Her Daughter's Father

She edged another thin slice of space between them. “You could try more with Dad. My grandparents agree with him, and they all try to keep me from seeing you.”

Chris slammed his fist on the gearshift. “I’m tired of Jack Stephens. Who does he think he is? I heard the bank came sniffing around to see how much work he’s done on the repairs. He’s a deadbeat, Colleen.”

She might be mad at her dad, but Chris’s opinion made her madder at him. She shrank against the car door. “Don’t talk about him that way.”

Chris burned her with angry eyes. “I’ll bet you don’t tell him to shut up when he talks about how bad I am.”

“I didn’t say shut up.” She wrapped her palm around the door handle. “He is my father.”

Chris snatched a handful of her sweatshirt. “Maybe it’s time you picked one of us. Look at the way I treat you. Are you loyal to me or to a guy who acts like you’re a baby?”

Unwilling to admit Chris frightened her, even when he forced her to recognize her fear, Colleen tightened her hand on the door. “You want me to choose between you and my dad?”

“Yeah, between me and some guy who’ll be lucky to keep one of those old broken-down nets on his boat. He thinks he’s such a man.”

Colleen opened the door with a slow screech of metal against metal. “I called you because I needed to talk to you. You say you care about me.”

Chris softened his grip on her shirt, trying to turn his palm against her breast. “I say I love you.”

She shoved him away. “I’ve asked you not to do that.”

His pupils glittered. “Maybe you are a baby after all.” His voice hissed like a snake.

Truly afraid now, she slid backward out of the car. He laughed when she landed on the pavement on her bottom.

“Maybe I am a baby, but I’ll walk from here.” She scrambled to her feet, hauling her short skirt down. “Okay?”

“No, it’s not okay. Don’t act like this. You always try to ignore me when you’re mad. We’re just arguing.”

“I wanted to talk.”

“You want me to guess what you want. I know what I need.”

As if that settled everything, he pulled the door shut and drove off. Colleen stared after him, her legs shaking. He drank more than she ever let on, because he hated living in this small town where everyone knew his life inside and out. But Colleen didn’t think he’d had anything today.

He’d left her in the middle of the street, said terrible things about her father. And he’d tried to grope her again. Could her dad be right about Chris?

What had he meant by that crack about making him guess what she wanted? She’d told him, in every way she knew, not to touch her like that. And how was she supposed to tell anyone what she wanted if no one ever listened to her, anyway?

She turned toward the marina, more alone than ever. If only her mother hadn’t died. Colleen swallowed hard. Even after three years, she missed her mom, but she couldn’t talk to her dad about that, either. No matter how much she wanted him out of her business, she hated the look of pain that still came into his eyes when he didn’t think she noticed.

And Grandma. Poor Grandma needs someone to look after her more than I do. If only her mom…

At the top of the hill, Colleen paused. She’d meant to ask Chris to take her to the marina. Looking out at the water, at the sailboats bobbing all around her, she felt clearer, calmer. But today she missed her mother, and her mother had never liked the bay.

She’d resented the water like another woman who stole Colleen’s father away, and sometimes even Colleen had wondered why he’d worked such long hours. She scuffed her feet in the gravel at the edge of the road.

Her dad and mom had loved each other, but they’d had problems, like every other married couple she’d ever heard of. Her dad’s grief had been real after her mom died. Why did everyone believe she couldn’t see what went on around her?

Colleen hesitated on the road. She couldn’t go home. Grandma badgered almost as much as her father about grades. Maybe she’d go to the library. She’d entered her favorite picture of her mom in their exhibition of island families. They hadn’t sent it back yet, so maybe they’d used it. Her father certainly hadn’t missed it from the piano.

Too busy looking for signs she’d spent ten seconds alone with Chris, he couldn’t seem to see their problems went deeper than her choice of a boyfriend. Chris was right about one thing. He already saw her as a woman. She mattered to him, but her father still believed she was a baby. Because of his attitude, even strangers like India Stuart treated her like an infant.

