The Real Father

“Do you think so?” As Molly tried to think of what else to say, Liza’s song changed to a show tune, her young voice swaggering with a pretty good approximation of early Madonna. Molly couldn’t help smiling, meeting Jackson’s raised eyebrow. What an amazing kid she had. Where did she learn these things?

“As you can hear, though, the similarities are all on the surface,” Molly said over the noise. “Liza’s nobody’s clone. I never could carry a tune. And she’s got tons more gumption than I ever dreamed of.”

Jackson tilted his head and let his gaze settle on Molly’s face. “Maybe,” he said, answering her smile with one of his own. “But, you know, M, I sometimes thought you might have underestimated yourself in that department.”

“Are you kidding?” Molly shook her head incredulously. It felt surprisingly nice to hear Jackson’s old nickname for her. “I was a mess. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

Jackson shrugged. “I think you’re still selling yourself a little short. After all, your daughter must have inherited all that confidence and charisma from somewhere.”

She stared at him, realizing, suddenly, just like that, the moment of truth had come. This was where she should say, quite casually, “No, actually, she inherited that from her father.” Jackson obviously was expecting that, waiting for it, as if he had planned it.

Perhaps he had. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been running through a conversational maze, and now she had hit the dead end, the unanswerable question that rose up between them as insurmountable as a thick, thorny hedge.

The big question. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one no one ever quite spoke out loud.

The question Jackson had nonetheless been leading her deftly toward since the first moment he set eyes on Liza.

If these lucky genes had not come from Molly, then where?

Who was Liza’s father?

ORDINARILY LIZA WOULD have been in no hurry to get back to the grown-ups, who talked about the most boring things on earth. Meeting new grown-ups was the worst, because they always wanted to ask her the same dumb questions, like what subject do you like best at school, or how did you get so tall?

But this new grown-up was different. She’d been looking for someone to be King Willowsong for nearly a year now. She’d almost given up. But it was as if the maze had led her to him, as if she had banged into him for a reason. When she had looked up into his awesome green eyes, and seen his hair shining all silvery in the sun, her first thought had been that maybe, finally, she had found a King for Planet Cuspian.

But it would take more than silvery hair and green eyes if he was really going to be King. The true test was much harder. If he was truly the King, he had to be able to recognize that her mother was the Queen.

So she had to hurry. She’d noticed a funny look in his eyes when he had said hello to her mother. It might have been the right look, the look a king should give a queen. But her mother had sent her away before she could be sure.

She was almost at the entrance to the maze when she heard people coming up the walk behind her.

“Hello?”

For a minute Liza wished she could just pretend she hadn’t heard the lady calling out. But that wasn’t nice. The Princess of Cuspian didn’t do things like that. At least not very often.

She turned and saw a woman about her mother’s age, but sexier, like someone on TV, and not quite as soft, with her tight shiny black belt and tight blue pants. Still, somehow Liza knew that the lady wasn’t a Mudbluff. She might smell like too much hair spray, and her lipstick might be the color of a really bad bruise, but she wasn’t a Mudbluff.

Her mom thought it was weird, but Liza always tagged everyone right away using the different species from her imaginary planet. Everyone was either a Willowsong or a Mudbluff. A good guy or a bad guy.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between made-up and real. It was just that tags made life simpler. Mostly, she had discovered, people were Willowsongs, which was kind of a relief, kind of comforting, when you thought about it.

Most of the Mudbluffs she’d seen were in the movies. Well, there was Mrs. Geiger who taught piano and hurt your fingers trying to make them reach the keys—she was a Mudbluff. And once Liza had watched a woman at the grocery store squeezing her kid’s arm until he cried. Definitely a Mudbluff.

But mostly Liza’s world was made up of Willowsongs.

As Liza slowed down to see what the lady wanted, she noticed that a little boy slouched along behind the woman, scuffing his sneakers across the brick walk. Liza looked closely at his blond hair. She knew him. She had seen him at the Radway School when she’d gone to visit a couple of weeks ago.

Tommy, maybe? Yes, she was pretty sure he was Tommy.

Tommy was hard to forget. He’d spent the whole day in trouble with the teacher. At first, Liza had thought Tommy was a Mudbluff for certain. But then she had looked into his eyes, cool eyes the color of rye grass, and she hadn’t been so sure. Those were the tricky ones, the people who did Mudbluffy things, but their eyes were sad, or tired, or scared, and you suddenly could tell they had reasons, big reasons, for the bad things they did.

