Finding Emma (10 page)

“At least I tried,” Jack mumbled. His face blazed red. If anything, that whole debacle should earn him some brownie points for later on.

Emmie's laughter drifted along with the late morning breeze. A huge smile wreathed her face as she danced along the grass. When she reached the porch, she plopped down on the top step and waited for Daisy to reach her. Dottie pulled away from him to pour Emmie a glass of iced tea. Emmie gulped it down, drained of every drop before she handed it back.

“Thanks, Grandma. Can Daisy have some too?” A cheeky smile took place on her face as she waited for another glass.

“Your dog can drink out of that pool, thank-you-very-much. I'm not wasting my tea on any animal that would lap it up with her tongue.” Dottie set the pitcher of tea back on the table and folded her arms.

“Like this?” Emmie stuck her tongue in her glass and tried to imitate her puppy.

Dottie scowled while Jack just laughed. He shooed her away before she could get into more trouble and pulled Dottie back in the swing until she rested back against his arm. Dottie shook her head.

“That girl ...” she said.

Jack rubbed her arm. “Oh, leave her be. That puppy is her only playmate. She needs to be around other kids, having that dog as her only friend can't be all that good for her. What about when she goes off to school?”

Dottie's body stiffened in his arms. She pulled away from his body and sat up straight.

“Now, Dottie --” Jack said.

Dottie turned and looked at him, the fury evident from the darts her eyes shot at him. Back in the day, she used to be pretty good at darts. Guess she hasn't lost the eye for it.

“Don't you now Dottie me, Jack Henry! Are you telling me how to raise our granddaughter?” Dottie bristled under the imagined accusation.

If Jack didn't know better, he'd swear he saw steam coming out of her ears. He made it a point to keep his tone down, steady and calm, just like one would when about to corner a skittish colt. He patted her hand and didn't flinch when she moved it away. Instead, he grabbed her hand and entwined his fingers with hers. She jerked a bit but settled down when he wouldn't let go.

“All I'm sayin', Dottie mine, is that our little girl is growing up and she needs other playmates than just two old bitties tinkering around the house. She'll head to school in another year and then what? That little girl is itchin' to spread her wings. She needs to find other girls to do the same.”

Emmie pranced around the yard, in and out of the kiddie pool with Daisy following after her. His little angel. He smiled as he watched her and glanced at Dottie, sure she would be smiling too. Except she wasn't.

“Jack, I --” Dottie stopped, pursed her lips and wouldn't continue.

Jack waited, gave her space to compose her thoughts, but when he realized she wasn't going to budge, he decided to continue.

“The boys want to meet her too. I think Doug is a bit hurt that I haven't brought her around yet.”

Dottie didn't look at him. The topic of Doug was one they tried to avoid. While it took years for Jack to forgive what happened, he knew Dottie never would. Forgive herself or Doug. When Jack returned from the war, he found out that Doug had taken his promise of watching over Dottie quite literal. He'd fallen in love with her. Jack knew he'd never recovered. It's why he was still single. His heart was already taken.

“Too bad for Doug,” Dottie muttered. Jack bit his lip. Years of silence on the subject didn't mean it went away.

Emmie flopped herself down on the front lawn. Jack chuckled as he watched Daisy jump all over her.

“She’s lonely, Dot,” Jack said. “Don't you remember our Mary at this age? Why, we couldn't keep her home long enough to brush her hair. And if she wasn't over at Jenna’s house, then Jenna was here, badgering us.”

The memories of the tight friendships they'd built over the years, the neighbors who'd lived next door through the course of their lives and the friends Mary used to bring home filled his heart. He squeezed Dottie's hand, wanting to share the happiness with her, but her hand remained still. He sighed. And things were looking on the bright side this morning.

“Mary was a little older than Emmie.” Dottie whispered into the gentle summer breeze. Jack almost didn't hear her.

“How is Mary? Have you heard from her?”

He was desperate to hear about his daughter, but he squashed the pain in his heart down. Jack looked down and noticed Dottie's hand was white. He unlaced his fingers from hers and began to rub the circulation back. Dottie didn't notice, she just sat there, still, only the rise of her chest let him know she were still breathing.

“No.”

“No? No, what?” Jack asked.

