Mountain Song (20 page)

Nobody else moved or
spoke.

“Mama, you’re squashing
me!” A round face appeared at her hip as small hands tugged her skirt out of
the way.

“I’m sorry, pet,”
Claudia breathed, her eyes never leaving Andy.

Walk away
, Andy’s mind screamed.
Pretend you
saw nothing
. He had done his duty, and then some. No one could argue that. He
was the one who had been wronged, deceived. He’d never asked for this
disruption of his perfectly good life...

His gaze traveled from
Claudia’s face down her rigid body, to the small hand and big, curious eyes in
a round face. Without even being aware of moving forward, Andy closed the
distance between them, knelt down. The boy pushed his way past his mother,
regarded him with open curiosity.

“Are you a doctor?”

“Yes. I am. Your
great-grandma...”

He looked like his
picture. His eyes were brighter, bigger, in person, and fringed with the most
perfect set of black lashes Andy had ever seen. His hair was messier, sticking
up on one side where he might have napped on it. A trace of a smudge above his
lip gave him a raffish, comical look. Chocolate milk, Andy would wager. “…She
needed her leg fixed up.”

“You fix it?”

“No, I didn’t do the
surgery. But a friend of mine did.”

The boy’s lips turned
down the slightest bit at the corners.

“How come? You didn’t
learn how yet?”

For a moment there was
quiet, and then Andy smiled.

He couldn’t help it.

“Well, see, all of us
doctors are in charge of different things. Fixing legs, that’s not really my
area.”

Paul looked at him
sympathetically. “S’okay. I bet if you practice they might let you sometime. Don’t
feel bad that you don’t know how yet. It’s prob’ly like with my training
wheels. Right, Mama?”

Andy glanced at the
hand hanging helplessly by her son’s ear, saw the tension in the nails dug into
the white flesh of the palm. Didn’t dare look up.

“Right,” she said
faintly.

He could still get
away. It would be messy, but doable. They already thought he was a jerk. No,
worse. Their opinion of him couldn’t get any lower, as a matter of fact, so why
didn’t he just stand and walk out the door?

“What’s this for?”
Paul asked, and then his small fist shot out and took hold of the stethoscope
draped around Andy’s neck. He was so close Andy could feel his breath, sweeter
than he’d ever imagined, on his cheek.

“That’s...” Weakly, he
unhooked the instrument, pressed it into the boy’s hands. Was startled at the
sudden warmth in his grasp. “It’s a tool I use for listening to people’s
hearts.”

Paul’s eyes widened. “Cool!
What else you got?”

Andy hesitated. From
the bed came the sound of Bea clearing her throat.

“A whole bag of
tricks, I’m sure,” she said, and Andy was almost certain he detected a bit of
mischief in her voice. “Go on now, Andy. Leave me to catch up with Jack. Show
the boy around your hospital.”

CHAPTER TEN

“And he had this
thing,” Paul said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve after a deep draw on his
milk.

“Use your napkin,
honey, not your sleeve,” Claudia chided softly.

She was on autopilot. Every
word she spoke, every step she took, every gesture felt like someone else had
made it. She could barely remember how she’d gotten here from the hospital. There
had been that interminably long time that Paul was gone, following Andy out the
door like a little puppy, excited by the prospect of a tour of the hospital. She
had counted seconds as her father’s voice mixed with Bea’s in a swirl of
comforting familiarity while she hunched in her chair, hugging her arms to her
chest, waiting, waiting.

For what? When Andy
had finally returned with Paul, she had no idea how much later, they had both
been grinning, Andy wearing a dazed expression as though it was him, not her
son, who had just had a chance to explore untold wonders. Andy seemed almost
oblivious to the abrupt interruption in conversation as the three of them
waited expectantly for him to say something.

“Sorry Mama. This
thing, you know, that is in your body, right in here.” Paul jabbed at his chest
with a thumb. “‘Cept his was plastic. He uses it to show people stuff.”

“A heart?” Jack
queried, buttering a roll. How her father found the appetite to eat, she had no
idea. He hadn’t said one word to her about Andy, even though she was certain he’d
known right away who he was.

Was everyone going
crazy? Or were they all trying to make
her
crazy? It certainly felt that way. Nothing was going the way it was supposed
to. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, with its promise of the flight, the
return home, where she could begin to pretend this had all been one long
nightmare.

“Not a heart.” Paul
frowned in concentration. “I know how to draw a heart.”

“Of course,” Jack said
gravely.

Paul brightened,
remembering. “I know. If you smoke a cigarette, it gets all black and dirty and
sick. Dr. Andy said it’s terrible to smoke. I’m never going to smoke,” he added
with conviction.

“A lung!” Jack said
triumphantly.

“Yeah! A lung. It was
funny looking.”

“I bet.”

“You ever see a lung,
Mama?”

“No,” she said
faintly.

The waiter mercifully
arrived to take their order. Lifting his eyebrow at Claudia, Jack conferred
with the waiter and finally ordered for everyone. Claudia toyed with a fork,
dragging the tines along the starched fabric of the tablecloth.

“Can I go watch the
fish until dinner, please, Mama?”

“May I,” she
corrected, following his excited gaze to the large glowing aquarium that lined
a wall of the restaurant. “Yes, I suppose.”

Paul wiggled out of
his chair and threaded his way among the tables to the tank. The restaurant was
a lively, noisy place, full of couples and families. But even with her father
there, Claudia felt very much alone.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,”
she said abruptly. “Now that you’re here, and everything seems to be fine with
Bea.”