“Hi,” the woman said as she drew closer. “I’m Annie Cheatwood.” Her blue eyes swept Liza’s face, smiling and frowning at the same time. “I guess you’re Molly’s little girl, aren’t you? Good grief, look at you! Is this déjà vu or what?”

Liza nodded. She knew what the lady meant—her grandmother said that all the time. And she’d seen pictures of her mom as a little girl, so she knew they looked alike. Especially the ones where her mom was smiling. There weren’t very many of those, as if her mother had always been hiding a missing tooth or something.

“Yes,” she said, curious to think that her mother had ever known this lady, who, now that she was up close, smelled of hair spray, Juicy Fruit gum, and, most surprisingly, wood chips.

It was actually kind of a nice smell. Nothing like her mom, but still. Definitely not a Mudbluff. “I’m Liza,” she added politely.

“Well, it’s great to meet you, Liza,” Mrs. Cheatwood said, sounding as if she meant it. “It’s really kind of a kick. This is my son Tommy. I guess you two are probably about the same age.”

Liza looked over at Tommy, who had his hands behind his head, stretching his head back to stare at the sky, thought there wasn’t anything happening up there, not even an airplane. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying “hi.”

“Actually, we’re looking for Jackson,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. “Jackson Forrest. He lives here, but nobody answered the door up at the house. Is he around?”

“Maybe,” Liza said. “My mom just met a man in the maze, but she didn’t say his name.”

“Hot damn, he cornered her in the maze, did he?” Mrs. Cheatwood shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe how funny that was. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘damn.’ That’s what comes from selling lug nuts to guys in dirty shirts all day. Anyhow, was it a tall, gorgeous guy? Blond? Green eyes to die for?”

Tommy groaned. “For crying out loud, Mom.”

Liza flicked a look at him. He’d begun tearing the leaves from a low-hanging oak branch, and he still didn’t acknowledge her presence.

“I guess so,” she said to Mrs. Cheatwood. “He had green eyes. I think they’re still in there.”

“Great. I hate to bust up a party, but I need to see Jackson ASAP. He’s going to help me get this little devil of mine under control.”

“Damn it,” Tommy muttered with feeling. He swatted violently at the denuded branch. “Goddamn it.”

“And maybe he’ll wash that filthy mouth out with soap while he’s at it,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. She stalked toward the maze, assuming without even looking back that her son would follow her.

Which, after a long, tense second in which his hard green gaze locked defiantly with Liza’s, he did.

Liza hung back a moment, but her curiosity overcame her hesitation, and she decided to tag along.

Green eyes, she mused as she followed the woman’s pointy heel marks that dug a string of small circles in the earth, like a connect-the-dots game. That’s what King Willowsong should have.

Green eyes to die for.

AS NOISES CARRIED toward them through the maze, and the irregular pattern of thudding footsteps grew loud enough to announce the imminent arrival of at least three people, Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t even ask herself who it might be. She just closed her eyes and thought that she’d never been so glad to hear anything in her life.

Hurry, she implored mentally. Someone, anyone, to break up this awkward moment.

She still hadn’t answered Jackson’s unspoken question.

But she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She had a lie ready. A good lie. Carefully thought out, embroidered with so many little homespun details that sometimes she half believed them herself. A lie good enough to fool the entire population of Demery, South Carolina, if necessary.

But this wonderful lie, which she’d practiced a thousand times, training it to issue confidently from her lips, had simply refused to be spoken. It had lodged like a chicken bone in her throat, and, while Jackson stood there watching her in growing bemusement, she had been able to manage only a few stupid syllables of stumbling evasion.

“Molly. You can tell me. Who—”

But he didn’t have time to finish. The approaching hubbub separated into individual voices. One adult—a female, clearly irked by something. One disgusted little boy objecting sulkily to everything the woman said. And then Liza’s voice, breaking in politely, instructing the others to take the next left.

“Thank goodness!” A voluptuous brunette emerged from the opening like a diva making her grand entrance.

