Forbidden Falls (16 page)

“Wow,” Noah said. “How amazing is that? They’re getting along so well. How are you two getting along?”

They seemed to look at each other cautiously. “We’re struggling,” Paul said. “This is very hard for Vanni. Two small children are a lot of work.”

“Is it also very hard for you?” Noah asked Paul.

“Very. Hard.” His elbows rested on his knees, hands clasped, and he looked down. The man was worried sick.

“Can I hear about your struggle first? If that’s okay with Vanni.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “But if Paul’s honest, he’ll tell you his struggle is with me.”

Noah shifted gears. “Go ahead, Vanni. Talk to me.”

“I butted in,” she said a bit regretfully.

Noah chuckled. “Gimme a break here—I’m very good at this. Everyone is going to get a fair chance. Hit me—tell me what your biggest burden is. Then we’ll get to Paul’s.”

She took a breath. “I resent it. And because I resent it, I haven’t bonded with Hannah. And there’s no reason not to—she’s perfect. She’s sweet and easy and delightful.”

“Describe the resentment.”

“How and why does this woman I’ve never met give me her child to raise? She might have named Paul in her will, but I’ve never met her. And it’s not Paul who’s going to take care of Hannah. At least not most of the time.”

“But that’s part of the problem, according to what I understand,” Noah said. “She didn’t ask.”

“She’s dead, Vanni,” Paul said. “Doesn’t she get a pass?”

“And what are you going to tell Hannah, Paul?” Vanni asked. “That you slept with her mother but didn’t love her? And she’s not yours but her own father didn’t want her?”

There was silence while Paul and Vanni stared at each other. Noah cleared his throat. “Honestly, I don’t think Hannah’s going to care who Paul slept with. I don’t think she’s going to care who you slept with, either, Vanni. Since you never met Hannah’s mother, she’s going to want to know from Paul what he remembers about her. Paul will probably remember some nice things. Won’t you, Paul?”

“Sure. Yeah, of course.”

“She might be interested in how this came to happen,” Noah said. “How she came to land in your family. Can one of you describe that to me?”

They were both quiet for a moment. Then Paul said, “Terri wanted me to be the father of her child from the first minute she realized she was pregnant. Well, maybe not the first minute, because we hadn’t talked in months. She went to Hannah’s biological father first and he told her she’d have to sue him to get any kind of support. But then I happened to call her, spent the evening with her and she made up her mind—she was going to try to convince me I was the father. She wanted to get married. In the end, when she admitted she’d lied about the whole thing, she said she did it because she thought I’d be a good father. She said she thought I was a good man.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she figured that—I wasn’t good to her. I told her I was in love with Vanni, that I couldn’t marry her because I’d always be in love with Vanni.”

“And when the lawyer told you Terri had named you as Hannah’s guardian? How did you respond?”

“I said I couldn’t do it—that Vanni and I were just starting our lives together. We wanted to have a baby together—now that’s on hold.”

“You’ve made a decision then?” Noah asked. “You’ll keep her? Adopt her?”

“Not until we get more comfortable with the idea. But even though Vanni doesn’t really want another child now, she doesn’t want to let Hannah go.”

“Is that right, Vanni?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. Her voice took on some emotion. “Look at them together,” she said, glancing at the kids in the playpen. “They’re perfect together. And Paul adores her. But I’m scared to death—when I hold her, it’s as if I’m holding someone else’s baby, a stranger’s baby. What if I never bond with her? What if I never think of her as my daughter? What if I’m always a little angry that her mother, Paul’s old girlfriend, just gave her to Paul without checking with me first?”

“Paul, you obviously changed your mind,” Noah said. “You told the lawyer no, but then you brought her home. What changed your mind?”

“I don’t know,” he said sincerely. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Before I saw her, I knew it was a bad idea, that it would complicate our marriage, our family, and my wife and little Matt are everything to me. Then here comes this little, chubby, rosy-cheeked kid who has no idea her mother’s dead, has no idea she’s being given to a family she doesn’t know. A family that doesn’t want her, that considers her a total inconvenience. And she looked at me and smiled so big I thought her face was gonna crack. It just shot me in the heart. I thought I was gonna die on the spot. I just couldn’t…let…any more bad stuff happen to her.” He inhaled for control. “On the way home, for hours in the truck, she was so good, so sweet and quiet. I stopped to give her a change and she grabbed me around the neck and gave me sloppy kisses. Before I knew it, I was crying like a girl. She didn’t even know all she’d been through. She had no idea how precarious her future was.”