India Stuart. A perfect match for Dad. A worrier who had no problem “helping” even though it meant butting into someone else’s life. Colleen scuffed her feet deliberately along the rough pavement. She tried to forget how scared she’d been of Chris. He’d been completely sober the day he’d driven her to thank India for her help, and he’d given her a lift even though he’d believed India ought to apologize to him for hitting his car. Nothing wrong with that.

NELL FISHER ROSE WITH INDIA and offered her hand across the desk. “I’m so glad you came in. I can’t convince my regular patrons they have time to read to the toddlers or shelve books, or even read back titles for me while I do inventory.”

India lifted her shoulders, uncomfortable with omissions in the picture she’d drawn for Nell. But she might learn more about Colleen here, and then she could go home as she’d told Nettie she was going to. “I’m glad you can use me.” They turned together to the door of Nell’s small office. “I’ll see you on Saturday morning at nine for the toddler’s story time?”

Already distracted by the unusual number of people crowding into the main room to see the historical society’s display of island family photos, Nell nodded. As she drifted away, India searched for Viveca Henderson.

Her landlady had invited her to see this exhibition. India had jumped, just at the off chance of seeing a photo of Colleen as a small girl, as an infant if Viveca could recognize her. But did she need any more regret? Because surely she would grieve even more if she stumbled on a record of Colleen’s life.

India found Viveca at the exact spot where she’d left her, a perfect vantage point. Viveca leaned into India’s shoulder and nodded at the young girl with honey hair who was disappearing around the first panel of photographs.

“That Stephens girl. Her father ought to worry more about her than about his boat.” Her voice rang tartly. “Are you ready, dear? How nice of you to help Nell out.” She held her vintage fifties skirt away from the crowd. “You know, I always liked Colleen until she started going around with that Chris Briggs.”

India no longer wanted to hear island gossip about Colleen. In fact, she bit gently at the inner skin of her cheeks to swallow a defensive response.

The first lady of the Seasider went on. “She’s making decisions she’ll regret one day.”

India curled her nails into her palms. The woman could be too right. Am I not living proof? Though she’d hoped for just this kind of opportunity, she couldn’t take it now. Instead, she wished she’d stayed home, where she’d never have known the townspeople had already begun to judge Colleen.

Small towns. They provided loving arms or bitter verdicts. No in-between in a small town.

Hoping to change the subject, India pointed at the first line of pictures, of women in crisp white shirtwaists and full skirts and men proudly flanking their fishing boats.

“Do any of these families still live here?”

Mrs. Henderson obliged. India cruised along at her side, only half taking in Captain Torquay and the shark he’d netted one day with his shrimp, or the Honorable Honoria Madison, the mayor’s wife who’d run away with a traveling milliner.

“No, Viveca, you’re wrong about Honoria. She was my great-great-great-aunt, and I happen to know….” A woman India didn’t know spoke up.

India ducked out of the conversation, impatient to see the later photos, the ones from the past fifteen years. She strolled through the panels, drinking in the good library air, flavored with old and new books and casually stored newspapers. She missed this world.

She turned a corner and saw Colleen. A study in concentration, the girl might have been completely alone. She saw nothing, appeared to hear nothing except memories suggested by the photo that held her attention.

Her look of utter loneliness drew India on reluctant feet. She’d been right to stop Chris from taking Colleen with him that night, but she was completely wrong to speak to her now, to intrude on the privacy her daughter had drawn around herself. Colleen could never be her child. And she couldn’t let herself forget that.

But Colleen didn’t notice her. Over the girl’s shoulder, India stared at the picture in its simple silver frame. A beautiful woman laughed with love at Jack as he curved his arm around her and smiled into the camera. Something about his smile…The vulnerable curve of his mouth sparked an uncomfortable pang in India’s heart, but the woman’s blissful face intrigued. Her blond hair, as pale as sea foam after a storm, clung to the woven shoulder of Jack’s sweater. Her eyes overflowed happiness.

Mary Stephens, at last. Ashamed of her involuntary envy, India pressed her hands to her belly. “Is she your mother, Colleen?”

As if India at her side didn’t surprise her, Colleen stretched her hand to the finely carved frame. Her eyes glowed, brilliant yet subdued, like light seeping past the door of a closed room. She rubbed one fingertip around the woman’s face.

“That’s Mom. She died three years ago.”

