Father and Child Reunion

* * *

Molly’s movie wasn’t over, but it really was past her bedtime and she had day camp in the morning. Since Molly loved camp, she offered only a token protest, then, on the way to the stairs, reminded Eve of her promise to leave on the hall light so the monster under her bed wouldn’t get her.

The monster nightmare was new. Hating the thought of her little girl being scared, Eve promised not only to leave the light on, but that she would personally check to make sure the only things under the bed were dust bunnies. When that didn’t completely alleviate Molly’s fear, Eve caved in and tucked the child into her own bed.

Her little girl’s eyes were already closing when, prayers, hugs and kisses dispensed, Eve left the room, leaving the light on as promised.

Rio was right where she’d left him in the study.

He still stood in front of the window, his hands on his hips and his shoulders rigid. Eve didn’t know what he saw beyond the dark glass. Or even if he noticed anything at all. In the reflection, it looked as if his eyes were closed.

Feeling as if she were shutting the gate on a cage, she closed the door behind her with a quiet click and leaned against it.

He didn’t move. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t? Was someone physically restraining you?”

“Of course not. What I meant—”

“What you meant,” he interrupted, wheeling around, “is you wouldn’t.” He kept his voice deliberately low. “All you had to do was say, Rio, I’m pregnant.”

He made it sound as simple as commenting on the weather.

“And what would you have done?” she demanded, regarding his attitude as highly unfair. “Helped me put her up for adoption? Paid for an abortion? You didn’t want children,” she pointed out as something fierce flashed in his eyes. “You told me so yourself when you talked about what you wanted to do with your life. Even if you had wanted them, it’s not as if marriage had been an option. I didn’t know that much about you. Until you mentioned it to Molly a few minutes ago, I didn’t even know what tribes you came from.”

“There’d have been no abortion.”

There was as much possessiveness as moral conviction in his curt pronouncement. She should have found that telling. All she considered was that he’d responded to the only thing that had never been an issue.

“I never even considered one,” she muttered, amazed by how he’d completely missed the point.

Determined to be reasonable, she reiterated what he’d conveniently overlooked. “You didn’t want children,” she repeated. “I asked you once how you felt about them and you made it perfectly clear that they were fine for other people, but not for you. Kids hold a person back, you said, and nothing was going to stop you from getting where you were going. You were positively driven, Rio. You had to graduate and get a job on a paper and work your way up to the city desk. For all I knew, you had plans for a Pulitzer and a move to the New York Times. If it didn’t have to do with your career, it wasn’t in the equation.”

Rio didn’t deny a word she said. As implacable as ever, he planted his hands on his hips and stared at the nap in the carpet while he wore down the enamel on his back teeth. She’d never known him to let anything stand in his way. From the moment she’d met him, he’d known exactly what he was going to do, and when; what he wanted for himself—and what he didn’t want. That confidence was one of the things she’d admired most about him. Especially when back then, she’d had so little confidence in herself.

When she’d first met him, she’d been a slightly overwhelmed, seventeen-year-old college freshman. Rio had already finished three years of college in two and was cramming his senior year into six months. She didn’t doubt he’d finished right on his schedule, either. According to her mom, he’d been the youngest intern ever hired onto the Herald’s staff.

“You knew what you wanted,” she repeated, thinking of how quickly a person could learn to stand on her own when she had to. “But I didn’t. I was seventeen, Rio. I hardly knew what I wanted to major in, much less what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. The way I saw it, we were in a situation that wouldn’t work for any of us. It was best to go away and give the baby up for adoption.”

She’d been seventeen.

Rio wasn’t sure why that made him wince. Grappling with the knowledge that he had a child, he didn’t try to figure it out. He was a reasonable man. He prided himself on his objectivity, his ability to see both sides of a story—and he knew for a fact that he’d done everything in his power to remain objective about Eve. But any sense of perspective he’d had was forever gone. She hadn’t believed he would do right by her. She’d doubted his integrity. Rather than trust him to work the problem out with her, she’d chosen to run away from him. At the moment, her distrust and deceit were all he could think about.

Tension vibrated from him like sound waves from a tuning fork.

“That’s very compelling, Eve. Except you didn’t give her up.”

“I didn’t plan to keep her. I didn’t,” she repeated, because he so clearly didn’t believe her. “But when I saw her, I couldn’t bear to part with her.” She didn’t know how to describe to him what she’d felt. Or even if it would matter. “I even thought you might change your mind about children if you saw her yourself.”

Had there been any room for Eve to back up, she would have done so by then. As it was, with her back pressed to the door, there was nowhere for her to go. Hating the position she found herself in, resenting him for putting her there, she deliberately tipped up her chin.

