An Unlikely Father

“Suit yourself. I’ll probably see you when I’m coming back from the Sweeney place.”

Officer Muldoone got in his car and drove away. Ethan swatted at an aggressive dragonfly, got in the Town Car and turned on the air-conditioning. Most of the cool breeze went out the gaping hole where the door had been, but Ethan didn’t care. He didn’t suppose Diamond Rental was going to say much about the car returning without a full tank of gas.

WHEN SHE HEARD the knock on her door, Helen looked out the front window and swore. “Oh, hell.”

Her father silenced the Sweeney’s fifteen-year-old yellow Lab and wheeled around in his chair. “Who is it, Helen?”

“It’s Muldoone,” she said.

“What in the world does he want?”

“I clipped somebody on Gulfview Road today,” she said. Seeing the worried look on her father’s face, she added, “It was no big thing, Pop. The other guy’s fine. Our truck just got a scratch.”

“And you didn’t tell me this?” Finn asked.

The pounding on the door increased, and Helen turned the knob. “I knew there’d be time enough.” She opened the door. “Hi, Billy. Nice day, isn’t it?”

“Not for you, Helen.” He handed her a ticket. “Reckless driving. Again. You’ll have to make a court appearance on this one. About six weeks from now.”

She took the ticket. “I’m probably busy that day, but I’ll try to squeeze it in. By the way, how’s that guy, the one who got in my way?”

Muldoone sent her a strange look, one that hinted he was amused by her question. “You don’t know who you hit, do you?”

“No.” She hadn’t bothered to look at the business card, which right now sat on the bathroom counter. “Who is he?”

“Ethan Anderson,” Billy said smugly. “Does the name ring a bell?”

It did. Almost as if the bell were clanging against the side of her head with the intention of deafening her. “The guy from Anderson Enterprises.”

“Oh, yeah. And you sure taught him a lesson about Heron Point hospitality. If he doesn’t hightail it back to New York on the next plane, he’ll at least avoid you from now on.”

Could this day get any worse? Now she’d hit the one man people in Heron Point were looking to as a financial savior.

Sticking his head inside the front door, Billy said, “How’s it going, Finn?”

“It’d be better, Billy, if you hadn’t given us that ticket—and that news.”

Helen closed the door a couple of inches. She had to get rid of Billy. She had to go down to the edge of the water and scream as loud as she could where no one would hear her. “Okay, then, boys,” she said. “Enough chitchat.”

Billy stubbornly leaned his two-hundred-pound frame against the jamb, preventing her from shutting him out. “Hey, Helen, you still going out with that folksinger?”

“Sure am. We’re as cozy as a pair of fleas on a dog’s ear.”

He moved a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You let me know when you break up. You still owe me a date.”

Helen couldn’t remember the debt, but even if it were true, there was no way Billy Muldoone was going to collect. “Right. You’ll be the first person I tell.” She shut the door and collapsed against it.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Finn said. “The ticket you just got or the fact that an Anderson has finally showed up in Heron Point.”

Helen had never understood her father’s resentment of anyone associated with Anderson Enterprises, and she’d grown tired of asking him. Finn would tell her when he was ready. “My money’s on the ticket,” she said. “You’re the only one in town who hasn’t been looking forward to Anderson’s arrival.”

Finn frowned. “You okay? You weren’t hurt in that little mishap, were you?”

“No. I’m just dandy.” She stared down at the ticket in her hand. That, and the bad impression she’d made on Ethan Anderson weren’t the most disturbing pieces of information she’d gotten today. In fact, they weren’t even a close second and third. The absolute winner in the bad-news category was that eight-letter word printed in blue on the plastic wand in her bathroom. It said, pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK THURSDAY morning Helen parked the Suburban behind the Lionheart Pub and entered the establishment through the back door. She’d been up since seven preparing fishing tackle for her charter trip the next morning, but she’d put off coming into town until she knew Donny would be awake. His last set at the Lionheart didn’t end until nearly two o’clock, and he liked to sleep in after performing late.

Helen hadn’t come to see him play last night. He’d called during his first break to ask where she was. She’d tried to sound cheery, as if nothing was wrong. She’d said she was tired and would see him the next day.