CHAPTER FOUR

DEEP SADNESS HELD INDIA silent in the face of Colleen’s lingering grief for her mother. Colleen kept her eyes trained on the photo.

“They adopted me when I was only a few hours old. Mom always said adopted children were luckiest, because their parents chose them. I felt pretty lucky until she died.”

Aching for her, India lifted her hand to touch the girl’s arm, but she kept her comfort to herself as Colleen turned with an accusation in her eyes.

“Why does everyone in this town take Dad’s side about Chris when no one knows him the way I do?”

“I can’t speak for everyone else.”

“Why do you, then? What do you think you know about Chris that I don’t?”

Nothing here had turned out as India had expected. Her daughter no longer had a mother. And I can’t step in. She couldn’t tell the truth, and she definitely didn’t want to lie. Not now, when she needed to most.

“When I was your age, I made a mistake.” Putting her hand on her throat, India felt for the lump that made talking difficult. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I’ve never talked to anyone about that time. I hurt myself and my parents—I hurt too many people. Maybe, when I saw you with Chris, I thought of that. Maybe I just don’t want you to be hurt, and I don’t know Chris except for what I saw of him that night at the festival.”

“What makes you think your past has anything to do with me?”

Reaching behind herself, India gripped the lip of a bookshelf. She’d already confessed too much. “Colleen, I know—I know you think nothing bad will happen to you. You can tell right from wrong. You can’t imagine why you’d make a foolish decision.”

Her wide eyes slightly softening her air of haughtiness, Colleen stepped back. “Yeah? So?”

“I don’t want any girl your age to go through what I did.”

“No one in this town believes I’m capable of thinking for myself.”

“Maybe you should think about your grandparents and your father. Think of the place you live and how these people look at you.”

Colleen raked her fingers through her hair, a gesture so familiar to India it brought instant tears to her eyes. Colleen might have been India’s mother in youthful form. India bit the inside of her cheek again. No crying, no whining. I can take this. She’s the important one.

Colleen only shook her head in disgust. “I know how they talk. To them, I’m a child. You’re a complete stranger, and even you gossip about me.” Stranger came out of her mouth like an epithet.

“Colleen!”

India’s tears vanished at the harsh rasp of Jack’s voice. She turned. Tall and male, he vibrated with the wrath of an angry parent.

“Apologize.” Silk in his voice chased apprehensive shivers down India’s back.

“Dad, I—”

He stopped her with a fed-up look. She tilted her chin.

“I’m sorry, Miss Stuart.” Without warning, she relaxed, the stiffness falling out of her body as she tried to claim all of India’s attention. “Sometimes I let my temper go, but I understand what you tried to tell me.”

Touched beyond bearing, India turned to Jack. “She had a right to be upset.”

“I know you left the boatyard with Chris.” Jack closed in on his daughter. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You have to get me back because you’re too young to date an eighteen-year-old boy?”

Colleen’s pink blush spread. She grabbed the loose cloth of his sleeve, evidently surprising them both. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Dad. I don’t like sitting in that boat shop, and the dust hurts my head. I just wanted to see—” She broke off and pulled her hand away, trying to retire back into her adolescent shell. Her eyes drifted over Jack’s shoulder to the photo of him with Mary.

As he followed her gaze, his face tightened with pain, but only long enough for him to catch himself. “Let’s go, Colleen.”

“Dad, I’m sorry.”

In the grip of need she didn’t understand or trust, India curled her fingers over the hard, strained muscles in his forearm. Why were they so reluctant to talk about Mary Stephens? What had happened to make them so protective of each other? She had no right, but she wanted to make it better. “Maybe you should—”

He stepped away from her, in a hands-off gesture she couldn’t ignore. In a moment of startling clarity, India realized her concern for Jack stood apart from her burgeoning, maternal anxieties for Colleen.

India backed into one of the panels. Mercifully, Colleen and Jack were too fixed on each other to notice.

His hands shook on Colleen’s sleeves as he turned her toward the door. Rooted to the floor, India ached to do something. Clearly Colleen regretted letting Jack find out she’d needed to see her mother’s picture.

India tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. Had he considered renewing the paint on his house? A watery smile curved her mouth, but Jack’s shadowed eyes cut to her heart again.

“I wish I’d learned to swim better,” she said as she watched them leave. “I’m in way over my head here.”

“India?” Viveca Henderson’s voice preceded her hand on India’s shoulder. “To whom are you speaking? Are you aware you’re quite alone?”

AS INDIA SLIPPED INSIDE her hotel room, Mick came through the adjoining door, holding a towel to his chin as if he’d just finished a shave. His smile made her feel normal again.

“We’ve had company,” he said.

“Who now?”

“I left his name—” Mick crossed back into his own room, and India followed in his footsteps. He bumped into her as he turned with a business card he took off the desk. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“We have to get out of town.”

“You sound like a Clint Eastwood movie.”

India snatched his towel away. “Mary Stephens died three years ago. Colleen can’t talk to Jack, and Jack’s heart is broken.”

Mick stepped back. “You expected a fairy tale?”

Though they’d disagreed so often for so many years, Mick’s pragmatic acceptance of Colleen’s family comforted India. She might be overreacting if he didn’t panic with her. “I like happily-ever-after, Dad.”

“So you want to run away before you see if she gets one?”

“Run away? I’ve tossed myself nearly into the middle of their problems. I have to get out before I confess who I am.”

Mick shook his head. “You won’t. You know you can’t.”

“I’m dying to.” India slumped on his neatly made, rust-colored hotel comforter. In the silence, water dripped from a faucet. The heater struggled to live but gave in with a gurgle. India lifted her head. “Thank you for coming with me. I’m so grateful I can be honest with you.”

“See? I don’t know how many times I’ve told you to come to me when you have a problem. Tell me about Jack’s heart.”

She froze. “I usually don’t come to you because you hear and see too well.”

“We painters.” He waved an admonishing finger at her. “People talk to us. You might think bartenders hear it all, but give a man a paint can, and he looks like he’s waiting to solve all your problems. Remember Tom Sawyer.”

“He worked his way out of painting.”

Mick gave a move-it-along motion with his right index finger. “Jack’s heart?”

“Colleen came to the library to look at her mother’s picture, but Jack was in the picture, too.” Searching for the meaning underneath, India frowned. “Maybe she wanted to see her parents together again? Anyway, I don’t think she told him she was coming to the library. I think they’d had some sort of argument, and she’d pulled a disappearing act.”

“Familiar story.”

“You mean for her? No, you mean me, but I only disappeared when you couldn’t help me anymore.”

“Your mother and I are your family, just like Jack is Colleen’s. We were supposed to help, especially when you needed us most. Look at Colleen. She’s the same age you were when you got pregnant. Now, make me believe she could provide for a child of her own.”

India refused to contemplate his homespun truth, but neither could she take the absolution he offered. “When Jack showed up, he asked her where she’d been. Instead of answering, she just looked at the picture, and he looked, too. I’ve never seen anything like the pain in his eyes, but he covered it up so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it.” She rubbed her chest. “No, I didn’t imagine it.”

“You like Jack.” Mick leaned against the desk.

“I’m confused about Jack, because he’s Colleen’s father.”

“He’s a good father, but why won’t she talk to him?”

“Exactly.” India slapped her hands against her thighs. “And that’s the one question I cannot ask them.”

“I think you might hang yourself on several questions.” Mick straightened and held out the business card. “Like I said, we have a new client.”

India tilted the card toward the weak gold and green lamp. “Leon Shipp. Power Trucks for Power Men?”

“He wants us to paint his house. We could stay another week or so.” Mick nodded at the card. “If you think we should.”

“No, I don’t.” She blushed. “But I volunteered to help with toddler story time at the library, so we have to stay until Saturday.”

Mick laughed. “Run to the familiar? I’ll call this Leon and tell him to expect us tomorrow morning. Okay?”

India tilted her head sharply to one side. “I’m afraid.”

As if she were his little girl again—and she’d been a daddy’s girl once—Mick sank onto the edge of the bed beside her and tucked her cheek against his rough shirt. “I know you won’t hurt anyone—well, except yourself, and I’m here this time to help you if you make that mistake again. I don’t want you to spend fifteen more years wondering what might have been.”

