Another Homecoming (19 page)

She found herself reaching across the table, taking his hand. The move was so alien that Harry jerked upright and stared down at her hand.

“I think Joel has found something that can help us,” Martha quietly told him.

He looked over at her. Instead of the barrier of old disappointments and bitterness, there was only confusion. “You mean, this religion thing?”

She nodded. “I feel as though, well . . .” Martha stopped and gathered herself, as though just saying the words was enough to push them both over the edge. New beginnings loomed before her, strange pulses ran through her veins. It took a long moment before she realized what she felt was hope.

She took a breath and went on. “I think maybe we could start over, you and I. If we ask God to help us.”

There was no cutting response. None of the acrid mockery that normally greeted anything she said. Instead, his gaze dropped back to her hand resting upon his own. He murmured, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe—” she whispered, her breath catching in her throat, “maybe you could ask Joel to teach us how to pray.”

To her surprise, tears formed in Harry’s eyes and dropped unheeded onto her hand. He said nothing, just turned his palm upward and enclosed her fingers with his own.

“It seems too much,” he said when he was able to speak. “First our baby girl—now this.”

For a moment Martha’s eyes showed her surprise. Then they too filled with tears.

“You miss her, too?” she asked quietly.

His tears increased. He nodded.

“I never knew. I mean—you never talked about her. I thought I was the only one . . .”

“I visit that upstairs room, too, when no one is around.”

Martha was weeping openly now. “I didn’t think . . . I mean, you never said—”

“I couldn’t. Not without . . . blaming you. You shouldn’t have done it, Martha. Shouldn’t have given away our little girl. There would have been a way. Some way. My mother . . .”

“I couldn’t ask her, Harry. I barely knew her. I couldn’t ask. I felt so alone—and scared. All I could think about was that I’d lost you and I couldn’t bear to . . . I didn’t even want to live.”

He reached a hand to her cheek. “You cared that much?”

“Oh, Harry, I thought I’d die with the pain of it. I wished that I’d been in that battlefield. That I’d died, too.”

“But when I did come home you were so distant.” There was puzzlement in his voice.

“I was numb by then. Dead inside. And you were so changed. I felt I didn’t even know you anymore.”

“Guess I was numb, too.” Ancient pain creased his features. “I’d had a tough time out there in the field hospital. It was really bad, Martha. A lot of pain. Took almost three months before I remembered my own name.”

“It should have been different, Harry. We should have clung to each other. Through our sorrow. We could have helped . . .”

He brushed at her tears with a clumsy hand. “This time we will, Martha.”

“I’m still hoping, praying that Doc is wrong. That Joel will be all right. He’s such a good boy. Surely God . . . Doctors have been wrong before, you know.”

Harry shook his head. “I’d like to hang on to that, too, but those x-rays look bad. Doc showed them to me. You don’t have to be a doctor to know. He says it’s a wonder that we’ve kept Joel this long. That he could do his paper route and all. He’s been hurting for some time, Martha. He must have known.”

“Why didn’t he tell us?”

Harry cleared his throat and pushed back from the table. He ran a shaking hand through his thinning hair. “Isn’t that we’ve been easy to talk to, Martha. We’ve both shut ourselves away.”

“We need to pray,” repeated Martha with a strength of conviction in her words.

Harry walked out to the back porch and seated himself in his customary chair. The afternoon shimmered with the year’s first heat wave. Suddenly Harry was consumed by a memory of another time, another place of heat and dust and light. And noise.

He was back in the desert, preparing himself for the first big push. Beside him was a young man who spent his last hours before the battle in prayer. There had been such a sense of peace about him, such a sense of light drawing down and near. Harry had intended to speak with him about it, about the way he spent his time reading the Bible, even when the coarse humor and arguments echoed about him.

But when the young man had been killed in the skirmish, Harry had shrugged it off, thinking that the man’s faith had not helped him at all.

Harry shook his head to clear it, and once again he was surrounded by birdsong and his own back garden. But the lingering light from the young man’s eyes remained with him, joining with the memory of how his son had been over the past months. The light from both pairs of eyes now touched his heart like gentle fingers prying open the long-closed recesses inside him. Then the light seemed to grow until it surrounded him on all sides, flooding into his mind and heart. And Harry knew that what his wife had said was true. That if he wished, he could start anew. He could be healed within. He could begin again. It was not too late. Not even for him.

Had anyone been watching all they would have seen was a single nod. He would speak with his son.

17
 

As soon as the familiar voice answered
on the other end of the line, Kyle felt a tremendous flood of relief. “Kenneth, it’s me.”

“Kyle.” The warmth with which he said her name made her think of her father. “Where are you?”

“At the Economy Inn out by the airport.”

