Daddy's Home

Sammy was her son now. The papers declaring it so were firmly in her possession and valid in a court of law.

She’d fight him tooth and nail in court if she had to, but she prayed it wouldn’t come to that. That was her true objective—to reason with him, to try to touch the man she once knew, the man buried deep inside the monster sitting across from her.

To make him leave quietly. And alone.

“What’ll ya’ll have?” said a waitress, tapping her pencil against her pad of paper. Her cheek near her bottom gum was plump with tobacco. Jasmine had heard of gum-chewing waitresses, but the thought of a tobacco-chewing waitress was more than her stomach could handle.

“A cup of hot tea for me,” she said weakly, shifting her attention from the woman to focus on her queasy insides. “Peppermint, if you’ve got it.”

She wasn’t sure she could swallow even tea, but it occurred to her the peppermint might settle her stomach a little. She’d used it on Sammy’s colic to good effect, so she could only hope it would ease some of her own distress.

“Double cheeseburger with everything, onion rings and a chocolate shake,” Christopher ordered, smiling up at the waitress as if his entire life weren’t hanging in the balance of this conversation.

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he didn’t care. Jasmine didn’t know whether to feel relieved or annoyed.

It was obvious his appetite, at least, wasn’t affected by their meeting. And he wasn’t keeping his hands clenched in his lap to keep them from quivering, either. She pried her fingers apart and put her hands on the table.

Christopher cleared his throat and ran the tip of his index finger around the rim of his mug. “Remember when we used to sneak up here on Friday nights?” he asked, chuckling lightly. His gaze met hers, the familiar twinkle in his light gray eyes making her heart skip a beat.

Jasmine felt her face warm under his scrutiny. She knew what he was thinking, the memories this café evoked. Two carefree youths, so much in love, their lives filled with laughter and happiness. And hope.

“We thought we were being so underhanded, slipping out of town.” His light, tenor voice spread like silk over her. “Remember? We were so sure nobody noticed we were gone. We really thought we were pulling one over on everyone. And all the time, they were probably laughing and shaking their heads at us.”

Jasmine laughed quietly despite herself. “I’m sure Gram knew all along. She had such—” She was going to say high hopes for the two of them, but the thought hit her like a slap in the face, so she left the end of her sentence dangling sharply in the air.

How ironic that he’d picked this location to meet today. She’d been so wrapped up in dealing with her crisis that she hadn’t realized the poetic justice in his choosing this café. She swallowed hard, trying in vain to keep heat from suffusing her face.

It was the place where they’d first said I love you. The night they’d pledged themselves to each other forever. The night he’d asked her to be his wife. Before med school. And before Sammy.

She could see in his eyes that he was sharing her thoughts, reliving the memories right along with her. Her chest flooded with a tangle of emotions. Anger that he had brought her here. Hope because he remembered, too.

Had he brought her here on purpose, she wondered, as a way to have the upper hand? Or was this simply a convenient spot to meet, away from the prying eyes of the world? Did he mean to remind her of their joyful past, to taunt her with what could never be? She pinned him with her gaze, asking the question without speaking.

In answer, he swiped a hand down his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “It was thoughtless of me to bring us here. I should have realized—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted, holding up a hand. “Better here than in Westcliffe, where we might be seen.” She closed her eyes and eased the air from her lungs. At least he wasn’t trying to rub her nose in the past, and for that, she was grateful.

He let out a breath that could have been a chuckle, but clearly wasn’t, from the tortured look on his face. “I prayed about this meeting before I called you,” he admitted in a low voice.

He clenched his napkin in his fist and looked out the window, allowing Jasmine to study his chiseled profile. There were small lines around his eyes, and dark furrows on his forehead. They weren’t laugh lines, she noticed sadly. He looked ten years older than his twenty-eight years.

“Truth be told,” he continued, still avoiding her eyes, “praying is about the only thing I’ve been doing for weeks.”

His admission wasn’t what she expected, and it took her aback. She remained silent for a moment, trying to digest what he was telling her.

She’d assumed from his actions that he’d played his faith false, that he’d given up on God and was taking his own way with things.

Abandoning his family was hardly the act of a man walking with his Maker. But now he was telling her, in so many words, that his faith was still intact. That he believed God was in control. That he believed prayer would help this wretched situation. That God was here.

She barely restrained the bitter laugh that desperately wanted to escape her lips. Irony seethed through her. How had he kept his faith in God when hers so easily disappeared?

He smiled, almost shyly, as if his revelation had taken great effort. It probably had, though there was a time when there had been nothing they couldn’t share between them.

In so many ways, she wanted to close her eyes, embrace his belief, wipe the slate clean and start all over again. To return to the time in her life when she believed, and when her belief had given her hope.

But that was naiveté. She wasn’t a child, to believe in miracles. To believe in a close, personal God who would help her through life’s problems. Her faith was ebbing and flowing like waves on rocks.

She wasn’t even sure she believed in God, at least in a personal God who watched over His flock like a shepherd watching over His sheep.

She couldn’t—and didn’t—pay Him more than lip service, and at this point she was hardly doing that. Although she hadn’t denied her faith outright, she hadn’t set foot in a church in months.

The subject humiliated and frustrated her. All those years she considered her faith strong, yet it wilted with the first attack of trial.

Some Christian she was. Or maybe she never had been. She was too confused to know.

How could she believe in a God who would allow Christopher to get away with what he’d done?

And Jenny—what about Jenny? If God was there, why hadn’t He helped her? Why hadn’t He healed her? He’d forced Jasmine to stand helpless and watch her sister die, her head crammed full of medical knowledge and unable to do a thing to save her.

“Would you pray with me?” he asked when she didn’t answer.

Prayer. Gram suggested it before, and now Christopher was bringing up the issue. Her heart clenched. It wasn’t as if she never tried.

She had. Last night on her knees beside her bed. But the words wouldn’t come, and the space between her and the heavenly realm seemed unbridgeable. God wasn’t listening. Or He had cut her off. As she had once cut off Christopher.

She shook her head. “We’re in a public restaurant, Christopher. Let’s just get down to business.”

She cringed inside as she said the words. It wasn’t business. It was a baby’s life they were talking about.

He looked vaguely astonished, but he didn’t argue. Instead, his gentle smile tipped the corner of his lips as he reached for her hand, which she quickly snatched from his grasp.

Shrugging, he plunged into the reason they were meeting. “You know what I want. I want to see Sammy. I want to—”

“Take him away from me?” she snapped, heedless of the fact that she hadn’t given him a chance to finish his sentence. Suddenly she felt completely unsure of herself as Sammy’s guardian, of her ability to provide what he needed. Without thinking, she took her insecurity out on the man sitting across from her. “I don’t think so, Christopher.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she gestured for him to stop.

“You need to understand something,” she continued, her voice crackling with intensity. “You weren’t around when Sammy was born. You didn’t walk him up and down the hall at all hours of the night because he had colic and didn’t want to sleep. You haven’t changed him, fed him or bathed him.”

“I haven’t even—”

She pinned him with a glare. “I have. I was the one there for Sammy. And I am going to be the one to raise him.”

“But I want—” His voice closed around the words and he coughed. “I want to do all those things. I want to be there for the boy. My…” He hesitated. “My son.”

He looked petulant, and his eyes pleaded for her mercy.

Why, oh why did his mere physical presence affect her so? He once used those very same big bluegray eyes to get his own way with her when they argued over which movie to see or where to go for dinner.