Snowbound Summer (11 page)

“We're adopted, you idiot!” Kitten told her. “Only he's", she hooked a thumb in Ron's direction, “natural born.”

“Wait a minute!” Anne said.

But Kitten had already turned and rushed away from the table.

Her husband immediately hurried after her. The look of concern on his face would have been touching under less serious circumstances.

Anne turned to her husband. “Daddy didn't say we're adopted, did he?”

“Not in so many words,” Gene told her. It was obvious to Kara that he, too, thought
adoption
was the way to explain Howard's strange comment about
inviting
his daughters into their home. It also explained why Hanna got upset with him when he started his toast.

“This is wrong!” Ron said. “Anne, you and Kitten can't be adopted!”

“No, of course not,” Anne said.

The expression on her face suggested she wasn't actually so certain.

“So that's why you guys don't look alike,” Kitten's son said.

“
Brett!
” Gene snapped, glaring at the boy. “This isn't a good time.”

Anne stood up. “It's okay,” she said. “I know who I am. I—”

She took a step away from the table and staggered, almost losing her balance.

Gene leapt to his feet to steady her, but she didn't want his help. “Would you watch Emmy?” she asked. “I need to be by myself for a while.”

Gene actually looked more devastated than his wife did. He clearly wanted to follow her, but the kids were all sitting around the table. He turned to Ron and Kara.

“Could you?”

“I'm sorry, Gene,” Ron said. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I need to find my parents and figure out what the hell is going on.”

He walked in the direction his father had taken.

Kara wanted to help Gene, but she needed to be with Ron more. She leapt to her feet and hurried after him.

* * * *

* * * *

Kara caught up to Ron on the front steps of the lodge. She had to run to do so because he was walking so quickly and he didn't turn to face her until she grabbed his arm and demanded his attention. “Ron!”

His normally fair face had turned beat red with emotion—a jumbled confusion of pain, anger and fear. He lifted his hand and shook his finger between them as if he expected Kara to start fighting with him. “He
is
my Dad, Kara!”

She'd been wrong. It wasn't anger she saw in his face, only pain and fear. She threw her arms around him and pulled him tight against her. “I know, Sweety,” she told him. “Whatever he meant by what he said in there, he'll always be your Dad.”

Ron's didn't hug Kara back. His body remained unnaturally stiff with the pain of his father's revelations. She wanted him to let her embrace him. She wanted him to cry and hug her back. But she knew that wasn't going to happen. Why the hell had the Millers waited until today to share this with their kids: two adoptions and well, maybe she could understand why they hadn't shared Ron's paternity. Still it was an awful thing to dump on your children decades into their lives.

Ron's hands awkwardly closed on Kara's shoulders, not pushing her away, but not pulling her nearer either. He simply took hold of her and held on, as if he could ground his churning emotions by anchoring them to Kara.

His grip comforted her. In the midst of the most shocking revelation of his life, Ron was trying to reach out to her. “I love you, Sweety!” she whispered. “How can I help you tonight?”

Suddenly Ron pulled Kara very tight against him. His hands slipped behind her back and he crushed her against his hard chest. His right hand cupped the back of her head and pressed her face into his shoulder. His chest heaved as if he were trying desperately to contain a storm of tears. “I have to...” he began. “I have to find my Dad!” he told her.

His grip didn't loosen. It felt as if he were trying to merge their bodies into one.

“I know, Sweety,” Kara told him. “I wish I could help you with this.”

“You can!” Ron said, his voice gruff and thick with pain.

His hand on the back of her head slipped away, allowing Kara to look up at him. “Anything!” she promised. She'd regret that word in a very few seconds.

“My Mom ran off alone,” Ron told her. “She's held this in a very long time. I'm afraid she might do something stupid. And I want to know what really happened.”

The last thing Kara wanted to do was talk to Hanna Miller tonight, but the pain in Ron's eyes overrode her resistance. “I love you, Sweety,” she told him.

Ron's arms pulled her tight against him again, crushing her against his chest. “Thank God you're here tonight, Kara,” he told her.

She hugged him just as tightly. “I wish I could fix this for you,” she said.

“All of these years I've blamed him,” Ron whispered. “All of these years...”

Kara didn't think Ron's father was blameless in all of this. She didn't know what circumstances had led to Hanna cheating, but surely they didn't justify twenty-five years of tormenting her over it. Why the hell didn't he file for divorce? And why hadn't she? She just couldn't understand the full dynamic here. And she wasn't going to if she remained here hugging Ron. Secrets were being revealed tonight. By tomorrow, Howard and Hanna might close up again for the next twenty-five years.

She relaxed her embrace, and Ron followed suit. “You go check on your father,” she said. “I'll find your mother.”

Ron didn't immediately move to do as Kara had instructed. Instead he lifted his hand and lightly caressed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “What did I ever do to deserve someone as wonderful as you?” he asked her.

Kara covered Ron's hand with her own, cupping it against her cheek. “I love you, too, Sweety,” she said again.

She squeezed his fingers for a moment, then let go of his hand and went off in search of his mother.

* * * *

* * * *

Kara found Hanna Miller sitting in the lodge bar getting drunk. It was not actually where she expected to find the woman and it was only an accident that Kara noticed her out of the corner of her eye as she returned to the lodge restaurant to begin her search. The older woman was sitting by herself with a shot glass in front of her and a mostly full bottle of Jim Bean. If she'd been trying to make herself look like a Hollywood caricature of a woman pathetically trying to make people feel sorry for her, she couldn't have made a better start.