She pressed the heel of her hand dramatically to her forehead. “I swear, Jackson, if you don’t make this little rascal see reason, I’ll—” She ducked her head to Jackson’s collarbone and went limp against him. “I don’t know what. Toss him into the volcano? Grind him into hamburger meat and have him for dinner?”

Jackson grinned, but over the woman’s bent head he tossed a quick wink to the little boy, who had come sulking in behind her. “Why don’t you just sell him to the Gypsies? Make a few bucks while you’re at it.”

The woman moaned. “They won’t take him.”

Jackson put his hands on the woman’s shoulders and eased her erect again. “Then I guess we’re stuck with him. We’ll have to see what we can do to straighten him out.”

He rotated her slightly. “Annie, say hi to Molly.” He tilted his head. “You remember Annie Cheatwood, don’t you, Molly? She was ahead of you in school—she graduated the same year Beau and I did.”

Reaching out with his right hand, he touched the little boy’s shining blond head. Molly noticed that the child, though still noticeably surly, did not pull away. “And this is her son Tommy, who, though his mother seems to have forgotten it, is a pretty cool kid.”

Molly recognized him immediately. It was the little boy from Radway School. The mischievous blond child who’d been wheeling another student around by the ankles. The one who had reminded her of—

Suddenly Molly’s brain began to blink and spin, like a computer being violently overloaded. So much was going on in the scene before her—so many complicated nuances, so many unspoken implications. She hardly knew where to begin processing it all.

Out of the chaos, one bewildering question pushed to the fore, blinking in a neon urgency.

Could Jackson be this little boy’s father?

Bluntly stated like that, it seemed absurd. Annie’s son, he had said, not “mine.” And somehow, to Molly, it was inconceivable. Could Jackson have a child he refused to acknowledge? A pregnant lover he had refused to marry?

Surely not. But still… Look at the boy. The lanky limbs. The silver-blond hair. Those Forrest green eyes. That straight, high-bridged nose with slightly flared nostrils…

It could be true. That moment on the playground hadn’t been an illusion. In a few years this handsome little boy would definitely possess the arrogant Forrest profile.

“Hi, Molly.” Annie was smiling at her warmly.

“Good to see you. It’s been years. You grew up nice, kid.” Annie poked Jackson in the ribs. “Didn’t she grow up nice, Jack?”

Somehow tearing her gaze from the mysterious child, Molly smiled back. Of course she remembered Annie Cheatwood. Beautiful, sexy, brassy Annie, who had entertained a steady stream of the school’s most popular boys in her ancient yellow sedan. The Yellow Peril, the boys had called it. Molly had been officially horrified but privately awed. She’d never known a girl whose car was infamous enough to earn a nickname of its own.

Annie had lived just down the street from Molly, in that modest neighborhood just on the wrong side of the tracks. Molly’s mother had always looked down on Annie’s family, who didn’t care if crabgrass took over their little square of lawn, who let the paint peel on their walls and slats droop in their shutters. “Thank God we’re not as tacky as the Cheatwoods,” her mother had always said, sniffing with the desperate superiority of the chronically insecure.

Molly hadn’t been friends with Annie, exactly. In high school, four years made a huge difference, and besides, Molly was too diffident, too prissy and far too uptight to interest the dynamic older girl.

But Molly had always admired her and had secretly wished to be more like her. Annie wasn’t ashamed of being poor, and she obviously didn’t agonize over what the neighbors thought. Even as a teenager Annie had believed herself the equal of anyone, somehow aware that human value wasn’t measured by whether a man had spindly crabgrass or lush boxwood hedges in his front yard.

It was an enviable level of wisdom that Molly herself hadn’t found until much later in life.

“Thanks, Annie,” she said. “You’re looking wonderful yourself.” Molly intensified her smile, hoping that Annie might sense a little of that longstanding respect.

Maybe, Molly thought suddenly, it had been Annie who had refused to acknowledge the father of her child—not the other way around. That would be like her. She’d no doubt consider little Tommy just as “legitimate” as a Cheatwood as he could ever have been as a Forrest.

“Sorry to bust in on you guys, but I need Jack’s help with Tommy.” Annie cast a daggered glance toward her son, who simply looked away, feigning boredom. In that pose of deliberately casual defiance, he looked more Forrest than ever.

“This one’s in big trouble. Huge.” Annie turned back to Jackson. “He broke Junior Caldwell’s nose, and now he won’t go over there and say he’s sorry.”