Neither of them spoke
for a minute. The waiter slid drinks in front of them, and Claudia took a
grateful sip of her hot tea. Despite the unseasonable warmth of the evening,
she felt cold in her light dress.

“Are you sure that’s
what you ought to do?”

She glanced up,
searched for clues in her father’s faded blue eyes, read only concern there.

“I don’t understand. I—why
would I stay?”

“Shall I spell it out,
Honey? That earnest young man...”

Claudia bit her lower
lip. “I thought you’d be, well, angry. About...Andy.”

“Do you want me to be
angry?”

“No. Yes. I don’t
know. I mean, that’s
him
. Andy.” She
couldn’t bear to be any more specific: her son’s father, the one who wanted no
part of him, who dared nonetheless to lead Paul off like the Pied Piper and
dazzle him, to appeal to a little boy’s sense of curiosity and wonder.

“I know who he is,
Claudia.”

Claudia bent her head,
concentrated on the invisible design she was tracing. “I don’t understand. Why
aren’t you upset?”

From the corner of her
eye she saw her father shrug. “What would be the point? Things happened a long
time ago. People made mistakes.”

Who? Her, certainly,
though her family had never been cruel enough to rub her face in it. Oh, their
disapproval and disappointment in her had been plenty noticeable, if wordless,
during those long months when her body swelled and her heart broke.

Though their ire
disappeared like smoke the day Paul was born, when her father and her sisters and
their families shared her joy with all their hearts. Never again did any of
them speak of the matter of his conception.

“I always felt like
I...” Claudia struggled with her words, wanting to find the right ones. “I let
you down. You know, coming home expecting a baby. Disgracing the family.”

“You never disgraced
us.” Jack’s response was sharp, quick. When he continued though, his voice was
gentle. “We were just so worried about you. You were such a young girl,
still...maturing, still growing up. You surprised us all with your strength
when Paul came.”

Claudia allowed
herself a small smile. Her one triumph, the one thing she could be proud of for
the rest of her life. Paul.

But the smile melted
away as she thought of the long road ahead, as Paul would discover that
his
father hadn’t wanted him,
his
father had thrown away the chance to
be a part of his life. That all that was left of the brief love that created
him was the child support check that would arrive, she knew, promptly every
month.

“Do you love him?”

“What?”

“Andy. Do you still
love him?”

Claudia clenched her
fist around a fold of the tablecloth, struggled to take a breath. “I—whatever
makes you ask that?”

Again, her father
shrugged, though now he was watching her carefully. “The way you two looked at
each other. Or rather, avoided looking at each other today.”

“It’s just awkward,”
she said. “The whole situation is so awkward. You can’t expect us to, you know,
just exchange pleasantries after everything that’s happened. I never meant to
see him again,” she added.

“I know. Count on your
grandmother to rig that one. You got to hand it to the old gal.”

“You sound like you’re
on her side! What has she told you?”

“Nothing. Come on,
Sweetheart, you were there. I never expected him to walk through that door. Though
it might have been nice if I’d had a little warning.”

“You and everyone
else! She didn’t give
me
any warning,
just let him walk into the room five minutes after I got to town and—and—”

“And fall in love with
you all over again?”

“I—I didn’t say
that.”

“Claudia.” Jack
reached across the table and grasped her hands, pressing her fingers lightly
until she finally relaxed a little. She looked up into his eyes, wanted so much
to give in to the comfort she saw reflected back. “If you do love him...Well, I
suppose it’s not really my business, but I would hate to see you walk away
without doing your best to make it work.”

Tears pooled, but her
father held on, not allowing her to brush them away. They fell soundlessly to
the table, staining the fabric.

“Dad, don’t you see? It’s
not me
. It’s...him. Andy doesn’t want
us. Doesn’t want to be a father.”

“I saw him with Paul. Give
him a chance. You had nine months to fall in love with Paul before he was ever
born. A man doesn’t know what it means to be a father until he holds a child in
his arms for the first time.”

Claudia shook her
head, squeezed her eyes shut. How she wanted to believe that. But her heart had
been damaged enough, buffeted around in the storm of the week’s events.

“Sweetheart,” her
father continued, his voice strong and gentle at the same time. “It’s been
hard, without your mother. I’m not making excuses, but there were many times I
didn’t know the right thing to do. A grown man, with three girls and a business
to run...well, I made so many mistakes. With you, I thought if I just tried
hard enough, I could protect you from ever getting hurt. I tried to give you
things, all the pretty things a young girl likes, thinking it might make up
somehow for your mama being gone.”

“Oh, Dad, you never needed—”

“Hush. This is
important. The worst mistake I ever made was turning Andy away. All those times
he called, pleaded with me to put you on the phone. I thought if we just sent
him away, closed the door on his memory, it would be better for everyone. But
it isn’t. That boy—” He gestured at Paul, who was watching the glimmering
shapes of the tropical fish with fascination— “deserves better. He
deserves a father. Now you go and get him one.”

Finally, he released
her hands, waited as she dug in her purse for a tissue.

“It’s too late,”
Claudia said softly, dabbing at her eyes. “He doesn’t want us anymore.”

Andy raised the flask
to his lips and drank deeply, the potent liquid burning a path down his throat.
Outside his picture window, twilight slowly melted into night. Clouds scudded
across the few stars that studded the sky.

He took another
swallow. Andy wasn’t well acquainted with the comforts whiskey could provide. But
tonight seemed like a night that called for a little fortification.

He held the flask up,
turning it in the lamplight. It was made of old silver, tarnished and faintly
etched with his father’s initials. One of the few treasures the man had ever
had, along with the pocket watch his wife had given him on their wedding day.