A deep sigh escaped out of Dottie's mouth. Her shoulders slumped as if the weight of that one words was too hard to bear.

“No Jack, I haven't heard from Mary. She's dead to me, to us. She died the moment we got Emmie.”

Jack turned and stared at her in shock. He didn't know the woman who sat beside him. Dead to her? Our daughter? Jack pulled his hand away from hers. He watched as her hand fell to the cushion, a dead weight.

“Emmie is all that matters now. Don't you understand? She's our second chance.” Dottie's voice broke. Tears filled her eyes before trickled down her wrinkled cheeks.

Jack brushed them away with his thumb. He waited. This was the woman he knew and loved. Where she went moments ago he had no idea, but he'd do his best to ensure she never went back there.

A bee buzzed by the front porch and landed in the hanging baskets. Jack watched as it whisked its way through the flowers. Emmie's laughter echoed through the yard. He thought back to the days when Mary was a little girl. They didn't have a pool, but she sure loved to jump through the sprinkler.

“Okay. As long as she stays close by and doesn't go anywhere without one of us knowing.” Dottie exhaled long and hard.

It hurt Jack's heart to know how tough that was for Dottie. For her to give up control. It shouldn't have been.

“Just the neighbor. We can go over and introduce ourselves, just like the old days. What do you say?”

Dottie angled her body until she faced Jack on the bench. He pushed his foot down so they stopped rocking. A pained look filled her eyes as she grabbed onto Jack's hands. Her grip surprised him. He felt her nails dig into the palm of his hand. He searched her face as he tried to understand the reason for the sudden desperation.

“I've already lost one daughter, Jack, I can't lose another. Emmie is all that matters. Jack, promise me. Promise me you won't lose her too.” Dottie pleaded with him.

Jack was stunned into silence. What is going on?

With a flick of his wrist, Jack managed to loosen the grip Dottie held. He took her ice cold hands into his and rubbed them. He swallowed, shaken by Dottie's words. Jack's perfect domain crumbled like a stack of cards. Emmie played in the pool, oblivious to the cracks in the facade of their perfect family. Jack drank in the face of the woman who sat beside him. The face of the woman he didn't recognize. A sad smile settled on his lips, his voice cracked as he tried to echo the promise Dottie needed from him.

“I promise, Dottie-mine. I will do whatever it takes to keep the girls of my heart safe. I promise.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Dottie had coaxed Emmie to have a nap with her, which left Jack to fend for himself. He puttered around in the yard, dragged the pool to the backyard since he knew a certain little miss would want to splash in there later, and made himself a peanut butter sandwich.

Without thinking, he cut the crust off the bread and sat down to eat it at the kitchen table. It wasn't until he took a bite of the crustless sandwich that he realized what he'd done. Mary would only eat her sandwiches if the crust was off. It used to be a battle of wills between her and Dottie.

Jack set the sandwich back down on the plate. He missed his daughter. Emmie did a lot to fill that empty hole in his heart, but it wasn't enough. A lot of years had passed since he last spoke to her. Even more since he'd last seen her.

He pushed the plate away and walked into the front room. One wall was covered in framed pictures. Many of them were of Mary as a child. Jack stared at his favorite photo, taken on a summer day. Jack carried Mary on his shoulders, her smile wide as she clung to the sides of his head. He could still hear her laughter, how it rang out across the park. They'd been having a picnic. It had been a good day.

He lifted the photo off its hook on the wall and carried it to the old desk by the back door. Dottie normally kept a little phone book there, but it was covered in pictures Emmie had drawn, receipts, and odd lists Dottie would make.

Jack pulled out the drawer and searched inside, pushing aside pens, pencils, rulers but didn't find the phone book. He pushed the drawer back in and grunted. Where was that phonebook?

Jack walked back into the front room. Their old china cabinet sat against the wall. Sometimes Dottie kept papers in those drawers. He once found their wills shoved in there. That was at the beginning of this new phase with Dottie. Her forgetfulness. Now he never knew where to find things. Emmie called it Grandma's hide and seek game. Hide and seek, indeed.

Jack grumbled under his breath. Receipts from years ago cluttered the drawers. Seriously. He grabbed a wad and fingered through them before he tossed them in the trash can beside the cabinet. Why keep such senseless junk around? Dottie used to be so fastidious about stuff like this.