“Why on earth did you go there?”

She looked around the shabby room, then waited for an aircraft to pass overhead before replying. “I needed to have some time to think. I had your hundred dollars less the taxi fare, so I came here. I’ve even got money left over for meals.”

“This is crazy,” he muttered. “Look, stay right there, and I’ll come pick you up.”

“Thank you.” She did not want to go home, but the money was running out. Calling Maggie and Bertrand meant making them risk their jobs, which she knew they would do for her, but still she did not want to chance it. “Thank you so much.”

It was more than relief she felt when she saw him enter the hotel lobby. She stood and watched him cross the room. Unlike Randolf, he was not particularly handsome. Yet an honesty shone from his face, a strong vitality. His direct gaze seemed to reach straight to her heart. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into this.”

“Kyle,” he said, taking her hands in both of his. “There is nothing I would rather be doing. Nothing at all.”

Coming as they did after five lonely days of soul-searching and sorrow, the words were met with a burning behind her eyes. She could not speak around the lump in her throat.

Kenneth seemed to understand. He released one of her hands to pick up her small case, then led her toward the doors. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

On the way back across the river, he told her, “I’ve reserved you a suite at the Mayflower.”

She stared at him in alarm. “I can’t afford that.”

“Yes you can.” He stopped at the light by the Fourteenth Street Bridge and turned to smile at her. “You might as well start getting used to it.”

“The money is not mine,” she protested. “It’s Daddy’s.”

She knew that Kenneth had no idea what the reclaiming of her father’s relationship meant to Kyle. She had spent days struggling to sort out who her father really was. Who
she
was. Finally she had come to accept the truth that Lawrence had
chosen
her. Had given her his name and his love. She really did belong to him. Perhaps, she had ventured to think that very morning, perhaps they were bound by even stronger ties than if she had been his blood child. The knowledge had brought tremendous relief and freedom. Adopted? Yes. But she was still her father’s daughter.

“It’s Daddy’s money,” she repeated.

“And he left it to you. Just as he had every right to do.”

“Kenneth, did you know I was adopted?” It was the first time she had said the word aloud since hearing it from Abigail, and she was almost afraid to see the shock in Kenneth’s eyes. But when she looked into his face, she realized before he spoke that he already knew.

“Randolf told me the morning after you disappeared. Probably his attempt to scare me off. But it will take more than that.” He handed her a bulky envelope. “Here.”

“What is it?”

“As trustee to your estate, I’ve arranged a small withdrawal from your account. There’s a paper in there you need to sign.”

She opened the envelope and gasped at the bills. “Small?”

“It’s better not to draw attention too often to your account, not until everything is cleared up. Your mother . . .”

When he did not finish the sentence, Kyle said, “She’s worried.”

“No,” he replied slowly. “Abigail left ‘worried’ behind right after you disappeared. She’s crossed the great divide and entered the land of ‘frantic.’ ”

She found it nice to have a reason to smile. It was the first time she had done so in what felt like weeks.

“She’s even spoken with me—well, shouted really. She accused me of kidnapping you.”

“I’ve made more trouble for you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Abigail has made no secret of how she feels about me.” Kenneth turned onto Massachusetts Avenue and asked, “Where would you like to go?”

“To the office, please,” she said, steeling herself for what had to come.

He glanced at her. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “And please cancel the reservation at the Mayflower. That’s my mother’s kind of place. I want to find something nice, simple, and within walking distance of Rothmore Insurance.”

He studied her more closely. “You’re not going back home, then.”

“When Mother stops fighting against what Daddy wanted us to do,” Kyle replied, forcing herself to keep her voice steady, “then I will go back home.”

Kenneth did not say anything further until they had stopped in front of the Rothmore building. Once there, however, neither had much desire to leave the car’s safety. It was Kyle who finally spoke. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Kenneth. You are a true friend.”

He lowered his head and stared at where his hands gripped the wheel. It took a long moment before he was able to reply, “I would like to be more than that.”

“I know,” Kyle said, and found herself not at all surprised by his admission—or her own. It had been there between them for a long while, never said but there just the same.

Suddenly she was very uncertain. Nothing in her past had prepared her for the affection that rose within her. It was so real, so
genuine
. She did not know how to act, what to do or say.

But Kenneth kept his head lowered and did not see the nervous uncertainty that gripped her. He said quietly, “Ever since the first time I walked into your house, and you came over to welcome me, I have been head over heels in love. You were so kind. You tried to hide it and be just like the others, aloof and sophisticated. But I could see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice. You were different than the rest of them. You didn’t really fit there.”

“No,” Kyle agreed softly. “I never belonged.”

He looked up then, instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. That’s not at all what I meant.”

