Dry Creek Daddy

No wonder she was still talking to her father, Mark thought. If he didn’t count Jeremy, Mr. Stelling was the only family she had. She wouldn’t give him up unless she absolutely had to.

Mark opened the café door for Hannah and followed her down the steps.

He opened the door of his pickup and held her elbow so she could make the long step up to the floorboard. Long ago, his mother had taught him to be a country gentleman when escorting a girl anywhere in a truck. She said the young lady would appreciate it. Hannah didn’t appear to think much of it, though. In fact, she scowled at him as though he should know better.

He was so dumbfounded that he just stood there a moment. She had never objected to his help. Not even when they’d been fishing and she’d gotten that long wood sliver in the palm of her hand and he had to pull it out with his teeth.

She couldn’t have changed that much. Not unless something really bad had happened. It didn’t take more than a second for him to realize he had been that bad thing. His coma had left her pregnant and alone.

He figured now wasn’t a good time to apologize for letting her down, though. So he walked around the pickup, opened the door and settled himself behind the steering wheel.

In minutes, they were outside town and on their way to Miles City. He couldn’t help but notice Hannah was looking down at the rose lying in the middle of the seat between them. She was frowning at that, too.

“Girlfriend?” she asked.

“Huh?” He was surprised, but managed to keep the pickup on the road. “No. It’s for you. For your first day back home.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe—”

She stopped and looked out the window.

“What?”

“You were gone so long that I thought maybe you had a girlfriend now. That’s all.”

“I wasn’t gone,” Mark protested. “I was stuck in a coma.”

“Of course, but—” Hannah started, but did not finish.

“I know I was still gone,” Mark answered. He would agree to that.

Mark knew he should say something more, but he didn’t want to give her a glib excuse. There was a time when he’d have been able to string together a convincing argument for his actions without even thinking about it. The bullet that hit his head had reduced his vocabulary to rubble, though. No words came to his mind and then it was too late.

“Nice day,” he finally said.

“How can you say that?” she responded incredulously. “It’s going to rain.”

“I didn’t mean the weather,” Mark said. He wasn’t sure what he had meant, so he kept quiet. It was going to be a long drive into Miles City.

* * *

“This is it?” Hannah knew it was the hospital. That much was obvious. But she needed to say something. She’d been frozen in silence on the trip here, and now they were parked in the building’s lot, just sitting there.

“They’re planning to remodel the place,” Mark said as he reached for his door handle.

Hannah turned to unlatch hers, too, and opened the door before Mark felt he had to come around and do it for her. She knew he was just trying to be nice to her, but she didn’t want him to be polite. She remembered how, as a child, she’d felt like an outsider in Dry Creek, believing the town’s friendliness was only for those who had been born there. But once Mark started coming around to take her fishing, she was content. She hadn’t cared any longer if she didn’t belong. One friend was more than she’d ever thought she’d have in life and she liked him.

But then Mark kissed her. Both sixteen at the time, they were standing in the far field checking to see if there were any chokecherries yet on the wild bushes that grew along the fence. The kiss had been an impulse on his part. She was sure of that. He seemed as shocked as she had been. But while he seemed to take it in stride, she felt like she’d fallen off a cliff. Something inside her shattered. After that, she dreamed of a future with him that she’d never given any thought to before that kiss. Suddenly he wasn’t just her friend; he had become as important to her as the air she breathed. She’d never felt like that with anyone or anything before. No one had ever made her feel as safe.

And then—no sooner than she’d become adjusted to her new hopes—he was gone. Almost dead, everyone said. She hadn’t allowed herself to get that close to any man since.

She’d been writing back and forth to Mrs. Hargrove over the years, and the good woman had encouraged her to trust someone, especially God, with her life. A few months ago, Hannah had decided to do that. But relying on God and trusting Mark were two different things. God did not go into a coma when she needed him most. No, she could not face that cliff again. Not with Jeremy being so very sick. She was all her baby had and she could not worry about anyone else, not even herself.

A long hallway ran along the edge of the building, and Hannah saw that the waiting room was crowded. A line had formed in front of the receptionist’s counter.

She and Mark hurried over and joined the people standing there.

“It’ll be okay,” Mark murmured as they started to move forward slowly.

Hannah ignored his words. That was the way it started. A woman would believe some nonsense from the man in her life. And foolishness it was—no one could know if things were going to be okay or not. Mark should realize that. He couldn’t guarantee anything.

Just then the couple in front of them finished their business and stepped out of line.

“I’m here about Elias Stelling,” Hannah announced to a dark-haired woman behind the receptionist desk. “He was in a car accident out on the freeway about—” Hannah glanced up at Mark. “Would you say forty-five minutes ago?”

Mark nodded.

“Is either of you a relative?” The woman looked up from the paperwork on her desk.

“Well, I’m—” Hannah stumbled and paused.

She had run away from the Stelling place when her pregnancy started to become obvious. Her adoptive mother had died of cancer years before and her father still moved around the house like a disinterested stranger, glaring at Hannah if he noticed her at all. She had curled up in a protective ball when Mark went into his coma. She felt like she was in the emptiness with him, waiting to die. But there was the baby inside her, calling her to live.

After the first wave of grief passed, she knew she had to make some decisions. She was brittle and could break at any time. She refused to stay around someone who was supposed to care about her but didn’t. Leaving the Stelling house was a stubborn decision based on hurt, but she knew it was right for her. She was better off in a home for unwed mothers, where she had no expectations of kindness as she did living with her adoptive father. Besides, she knew how to make it in an institution. No one could disappoint her. She never had gotten the hang of being part of a family.

She was taking too long to answer the clerk’s question and the woman was looking at her with suspicion. Hannah straightened her shoulders. The hospital wasn’t asking about the strength of her tie to the man she called Father. All they wanted was her legal status.

She nodded to emphasize her point. “I’m his daughter. His only family.”

Neither one of them had anyone else. Strange as it was, that feeble truth had pulled her back to Dry Creek.

The woman still eyed her skeptically and asked for identification. Hannah pulled out her wallet and flipped it open. “Here’s my driver’s license.”

The clerk seemed friendlier after she’d checked Hannah’s name on the license. “We have to be careful who we talk to. The privacy laws, you know.”

The woman looked down on her desk and pulled a clipboard from the pile in front of her. “The two of you can have a seat in the waiting room. Someone will call your name shortly and then escort you back to your father.”

Hannah nodded. “Thank you.”

Most of the seats in the waiting room were taken. Hannah noticed several mothers with toddlers and was thankful that Jeremy was not here. She was determined to keep him out of hospitals as much as possible. Planning to lead into telling him why, she’d asked if he might want to spend a night in a hospital sometime. The very thought seemed to terrify him. Since then, she hadn’t come up with a good way to tell her son that he would most likely need to do just that because he was very sick.

“How’s this?” Mark asked as he gestured to the two empty chairs in the corner.

Hannah nodded and they walked over to them. She’d have to tell everyone about Jeremy’s leukemia diagnosis at some point, but she didn’t want to do that until she had at least unpacked their clothes and gotten them settled.

She wondered how Mark could know who she was thinking about, but he seemed to because they had no sooner sat down in the chairs than he asked, “Which of these kids is closest to Jeremy’s size?”

Mark seemed a little shy about asking.