The Color of Secrets (38 page)

She dropped to the floor, her legs suddenly too weak to support her. Beside her on the hall rug was a tightly folded letter that had dropped out when she opened the envelope.

My dear daughter,

Words can’t express how thrilled I was to receive your letter
. . .

The spidery script blurred as her eyes welled up. Holding the letter in one hand and a sodden tissue in the other, she managed to read the words she had longed to hear. He had never given up hope of finding her, even when his letters to her mother were returned unopened. He had been posted to a base in the south of England in 1955 and had come to Wolverhampton, driving around the streets in the hope of catching sight of her. And now that she had found him, he couldn’t wait to hear her voice.

That night, with Michael by her side, she dialed the number Bill had scribbled beside his signature. As the phone rang, she reached for the tumbler of vodka and orange juice she had beside her to calm her nerves. She took a big swallow. The ringing stopped.

“Bill Willis.”

His voice was deep and gravelly. The American accent threw her. She stared at the phone for a second, unable to speak. Of
course
he was going to have an American accent. She took a deep breath. But it wasn’t the accent. Suddenly, after all these years of searching, he was real. And she wasn’t sure she could handle it. She shot Michael a desperate glance, and he took the receiver from her. After a few sentences of explanation he passed the phone back.

Louisa’s hand shook as she put it to her ear. “Hello
. . .
yes, it’s Louisa. I
. . .
I’m sorry
. . .
it’s just that I can’t quite believe it!”

“You’d better believe it,” the voice replied. “It’s your dad!”

Chapter 41

A
PRIL 1978

On the way to the airport Louisa studied the photograph that had arrived in the mail just two days ago. In the three decades since his romance with her mum, Bill’s face had filled out and the short, slicked hair had become a gray-tinged mane drawn back into a ponytail. It had been a shock to see how he looked now after carrying the image of the youthful GI in her head for so long.

Time had not been kind to Bill or her mother, she thought. His smile was the same, though. And the dark-brown eyes shone with an intensity the old black-and-white snap hadn’t picked up.

“Do you think you’re going to recognize him?” Michael glanced at her as they turned off the road.

“I hope so. He said he’d be wearing a black leather jacket with a yellow rose in the buttonhole.” Just describing him made her heart skip a beat. She looked at her watch. His plane was due to land in half an hour.
Half an hour!
She had been speaking to him once a week for the past two months, but until she could touch him, put her arms around him, part of her would not believe he was real.

She pulled a packet of mints from her handbag, her mouth dry. Despite their long conversations, she felt she still knew very little about him. He had told her that he lived alone and had not remarried after splitting up with Cora-Mae. That had surprised her. She’d expected him to have at least one other child—but apparently there were none. The only blood relatives he had spoken of were his sister, Martha, and her two teenage boys. Louisa wasn’t sure whether she felt disappointed or relieved. To have discovered a half sister or half brother would have been thrilling—but what if they had resented her?

She had to admit she was glad there was no stepmother on the scene. That could have made things very awkward. A wife would have probably wanted to come with him. Louisa smiled. She was going to have him all to herself.

Michael dropped her outside “Arrivals” and went to park the car. She hurried to the big black information boards, frowning as letters and numbers jumbled before her eyes, reassembling into places and times. With a gasp she registered the fact that his plane had landed, that he was already somewhere in the building. She dodged past knots of tourists to where a cluster of people stood craning their necks. Some were holding boards with names on them. She should have thought of that. A trickle of weary-looking people came through the gates pushing trolleys. British tourists, she decided, looking at their sunburned faces. Definitely not from the Detroit flight. She jumped as she felt someone touch her arm. It was Michael.

“Hey, calm down!” He took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Any sign of him?”

She shook her head. Then something caught her eye. A ponytail, thin and curly, resting on the collar of a black leather jacket. The man was bending over his luggage.

“Michael!” she hissed. “Is that him?”

They watched the man straighten up. He turned slightly. There was something yellow on his lapel.

“Bill!” Louisa called out his name, waving frantically. His head whipped around. And suddenly she was running toward him, oblivious of the wall of people on either side, running into his outstretched arms.