“I know.” The need to reassure him gave her the strength to reach over and take his hand. She felt a little thrill run through her as he released the wheel to enfold her fingers. “It’s the truth. I’ve always known I never fit in.”

“Perhaps,” Kenneth told her, “that is why your father loved you as he did.”

It was the perfect thing to say. She pressed his hand tightly, feeling that she could tell him anything, ask him whatever was on her mind. “Why have we waited so long to talk like this?”

“Your mother has been against me from the first day we met,” Kenneth said. “It was frightening to see how strong her reaction was.”

“I know.”

He went on, “And I wanted to be sure you understood that what you possessed, or what your name was, had nothing to do with how I felt.”

My name
, she reflected, and felt the hollow sorrow bloom again within her chest as it had done over and over those past few days. Her father’s love was not enough to erase the questions from her mind.
My name. What is my name? Who am I really?

But Kenneth was not finished. “There was something else.” Kenneth regarded her a moment longer before saying, “At times like this, I have to keep in mind what is most vital in my life.”

“You mean, your religion?”

“My faith, yes.” He searched her face, as though looking for something, yearning to find it. “It is something which I absolutely must share with, well . . .”

For once, the words did not unsettle her. In accepting him, she was coming to accept what made him the man he was. “I would like it very much,” she said quietly, “if you would teach me.”

His face seemed to crumple in relief and joy. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“Kyle!” As soon as she stepped from the elevators onto the executive floor, Randolf Crawley hurried down the hall toward her. “Thank goodness you’re all right!”

“Hello, Randolf.” She squared her shoulders, and with only a brief backward glance to where Kenneth stood, she allowed Randolf to lead her toward his office. She needed to get this over with, and she needed to do it in private.

“Miss Kyle!” Mrs. Parker sprang to her feet, relief written over her features. “We’ve been so worried.”

“Call Abigail,” Randolf barked, not slowing down.

“No.” Kyle shook off his hand so abruptly that he continued on another step before coming to a halt. She said to Mrs. Parker, “I will call her myself in a few minutes.”

Mrs. Parker looked from one face to the other, then made her decision. “Very well, Miss Kyle.”

“Thank you,” she said, then passed before an astonished Randolf and entered her father’s old office. She seated herself across from the desk and felt the familiar pang as she stared at its massive polished surface.

Cautiously Randolf circled the desk and took his place. Clearly her actions and attitude were not what he had expected. “Has Adams had anything to do with your disappearance? Because I am seriously thinking—”

“Kenneth has done nothing but what I asked him to do, which was to bring me here,” Kyle said sharply. “And I consider him to be not only a dear friend, but a highly valued associate. Just as my father did.”

“Of course, of course,” he agreed warily. “It is only that we have been so concerned for your welfare.”

“I am fine. I merely had some things to think over.”

“Yes, your mother informed me of your discussion.” His handsome features creased into an expression of sorrow. “It is so unfortunate that you were ever forced to find these things out. However, I want you to know that I have everything under—”

“I want to find my parents,” Kyle stated flatly.

“Your . . . ?”

“My birth parents.”

“My dear Kyle, that doesn’t matter. Whoever they might have been makes no difference to you now.” He presented her with one of his professional smiles. “Or to us.”

“It matters to me. Very much.”

The pronouncement drew him up sharp. “Why? You are doing fine as you are.”

“No, I’m not. I’m all alone in the world.”

“Of course you’re not.” His refined manner made the words sound as though he listened to them first in his mind before saying them aloud. “Why, your mother and I are very much here with you, you know that.”

“I want to know, Randolf.”

The words came more slowly. “Whatever the reason behind their giving you up for adoption, you can be certain it wasn’t a happy one. Don’t you think such sadness should be left alone?”

“No, not at this point in my life—or theirs.”

“You disappear without a word for five days, then return and start making these astonishing demands.” He turned quite patronizing. “Really, Kyle. Your mother has always said you were a trial, unwilling to listen to a thing she said.”

“Which means,” Kyle said, “you are not going to help me.”

He spread his arms. “There is actually very little I can do. Your adoption papers are sealed.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your parents gave you over to the state. Your records are sealed by law.” He talked with pedantic superiority. “They cannot be opened.”

She struggled to keep her voice calm. “Mother told me you knew enough to take care of some ‘unsettled’ matter. Which means you also know enough to give me something to start on.”

Her persistence finally rattled his composure. “Really, Kyle. I have heard about enough of this. Let it go. They have their life, whoever they are. You have yours.”

She rose to her feet. “I decided I had to give you one last chance, Randolf. This was it.”

He rose with her. “What on earth are you talking about now?”

Kyle turned toward the door. “This conversation is over.”