“See how good he is?” Vanni said. “Oh, Noah, that’s why I fell in love with Paul—because he’s that kind of man. What’s the matter with me?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Vanni. It’s a shock, it’s an intrusion. And not a baby abandoned on your doorstep, but the child of a woman your husband had a relationship with. Add to that, Paul took one look at her and was hooked. Your adjustment is more difficult. You have to cope with the bite of jealousy, which is a burden you shouldn’t be embarrassed about. I think it’s pretty natural.”

Paul scooted forward anxiously. “But I’ve told Vanni over and over, there was no reason to be jealous of Terri. Even if Matt hadn’t been killed in Iraq, even if Vanni and I never got together, even if Hannah had been my daughter, I don’t think I would’ve ended up with Terri. She was a good person, had lots of nice qualities, but I just wasn’t in love with her. I’d have taken care of them, but I knew the way I felt wasn’t enough to make a good marriage. And Noah, it probably wasn’t right for me to be seeing her, knowing that, but I never led her on, I swear.”

“Easy, easy,” Noah said. “Vanni’s not jealous of Terri. She’s jealous of Hannah.”

You could have heard a pin drop. The silence stretched out.

“That can’t be,” Vanni finally said. “That’s impossible! Jealous of a defenseless baby? I’ll go to hell for that.”

“No,” Noah said, smiling, shaking his head. “Not in a million years.”

“But that’s irrational! I’m not mean enough to be jealous of an innocent child! A child who needs me!”

“A lot of emotions are irrational, but that’s not really the case here, if you think about it. You wanted to have a child with your husband. You planned, waited until your son was a good age to space the children so you could manage, and you were looking forward to it. Paul told me—you love children, want a bunch of them. And before you even had your chance, the little babe of an ex-girlfriend needs Paul, and Paul was immediately hooked. Your husband fell in love with another woman’s child.

“The thing is, this could have worked out differently. For example, if you’d been present for the reading of the will, it might’ve been you who was pulled in by her rosy cheeks and pretty smile. Her need for a loving family. But the way it went down…”

“I told him—he should have called me from Oregon. Rather than just bringing her home like he did,” she said.

Noah was shaking his head again. “That might have been even harder, because Paul couldn’t stop himself. He had to try. And if you’d told him no, don’t accept that baby, then he would have defied you. No, I think this worked out the way it was supposed to.”

“But now what am I to do?” she said, tears leaking out of her eyes. “How can I ever bond with her if I resent her? If I’m jealous of her?”

Noah smiled patiently. “It’s not going to be this way forever, Vanni,” he said gently. “Your feelings aren’t shameful or sinful, but predictable. They’re human. You’ll need a lot of reassurance from your husband, and we’ll work on the issues—anger, jealousy, remorse, guilt. Paul will learn to let himself off the hook for bringing this challenge to the family, and you will learn to forgive yourself for responding in a completely understandable way. It’s going to be all right. We’re going to walk through this, nice and easy, and reach a conclusion that works for your marriage, your family and for Hannah. You have a wonderful, deep, committed love for each other. In the end, this is going to be all right.”

After an hour with Vanni and Paul, Noah called Gloria and pushed his coffee date at Valley Hospital off to the next day. He called her and said he’d had a rough afternoon. Instead, he went to the nursing home in Eureka to watch Andy Griffith with Sal Salentino. An hour with Sal was like sandpaper on his emotions, smoothing down the bumps. He bought six large cans of soup at the grocery store and drove out to the transients’ camp on his way home. Those old boys were starting to like him, he could tell by the way they drew near when he showed up.

He thought he’d done a decent job of reassuring Vanessa and Paul that things would work out for them, but it left him tired and feeling sorry for himself. Vanessa and Paul grappled with adjustments to a new marriage and growing family, but at the core they had health, love and passion.

Noah missed passion.

