It would be a college credit.”

“You’ve had a couple of years of foreign languages already, haven’t you? You must really have a knack for that.”

“Well, I don’t know about languages in general. I only know Spanish.”

A glint came to Betsy’s eyes.
“¿Qué pasa?”

“Hola. No hablo mucho español. ¿Podría hablar más despacio, por favor?”

Betsy laughed and held up a flour-dusted hand in protest. “Okay, okay … you lost me back on
hola
. I’m impressed.”

Natalie gave her aunt a sheepish grin. “I’m not even sure what I just said. Something like ‘Speak slowly, please, because I’m an idiot and I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ ”

Betsy laughed. “Well, obviously it doesn’t take much to impress me.”

“It’s just something we had to memorize off the tapes in Spanish II. But I do like studying Spanish. That and English are the only classes I ever ace.”

“Well, I happen to know that anybody would be proud of the report cards you bring home. Grandma always cuts out the honor rolls from the Bristol paper,” she explained.

“Oh yes, for her famous scrapbooks.”

“Yes, but before they go in the scrapbook, she makes copies for your dad and me.”

Natalie rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother.”

“Yes, the honor rolls and the school lunch menus. Your grandma likes us to know what the Bristol High cafeteria is serving up on any given day.”

“Are you serious? I guess I won’t tell Grandma that I usually bring my lunch from home.”

The two of them giggled like schoolgirls.

Natalie closed her eyes and breathed in the rich cinnamon aroma that
hung in the air. Throughout her eighteen years, time spent with Aunt Betsy had always been a bright spot in her frequent weekend visits with her birth father’s side of the family.

Now they worked together in companionable silence, flattening the supple lumps of yeast dough with a wooden rolling pin, then spreading each with butter and sprinkling a fragrant mixture of cinnamon and sugar on top.

Wiping a smudge of flour off her nose with the back of her hand, Betsy told Natalie, “Every time I make these I think of your dad. He used to polish off an entire batch of these things single-handedly.”

“I can see why,” Natalie said, putting a pinch of the rich dough into her mouth. She busied herself with buttering the baking dishes. “I think of him too—every time we make these.” The truth was, she thought about her birth father often lately. She always felt closer to Nathan Camfield when she was with Grandma and Grandpa Camfield, Aunt Betsy, and Uncle Jim.

Her aunt was silent as she cut the roll of dough into slices and handed the swirled rounds to Natalie to arrange in the bottom of the pan. After all these years, they had their routine down pat.

Something about the warmth of the kitchen, the golden glow of afternoon sunlight that filtered through the stained-glass panel in the back door, and the quiet music that wafted from the stereo in Uncle Jim’s den made Natalie feel at ease. She could remember a time when she’d been so little she’d had to stand on a wooden stool to see over the countertop. She thought back to a long-ago day in this very kitchen. She must have been about eight years old.

“I sure wish they’d invent a way that you didn’t have to wait for the rolls to rise, Aunt Betsy.”

Her aunt laughed. “Nattie, Nattie, that would be cheating! Half the fun is in the waiting.”

“Then, I guess I don’t know how to have fun. I hate waiting … for anything. Mommy says I’m too impatient for my own good.”

“You get that from your dad,” Aunt Betsy said. “But he learned … he learned how to be patient.” A sad look came to her eyes, and for a minute Natalie thought Aunt Betsy had forgotten that she wasn’t alone in the room
.

“You mean because of—well, being lost in the jungle all that time.”

Betsy looked up, seemingly startled. “Yes,” she whispered. “I … I guess I didn’t know you knew about all that.”

“Mom told me some stuff. And Grandma. I don’t know all of it, but—I guess the important stuff.”

“Oh?”

Natalie licked a cinnamon-sugared finger and looked up at her aunt. “I know my dad went back to South America after he found out Mom got married again.”

Aunt Betsy was silent, wiping flour off the countertop
.

“I … I wonder how that made my dad feel … You know—finding out that Mommy had married somebody else.”

Her aunt cleared her throat. “Well, Natalie, it was very hard for Nate—for your dad—to give up your mom. He loved her very much. But I sometimes think it was even harder for him to give you up. Here he had an adorable little baby that he hadn’t even known about, and—”

Natalie held her breath, her heart skipping a beat. “What do you mean?”

“Mean?”

“What do you mean he didn’t even know about me?”

A stricken expression replaced her aunt’s smile. “Oh, honey. Maybe—maybe you should talk to your mom about all this.”

“No! You have to tell me. My dad didn’t know about me? I don’t understand what you mean.”