He spied Dottie's knitting bag. Hmmm, sometimes she hides things in there she didn't want Emmie to find. Jack crouched down and riffled through the bag. At the very bottom lay the phone book. He opened the tab that contained Mary's phone number, the only link to Mary they had. But it had been crossed out with black marker.

Jack scratched his head. Why would Dottie mark out Mary's phone number?

He tried to recall what the numbers were. He could barely make out a few of them, but not enough. He flipped through the book; they had to have the number of that place Mary would stay.

He glanced at the kitchen table where his crustless sandwich sat. What he was about to do felt taboo. Dottie was the go between them and Mary, never Jack. Mary would take his money, but not his calls. With a grumble under his breath, Jack ambled over to the desk in the kitchen, pulled out the stool and sat down. If a father wanted to call his daughter, there was no reason why he shouldn't. No reason indeed.

He opened the book, found the number and punched in the numbers. After the third ring, he was about to hang up. But someone answered.

“Martha Dover's House, how can I help you today?” A soft, sweet voice answered the phone. Not what he expected from a halfway house located in the inner city of Seattle.

“Yeah, um, I'd like to speak to Mary Henry, please.” Jack cleared his throat. He pulled out a pen from a jar on the desk and began to doodle on a pad of paper.

“Is she a resident, sir?”

Jack glanced behind him again. He should have just gotten Dottie to call.

“Sir?”

“A resident? She stays there off and on I believe. Is she there now?” The way the sweet voice said the word resident made Jack feel like it was a hospital or something.

“I'm sorry, I don't recognize the name. May I place you on hold while I go through our files?”

Did they have a lot of residents? He remembered it being littered with druggies and messed up kids, much like Mary, but were there too many to recognize his daughter's name? He'd been sending money there for years.

The first and only time he'd been to the Martha Dover house was after Mary ran away, at age of sixteen. He still carried the note she left him in his wallet.

Gone to live my own life. You'll always be my knight in shining armor, but I don't need to be rescued. I love you Daddy. Love, your Princess.

Jack didn't believe her. She was too young and had no idea what it meant to live your own life. Of course she needed to be rescued. That's what fathers did. Except she was nowhere to be found. He'd managed to trace her to the halfway, house but when he arrived in his pickup, she hadn't been seen for over a week.

He remembered thinking there was no way his daughter would be living at a halfway house, especially not amongst the unseemly crowd which loitered around the front yard. Mary had been raised differently, not like these kids. A little girl from a small lake town didn't do drugs. Or so he thought.

“Sir, I'm sorry for the delay. I found your daughter's file. I have Dr. Shepherd, our counselor here at Martha's House, who would like to speak to you about your daughter. May I transfer you?” The voice didn't sound so sweet anymore.

Even before he could reply, the elevator music came on. Jack groaned and swiped at his bald head. He just wanted to talk to his daughter, not some counselor.

The last time he saw his daughter was at a coffee shop. Dottie arranged for them to meet. She was supposed to have been there too, but bowed out last minute. Something about a hair appointment. Mary was livid when she saw him alone in the pickup. She almost left, turned her back on him and walked down the sidewalk. She would have walked away without a backward glance too, if Jack hadn't called her name. When she turned, the greeting he'd been about to give caught in his throat.

That wasn't his daughter, it was just her shell. Gone was the vibrant little girl, so full of life and laughter. In her place stood a strung out teen, hair limp and tattered, her face shrunken and her body half its size. Her clothes hung on her, her girlish curves vanished. Dottie had warned him she was addicted to drugs, but he didn't believe her. Didn't want to.

“Come have a cup of coffee with me. It's been too long.”

Jack begged Mary to spend time with him. He was her father. Her knight in shining armor. Why did she keep him at arm’s length? All he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and never let her go.

He took a step towards her, but she stepped back, as if she couldn't bear to be seen close to him. Jack walked into the coffee shop and prayed Mary followed him. He didn't look behind him until he was at the counter and ordered his coffee and muffin. Mary ordered a hot chocolate and cookie before she turned away from him and walked to a table. Jack bought two cookies and plunked them down in front of his half-starved daughter.

