The Seal's Secret Child

Her fingers came to rest on something soft, squishy and furry. She yanked her hand out.

“Archie!” she yelled out. “What are you keeping under your bed?”

The noise woke up Sherbet, Archie’s blue parakeet, sitting on a perch in his cage next to the bed.

“Pretty boy. Pretty boy,” the budgie squawked, making a bowing motion with his head.

Josie jumped. Sherbet always had a habit of scaring her when she was off guard.

“Be quiet, Sherbet,” she muttered, steeling herself to retrieve the furry object beneath the bed. Pulling out her hand slowly, she found herself staring at a moldy peach, collapsed like a popped balloon. It seemed to sum up how Josie felt: deflated, empty and way past her sell-by date.

The bird chirruped.

“What do you want, Sherbet?” she asked, looking for some scrap paper on which to place the soggy fruit.

The budgie picked up his empty food bowl in his beak and banged it against the bars.

“You want food?” Josie asked, gingerly holding the peach in one hand and reaching for the birdseed with another. “I’m sorry I’m grumpy, but I’m jittery.” She poked some seeds through the bars. “And I must also be crazy, because I’m talking to a bird.”

Josie nervously peered through the window to see a uniformed officer standing guard outside her home in Sedgwick, Kansas. He had been there for the past five days, ever since a series of threatening phone calls culminated in someone trying to run her off the road on her way home from work. It had been a terrifying experience.

As an attorney working for the Sedgwick County Public Defender Office, Josie had been assigned a child abduction case. It was her job to defend the man accused of abducting a young girl from the sidewalk outside her home. The accused man, Norman Francis, was an odd and reclusive character who always wore a large overcoat even on the sunniest days. Norman claimed that the three-year-old girl came into his neighboring home uninvited, and he proclaimed his innocence. But his protestations were to no avail, and he was subsequently charged with kidnapping. Yet Josie believed his pleas of innocence and had gladly agreed to represent him in court. The community of Sedgwick had already acted as judge and jury, condemning Norman without a trial, and Josie intended to let the truth be told.

However, someone in the vicinity was determined to make her pay for defending a man like Norman, a man who some believed was a potential child abuser. After it became apparent that her life was in danger, the police agreed to post an officer outside on the driveway for a few hours a day to act as a deterrent. Whoever wanted to terrorize her was not going to win.

Despite the fear that had been instilled in Josie, she wouldn’t let it destroy her life. After narrowly escaping her attacker’s car, she had sat down around the kitchen table with Archie and her father, Tim, to discuss how they would cope. Her dad had lived with her ever since the death of her mother five years ago, and he had been a constant source of support. Being a single mom was hard, and Josie often worked long hours. Her dad stepped in frequently, doing the school runs, making dinner, being a surrogate dad for Archie. She had no idea where her son’s real father was. He had vanished many years ago, apparently determined never to be found, despite an extensive search.

Spying a crumpled piece of paper on the windowsill, Josie picked it up and placed it on Archie’s desk, intending to wrap the dripping peach and throw it in the trash. It was a sheet from the printer in her son’s room. He was a budding engineer and often used a kids’ software package to print his crazy designs. But this paper was a printed email conversation, covered in doodles of birds and mice. She furrowed her brow, unaware that Archie had set up his own email address. He knew that this sort of online activity wasn’t allowed. As she looked closer, she jumped with shock. The name of the person her son had been conversing with caused her to gasp and drop the fruit to the floor. The peach exploded on the carpet, showering her ankles with a spray of juice, but she didn’t care. She simply looked at the paper, too stunned to move.

“Archie,” she yelled. “Come here, please.”

She held the printed paper with shaking hands, confronted with the name Edward Harding. Josie blinked hard. Edward Harding was the name of her ex-fiancé. Edward Harding was the name of her son’s father, a man who had never known of Archie’s existence. Could Archie have possibly found his father? Could a six-year-old have managed to complete a job that several private detectives had failed to do?

Archie appeared in the doorway, his blond, unruly curls and freckled face making him appear impish and mischievous. When he saw the paper in his mother’s hand, his cheeks flushed, and he looked at the floor guiltily.

“I’m not mad,” Josie said gently, leading her son to sit on the bed. “But will you explain this to me?”

She cast her eyes over the email, trying to make out the words behind the doodles. She saw, mom, danger, bad man, help us. Archie was asking for assistance from a man who might very well be a complete stranger.

“I saw him on a news channel,” Archie said in a small voice. “And I called the news station. They gave me his email address.”

“Who did you see, sweetie?” Josie asked. “A man you thought was your dad?”