The next day Noah met the nurse, Gloria, during her dinner break at the hospital. She was a nice lady, but then he had expected nothing less. She was short and cute, kind of round but pleasantly so, around thirty years old. She had a heart-shaped face, lots of yellow curls that she had pulled back into a tie to keep out of her face and her work, big luminous blue eyes, rosy cheeks and full lips. Of course she was wearing scrubs to work in, but he imagined she looked quite pretty in her regular clothes. And she was very excited to meet with Noah.

They had a pleasant conversation in which it was established that she was completely available and he admitted to being widowed. Within thirty minutes she was offering to cook him dinner. And he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Gloria. I didn’t mean to mislead you—I’m seeing someone.”

He had absolutely no idea why he’d said that and was enormously grateful she didn’t respond with, “Who?” It was just that he knew, almost instantly, that he didn’t want to have dinner with her, didn’t want to date her, didn’t feel that lustful tug that accompanied attraction.

People probably assumed that a man of the cloth didn’t experience all the usual emotions. Maybe just the tidy and manageable ones. Noah was eternally grateful such was not the case, especially when it came to things like desire for a woman. He was so glad it didn’t feel like a warm bath to want a woman, but rather like a firestorm. For Noah, when it was the right woman, it was not quiet yearning, but a desperate and hot wanting that threatened his control. That was definitely the best part, that it was bigger than him, that it had a life of its own, that it was more like a fire-breathing dragon than an angel of comfort. When that feeling came over him, it was so good it was scary.

He did not have that feeling for a nurse named Gloria.

After meeting with Gloria, Noah was heading back into town when he drove by the Fitches’ house. He pulled up in front, parked, got out and went up the garage stairs to the apartment Ellie rented. He knocked on the door and momentarily he heard, “Who is it?”

“Noah,” he answered.

She opened the door wearing loose shorts, a big T-shirt, bare feet, and was towel drying her hair. “Hi,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“No. I was just wondering…You’re having the kids on Saturday, right?”

“If nothing goes haywire. Why?”

“What will you do with them?”

She shrugged. “A park, maybe. I thought about packing up some PB&J, chips, sodas, and heading to a playground for the day. Or Jo would love us to spend the day here, with her, but I don’t want to take advantage. We’ll play it by ear.”

“How about a kid movie?” he asked. “Could I tag along? If I treat and promise not to get in the way too much?”

She tilted her head and frowned as she looked at him. “What’s the matter, Noah? You look like something’s wrong.”

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m just kind of looking for something to do, and I like your kids. They’re nice.”

She made a face of disbelief. “Something’s wrong. Why don’t we just cut to the chase here and you tell me. That’ll save badgering time.”

“I had dinner with that nurse,” he admitted. “At the hospital. Not a date. I meant it to be coffee, but it was her dinner break.”

“Oh. And she’s after you.”

“Yup. Sort of,” he said. “She’d like to make me dinner. It wasn’t easy to stop her. She was almost quicker than me, and I thought I was ready for her.”

Ellie laughed. “Come in—I have popcorn. You can tell me all about it.”

“I shouldn’t. I’m imposing.”

“Yeah, you are, but you’re also in the clutches of a horny nurse and I want to hear about it. Come on.”

“Horny is stretching it,” he told her, entering.

“Uh-huh, and let me guess,” Ellie said as she closed the door behind Noah. She hung her towel over the sink. “She’s kind of pretty, aggressive, works the conversation around to the next time you’ll be together and has a totally futuristic tone. It goes something like, ‘And when would you like to do that?’”

“My God, are you psychic?”

“For Pete’s sake, have you no experience at all?” She sat cross-legged on her bed and offered up her bowl of popcorn. He perched on the end of the bed.

“Actually, I do have experience, I’m just not interested in Gloria.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Is she ugly?”

“She’s pretty,” he said. “And nice. But she just doesn’t start my engine, if you get my drift.”

“Noah, be careful here. Don’t tell me more than I want to know.”

“She’s boring,” he said. “Nice, pretty, real determined and boring. She’s exactly the kind of woman people try to fix me up with—proper and polite. I don’t know what it is about being a minister, it’s like people don’t want me to get too excited. And also, like they think it’s good résumé material for a woman to land a preacher. Or something. I don’t get it.”

“Good night, Nellie.” She rolled her eyes. “Noah, I’m not sure it’s the minister thing that makes you attractive. You’re actually kind of cute.”