“She’s your granddaughter, too. And she’s Mom all over again.”

His chin moved up and down against her forehead. “Mmm-hmm.”

Miserably she clutched his sleeve. “I wish I could give you back everything I took from you.”

“Shh. You refused to take anything from us, India.”

“I love you, Dad.”

As she absorbed her father’s silence, she realized how long it’d been since she’d last said those words.

Mick cleared his throat. “I’d paint Leon Shipp’s house and his entire fleet of bumper cars to hear you say that again.”

India smiled. “Power trucks, Dad.”

“Whatever. Try not to ruin the moment, honey.”

AT THE TOP OF THE HOTEL’S rickety wooden steps, Jack hesitated. By the time he reached India’s door, his courage damn near deserted him. Whatever she’d said to Colleen at the library had made his daughter more receptive to him. On the way home, he’d kept silent, afraid anything he said to Colleen might only push her further away. But the moment he parked the truck, she’d announced she wouldn’t see Chris anymore unless they met within a group of her friends.

Which ought to cut down nicely on their time together. And Jack didn’t intend to look that gift horse in the mouth.

Still puzzled over India’s unexpected powers of persuasion, Jack stared at her sea-salted, pale gray door. He rubbed his palms against his jeans. Sweaty as a teenage boy’s, they bumped over the denim. If he didn’t knock now, he never would. He owed India an apology for the brusque way he’d treated her at the library, especially since she’d managed to help his daughter.

He’d shut down the moment he realized Colleen had come to see her mother’s picture. Memories of Mary sprang a truckload of feelings on him, just when he felt least prepared to deal with the past. Hayden had snapped that photo of them together the day they’d heard Colleen was coming.

Jack hated that picture. He wondered that no one else had ever seen the truth in his eyes. That morning, Mary had told him Mother Angelica had called. At the same time, she’d confessed she’d made love with another man. She’d said she couldn’t go on with their marriage without coming clean. The man had been one of the island’s summer people, and Jack hadn’t let her say his name.

“I just wanted to remember what love felt like without a purpose.”

Mary’s words still tore him apart with a deeper emotion than he’d ever felt for her again. Both desperate to have a child, they’d tried every crazy procreation theory anyone suggested. In some horrible, too-sane recess of his mind, he’d understood what she’d meant about needing a different kind of love.

In the same breath as her confession, she’d asked him to stay with her and adopt the infant girl Mother Angelica had offered them. How many times over how many years had he wished she’d kept her secret?

Able to feel such strange compassion for Mary, he’d believed he would be able to forget her betrayal. He never had. He’d loved her still, but he’d never loved her in the same way. He’d hidden from the truth behind work and behind his and Mary’s mutual joy in Colleen. She’d used him to keep the baby who’d, in a way, cost them their marriage. He’d accepted the compromise.

Why now, outside India Stuart’s room, had he lost his long-standing ability to shield himself from those memories? Impatient, he stepped forward and pounded on the door.

Startled at the shotlike echoes in the otherwise silent street, he peered at the windows around him. His resolute knock had sounded more like police on a raid. Just the kind of commotion to raise a dozen or more Arran Islanders.

Nobody answered the door. He knocked again, more gently, just in case India had ducked behind her bed at his first demand to be let in. Still no answer. He turned toward the stairs, feeling foolish. All that idiotic soul-searching, just so he could apologize to an empty room.

Glancing down the street to the bay, he saw India before he’d gone down one stair. In silky blue shorts and a white oversize tank top, she ran through the waning sunshine like a grasshopper, all arms and legs that flailed in way too many different directions.

He laughed to himself. “Exercise is exercise. I thought she’d be more graceful.”

Her clumsy stride didn’t detract from the taut line of her thighs or the sweet curve of her upper arms. Jack tightened his hand on the stair rail. Oh, my God—I just ogled her. Again he surveyed the surrounding windows. Thankfully, not a single curtain twitched. And India came toward him.

“Jack?” she panted as she crested the hill.

A stride like that ought to leave her out of breath. “India,” he returned, descending the steps two at a time. Movement made him feel less asinine, less as if she’d caught him loitering outside her door. Since she had.