And now that she was going to face him, she didn’t feel any more confident about telling him the news than she had the day before. She’d hoped that a quiet night alone with her thoughts would result in a clear plan for what she was going to do about the pregnancy, but that hadn’t happened, because her decision depended heavily on Donny’s reaction. Now, as she came through the Lionheart’s kitchen, she pondered the two conclusions she’d come to sometime in the middle of a restless night. She would tell Donny today. He was the father. He deserved to be the only other person she confided in. And for now, she would think of her condition in terms of the clinical word pregnancy. She refused to think of herself as having a baby. That was too intimate. Too conscionable. And certainly, until Donny reacted as she hoped he would, too scary.

Vinnie, the Lionheart’s luncheon cook, looked up from a bubbling cauldron of spaghetti sauce as she walked by. “Hey, Helen, it’s kind of early for you to be here.”

“Hi, Vinnie. I could tell what you were cooking all the way over at the Finn Catcher this morning, and had to see for myself if it tasted as good as it smelled.” She took the spoon he offered, dipped it in the pot and slurped a healthy portion. The rich tomato sauce settled in her stomach like a lit firecracker, and reminded her that two cups of coffee and a helping of garlic probably wasn’t a fit breakfast for a pregnant woman. “Yep, just as I thought,” she said. “Delicious.”

He smiled with pride. “Come back for lunch. I’ll make sure you get a big helping.”

She laid her hand over her stomach. “I’ll hold you to that. Is Donny outside?”

“Yeah, hard at work as usual.”

Helen knew what that meant. Donny spent most of his waking hours building his sailboat. Luckily, the vacant lot between the Lionheart and the Heron Point Hotel was large enough to accommodate the twenty-nine-foot hull that he’d lovingly assembled in the three months he’d been on the island.

She went through the public area of the bar without being noticed by the few patrons inside, walked out the front door and looked at the sandwich sign standing under a front window. While she gathered her courage for what had to be done, she silently read the advertisement she knew by heart.

The Lionheart Pub proudly presents the mellow folk styling of Donovan Jax. Six nights a week beginning at nine o’clock.

In the time he’d been here, Donny had seemed to fit in with the varied population of Heron Point. At least folks came to the Lionheart with enough regularity for Helen to believe they liked his singing. The only person who didn’t seem to take to the town’s most recent performer was her father. But getting Finn to admit to liking anything new on the island was always a challenge.

Helen descended the two steps from the porch to the sidewalk and strode around the side of the building. Donny was there, a kerchief around his forehead and his shoulder-length brown hair tied with a bit of twine at his neck. Dust motes rose in the sun as he sanded the bow of Donovan’s Dawn, the vessel he’d promised would take the two of them around Key West and into the eastern Caribbean.

Helen watched him work for a moment. She noticed especially his strong arms, since he was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cropped off at the shoulders. His muscles flexed with each smooth, practiced swipe of the sandpaper—muscles as finely tuned to this task as they were to playing a guitar. His devilish green eyes narrowed as he studied the results of his labor before his full, sensuous lips rounded and he blew a puff of sawdust into the air.

He looked up, saw her leaning against the building and gave her a cheeky smile. “Hello, cupcake. How long you been standing there?”

She walked toward him. “Long enough to know that I’ll be glad when this thing is finished and I can see if she’ll really float.”

“Oh, she’ll float all right, if I have to swim underneath her holding her up the whole time.” He picked up a rag and brushed wood specks from his damp arms. “I thought you had a charter this morning.”

“Nope. Wish I did.” Any day Helen didn’t have a fishing trip was a day she didn’t make any money. “Got one tomorrow, though.”

“Good. Then you can help me today.”

“Yeah, how?”

He pointed to a stained foam cooler a few feet away. “By tossing me a beer.”

She pulled a bottle from the melting ice and threw it to him.

“Have one for yourself,” he said. “Once you start sanding, you’ll find out how hot that sun is today.”

A beer sounded good. Maybe it would help relax her. Helen reached into the ice again and withdrew a tempting bottle. She wrapped her hand around the cap and started to twist, anticipating the hiss of carbonation that always tantalized her taste buds.