She ate the first cookie in three bites before she even touched her hot chocolate. Jack drank in the sight of her face, her eyes, the shape her nose and waited to see if she would begrudge him a smile. She never did. He didn't know what to say, how to break the silence that stretched between them. The murmur of the other customers enhanced the awkwardness. Jack fiddled with his coffee mug while Mary stared at hers.

“Come home, Mary.” He didn't realize he voiced his thoughts until Mary's head popped up and she laughed. Jack winced at the bitterness emanating from his daughter.

“Home? Home to what, Dad? To make bread in the afternoons and knit endless amounts of baby hats for the hospital? To roam the streets of a small town where the only fun is getting dressed in pajamas and follow some lame bagpipe band down the main street on a Saturday night?” Mary leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

A twinge of pain plucked at his heart. He thought she liked doing that with him. It was their tradition, the Scottish Pipe Band Parade.

“I wanted a life, Dad.” Mary spread her arms out. “It might not be the life you wanted for me, but it's my life. The one I chose.” She hugged her body with her arms again. Jack wasn't sure if she were cold or defiant.

“It wasn't a bad life, Princess. Was I really that bad? Did I make you run away?” Jack couldn't look in her eyes.

“It's Mom's life I ran away from, not yours.” Jack lifted his head up, surprised at what she'd admitted.

“Then why won't you take my calls?”

Mary's head bowed and a tear trickled down her cheek. “Look at me Dad. I'm not exactly that little girl you knew.” Her fingers, nails bitten down except for her pinkie, drilled on the table.

“Come home.” Jack knew she wouldn't, but he had to say it.

“No.”

One small word, yet it held the ability to shatter dreams.

Jack looked around the coffee shop. There was nothing unique about it. It looked like the same one in his town. Yet it felt colder, more hostile.

“Where are you staying?”

Mary shrugged. “Here and there. Mom calls the Martha House when she needs to get in touch. They'll give me the message when I'm around.”

That night, when Jack sat with Dottie at their kitchen table, eating alone, he told her to include money in the monthly parcel she sent to Mary. Dottie refused. She wasn't going to supply Mary's drug habit. They agreed to send money to the halfway house instead.

When Dottie brought home Emmie, she said they didn't need to send any more money to Mary. He didn't ask any questions then, but he should have.

“Mr. Henry?” Jack dropped his pen. He looked about the kitchen. Still alone.

“Yes?”

“This is Dr. Shepherd. I'm sorry it took so long, but I was just going over your daughter's file. How can I help you, Mr. Henry?” The female doctor's voice sounded calm, soothing even. Too calm. Too smooth.

How can I help you? Didn't I make myself plain to the gal who answered the phone?

“I just want to speak with my daughter. Is she there?” Jack sat straight, determination filled his spirit.

Above him, a creak sounded. Footsteps pounded on the floor. Emmie was up. Jack glanced at the clock. He was out of time. The voice on the phone continued to speak, but the words were mumbled. One word caught his attention, forced him to stand and stare at the stairway. He waited for Emmie to come down.

“I'm sorry? I don't think I heard you right.”

“I'm sorry Mr. Henry. But Mary --”

Emmie stood on the steps and rubbed her eyes with her fist. Her hair was all askew. Again. He listened to the woman on the phone, his shoulders tight as his world crashed around him. His vision blurred as dark circles swam before him. Jack grabbed hold of the chair, his knuckles white as he clenched it. Emmie stared at him, unaware of what was happening.

“Papa?”

“Mr. Henry? Sir, are you there?”

Jack pulled the phone away from his ear. His hand shook. He brought the phone back up to his ear.

“Um, thank you. Sorry to bother you. You have a good day now.”

“Mr. Henry, did you hear me? Mr. Henry--” Jack placed the phone back on the receiver. His chest felt tight. He tried to take a deep breath, but a shallow one was all he could muster. He slowly sat back down in the chair. The sun still shone. The bees still buzzed around the flowers he'd placed in the window planter. All was right with his world, but him. Tiny footsteps echoed against the kitchen floor. Jack turned and stared at his precious granddaughter.

“Papa?”

Jack reached out his arms and waited for Emmie to throw herself into them. The moment it took her to do so felt like years. Two years to be exact. If Jack had known two years ago that bringing Emmie home would destroy his heart, he never would have let Dottie go and fetch her alone.

Never. He would forever regret that he did.