The Reunion (15 page)

D
ave had enjoyed spending the day with Karen and didn’t want it to end. After Karen picked him up at the airport, they had driven back to Southlake and eaten lunch together. She had brought the box of cards and envelopes with her, the ones written by Aaron Miller to her and Steve when they were kids. During lunch, he’d looked them over. They didn’t yield many clues. Aaron had clearly written simple sentences that any child could read.

But a few lines had backed up the one clue Karen had found on the faded postmark: that Aaron had mailed them from somewhere in Florida.

It’s very hot here, is it hot there in Texas?

I went to the beach yesterday, do you like to swim?

It never snows here, do you ever see snow?

Dave’s mom had been right—it was pretty silly for him to fly out here like this; he could have asked her to scan them and send them as an email attachment and achieved the same result. He had flown out here for one reason. To spend more time with her.

Dave set the cards back in the box Karen had brought them in. He looked up and saw her coming back from the ladies’ room. They were at a Starbucks a few blocks away from the restaurant where they’d eaten lunch.

She sat in her chair and picked up her cup. “I can’t believe you have to fly back already.”

“I know. I wasn’t thinking about the extra holiday traffic. All the flights that leave later this evening were booked solid. This was the only one that had any open seats.” He glanced at his watch. She would need to drop him off at the airport in two hours. He’d only brought a carry-on bag but still needed time to get through security.

She sipped her latte. “There weren’t any flights you could take tomorrow? Or maybe Sunday afternoon? Then you could visit my church. I could drop you off after lunch.”

Dave loved hearing her talk like this; she didn’t want him to leave, either. “The thing is, my son has a basketball game tomorrow afternoon. I promised him I wouldn’t miss any home games.”

Karen smiled. “I’m glad. That’s a good thing.” She sighed. “I think I’d like to meet Jake someday.”

“Hey,” Dave said. “I never showed you his picture. I’ve got some on my phone.” He pulled it out and flipped around till he found them. “Here, this one’s pretty recent.” He handed her the phone. “We were in Houston at a basketball tournament. Actually, flip through the next four or five. They’re all of him in Houston.” As she did, he watched her eyes.

She looked up. “Dave, that is one seriously handsome young man.”

“Isn’t he?”

“No, I mean . . . he’s really a nice-looking guy. He doesn’t have a girlfriend?”

“No one serious. Not yet anyway.”

“I can see the resemblance,” she said. “Especially in the eyes.”

“You think?”

She nodded. “He doesn’t seem very tall, for a basketball player, I mean.”

“He’s not. Just a little taller than me. He plays point guard, when he gets to play. He’s on second string. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s just happy to be on the team.”

She handed the phone back. They sat in silence a few moments. Dave had a number of questions he still wanted to ask her about her childhood. He’d written them down on the plane ride here that morning, back when he was still fooling himself that the purpose of this trip was finding Aaron Miller. They were the kind of questions he thought might stir up some additional clues. But that’s not how he wanted to spend their last moments together.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

He looked into her eyes, and an idea suddenly popped into his head. “Come back with me?”

“What?”

“Come back to Florida with me . . . tonight.”

Her eyes lit up. “Tonight? You mean fly back with you now?”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, I can’t afford something like that.”

“Not a problem. Gold debit card. I’d pay for it.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure I can. It’ll help with my research. You’re the daughter of the man we’re searching for. You used to live there. It’s just an hour away from where I live. Maybe going back there in person will jog some fresh memories from your childhood. And . . . I’d get to spend more time with you.”

“But he might not be living there, Dave. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“True. But that’s the nature of a project like this. It’s all speculation . . . hunting down clues, following up on leads. You never know which one might pay off. I’ve still got a list of questions I haven’t asked you about your childhood. We could talk about it on the plane ride back.”

“But Dave—”

“Give me another reason.”

“I’m supposed to work over the weekend. Gail’s expecting me.”

She was resisting, but Dave could see in her eyes, she wanted to come. “Tell you what, call her now and ask. See what she says. If she’s even a little hesitant, we’ll drop the idea completely.”

“Call her now?”

“Would you . . . please?”

She pulled her phone out of her purse, clicked a few buttons, then looked up at him. “It’s ringing . . . this is so crazy. Hi, Gail? It’s me.”

Dave couldn’t hear Gail’s side of the conversation, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what she was saying.