Kara took a deep breath. She didn't really want to reach out to Hanna right now. She didn't really like the woman. But at the same time, this was Ron's mother and the last fifteen minutes had driven home to Kara how deeply she really loved her handsome, blond boyfriend.

She steeled her nerve and joined Hanna at the bar. The bartender stepped over to her and asked what she wanted to drink.

Kara waved a hand dismissively at the bottle of Jim Beam. “First take this away,” she said. “Hanna's had enough already. Then bring us each a Michelob Ultra.” If she had to drink without Ron tonight, at least she could do it without a lot of calories.

The bartender shifted his gaze to Hanna who sat holding the bottle in her right hand and her shot glass in her left. She hadn't even acknowledged Kara's presence yet.

“Hanna?” Kara kept her voice quiet and calm. “Give the nice bartender the bottle. We really don't want to get too drunk tonight.”

While Hanna hesitated, the bartender set an open bottle of Michelob Ultra in front of each of them. She finally sighed and moved her hand to the beer. She lifted it to her mouth and took a long swig. When she finished, she set it back on the bar and said: “At least it doesn't taste as bad as the bourbon.”

In Kara's opinion, the Ultra didn't have much taste at all, but then she'd been spoiled lately by the decidedly robust Black and Tans she'd been drinking with Ron. She left her own beer on the bar and waited for Hanna to say something.

It didn't take long.

“He didn't have to tell them,” Hanna complained.

No, Kara supposed, he didn't.
But why were you keeping it a secret?
Maybe she could understand hiding Ron's paternity, but the girls? Adoption was pretty common these days. There certainly wasn't any stigma attached to it and there were potential medical benefits from learning your biological parents’ health histories.

“We kept the secret for thirty-six years,” Hanna continued. “They're our girls! He didn't have to tell them differently.”

“I don't think,” Kara tentatively suggested, “that was the message Howard was trying to impart.”

Hanna glared at her for a moment then drained the rest of her beer. As Kara hadn't touched hers yet, Ron's mother reached across the bar and snatched up hers. The bartender walked over and placed two more in front of them, offering Kara what she took to be a sympathetic look.

On the television screen above the bar, weather forecasters seemed to be predicting that the much-heralded storm really was coming their way. The television commentators were worried about rain, but Kara idly wondered if they could see snow at this altitude.

“Thirty-six years,” Hanna mumbled.

Kara decided that Hanna needed a little encouragement if she were going to talk about things that would be useful to Ron. “How did it happen?” she asked.

Hanna looked around in confusion. “What?”

“You adopted two girls,” Kara reminded her. She wanted to ask more specifically about Ron, but she was afraid that if she pushed too hard too soon, Hanna would clam up and Kara wouldn't learn anything.

The older woman took another swig of beer. She wasn't sipping it. She was gulping it down. The action—and the image it presented—was at odds with the ladylike demeanor she normally presented.

“Hanna?” Kara prompted.

“Howard can't have children,” Hanna confessed. “We didn't know before we got married. Believe it or not, we actually waited to get married to start having sex. That's surprising these days, but it wasn't all that uncommon forty years ago, no matter what people tell you about the sixties and seventies.”

“And so you adopted,” Kara encouraged.

“His sperm count is about one-ten-thousandth of what it should be,” Hanna continued. Anger was visible on her face, strengthening her cheekbones and glinting in her eyes. “We'd always talked about having children,” she said. “I really wanted them and the bastard couldn't give them to me.”

She took another swig of beer while she sifted through her bitter memories. Kara felt the need to defend Howard—it certainly wasn't his fault if he were functionally sterile—but she kept her mouth shut so that Hanna would keep talking.

“We thought it was me at first,” she said. “Believe it or not, he asked me to get tested, but it was his damn fault the whole time.”

Hanna's anger burned as brightly now as it must have forty years ago. Her eyebrows arched with ill will and her cheekbones flushed with more than alcohol. It disturbed Kara. There was no wisp of remembered fondness or good times. Decades of hating each other had burned all those feelings out of the woman.

“When we found out it was him, he apologized,” Hanna remembered. “He actually sat me down on the couch, went down on his knee, and told me how sorry he was that he couldn't give me the little ones I wanted. Then he suggested we could adopt—and I agreed—but it really isn't the same thing, Kara, taking in a baby that someone else has made for you.”

She drank some more beer and dwelt on her sour memories.

“Anne remembers those as happy years,” Kara prompted her.

Hanna's lips curled up in a tiny half smile. “They were good kids. Howard used to let them ride around on his back and pretend he was a horse. And the neighbors were great...some of them knew we had adopted, but no one ever told the girls.”

Kara wondered about that decision, still not understanding why Howard and Hanna had kept the adoption secret.

“It ruined our sex life,” Hanna confessed in an apparent non-sequitor. “Howard just didn't feel man enough after he found out he couldn't give me children.”

And did you help him feel less masculine?
Kara wondered. Somehow, she couldn't picture Hanna holding Howard and whispering that none of this mattered, or that everything would be all right. Forty or so years later and she still felt aggrieved by her husband's physical failings. Still, Hanna's statement offered an opportunity for Kara to shift the conversation toward Ron's biological father—if she had the courage to take advantage of it. “So you...looked elsewhere?” Kara asked.