Betsy took a deep breath. “When your dad disappeared, your mom didn’t even realize she was going to have a baby. So when he came back from Colombia, you were … a surprise to him—a wonderful surprise, of course. You … didn’t know about that?”

Natalie shook her head
.

“Oh, Nattie, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place to tell you. I hope your mom won’t be angry with me.”

Natalie shook her head. “She won’t mind.” But her thoughts were reeling—and Mommy probably would mind. As Natalie had grown older, she’d come to realize how unusual her parents’ story was. What else had her mother failed to tell her? She wanted to know everything, and yet she wanted to forget what she already knew
.

“I bet it wasn’t such a good surprise to him about my mom, huh?” she risked now
.

“About her being remarried, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Aunt Betsy said slowly. “That was pretty tough. On both of them. Your mom and dad were very, very much in love.”

“You mean my Daddy-Nate?”

Aunt Betsy nodded, and a soft smile curved the corners of her mouth. “It gets kind of confusing, doesn’t it?”

Natalie swallowed hard. “Then … why did she get married again?”

“Well, honey … because she thought your dad—Nate—she thought he was dead. You did know that, didn’t you, Nattie? Your mom would never have married someone else if she’d thought there was any chance that your dad was alive.”

“Yeah, but still, if she really loved him, how could she ever marry somebody else?”

“Honey, I know this probably seems all mixed up to you, but you have to understand that your mom did what she thought was best. She had you to think about. You were just a tiny baby, and she wanted you to have a father.”

“Grandma thinks she should have waited,” Natalie challenged
.

Betsy’s nostrils flared. “Grandma sometimes has a mind of her own. And you’ve got to remember, honey, Nate is her son. She wanted him to be happy, and she sure didn’t want him to go back to Colombia. Not after everything he’d been through.”

Natalie thought about the ropelike scars that marred Nathan Camfield’s hands and forearms, and for the first time she began to comprehend some of the suffering her father had endured during the time he’d been held captive in Colombia
.

“So why did he go back?” she asked
.

“Mostly, I think he just really felt like God was calling him to go back and help the people in Colombia. They kind of became like his family, you know?” She scrubbed at a countertop that was already spotless
.

“Mommy loves Daddy now, though.” It came out more like a question
.

“Cole, you mean?”

She nodded
.

“Oh, of course she does. Cole has been a wonderful father to all of you girls. And I’m sure he loves you very much—and your mother.”

“And she loves him,” Natalie repeated defensively
.

“Of course she does. Nobody doubts that, Nattie.”

The timer on the stove buzzed, and Natalie jumped. She shook herself back to the present and held up a pan of rolls. “First batch, ready for the oven,” she told Betsy, hoping her aunt didn’t detect the quaver in her voice.

“It’s hard to think about him, isn’t it?”

Aunt Betsy’s question startled her. It
was
hard to think about her father. She had a longing for him that she couldn’t explain. And yet that longing made her feel like a traitor to the man she called “Daddy.”

Natalie nodded now, aware that Betsy wasn’t going to let her question go unanswered. “I … I wish I knew him better. I mean, sometimes when I read through all the letters he’s written me, when I look at Grandma’s picture albums, I feel pretty close to him. But then you say something as simple as ‘your dad loved cinnamon rolls,’ and I realize how much I
don’t
know about him.”

Her aunt listened with her head tipped to one side, a dangly earring brushing one shoulder, and Natalie let her thoughts pour out, unguarded.

“When I was little, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to be a
real
Hunter … Cole Hunter’s natural daughter. I guess sometimes I still wonder. My name—being a Camfield—has always singled me out.” She held up a hand and shook her head, aware that Betsy might misinterpret her words. “Not that I’m not proud of my name. I am. But sometimes it—well, it makes me feel like I don’t quite belong in my own family.” She
cocked her head to match the tilt of Betsy’s. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“Oh, honey, it makes perfect sense. Anyone in your shoes would feel the same way.”

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I mean, I think about Sara … you remember Sara?”

“Sure. The pretty redhead who was here with you last summer, right?”

Natalie nodded. “I wouldn’t trade places with her for anything. She has great adoptive parents, but she didn’t know either one of her birth parents. When she did find her birth mother, the woman didn’t want anything to do with her. And Sara never did find her father. Even though I don’t get to see my real dad very much, I’ve always been glad that I at least knew him. And I never had to wonder what he was like, or if he loved me. I’ve never doubted that. I know that what Sara has to deal with would be much harder than … than what I have, but …”