“We did,” Karen said. “We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. How about you? Did you get along with Bill’s family?” She listened a few moments, nodding, smiling. “I’m glad, I knew you would. Listen, I’ve only got a few minutes. I need to ask you something. It’s going to sound crazy. It’s not something I’d ever think to ask you, and I want you to feel totally free to say no.” She listened a moment. “Well, let me tell you. Remember the guy I told you about who’s trying to find my birth father? Yes . . .
that
guy.” She looked up at Dave and smiled. “He’s here, right now, sitting across the table from me. No, he didn’t spend Thanksgiving with us. He just flew in this morning. But listen, he has to fly back to Florida tonight. Actually, I’m supposed to drop him off at the airport in two hours. He’s following some lead about my dad, and, well . . . I’m just going to say it. He’s asked me to fly back to Florida with him . . . tonight.”

Dave heard some loud words coming from Karen’s phone. But they sounded happy.

“It’s not exactly like that,” she said. “He wants to keep talking about my childhood, but we’ve kind of run out of time. And he thinks if I go back there, it might stir up some memories that might help him find my father.” She listened some more. “Where would I be staying?” She looked at Dave.

“You could stay at my place,” he said. “I mean, my mom and son would be there. Or I could put you up in a hotel.”

She repeated this back to Gail. “But Gail, the thing is, I’m supposed to be working with you over the weekend. I don’t want to leave you all by . . . what? Are you sure?” A big smile came over Karen’s face. “You sure you don’t mind?” Gail said some other things. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll say okay then.” She listened some more. “I’ll call you when I get back, tell you everything. I promise.” She hung up the phone.

“Sounds like Gail is okay with this,” Dave said.

Karen put her phone away and looked up. “She’s more than okay with it. She said it was a crazy idea, totally unlike anything she’d ever expect me to do. And she absolutely wants me to go.”

“So . . . you’ll come?”

“I guess I will. But what if they don’t have any more seats left on the plane?”

Dave pulled out his phone. “Let’s find out right now.”

K
aren was so excited, sitting in 26E, the window seat. Dave sat next to her in 26D, walled in by a middle-aged man in a suit occupying the aisle seat. His ample girth spilled over into Dave’s seat, but that gave him a good excuse to lift the armrest between them and sit closer to her.

The captain had just announced they’d reached cruising altitude so people could turn on their electronic devices. Dave leaned toward her and said, “I’m so glad you agreed to come. You should have heard my mother when I told her.”

“She was okay with it?”

“Are you kidding? She was ecstatic. I’m sure right now she’s cleaning the condo from top to bottom. Then she’ll sit down at the dinette table and make a list of all the food she needs to buy.”

“But I’m only staying a day.” They had tried to find a return flight on Sunday, but because of the Thanksgiving weekend, all the flights were totally booked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dave said. “She loves company, a lot.”

“Does she know . . . about us? I mean that we’re . . .” Karen didn’t know how to describe . . .
them
.

“She knew, after the first few sentences I’d shared about our first meeting. And I didn’t say anything. In fact, I went out of my way to hide my feelings. It doesn’t matter with her. If she were a Martian, her antennas would scrape the ceiling.”

Karen laughed. And she loved it when he said “hide my feelings.” Dave had feelings for her. She knew that by now. She certainly had feelings for him. Very nice ones. So, was that the stage they were at? Was he her boyfriend? Listen to her, she was talking like a high school girl. It had only been a couple of days. This whole thing was so foreign to her. She hadn’t felt this way about anyone for ages.

She was sitting on a plane, flying to Florida with a man she barely knew.

She never did anything like this . . . ever. Another crazy thing was that the reasonable people in her life, the ones who should have tried to talk her out of saying yes, Gail and Steve, both had almost insisted she go.

“What are you thinking?” Dave said.

“I can’t believe my brother.”

“You mean, that he thought you should come?”

“Yes. I was sure he would say it was a terrible idea.”

“I’m glad he didn’t.”

“Me too. He’s just so excited about the idea of finding our dad. It’s this whole Medal of Honor thing. I’m sure it has something to do with his son too.”

“The one in Afghanistan now, right? Is he in any danger where he’s stationed?”

“Steve says no, but they’re worried all the time. I am too. Every time I hear about a soldier dying over there I hold my breath and pray we don’t get that call. I’ll be so happy when he comes home for good.”

The flight attendants wheeled the refreshment cart by. “Do you want anything when they stop at our row?” Dave said.

“Maybe a Diet Coke.”

“So . . . does your brother know . . . about us?”

“His antennas aren’t as long as your mom’s,” Karen said. “But I think he knows something’s up. He asked some questions that hinted at it in our last conversation. I guess my long pauses didn’t help.”

“Do you think he’d be concerned?”

“I don’t think so.” Karen always considered Steve a good judge of character. She was sure he’d like Dave instantly and even more as he got to know him. Steve’s only concern might be the one Karen kept trying to suppress herself. How could she have a meaningful relationship with a man who lived four states away?