His eyes widened briefly. “I am?” he asked, though kinda cute was not exactly what a man was looking for by way of praise.

“Mmm-hmm. You kind of make a girl want to shave above the knees. That was a compliment by the way.”

“Is that a big deal? Shaving above the knees?” he stupidly asked.

She laughed. “Pardner, for my last job I had to shave above the—”

“Stop,” he ordered. And she laughed some more. He helped himself to a handful of popcorn.

“One minute you want to hear all about it, then it offends your little sensibilities,” she teased.

“They’re not little,” he said, opening his mouth and dropping popcorn inside. “Good popcorn,” he said. “Is this microwave stuff?”

“Yup, but not bad. I love popcorn. Sometimes my gramma and I had popcorn for dinner.”

“Really?” he asked. “Not real nutritious. I mean, as a meal.”

“Noah, we were poor. There were times we ran a little low. But we were happy. If my gramma was worried, it didn’t show. We used to giggle about ketchup sandwiches. Pickle and peanut butter sandwiches. Popcorn or rice and tomatoes.”

“Rice and tomatoes?”

“A couple cups of rice, a can of stewed tomatoes, voila. Another favorite for the end of the month was soft-boiled eggs on fried potatoes. Didn’t you ever have things like that when you were a kid?”

Not while growing up, he hadn’t. “There were times we had pretty simple dinners, but…” His voice trailed off.

Ellie grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into her mouth. “What was your growing up like?”

He took a deep breath. “Ellie, I didn’t grow up poor. I grew up in a big house—practically a mansion. My father was a pretty famous preacher—he was on television. He still is—famous and on television. He was ten years younger than my mother. She inherited money, so before my father made his in the ministry, she had hers. I think it’s fair to say she made him what he is.”

“No shit,” she said, wide eyed, fascinated. “Oops.”

“Don’t worry about it—I’m getting used to it. I’m an only child, my mother is dead and my father and I don’t get along. But there was always plenty of money while I was growing up.”

“Well, there you go,” she said. “Money isn’t the answer.”

“No shit,” Noah said.

Ellie might’ve grinned if Noah didn’t look so serious. “So, did you always know you were going to be a minister?” she asked.

“Absolutely not. I was going to be anything but a minister. I wasn’t about to follow in my father’s footsteps—for a religious man, he sure had his failings. But while I was looking for some answers to questions I’d had since I was about five years old, I ended up studying religion, among other things. Go figure. I discovered parts of the ministry that had nothing to do with being on television or being famous that appealed to me in a very personal way. It took me a really long time to get there, though.”

“How long?”

“I was a student forever, Ellie. I have two undergrad degrees and two master’s.”

“Wow. And I didn’t even finish high school. Well, I got my GED later. So when did you get there? As you put it.”

He chewed thoughtfully. “This really is good popcorn. I could eat this for dinner.”

“Don’t get distracted, Noah,” she said. “When did you discover you were going to be a minister?”

“Oh, that. I was going to teach and counsel and study. Maybe get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I like counseling—at least some kinds. But all along I’d been doing some community service and I realized I was happiest when I was just being a good neighbor. When I was helping out, lending a hand, you know. And a minister’s role is complicated, but a lot of it is helping out, acting as spiritual support. It’s like a relay race, Ellie. The baton is filled with faith and knowledge and good works—like community service, food for the hungry, food for the soul, and as it’s passed to me, I can run with it to the next person, who can run with it to—” He stopped to laugh and shake his head. “That’s the part I gravitated to. I have a mentor professor, George. I landed in the seminary because he couldn’t stay out of my business and convinced me it would make me happy.”

“So you just went along with his idea?” she asked.

“Not really. It was more than that.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake,” she said, annoyed. “What more?”

He thought for a minute, chewing his popcorn. “It was about God,” he said. “Whenever I called out to him, he answered. Wasn’t always the answer I wanted, but there was always an answer. I ignored that as long as I could.”

She tilted her head in thought. “Now, that’s a good enough reason,” she said. Then she took one of his hands and pulled it toward her. “But these are not the hands of a preacher.” She ran her fingers over the calluses on his palms and fingers, then a long fingernail over a couple of thin scars on his forearm. “How did you get so rough? So messed up?”