Wait a minute, a voice inside her head cautioned. What are you doing? A woman who’s having a… A woman who’s pregnant isn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Isn’t that what you’ve heard? Isn’t that why you’ve always pitied those poor females in the heat of summer who are sweating for two without benefit of a little cold fermented malt grain?

Slowly, certainly reluctantly, Helen lowered the bottle back into the cooler.

“What’s the matter?” Donny asked. “It’s close enough to noon, even for you.”

She wiped her wet hand along her shorts. “It’s not that. I just changed my mind.”

“Suit yourself.” He held up a roll of sandpaper. “Anyway, if you’re sticking around for a while, you might as well tear off a piece and start to work on the deck rail.”

She walked closer to the boat, but didn’t reach for the sandpaper. “Donny, I have to tell you something.”

He set down the roll and went back to work. “Okay, go ahead.”

She watched him a moment longer, listened to the sound of the rough-grained paper on the already smooth teakwood. For a minute, her skin tingled as if he were abrading her body instead of the sailboat. She rubbed her arms briskly. “Donny?”

He glanced up, squinted, returned his attention to the task. “What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

He stopped sanding. Her heart skipped a beat. For a few torturous seconds, he glared at her over Donovan’s Dawn with extraordinarily wide eyes, and Helen waited for his next words to restart her breathing.

He dropped the paper and planted his elbows on the railing. “What did you say?”

“I just found out yesterday. I took one of those tests. It was positive.”

He shook his head as if denying it would make it so. “That’s impossible.”

“No, only nearly impossible. Anyway, remember Friday night two weeks ago after we… Well, didn’t you say that something didn’t seem right, that maybe there was something wrong with the condom?”

“Oh, hell, that was just talk. Besides, it was after your friend’s engagement party. We were too juiced to know what we were doing.”

She felt the grip of shame in the tightening of her stomach muscles. The reminder of her overindulgence at Claire’s party was still enough to make her cringe in mortification. She was too old to excuse such irresponsible behavior anymore. Getting drunk and stupid was just, well, stupid.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said. “I’m pregnant and that’s a fact.”

At least he didn’t argue the indisputable. He simply draped his hands over the side of Donovan’s Dawn and mumbled something. She thought she heard the word damn.

“What are you going to do?” he asked after a moment.

The wording of his question stunned her since it seemed as if he’d completely left himself out of assuming any responsibility. By asking her what she was going to do he was, in effect, telling her to do something.

She fought an escalating anger. Finn always told her she tended to act without thinking, to strike without having a justifiable target. She wasn’t going to do that, this time. She’d just dropped a bomb on Donny’s plans, on their plans together. He had a right to be defensive, confused.

“My first thought was to tell you,” she said calmly. “You’re the father, so obviously you have a stake in what happens with this ba…pregnancy.” She looked into his eyes and spoke with clear intent. “What do you think we should do?”

“Well, hell, I don’t know.” He rubbed his hand along the railing of the sailboat. His touch seemed gentle, caressing, even more than when he made love to her. “We have plans, Helen. When I got the boat done, we were going to take her around the Keys, sail all the way to the Turks and Caicos Islands, just you and me.”

“Plans can change, Donny. Life happens.” She’d never told him that his idea had been impractical from the start, anyway. Maybe deep down she’d hoped they could sail away just the two of them, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe some people believed in fantasies, but not Helen Sweeney.

Donny took a long swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The eyes that focused on hers were cold and distant. So were his words. “I don’t know, Helen. I’m forty-two years old. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of a kid and a mortgage and a college savings account.”

Her eyes burned and Helen cursed her frailty. She wasn’t going to cry. “I know it’s a shock, Donny. It is for me, too. I still can’t believe it. But it’s happened, and we have to…” Her voice hitched. Damn. She couldn’t go on, so she sat on the cooler, dangled her hands between her knees and took a deep breath.

At least a minute passed, the longest minute of Helen’s life, until Donny came around the boat and stood in front of her. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she brushed at a stubborn tear and looked up at him.

“It’ll be all right, Helen,” he said. “You tell me what you want, and we’ll make it work. If you want to go through with this, have the kid, I’ll stand by you. If you decide on a different course, I’ll be there for that, too.”

