Fit for a King (27 page)

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alcohol, and he
robbed a grocery store and had the
bad fortune to get caught."

He studied
his neatly shined black shoes. "Well,
to make a long story
short, he went to jail. And while
he was there, sure that God and mankind had given
up on him, a young visiting minister took an
interest
in him. Now this young
hoodlum," he added brightly,
"had
an eye for beauty, and he liked the ladies. And
there was a lovely young girl with whom he was
deeply in love. They'd gone, as the saying goes, a
bit
too far of an evening, and she'd
gotten into a family way. So there she was, all alone, her lover in jail and
a baby on the way."

He
sighed. "The young minister found a capable
lawyer to defend the
young man. He got him off,
since it was a first offense, then proceeded,
in turn,
to find the young man a job, get him married as
quickly as
was feasible to the young lady and move
them into a small
apartment."

Elissa
smiled, her tears drying, sure that the young
minister had been her father. "What a
nice fellow,"
she murmured.

"Yes,
I thought so, too," he sighed, returning the
smile. "To
finish, the young man was so grateful for
what the minister
had done that he entered a seminary
and undertook to repay the man by
carrying on his
good work."

"And the minister, I
daresay, was delighted with his handiwork."

Her father
had a sad, faraway look in his eyes.
"Well, not exactly. You see, the
minister was in a
reserve unit, and it was called up for duty in Vietnam.
The young hoodlum I mentioned came out of combat
without a scratch,
but the minister stepped on a land
mine the very first day he was in Da
Nang." He
sighed, a sound resonant with regret. "He was
killed
before that young man he'd rescued could get in
touch and tell him
that he'd decided to take the
cloth."

Elissa
felt a chill down her spine. "It was you,"
she whispered.

He nodded.
"Me and your mother. I was twenty-three; she was twenty." He leaned
over and took her
hand,
holding it tightly. "And now you know why
we've sheltered you, don't you, my girl? How well
we understand the passions of youth. All too well,
I'm afraid." He smiled at her
gently. "Now tell me
all about
it, and maybe I can help."

She burst
into tears. In all her life, she'd never been
so proud to be his daughter. "I
didn't know," she
whispered.

"Sometimes,"
he replied, "we have to fall into a
hole to touch the
sky. The important thing is to realize
that we're never out
of God's heart, no matter what
we do. And very often it isn't until we hit
bottom that
we reach out for a helping hand."

She hugged him warmly and sighed, feeling at

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peace for the first
time in days. "I could use a helping
hand."

"Here's mine. Lean all you like."

After she
told him what had happened, he took her
into the kitchen,
where they joined her mother for a
cozy supper of cold cuts and iced
tea. Not one word of censure was spoken.

Her mother
seemed to know it all without a word from her husband. She smiled at Elissa
with loving
warmth. "Don't worry," she said gently.
"There's
nothing to be afraid of."

Elissa
cupped her hands around her glass. "I could be pregnant," she said,
putting her most delicate fear into words.

"Does he know?" Tina asked.

"Oh, yes," she said,
looking up. "He made me
promise to get
in touch with him if that happened.
But
I can't see that it would help, to back him into a
corner. He loves Bess. I can't tie him to me for
all
the wrong reasons."

"A
wise decision," her father remarked. "But I
think you
underestimate the gentleman's feelings. In
fatuation dies a
natural death without
anything
to feed
it; he'll get over
Bess soon enough—if he's even still
interested in her, that is."

"But he's got her now.
She's going to divorce her husband," Elissa protested.

"Is
she?" Mr. Dean looked at her over his glasses

and grinned.
"Well, we'll see, won't we? Eat your
ham, darling."

She glanced from one to the
other. "Aren't you
upset?" she
began hesitantly.

Tina lifted her thin eyebrows. "About what,
dear?"

"The baby, if there is one!"

"I like babies," Tina said.

"So do I," her father seconded.

"But it will be..." Elissa hesitated.

"A
baby," Tina finished for her. "Darling, in case it's escaped your
notice, I've brought quite a number
of unwed mothers into the
congregation in years past, and the children have been raised in the church.
Little
babies aren't responsible for the circumstances of
their
birth. They're just babies, and we love them.
Now do eat your ham, Elissa. For all we
know you
may already be eating for two."

Elissa
sighed. She'd never understand them, but
she certainly did
love them. "What's your sermon
going to be on?" she asked her
father.

He looked
at her gently. "On learning to forgive
ourselves, after God
has. Sometimes He punishes us
much less than we punish ourselves, you
know."

She flushed, wondering how he'd
learned to read
her mind so accurately.
"I imagine we'll all learn
from
it, then," she murmured.

He winked
at his wife. "Yes, I hope we will," he
replied, and then he concentrated on his
meal.

Warchief was back in his cage soon afterward,

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making enough noise
to wake the dead. Elissa carried
him into her room, saying a quick good-night
before
she closed the door.