“It was my dad,” he replied, imploring her to believe him. “Some bad guys were arrested in Missouri last week, and my dad helped catch them.” He pointed to the television in the corner of his room. “A reporter asked him all about it and put it on TV. The man’s name was Edward Harding. That’s my dad’s name, right?”

“Oh, honey,” Josie said, sitting on the bed next to her boy and placing an arm around his slim shoulders. “There are probably lots of men named Edward Harding. I know you want to meet your dad, and I’ve tried really hard to find him, but we have to accept that he’s gone.”

Archie looked up into her face, his bright blue eyes glittering with the hope of a child. “But this guy had one leg, Mom.”

She drew a sharp breath. Archie’s father was a former navy SEAL who had lost his lower leg after being injured on a mission in Afghanistan seven years previously. Archie knew this. She had told him as much about his father as he had wanted to know. Which was a lot.

“I know it was him, Mom,” Archie continued. “He looked like me.” He pointed to a spot on his ear where the cartilage was flattened and smooth. “He even has the same ears.”

Josie found her head reeling. “Why didn’t you come and talk to me about it?” she asked, attempting to control the unease in her voice. “You should have told me.”

Archie looked down at his hands cupped in his lap. “I don’t know if you like my dad now,” he said quietly. “You never talk about him anymore. I thought you would keep me from seeing him.”

“Archie,” she said, wrapping her arms around his torso. “Of course I want you to see your dad. I’ve tried to find him. I really have.” She pulled back and wiped tears from beneath her eyes. “It’s complicated. It’s hard for you to understand. You should never get in touch with a stranger unless you ask me first, okay?”

Archie jumped off the bed and stood with his fists clenched. “But he’s not a stranger, Mom. He’s my dad.” Archie pointed to the email still clutched between Josie’s fingers. “He wrote back to me and he was nice. He says he remembers you. I told him you were scared because of the bad man, and he says he can come help us.” He pulled himself up to his full height, like a proud soldier. “I know he was in a special army. He can make you safe.”

Josie listened to her son with a mixture of terror, bewilderment and disbelief. Was this Edward Harding truly the man she had loved and lost? Could this be the man who had vanished from her life overnight because he couldn’t accept his disability? Or was someone cruelly playing a trick on her beautiful little boy, exploiting his desperate desire to meet his father?

“Sweetheart,” she said, kneeling to the floor and clasping Archie by the shoulders. “When did you get in touch with this man?”

“Yesterday.”

“And did you tell him where we live?”

Archie nodded solemnly. “He’s coming to see us.”

Josie’s heart skipped. “When?”

When Archie refused to speak, Josie pushed a little harder. “This is really important, Archie,” she said. “I need to know when he’s coming here to Sedgwick.”

But before her son could answer, a loud crash sounded through the room. A brick came through the window and hit the wall, smashing a mirror and then bouncing onto the carpet. Around the brick was a white piece of paper secured with a rubber band. Josie reacted instantly, yanking Archie to the ground, away from the glass, before covering his small body with her own. She could see bold black words written on the paper: DROP THE CASE OR PAY THE PRICE. In the next moment, the police officer who had been stationed out front came bounding into the room.

“Go to the back of the house,” he ordered. “And stay away from the windows. Let me deal with this.”

Josie scrambled to her feet and lifted her son into her arms. He curled his legs around her waist and she carried him into the kitchen, almost colliding with her dad, Tim, in the hallway.

“What’s going on?” Tim asked, his eyes wide and fearful. “What happened?”

“Somebody threw a brick through Archie’s window,” she replied, holding her hand over her son’s head, not wanting to imagine how close he came to serious injury. The person who wanted to terrorize her had no intention of stopping. “Oh, Dad, why does this have to happen to us?”

Her father steered her into the kitchen and pulled down the blinds, shielding them from view to anybody outside.

“The police will do their job, Josie. Don’t worry.” Yet her father was utterly failing to hide the anxiety in his voice. “It’s just somebody trying to scare you. That’s all.”

Josie hugged Archie even tighter. She felt his breath quicken on her neck.

“It’s okay, Granddad,” Archie said, keeping a tight hold on his mother. “My dad is coming to help us today. He promised.”

Tim’s eyebrows shot up high, and he looked sharply at Josie. “What did he just say?”

Josie squeezed her eyes tightly shut. If what her son said was true, then she would shortly be seeing a man who had vanished from her life seven years ago, someone who had no idea she was ever pregnant with his child. After losing his leg, Edward had broken off their engagement via letter and disappeared, severing contact with his friends and family. She had understood why he had done it, but she had never forgiven him. After searching fruitlessly to find him and inform him of the birth of his son, she had eventually given up.

Her stomach was a swirl of dread. How on earth was she going to face the difficult task of allowing him into her life again? She had turned her back on the past and forged a future without him.