Her body went limp with relief. She covered the hand that still curled over her shoulder. “We don’t have to get married,” she said. “It’s enough to know that you’ll be here.”

“Sure. Don’t worry about me. You’ve got more important things to think about. We’ll still sail the boat. It may just take a little longer than we’d planned.” He crouched down in front of her and took her hands. “So, you’re going to have it? That’s what you want?”

Her lips quivered. Stupid hot tears spilled down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away. But it was okay. They were tears of gratitude. For the first time, she allowed herself to think of the little seed growing inside her as a human being, not a condition.

Donny smiled. “I guess that’s my answer.” He stood up. “You go on home now. Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

She let him pull her up from the cooler. “I’m fine,” she said. “In fact, I’m better than fine.”

“Atta girl.” He turned her around and nudged her toward the Lionheart. “I know you’ve got a charter in the morning, but are you coming back tonight for the first set, at least?”

She smiled over her shoulder. “I’ll be here.”

She felt the warmth of his gaze as she left him and climbed the steps to the entrance to the bar. Everything was going to be okay. She held that thought all afternoon as she prepared for Friday’s trip into the Gulf. She believed it as she drove back into town that night. Her confidence grew with each breath until she arrived at the Lionheart at nine o’clock and realized that only a few cars sat outside, far fewer than normal. She didn’t really worry until she parked a block away from the pub and walked to the front door. The sandwich sign was no longer sitting by the entrance. That could only mean one thing. The great Donovan Jax was no longer playing at the Lionheart Pub.

“I DON’T KNOW MUCH, Helen,” the owner of the Lionheart said a few minutes later when she sat at the bar, nursing a Coke.

“He just left without any explanation?” she asked.

“Yeah, well, he said there was an emergency. He apologized for leaving me with no entertainment, packed his bags and took off.”

There was an emergency, all right. Someone without a backbone was about to become a father. “I suppose this is pointless to ask, Stan, but did he leave a forwarding address?”

Stan shook his head slowly while wiping his perfectly clean bar. “Sorry, Helen. I think it’s lousy of him to walk out without letting you know.”

She swallowed the rest of her drink and slid the glass across the bar. “Don’t waste your sympathy on me. Donny and I weren’t getting along, anyway. I was about to end it. Probably would have tonight if he hadn’t bolted.”

Stan draped the damp rag over the sink behind the bar. “Maybe he sensed that and left before you broke his heart.”

Helen got down from the stool. “Right. I have to get up early, so I’m calling it a night.” She headed for the door, but stopped and turned around. “One more thing…”

“What’s that?”

“Donovan’s Dawn. I noticed the sailboat is still in the vacant lot. Did Donny say anything about it to you?”

“Yeah, he did. Said he’d send a mover to pick it up as soon as he could. I expect in the next week or so. I can keep a watch out there. You want me to try and get a location where the boat’s going?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.” She walked out onto the porch and paused in the overhead light. Knowing where Donny went really wasn’t important. Everything had changed in the last few minutes, and once again Helen had to face a grim reality. Planning a future with Donny had been a ridiculous dream, anyway, and was best ended quickly. Now, without Donny’s support, Helen knew she couldn’t raise a kid and keep the Finn Catcher going and take care of Finn. She barely made enough money to keep her family going as it was, and she couldn’t do any more. So this little bean inside her belly was the sacrifice she’d have to make.

She went down the steps, but stopped at the street. So, if this was her decision, why the hell had she ordered a Coke? She could be in the Lionheart right now, tossing back Wild Turkeys like there was no tomorrow. But she’d ordered a damn Coke.

She stared down at her flat stomach before closing her eyes to the image that had been stuck in her mind all afternoon. Little bean. What did it look like after two weeks? She remembered a picture in a high-school biology book. It looked like a lima bean. A tiny round speck, one a person could barely see without a magnifying glass. It had no heart, no brain, no sense that its mother was contemplating…

“Aw, hell.” Helen went back to the door of the Lionheart. She had a bit of time to wait and hope for a damn miracle.

Stan looked up and saw her at the door. “You forget something, Helen?”