They clung to each other, her face pressed against his shoulder, her eyes closed, the scent of warm leather mingling with the perfume of the rose in his buttonhole. She felt his chest rise and fall. They were both fighting back tears. She drew away, suddenly aware that she was crushing the rose, realizing even as she did so that it didn’t matter. She felt embarrassed, awkward. He was a stranger, but he was her father.

They held each other at arm’s length, looking each other over. He was tall. Much taller than her. Her eyes were level with the knot of his tie. A strange tie: black with a pattern of tiny white crosses. As he released her, a thin gold cross on a long chain slipped from behind the tie. He saw her eyes flick to it and smiled. An apologetic smile.

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “It’s
Reverend
Bill Willis—I didn’t tell you because it puts some people off.”

“Oh no!” Michael smiled as he reached forward to shake his hand. “I married a vicar’s daughter!”

They all laughed, the ice broken.

“Just look at you
. . .
” Bill shook his head as he gazed at Louisa. “I can’t tell you how
. . .
” His eyes were brimming. “And Eva? How is she?”

Louisa and Michael exchanged glances.

“We’ll catch up on everything when we get back, shall we?” Michael reached for Bill’s suitcase. “Tom and Rhiannon are desperate to meet you: they’ll be counting the minutes!”

Louisa could feel the adrenaline pumping as she climbed into the back of the car. It was so wonderful to have him sitting here beside her. But she dreaded having to tell him that her mother wouldn’t see him. How would he take it? She told herself that as a man of religion, he should be forgiving. Was that too much to expect?

She frowned as she fastened her seat belt. His revelation about being a reverend perplexed her. He had told her he worked in a hospital. Why had he told an out-and-out lie?

“I’m sorry if I misled you,” he said, as if reading her mind, “but I wasn’t lying. I’m a chaplain at Harper University Hospital.”

She was relieved by this explanation and felt her body relax a little. Still, she was intimidated by the cross, which glinted in the sun as he fastened his seat belt. She had so looked forward to this day, and the days that lay ahead, visualizing the long chats they would have, filling each other in on all the missing years. But how could she open up to a minister of religion? He wasn’t going to approve of Michael when he found out he’d had to get a divorce before he could marry her. She felt her heart sink. He wasn’t going to approve of
her
either.

Bill produced a wallet full of photographs and began passing them to her to look at as Michael pulled away from the airport. She studied them gratefully. They could talk about his family instead of hers on the long journey home. The photos were mainly of her aunt Martha and her cousins, Marvin and Leroy. Louisa was struck by the resemblance between Martha and Rhiannon. She said as much to Bill, who beamed and produced another photo of his sister as a child. Louisa gasped. It was like looking at Rhiannon’s twin.

She told him how worried she’d been about her daughter starting school, and how people had assumed her children had different fathers. She didn’t explain that Michael wasn’t their dad. She needed time to think how she was going to break that to him.

Bill gave her a look of such sadness she thought he was going to break down. “I thought about that a lot, you know, after you were born,” he said. “I worried so much about how people would treat you, being half-black and half-white.” He pursed his lips. “Do you remember I told you on the telephone about the time I was based in England after the war, when I came looking for you in Wolverhampton?”

She nodded.

“It was 1955—eleven years since the last time I was in Britain—and boy, what a difference. You should have seen the faces when I came cruising along the street. They looked at me as if I was something they’d stepped in. I realized then things had gotten as bad as back home in Louisiana. And I thought of you growing up in that place, going to school and all, and I said to myself, I did wrong letting her stay: she would have been better off in Chicago.”

Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. She could hardly bear to think of him searching for her, driving around the streets on the other side of town with no idea she was sitting in a classroom just five miles away.

“It was okay until I was ten years old,” she said, swallowing her tears. “It sounds crazy, I know, but I actually grew up thinking I was white.”

She told him about the move from Devil’s Bridge to Wolverhampton, of the shock of being refused service in the corner shop. Slowly, hesitantly, she began to tell him about the shame she had felt about her color and the lengths she had gone to, to make herself white. But each word was carefully chosen. This was an edited version of her life.