Tommy raised his pointed chin. “I’m not sorry. You want me to lie?”

Annie narrowed her eyes dangerously. “You bet I want you to lie, buster. It’s called good manners. It’s called do it or your sorry behind is grounded for the rest of your sorry life.”

Tommy’s chin didn’t waver, though his voice did, just a little. “I won’t apologize. He deserved it. Junior Caldwell is a big, fat, stinking parasite.”

Jackson made a sound like a muffled laugh, and Annie jabbed her elbow in his ribs. “Straight off this week’s science vocabulary list,” she said, and Molly could hear strangled mirth in her voice, too. “Talk to him, Jack. The Caldwells are raising Cain. They’re trying to get Tommy kicked out of Radway.”

“I don’t care,” Tommy said firmly. “Radway stinks. It’s just a bunch of snobs and mamma’s boys.”

“Some things never change,” Jackson observed cryptically. He slid his arm around Annie’s shoulders. “Okay, cool down. Tommy and I will talk.”

Annie let out a groan of relief. “You’re an angel of mercy, my friend. And maybe, while you’re at it—” she pointed toward her head with two fingers and made a scissoring motion “—this, too?”

Jackson glanced toward Tommy, as if assessing the need. Tommy, who Molly realized was plenty smart enough to know what his mother was talking about, simply stared off into space. Only the unnatural stillness of his body indicated any interest in the outcome.

“Sorry, Annie. Can’t help you there.” Grinning, Jackson chucked two fingers under Annie’s chin.

“You got to learn to pick your battles, sweetie.”

Strangely mesmerized, Molly watched the two of them, still unable to come to grips with what she saw. Jackson and Annie were so comfortable together, so clearly partners in the awesome task of rearing this bright, handsome, willful little boy. Their communication was relaxed, largely nonverbal, and yet amazingly complete.

Molly had to pinch off a trickle of envy. It would have been nice to have someone like that, someone to bring your troubles to, someone who would help you sort out the mountains from the molehills. Molly had always been alone with her worries, sometimes struggling from bedtime until dawn to find the simple perspective Jackson had been able to offer Annie in a matter of minutes.

She felt a small hand creep up toward hers, and she looked down with a smile to find Liza standing close, her expression wistful. Molly’s heart ached, recognizing that wordless longing. Never mind that the threesome in front of them weren’t really a family, the couple not man and wife, the boy’s background murky.

In every way that mattered, they felt like a family.

Molly and Liza were like children pressing their faces against the candy store window. She didn’t know what to say to take that look from her daughter’s eyes.

“I love you, honey,” she said, for want of anything more inspired.

“I know,” Liza answered softly, but she didn’t take her eyes from Jackson even long enough to blink.

CHAPTER THREE

TOMMY SAT NEXT TO Jackson on a big iron bench that overlooked the river. Though they’d been sitting there at least five minutes, Tommy hadn’t said a word. He knew why he’d been brought here. Jackson was going to give him a lecture about how you shouldn’t fight with people at school.

Well, he could just lecture away. Tommy didn’t care. Grown-ups didn’t know about Junior Caldwell, about what a creep he was. He deserved to have his nose broken.

Besides, Jackson didn’t have any business giving Tommy a lecture. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t his uncle, or his brother, or even the principal. He wasn’t anybody. He was just a guy who hung around with his mom. Lots of guys did that.

And they all wanted to impress her by trying to play daddy. Lots of big, fake smiles and head patting. And all that “How’s my little man?” crap. Oh, yeah, everybody wanted to be Tommy’s dad.

Everybody, that is, except his real dad. Wherever he was.

Whoever he was.

If he ever met his real dad, Tommy decided, he’d break his nose, too.

Tommy impatiently kicked at the small rocks that decorated the little picnic area where they sat. It was getting hot out here. Jackson had pretended he needed Tommy’s help moving a bunch of boxes around for that old Miss Forrest. It had been hard work, and it made Tommy mad because he knew it was just an excuse to get him out here and bawl him out.

He stole a look at the man sitting next to him on the bench. So where was the lecture?

Almost as if he had forgotten Tommy was even there, Jackson leaned down and picked up one of the flat white pebbles at their feet. He eyed it carefully, tested its shape and weight, and then tossed it with a perfect flick of his wrist toward the river. It skipped three, four, five whole times before it finally sank.