"Be quiet, or you'll get
us thrown out!" she raged
at him.

"Hellllp!" he screamed. "Let me out!"

"Go
to sleep," she muttered, pulling his beak to
ward her to kiss his
green head. He made a parroty
sound and wolf-whistled softly. She kissed
him again,
putting
the cover over his cage.

As she
slid into bed, minutes later, she wondered
how King was and if he was happy now. She
hoped he was. She hoped, too, that she wouldn't be preg
nant. Despite the fact that she wanted his child very
much, it wouldn't be fair to tear him between Bess
and her own baby. For his own
happiness, she had to
let him go.
She turned her face into the pillow, thank
ing God for loving parents and the hope of a new
beginning.

But hope wasn't a good enough
precaution. Six
weeks later, after horrible
bouts of morning sickness and fatigue, she went to her family doctor to have
the
necessary tests. And he
confirmed her pregnancy.

She
didn't tell her parents. Despite their support,
which she knew she
could count on, she had to come
to grips with her situation alone. She went
downtown
to a quiet restaurant and drank coffee for two hours,
until she remembered that coffee wasn't good for
pregnant women. She
switched to diet drinks and then

worried about the
additives in them. Tea and coffee
and most carbonated drinks had
caffeine, herbal tea nauseated her, and she hated plain water. Finally she
decided that her choices had to be decaffeinated coffee, milk and Perrier.
Those should carry her through
the next several months.

The thought of the
baby was new and delicate, and
she sat pondering it through a fog of
confusion.
Would
it be a boy or a girl? Would it have her col
oring
or King's? She smiled, thinking about dark eyes
in a dark complexion and holding the tiny life in her
arms and
rocking it on soft summer nights.

The more she considered the
future, the more ap
pealing it became. She
wouldn't have King, but she'd
have a
tiny part of him. Someone to hold and love
and be loved by. Maybe that
was her compensation
for a broken heart. She
smiled, overwhelmed by ten
derness.
She could still work; pregnancy wouldn't hamper designing clothes. And her
parents weren't
going to throw her
out in the street, although she wor
ried
about the impact her unwed-mother status was
going to have on her father's congregation. She might
get a cottage farther up or down the coast to
prevent
any gossip from harming his
career. He'd find it hard to get another job at his age, despite his protests.
He
loved her, but she loved him, too,
and she wasn't
going to be the cause
of any grief to her parents. Well,
she'd
think about that later.

Right now, the thing was to get back on her feet.

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She'd grieved so for
King that she could hardly func
tion. She had to learn to live with the fact
that he
wasn't coming after her. She'd spent the past few
weeks
gazing hopefully at the telephone and jumping
every time it rang.
Cars slowing down near the house threw her into a tizzy. She checked the
mailbox every
day
with wide, hopeful eyes.

But there
were no phone calls from Oklahoma. No visitors. And no letters. Eventually even
her stubborn
pride gave up. King finally had Bess, and Elissa was
well and
truly out of his life. So she began to make
plans of her own. She
was going to move someplace
far away, and she wasn't going to tell
anyone where she was going, not even her parents. She'd write to
them, but
she'd find one of those forwarding-address
places that would
confuse the postmarks. Yes, she had
to do this on her own. She and the
child would grow
close over the years, and someday she'd tell him
about his
father.

That was
when she remembered that King didn't
know where his own father was and had
always
blamed the
man for running out on him. She'd de
cided
when Margaret told her about it that one day
she'd tell King where his
father was and make sure
that he got to sit
down and talk with him, to hear his
side
of it. But for now, she didn't have the right to
deny King at least the knowledge of this child. She'd
promised.

She
went home, resigned to do the right thing, no

matter how much it
hurt. Bess would be there, surely,
whether or not the divorce was final.
Maybe they
were
preparing for the wedding already. She hesi
tated,
but in the end she reached for the phone and
called the number King had once given her in case she needed to reach
him at the ranch.

Her
parents were visiting a sick member of the con
gregation, so it was
a good time to make the call. She
didn't want them to see her go to
pieces when she
tried
to tell King what had happened.

It rang
once, twice, three times, four. She was about
to hang up when a
breathless, familiar voice came
over the line.

"Hello?"

"Bess?" Elissa faltered.

"Oh,
it's Elissa, isn't it?" came the enthusiastic reply. "Kingston isn't
here right now, I'm afraid,
but..."

Elissa paused. "Do you know where he is?"

"Not offhand, but I can take a message."

"No.
Thank you." She hesitated, desperate to ask
if the divorce had
gone through. She settled for, "Is
Bobby doing all
right?"

"He's
already back at work," Bess said, her voice oddly soft, "cast,
crutches and all. I...are you sure I
can't take a message for Kingston? I'm not sure he'll
be home tonight, but I could—"

"No.
I'm glad your...I'm glad Bobby is doing
well. Goodbye."