He had pulled a large white handkerchief from his pocket, and she noticed he was blowing his nose a lot. She realized he was hiding too, not wanting her to see him cry.

When they got to Michael’s, the atmosphere lifted. Gina was waiting there with Tom and Rhiannon, who jumped on Bill the minute he got out of the car. Having only ever known one granddad, the children were incredibly excited to acquire another—especially Rhiannon, who made him roll up his sleeve so that they could compare arms, proudly announcing they were the same color.

After lunch Michael went to show Bill the studio while Louisa washed up. They were gone a long time, and when she’d finished tidying up, she slumped into a chair, overwhelmed by an inexplicable feeling of depression. Bill and Michael seemed to be getting along so well. And he was obviously smitten by the children. She felt like the odd one out, and she wanted to cry at the unfairness of it. This was supposed to have been her big day. She knew her feelings were utterly childish, but she couldn’t seem to shake them off. When Michael slipped into the kitchen, he found her sobbing into a tissue.

“I feel so stupid!” she sniffed, her shoulders shaking as he hugged her to him. “It was so exciting when I first saw him: when he showed me those photos, it was like the missing pieces of a jigsaw falling into place. But I can’t
talk
to him, Michael! I’m not sure he even
likes
me!”

“Of course he does!” Michael shook his head. “You saw his face at the airport—he looked like he’d just scooped the jackpot!”

“B
. . .
but
. . .
he
. . .
doesn’t know anything about me.” She sobbed. “And when he does, he’ll be ashamed of me—I know he will!”

Michael held her shoulders, fixing her with his eyes. “He will
not
be ashamed of you! How can you say that? What on earth have you got to be ashamed about?”

“My whole life,” she mumbled. “How can I ever explain about Ray? About Trefor? About you, even?”

“Listen, Lou, he may be a reverend, but he’s not some prude. You should have seen him in the studio! I played a couple of Stones numbers, and he was on his feet, dancing with the kids. He’s really into the music, you know.” He squeezed her shoulders. “And anyone who appreciates my playing can’t be all bad!”

She gave him a wan smile.

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself and on him,” he went on. “It’s bound to be an anticlimax at first, isn’t it? You’ve built him up so much in your head. You’ve got to give him a chance—give yourselves time to get to know each other.”

Later that afternoon Michael took the children back to the farmhouse. Bill was going to be sleeping at Michael’s place—to keep him well away from Eva and Eddie. The idea was that Louisa would stay behind at the barn so that she could spend some time alone with him. But as she waved the others off, she was overtaken by a feeling of dread. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the hours that lay ahead.

“Michael sure is a nice guy,” Bill said as the Jeep disappeared up the track. “You been together long?” He smiled as her face tensed. “The kids don’t call him Dad, do they? And they told me he was taking them home.”

“Sorry.” She plaited her fingers, eyes fixed on her hands. “I should have been straight with you. Michael’s my second husband. My first husband committed suicide ten years ago because of
. . .
” She took a breath. “Because of something in my past he found out about.” She paused, expecting an interrogation. But Bill said nothing. She looked up. His face was unreadable.

“I met Michael when I started looking for you.” She hesitated again. “He was
. . .
he’s divorced. We have separate homes because the farm is really Tom’s—or will be in a few years’ time when he turns eighteen. He
. . .
it’s complicated.” She held her breath, watching his face. A look of sadness clouded his eyes.

“That must have been hard on you, losing your first husband so young.” He reached out and took her hand. “How did you manage, with the kids?”

Instead of replying, she burst into tears. Tears of relief that he wasn’t judging her and tears of pain as the pent-up memories came flooding back. “I’m so afraid of telling you about my life,” she sobbed. “I so wanted you to like me! To love me! But if you knew the truth
. . .
”

“You tell me just as much or as little as you want to,” he whispered. “It won’t make any difference to the way I feel about you: you’re my daughter!” He hugged her to him, and she felt his own tears against her skin. “But I’ll tell you something else, Louisa: when you hear about
my
life, I don’t guess anything you’ve done will seem so bad.”