“No, I just changed my mind. It wouldn’t hurt to ask the boat mover where the Dawn is going. In the next few days I might think of something Donny left behind. Something important I’d need to contact him about.”

“I’ll keep a watch,” Stan said. “If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”

Helen didn’t walk to the Suburban. She went into the vacant lot and stared at Donovan’s Dawn. The boat’s teak sides shone in the moonlight, testament to the weeks she and Donny had worked so hard. That had been a ridiculous dream, too, thinking she could take weeks away from Heron Point and sail around with Donny. Helen hadn’t been away from home for more than a couple of days in her life.

She’d been born in Micopee thirty miles away, and from the time her parents had brought her to the little cottage she still shared with Finn, she’d been as much a part of Heron Point as the giant cedar trees, the dozens of pelicans that squatted on all the old pilings, the sea itself. But the Gulf was ruled by the tides, so even the water moved to and from Heron Point more than Helen ever had. Maybe if Finn hadn’t lost the use of his legs, maybe if her mother hadn’t run off, maybe then Helen could have gone to college, made something of herself. But not now. And if she had this baby, not ever.

A cloud covered the moon, and suddenly the Dawn was a great hulking shadow of unfinished business just like Helen’s life. The sailboat stood on her supports, mocking Helen for believing in her, for believing in Donny. Finn was right, after all. Helen didn’t have a lick of sense when it came to men. She fell too fast and didn’t take long enough getting up before letting it happen again.

Well, not anymore. This time it wasn’t just her heart that was stomped on. This time the betrayal left her with a mountain of guilt about what she planned to do and a seriously wounded self-respect she’d never faced before. It wouldn’t be so easy to put the last three months out of her mind. This time it hurt.

Anger coiled inside her until she thought she would explode. Finding no outlet, she clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. She started to walk out of the lot, but when a shiny silver can by her feet caught her eye, she picked it up and rolled it between her hands. An innocent beer can. A weapon, a release. She hurled it at the sailboat. It pinged against the polished surface, hit the ground and rolled to the end of the lot. Tension ebbed from Helen’s shoulders. It felt good to fling her anger at the only tangible reminder left of Donny’s deception. She went to the garbage bin, picked up another can and threw it, too. Then another. Then many more.

She might have continued until the ache in her throat faded and her tears stopped flowing, except she heard men’s voices coming from the street behind her.

“Helen? Is that you?”

She froze. Just what she needed. Jack Hogan, Heron Point’s new chief of police and the man her best friend Claire was going to marry in a few weeks. She spun around and stepped into the shadows. “Hell, no, Jack. It’s not me, but I’ll clean up this mess somebody else left.” And then she saw who he was with and she couldn’t seem to speak another word. Her mouth dried up. Her lungs were incapable of drawing in air.

“That’ll be fair enough,” Jack said. He was still in uniform and she figured that technically he could nail her for vandalism. “Are you okay?”

“Dandy.” She stared at the sky, the dirt beneath her feet, anything but Jack and the man he was with, the town savior she’d nearly decapitated yesterday.

“It looks to me like somebody was picking on an innocent sailboat,” Jack said.

“Yeah, right. Not so innocent when you’re looking at it through my eyes. I see someone’s face very clearly on the side of that boat.”

Jack smiled. “I heard about Donny leaving. Sorry. But like I told Claire, you can do better.”

She huffed her opinion of his conclusion but mentally thanked him for saying it.

He turned his attention to Ethan Anderson. “I’d introduce you to our local fishing guide, Ethan, but I know you two met accidentally yesterday.”

“Yeah, we met,” Helen said. “Ethan sort of got in my way.” She managed to smile a little at the guy who was still dressed like he’d just gotten off the plane, in pressed pants and a blue oxford shirt. “You don’t need to arrest him, though, Jack. I’m not pressing charges, and I think he learned his lesson.”

“That’s generous of you,” Ethan said. He switched a foam takeout box from one hand to the other.

“Dinner?” she asked.

“Dessert.”

“Ethan and I just ate over at the Tail and Claw,” Jack said. “He’s waiting for a rental car to get here from the Tampa airport.”