She noticed Dave reach down to get something out of his laptop bag. “Are you getting your laptop?”

“No,” he said, pulling out a small notebook. “Going old school. My laptop battery is dying, barely gives me twenty minutes. I’ve got one on order but didn’t want to get stuck, so on the plane ride to Texas I jotted down these.” He opened the notebook and showed her a short list of handwritten questions.

“Those are about my childhood?”

He nodded. “Thought we should go through these now. My mom will pretty much dominate our time once we land.”

She smiled. But also felt herself tensing up. She knew he wanted to talk about this but wished she didn’t have to. She’d been telling herself, and Dave, it was because there really wasn’t anything much to say. And that none of these things bothered her anymore. But for the last day or so, whenever they talked about her birth father or she thought about it, an unsettled, disturbing feeling would come over her. She’d finally figured out what it was. This man, Aaron Miller, had abandoned her and Steve when they were children. For a few years he had sent them cards. And then after that . . . they never heard from him again.

“Are you okay?” Dave said. The flight attendant wheeled the cart to their row. He looked up. “Two Diet Cokes, please.”

“No, I’m fine. I know we need to do this.”

“Nothing may come of it,” he said. “And if any of it makes you uncomfortable, we can stop.”

She liked that. “Well, fire away then.” The flight attendant handed Dave the drinks, and he set Karen’s on the tray.

Dave took a sip then said, “I know you were very young, but do you remember anything about where you lived in Florida before your father left?”

“I know we were living in Texas when he left for good. Steve would remember a few more details about our place in Florida. He was a year older. I remember it was a mobile home, and it had these rickety metal steps. I was afraid of them because I fell down them once and cut my leg. Steve and I shared this teeny bedroom, I remember that. We lived on a dirt road and there were lots of shady trees. I think we had a cyclone fence around our yard. I remember mosquitoes.” She stopped a moment, noticed him writing. “Getting anything useful?”

“Not yet.” He looked up and smiled.

“I don’t know if we’ll even be able to find the street where we lived. I doubt that mobile home is still there anyway.”

“Probably not, but you never know what these trips down memory lane will turn up. You might remember something or see something that will create some new leads.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I have a hard time imagining it. It’s just something Steve and I haven’t talked about very much. After my mom remarried when we were seven and eight, Aaron Miller pretty much disappeared from the scene. He just never came up again.”

“That’s okay. Do you know why you moved from Florida to Texas? Did your mom ever say why?”

“I think it was because he joined the Marines. They met in Florida, not sure how. Fell in love, got married, and started having kids.”

“Did you say he
joined
the Marines? Wasn’t he drafted?”

“I don’t think so. I remember Steve saying one time that mom told him our father couldn’t find work for months. The war was going on, and he figured if he enlisted he’d get a steady paycheck. After he left for boot camp, she moved us back to Texas. That’s where her family’s from.”

“So after the war, he came there?”

“No, we moved back to Florida for a few years, when he got discharged. Steve said he was pretty messed up. I think he was in a hospital for quite a while. I have vague memories of my mom leaving us with some neighbors a few times. Maybe she was visiting him.”

“So did he ever actually live in your home in Texas? Were you ever there as a family all together?”

“I think for almost a year. Steve said we stayed in Florida for a while, but Mom wanted to move back to Texas. When we moved, our father came with us. I remember him reading books to me before bed, eating at the dinner table. I remember him even being there one Christmas. But I guess the whole time he was driving my mother crazy. She told us later he was constantly coming home drunk or stoned. He kept getting fired from one job after another. Some nights he’d go out and wouldn’t come back for days. I don’t remember any of this.”

“Do you remember when he left for good?”

She shook her head. “But Steve said he does. I was asleep. He said he heard our parents yelling. So he got out of bed and stood in the hallway. He doesn’t remember everything they said, but he remembers the last thing. She told him that we’d all be better off if he just left for good and never came back. My dad said, ‘All right then, I will.’ That was the last we ever saw of him.” She looked at Dave; he was writing as fast as he could.

Karen wasn’t sure how she felt about all this. Emotionally, she felt detached, like she was describing someone else’s life. Back then she had felt plenty of emotions. She remembered crying a lot after he left. And she remembered something else: her first dog, Alfie. That’s why she’d gotten him. Her mother bought her a puppy to help her stop being so sad.

The plane started to shudder. Then it began shaking violently up and down. The fasten-seatbelt light flashed overhead, and an alarm sounded. Karen’s left hand grabbed for Dave’s right. She turned toward him, ducking her head into his chest.

“It’s okay, Karen. It’s just some turbulence.”

She felt his free hand reach up and stroke her hair.

“But you can stay here just as long as you want.”