She didn’t understand the accusation in his eyes, or the anger he held so tightly in check. Those were things a man who’d felt cheated would feel. She would have understood if he’d been indifferent to what he’d just discovered. Or if he’d felt threatened or skeptical. She wouldn’t have been surprised had he told her he wanted nothing to do with their little girl. Or if he’d become wary and wanted to know what she expected from him. But she’d never expected him to act as if she’d betrayed him by keeping the child from him.

Unable to bear his accusation any longer, she hugged her arms to her chest and moved to pace between the desk and the door.

“I tried to call you after she was born,” she said, her voice strained. “You have no idea how much courage it took to finally make that call. I think I picked up the phone twenty times before I actually pressed all the numbers.

“It had been between semesters,” she recalled, wanting him to know this even if it didn’t matter to him. Now that he knew about Molly, she wanted everything out in the open. It was the only way they could get over the past and do what was best for Molly. “I’d tried to call you at your apartment, but after a couple of days of getting no answer, I figured you’d gone home for the break.”

She hadn’t been sure where “home” was exactly, other than on the reservation northwest of Grand Springs, but she finally got a number for his mother. Only, when she had asked for him and his mother had asked who she was, any thought Eve had of sharing the news of their daughter died right there.

“Your mom said she didn’t want me to talk to you anymore. It seemed you had a new girlfriend.”

I must ask you to leave my son alone, Eve Stuart. You are not of our people, and Rio knows his obligations. My son has a nice Indian girlfriend now.

Hesitation washed over Rio’s expression. Jaw working, he pulled a deep breath. Seconds later, his thoughts seeming dark and distant, his displeasure expanded. “She never told me you called.”

That didn’t surprise Eve. What did, was that she could still remember how hurt she’d been. Focusing on the bookshelf, she told herself she’d had no business feeling that way. She had left him. He’d had every right to move on to someone else. But the fact that Rio hadn’t denied the truth to what his mother had said somehow made the hurt seem fresh all over again.

That made no sense at all, she told herself, and concentrated on what had been truly important about her conversation with Rio’s mother, for it had revealed an obstacle she hadn’t even realized existed.

“I didn’t think she had,” she quietly concluded. “But what your mother said made it pretty obvious she wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of a half-breed for a granddaughter. It seemed to me that if you understood the obligations she mentioned, you might not have been too thrilled, either.”

Eve hugged herself tighter. “I remember picking up Molly after I’d hung up the phone and trying to pretend I’d never seen her before. I knew she was darker than I was, but to me, she was just my precious baby and everything about her was beautiful. I hadn’t thought about the color of her eyes or her hair or her skin. All that had mattered was that she had ten fingers and ten toes and she was healthy.”

She’d been blind to so much, she thought, aware of his shadow covering her. Too much. “Your mother made me realize that you probably wouldn’t have seen her the way I did, and that you had responsibilities to what she’d called ‘your people.’ That was when I realized how little I truly knew about you.”

He’d come up behind her. She could feel him. But she wasn’t prepared for the feel of his hand on her shoulder, or the heat in his eyes when he turned her to face him.

“My mother was out of line saying what she did. And she had no business keeping your call from me. But you never should have left to begin with. You knew all that mattered.” Defense marked his tone. Bridled anger etched his features. “My heritage is important to me. So is my family. But I decided a long time ago that neither the tribe nor my family was going to dictate my life.”

“You never told me that. You rarely talked about your family, and you never mentioned your heritage at all. How was I supposed to know how you felt if you never told me?”

“You knew how I felt,” he insisted. “I cared about you.” His heated glance swept her face, the source of his anger eluding her completely. “I don’t know how I could have made that any clearer.”

Nothing she said was getting through to him. Upset as she was, that was her only thought before she felt his hands clench her shoulders. His thumb swept downward, edging lightly along her collarbone, and his hard gaze dropped to her mouth.

He was close enough that she could feel the heat and tension radiating from him. Close enough that she could almost feel his body pressing against hers. But it was the motion of his thumbs that destroyed her attempt to make him understand, and left her feeling completely exposed.

He’d once had the habit of tracing her collarbone when he’d been about to kiss her. He’d be trying to make a point, or telling her about something that had happened that day, and his thumbs would do what they were doing now. Inevitably, his hands would slide up into her hair and he’d settle his mouth over hers, turning her knees weak and her blood to steam. He would kiss her hard. Or sometimes he was so gentle she’d want to cry. But, always, she never wanted him to stop.

The memory shouldn’t have tugged so deeply. The weight of his hands shouldn’t have felt so familiar. But what should have been bore scant resemblance to what was.

“I think we both need some time,” she said, not caring how unsteady she sounded. “This is…” Dangerous. Foolish. Irrational.

“Yeah,” Rio muttered, seeming to understand what she couldn’t articulate. “This isn’t good.”