Man of His Word

Daniel tore his mind away from the razor-sharp memories of that day—ten years ago? No, eleven. Almost twelve, actually, this coming July Fourth.

“Yes.” He found himself guarding his words. What could he tell them? What should he? Legally, he was in a bind, because Miriam was covered under Georgia’s safe-haven law. But more than that, he remembered the girl’s abject terror of her boyfriend’s parents finding out about Marissa.

He’d given Miriam his word. And it was up to him to keep it.

Beckoning for them to follow him, he walked out to the patch of lawn between the firehouse and the street. One of the crew had just mowed the grass, and it smelled fresh and green. Unlike that summer day, there was no redolent smell of charcoal and sizzling burgers from a July Fourth cookout by the crew, no shrieks from kids playing tag under sprinklers on the side yard.

“She pulled up here,” Daniel told them. “She was driving an old four-door. I was standing...” He pivoted, replaying the day in his head. “There, leaned against the side of the building. Everybody else had gone inside to eat.”

It was all fresh—the grief he’d felt over his dad not being with them on that day, the fact that he had angered and worried Ma with his sudden move to follow in his father’s footsteps as a firefighter, the last time his father had held his hand—his dad swathed in bandages, a mummy of a man in the burn unit.

Take care of your brothers and your sisters and Ma.

Keep your word, Danny, keep your word, no matter the cost.

The last words his father had spoken to him, an entreaty wrung out of a man in agony, a man needing assurance that his eldest son would take his place as the family’s leader.

And Daniel had promised his father that he would.

On that July Fourth, he’d been bent on escaping the day’s festivities, and that was why he’d been the one to see Miriam.

“What...sort of car?” Kimberly asked, behind him.

The question pulled him away from his own tangled emotions of that day and into the present. “You know, it was old. Like a 1970s Nova? I remember it had about four different colors of paint on it.”

Daniel turned back to face Marissa. Yes, she had Miriam’s red-gold hair, and it looked as though she was well on her way to achieving her biological mother’s height. Funny how they both twirled their long strawberry blond hair around their index fingers.

Funny how he could remember that small habit of Miriam’s at all.

“Is that why she dump—” Marissa broke off, apparently taking in the same look of exasperation that Daniel saw on Kimberly’s face. “Is that why she gave me up? Because she was poor?” Her words trembled with emotion.

“She gave you up because she cared about you. Because she couldn’t figure out a way to keep you safe and still keep you, so she decided that keeping you safe was the better choice.” Daniel fought a strange sense of protectiveness for Miriam, as though even the little he’d shared somehow violated his promise to her. “I honestly don’t know if she was rich or poor or even if the car was hers. All I can say for a fact is that you were born here, in this spot, on July 4, 2003.”

“I was born here? Right here? I thought...”

“You were born on the Fourth, right?” Now Daniel worried that maybe they’d gotten confused, that maybe this wasn’t the same Marissa after all. No. No she was definitely Miriam’s child.

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. People call me a firecracker baby. Because of my hair and being born on the Fourth and all...” Her face wrinkled as she said this, and her fingers settled for a moment on her hair and again twisted a strand of it. She didn’t sound too enthused about the moniker.

Kimberly spoke up. “I didn’t know she was born here, either. The court papers said Marissa’s birth mother had tried to surrender her here at the fire station, and you were the firefighter who’d helped her. So...what can you tell us?” Kimberly asked. “What all do you remember? About that day?”

This Daniel could do. He smiled. “I was out here, minding my own business, and then this car comes roaring up, and I go to check it out...” He closed his eyes. The memory was still so sharp he could smell the charcoal. “And there you were, Marissa. Busy getting born, all on your own. You didn’t even wait for the EMTs, and they were inside.” He jabbed a finger over his shoulder to indicate the firehouse.

Again memories flooded him: the sweet weight of Marissa in his arms, the goofy feeling that swamped him as he held her.

The agony of having to turn her over to the child-welfare folks. At the hospital, he’d asked if he could keep her for a while, just in case Miriam changed her mind and came back for her daughter, but they said no, certainly not.

The “certainly not” had stuck in his craw. Miriam had trusted him. Why couldn’t they?

But there were laws and regulations and he knew that he really couldn’t raise Marissa on his own. So he’d made them promise that she would be placed in a good home.

Daniel had kissed the top of Marissa’s little red head and handed her over, and that was the last time he’d seen her.

Until now.

And the mom they’d picked out for Marissa did look like a pretty good mom. Kimberly was pretty, and seemed caring. He noticed the furrow in her brow as she fretted silently over Marissa. She was worried. But she wasn’t saying anything, just giving Marissa time to absorb what Daniel had told her.

“Really? You remember?” Marissa asked. Again, there was a tremor in her voice.

“As if it was yesterday.”

He tore his gaze away from the girl’s face, her expression so unreadable that he couldn’t be sure if what he was saying was helping or hurting. Daniel turned to look at Kimberly.

Now, she was an open book. Her eyes, that curious blue, were bright with unshed tears. Her throat was working, and he could tell she was moved by the moment.

Had to be hard, helping her adopted daughter revisit the day she came into the world. Did Kimberly envy that mother? Envy the chance to have given birth to Marissa herself? Or was she afraid that Marissa would leave her in search of her birth mom?

“I have a picture,” he said, his voice husky.

“A picture?” The words exploded from both Marissa and Kimberly. They stared at each other, their eyes wide with excitement.

“Can we see it?” Kimberly asked.

“Yeah. Sure. Come on. It’s in my office.”

Inside, Marissa glanced around the tiny office, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Kimberly was more patient, and he noticed how she laid a light hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Its fluttering movement seemed to comfort the clearly anxious Marissa.

He grabbed up the photo of him and Marissa and extended it to her. “See? I told you that you were tiny.”

She stared down. “Oh.” Disappointment was plain on her face. “I thought...I thought it would be of me and my birth mom.”

But Kimberly had taken the photo from Marissa and was staring down at it. She traced her finger over the image, her mouth softly parted. A tear snaked down her cheek, and Daniel liked the way she let it be.

She looked up at Daniel. “This is you. With Marissa.”

“Yeah. The guys took it. Right before I had to hand her over. DFCS said they’d find her a good home. Looks as if they did. I mean, I asked if I could keep you,” he blurted out to Marissa, “but I mean, who was I kidding. I was a twenty-five-year-old unmarried guy, a rookie firefighter. Who was gonna trust me with a kid, huh?”

Marissa’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “My mom was twenty-five when she adopted me. And she was single.”

Something about that twisted in him. He shot a questioning look toward Kimberly, and she nodded. “Yeah, but, Marissa, at first I was just a foster parent. Besides, I’d already gone through all the foster-care paperwork and the classes, and they’d done a home study. Plus...you were listed as a special-needs baby. They needed somebody who would take you, no questions asked.”

“Yeah. I forgot about all that.” She leaned over her mother’s shoulder and studied the photo. “Hey, I was kinda cute. I thought babies were ugly.”

“You were beautiful. Tiny. But beautiful. Except...” Daniel scratched his head as he recalled the bruises he’d left on her pale pink skin. Other bruises, that the EMTs shrugged off, had started popping up, as well. Part of the birthing process, they’d assured him.

Just then the “ennnh” of the fire alarm’s buzzer reverberated through the building, and the radio crackled to life. He listened, took in the bare facts: multicar accident on the interstate, gas-tank leak, trapped driver.

“Sorry,” he told Kimberly and Marissa. “This will have to wait.”