“Awesome,” Tommy said in spite of his determination not to speak first. He picked up a stone himself and tossed it. Two measly bounces, and it sank with a hollow plop.

Jackson sorted through the stones, picked up two and handed them to Tommy. “Flat is better,” he said matter-of-factly. “And use more wrist.”

By the third stone, Tommy had made it up to four skips, and he was feeling a little less grumpy. Maybe he’d been wrong about the lecture.

“So,” Jackson said as he demonstrated the wrist motion one more time. “This Junior Caldwell kid. He’s pretty big?”

Tommy made a rude noise and tossed his pebble. Four skips. He was finally getting the hang of it. “Heck, no. He looks like a girl. He cried when I hit him. He cried so hard snot was dripping out of his nose.”

Jackson paused midtoss and arched one eyebrow blandly at Tommy. “You hit a kid who looks like a girl?”

Tommy flushed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, he’s a major creep. He was really asking for it.”

“Yeah?” Jackson shook a couple of pebbles in his palm thoughtfully. They made a noise like Monopoly dice. “Well, I guess you had to, then.”

“I guess I did.” It was so darn hot—how could a winter afternoon be so hot? His mother shouldn’t have made him wear this jacket. His face felt red.

Tommy heaved four pebbles, fast and hard, into the river, which was sparkling now under the high, yellow afternoon sun. They all sank immediately. “Darn right I had to.”

Jackson handed him another stone. “Take your time,” he advised. “Don’t try to bully it. You can’t intimidate a rock.” He demonstrated the sideways wrist flick one more time. “It’s subtle. But remember you’re always smarter than the rock, if you’ll just take the time to finesse it.”

Tommy took a deep breath, twitched his wrist a couple of times in practice, and then let the pebble glide easily through his fingers. Five skips! As much as Jackson’s best.

Finesse. He liked that word. And he liked the way it worked.

Too bad you couldn’t finesse a jerk like Junior Caldwell.

“You know what he said?” Tommy cast a quick glance toward Jackson, then looked away. “You know what that moron said?”

Jackson seemed entirely focused on finding the perfect pebble. “No. What?”

Timothy frowned, fighting back the sudden stupid feeling that he might cry. He hated even remembering what Junior had said.

“Somebody at lunch said they saw Coach Riser buying nails in the hardware store where my mom works. So Junior said that was because he’s nailing my mom. And everybody laughed.” He gritted his teeth and drew in a big breath, which hurt, as if his lungs were too tight. He made a fist around his pebble. “You know what that means, Jackson? Nailing somebody?”

“Yeah, I know.” Jackson’s face looked hard.

“Mostly it means your friend Junior Caldwell is a stupid little punk.”

“He’s not my friend,” Tommy said roughly. “I hate him. He’s a spoiled sissy. I spent the night with him one time, and you know what? He’s got twenty-five video games. He’s got his own TV in his room. He sleeps with a stuffed puppy named Bitsy, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.”

“Bitsy?” Jackson’s slow chuckle was appreciative. “Man. That’s really embarrassing.”

“And it gets even worse,” Tommy said, remembering that night at the Caldwell mansion with a sharp, uncomfortable clarity. The whole thing had made him feel rotten somehow, even though it hadn’t been so bad, really. Mr. Caldwell had been kind of nice, even if he did spoil Junior something awful. He played ball with the boys, and he had even watched them play video games for a while. He had particularly admired Tommy’s skill at the Vampire Blaster game.

“Get this. Junior can’t get to sleep unless his dad comes in and reads a bunch of football stats to him like a bedtime story. It’s just plain pathetic.”

Jackson’s eyes were thoughtful, and Tommy wondered for a moment whether he had sounded jealous. He wasn’t jealous, not one bit. Junior Caldwell was a nerd. It was just that Mr. Caldwell’s voice had been really nice, and it felt kind of safe to have a strong man there, reading numbers and names in that comforting voice—especially after that weird vampire video game.

But still, it was sissy stuff. No guy should need a bedtime story to get to sleep.

When Jackson finally spoke, his voice was normal. He didn’t sound as if he felt sorry for Tommy at all, thank goodness. Tommy couldn’t stand for people to feel sorry for him.