Secret Dad. Raye Morgan
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He scrunched up his face and looked at her from under a stray lock of hair. “Could I have a worm for a-pet? Just a little one?”
Charlie hesitated. Worms as pets. Wonderful. “I’m afraid not, honey,” she told him calmly. “Worms don’t do real well in captivity.” She winced as she saw the disappointment on his round face. “But you know what? I’ll bet we have worms living right in our yard. Later on, maybe we could dig up some dirt and see.”
“Could we?” He was happy again. “Great! When I find one I’m going to name him Cowabunga,” he called as he ran off to chase Sabrina through the trees.
Charlie smiled. Being with Robbie always made her smile. He was the joy in her life—practically the reason she lived at this point. He was the only thing she’d taken with her when she ran away. He would be with her until he was grown and then she would finally be alone. But she didn’t want to think about that. That day was a long way off—and this day was too beautiful for melancholy thoughts. Right now, her heart was light as a breeze.
Some days she picked Robbie up with her little motor scooter, carrying him home clinging to her waist as they roared over the bumps. But she liked best the days when they walked home together and he told her about what he’d learned. They were close in ways she’d never been with her own family, and that was just the way she’d planned it from the beginning. As far as she was concerned, her relationship with her son was a golden gift she would treasure and work to maintain. She would do almost anything to make sure it never got to be the way it had always been with her own mother.
For some reason, that made her think about Denver Smith, and before she could stop herself, she shivered with anticipation, then gasped at her own foolishness. “Wow,” she whispered to herself as a bird cried in the tree above her. “The man really is dangerous, isn’t he?” And that made her shiver again. She had a dangerous man in her living room and she could hardly wait to go be scared of him. What nonsense!
A giggle rose in her throat. What if her mother could see Denver, could know the way Charlie was reacting to him? She could see her mother’s strong, handsome face grimacing in disgust.
“A hooligan!” she would say disapprovingly. “We don’t invite hooligans into our home.”
“No,” Charlie said, laughing in a way she would never have laughed in front of the woman. “No, Mother. You don’t. But I do. And that is one reason why I don’t live with you any longer.”
Brave words, she thought, sobering. Too bad she’d never be able to say them to her mother’s face. Well, there was no question about it. The man was dangerous. She could see it in his eyes and in the evidence that scarred his body. You didn’t end up with a body like that playing tennis at the club. She’d never dealt with a man who’d actually been shot before.
“No more shivering,” she told herself firmly, and then her smile was back.
Robbie came skipping out of the trees and slowed to walk beside her.
“Mom, how come your eyes are sparkling?” he asked.
She looked down at him. “What?”
“Like stars.” He nodded, gazing into them.
She laughed. “Oh, come on.”
He wrinkled his tiny freckled nose, his blue eyes wise. “Do you have a surprise at home for me?” he asked carefully.
She sighed, shaking her head, delighted with him as usual. “How did you guess that?”
He shrugged. “Because of your eyes,” he said sensibly. “Because you look like a surprise.”
Laughing, she pulled him up into her arms and gave him a very loud kiss on his flushed cheek.
“Is it a rifle?” he asked hopefully.
“Robbie!” she cried, dropping him on his feet again. “No, it’s not a rifle. And it never will be, you can count on that. I don’t think you should have a rifle. And I wish you would stop asking for one all the time.”
He took her small lecture patiently, then got back to business right away. “Then what kind of surprise is it?” he asked, pulling further away so that he could skip along beside her.
“It’s not a toy surprise, either,” she warned him. “More of a people-to-people surprise.”
He thought about that for a moment, frowning then shook his head and asked, “What does that mean?”
“You just wait. You’ll see.”
His eyes widened and he started to ask something else, but he quickly thought better of it, and instead put his head down and began to walk on ahead as fast as he could, with Sabrina dancing beside him, watching for something to chase. But Robbie wasn’t interested in the forest any longer. He seemed to be intent on getting home.
Charlie shook her head, watching him. She so often worried that it wasn’t fair to try to raise him all alone, that he really needed a dad in his life. That was something she couldn’t give him. The thought of going out and trying to find a man to take over that role made her cringe. Unfortunately, she was afraid Robbie was going to have to grow up without a father around. Not an ideal situation, but the best she could do.
She hoped he would like having Denver stay for dinner. There hadn’t often been a man in their house lately. Now and then she invited Robbie’s friend Billy to come to a meal and bring his parents. She had noted the way Robbie hung on every word Billy’s father uttered, and followed him with his eyes at all times. It was obvious how much her son longed for a dad of his own. She wasn’t sure what he would make of Denver, but she was pretty sure their visitor was made from the mold every little boy liked to think of his father as being from. That was the best she could do for him, it seemed—occasional and temporary male influences in his life.
Robbie was walking faster and faster and she almost had to run to catch up to him. He pulled her by the hand and she laughed as he forced her to trot, with Sabrina dashing around them and barking. In no time at all, they were home, running up the porch steps and bursting in through the front door.
The house seemed too still and she looked around quickly, her gaze darting from the couch to the kitchen and back again. The blanket lay neatly folded on the table. The fire had just about gone out. There was no sign of him. He was gone.
Something lurched inside her but she didn’t stop to analyze why. He was gone and she was disappointed, but she wasn’t going to let it show
Robbie looked around too, puzzled. “Where is it, Mom? I can’t find the surprise.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” she told him, letting her fingertips trail along the back of the couch where Denver had been when she’d last seen him, remembering how big and rough he’d looked when she’d had him there. “I guess your surprise has sort of... disappeared.”
He was gone. The disappointment welled up in her like a thundercloud pouring over the tips of the mountain range on a summer day. She’d brought home a lost creature, tended to him, grown to rather like him, and now he was gone. That left an empty spot in her soul.
The sound of something outside caught her attention. There was a noise from out back, a thump, the sound of an ax against wood. She stopped, frowning, and suddenly she realized it was made by someone chopping firewood. Her heart leaped up but she didn’t let herself notice that. Instead, she ran to the window and looked out. He wasn’t gone after all. There he was, ax in hand, chopping wood. That thing that had lurched inside her rose again, rose and poured something warm and sweet through her body, and she grinned, feeling suddenly light as air.
“Or maybe not,” she told her son, tousling his hair as she passed him on her way outside. “Let me go see.” She stepped quickly to the back door.
There he was, swinging an ax in a very unbalanced manner, his hair shining in the sun. Throwing open the door, she ran out.
“What are you doing?”