“I worked on the docks and on fishing boats and markets in Seattle from the time I was eighteen till I went into the seminary a few years ago. I worked my way through college that way, I wanted to get as far away from my father and his lifestyle as I could. I got most of these scars the first year or two. It was tough, physical work.” He grinned. “I loved it, but I wasn’t born into it like a lot of the men I worked with. It took me a while to learn, and I got hooked, grappled, cut and scraped a lot.”

“Then why aren’t you still there?”

He shrugged. “It was time to move on. Past time—I’m thirty-five.”

She ate more popcorn. Then she thoughtfully said, “You can stop being ashamed of growing up rich now.” When he looked at her in shocked surprise, she said, “If I’m not ashamed of growing up poor, why should you be ashamed of growing up rich? I think it’s kind of cool. You shouldn’t let that hold you back.” And then she smiled at him.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Were you lonely growing up?”

“Growing up? Oh, hell no. I probably had too many friends. Of course, they were mostly friends in the same boat as me—not a dime to spare, not going anyplace, couldn’t even stay in school. But between my gramma and friends, I got by fine. Later, after I was a single mom with two jobs and my gramma gone, I was lonely all the time, but I was almost never alone. Growing up, I had friends. I always envied the girls who had good grades, cool clothes, went to lots of parties and stuff, but I wasn’t ever lonely.”

“Didn’t all those friends of yours have parties?”

She smiled blandly. “No, Noah. We hung out. Usually around a convenience store with a big parking lot.”

“You couldn’t get good grades?” he asked.

“Well, sometimes I did okay, but I’ve had at least one job at a time since I was fourteen. Full-time babysitting, housecleaning, waitressing, you name it. I worked when I was pregnant and I worked when the babies were small and my gramma watched them. Until she died. But I’ve always worked—from right after school till late at night and then on weekends. There wasn’t a lot of time to hit the books, know what I mean?”

He did know, but the difference was, he hadn’t been the mother of two children when he’d been working and studying. “Ellie, you’re smart,” he said. “You’re intuitive. You have common sense. I think you could do anything.”

She laughed at him. “I have done anything, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, grinning back. “And now you’re working for a church. God must be shaking in his boots.”

“No doubt.”

“Listen, I’d better get going. I’ll see you in the morning.” He stood up. “So, can I come with you and the kids on Saturday?”

“I’ll think about it. But you have to promise to behave.”

“Thanks. That’ll give me something to look forward to.”

He stood in the open door and she held it a moment. “Noah? When did you stop having a relationship with your father?”

“Oh, jeez,” he said, dropping his chin. “We haven’t gotten along since I was a kid. He was continually disappointed in me.”

“But when, Noah? When did you give up?”

He looked at her steadily, peering into her large eyes. How did she know the things she knew? Could her grandmother have taught her so much about instinct? Or was she just plain an old soul? “When he didn’t come to my wife’s funeral,” he said.

And before she could respond, he walked down the stairs and away into the night.

As Noah walked away from Ellie’s apartment, he thought, that was wrong, the way that happened. That’s not the way you tell a friend about your past. And he realized suddenly, Ellie had become his friend. When you ask someone if you can join them for their very limited time with their children, that’s about friendship.

Yes, she was a friend now. She trusted him with her personal challenges, even if they might be embarrassing. But that was what was odd and admirable about Ellie—she might not want the town to know the details of her past, but she had no shame; she didn’t waste her energy on it. For such a young woman, she was comfortable in her own skin. And then he realized with a shock of sudden clarity, she didn’t treat him like a minister. She treated him like a friend. A regular man.

Too often, people approached him as someone whose approval they needed, and that was so far from his role. It not only made him uncomfortable, it created a barrier between him and friendship. And he didn’t want only friends in the clergy. Ellie? She didn’t much care if he approved of her. He loved that about her.

The only thing that seemed to rattle her were issues with her kids—their welfare and safety.

Noah, however, had enough shame for both of them. What kind of fool laments his sad childhood to someone who ate popcorn for dinner and slept beside her grandmother on a sofa bed her entire life? Or how about the way he dropped that bomb about Merry’s death? Ellie lost her boyfriend in an accident when she was a kid herself, a poor kid who was expecting a baby. She must have been devastated and terrified. But she somehow kept on trucking, determined. Hercules Baldwin. He would have to apologize to her in the morning.