One More Knight

“How are you?” Charly asked, taking a cautious step closer. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and her throat felt scratchy and dry. She wished she had a drink of water. “Have the doctors said? How bad was it? Are you-?”

“Am I goin’ t’ die any time soon, you mean?” He glared at her from under his eyebrows, then relaxed back against the pillows with a deep exhalation. “Oh, they’ve got to run all sorts of tests, yet. They’ll wait till I’m out of the woods for that, but I expect I’m lookin’ at some surgery-only question is how many arteries need bypassin’.” His voice faded into a weak-sounding cough.

Charly looked around in sudden panic. “You’re tired,” she muttered. “I should probably go.”

Her father raised his head and shifted around, gruff and restless, like a bear rousing from his winter’s nap. “Sure, go on. Maybe you should.” And then, as Charly was turning uncertainly, beginning to move away, “Guess you saw the boy…got what you came for…”

She turned back with a sharp exhalation, feeling as if someone had just grabbed her around the chest and squeezed hard. “Yes. Yes, I saw him. But that wasn’t what I came for. How could it be? I didn’t know he was here.” Easy…easy.

What was she doing? The man was sick, he’d almost died and here she was, yelling at him again. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be saying this!

She clenched her jaws and reined herself in, but the words came out anyway, in a constricted growl. “I came… to see you.”

Her father flinched back against his pillows, glaring at her with the poignant fierceness of a battered eagle. “Why?”

She jerked away from him, turning her back on the bed and the beeping machines, one hand clamped to the top of her head, the other clenched against her stomach, fighting for control. I can’t do this, she thought. Not here, not now.

How many years had she thought of this moment, how many times had she rehearsed what she would say to him, to her father, the man lying in that bed…the man whose approval she’d longed for so desperately all of her life? How many times had she asked herself, Now? Do I deserve it now? And answered herself, No-not yet. Go a little farther…climb a little higher…achieve a little more…and then maybe. And now finally, feeling worthy at last and come to demand what she’d worked so hard to earn, to find that she’d been chasing a fantasy all along.

Why? he’d asked her. Why did you come?

Why, indeed. It was time she faced the truth. The one thing she wanted from him, he couldn’t give her. Her father didn’t want her. Didn’t love her. Never had, and never would.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have. This was a mistake. I’m sorry-”

“No!” It was a faint echo of her father’s familiar stentorian bellow, but it still had the power to stop her in her tracks. She turned and saw that his mouth was working in an odd way. Incredibly he looked like a child trying not to cry. “No…don’t go. I’m the one…I’m the one who should be saying that…I’m sorry.” His voice was one she’d never heard before, frail and quavering. Frightened, she wrapped her arms across herself, but couldn’t stop herself from trembling.

He paused, then, and made an impatient gesture. She could almost see him gathering his strength, and when he spoke again it was in a reassuringly sonorous tone, weak but steady.

“I b‘lieve it’s true, you know, what they say about a close brush with the hereafter changing your perspective.” He coughed, shifted and went on gruffly, “You were right. I never was a father to you. After-after your mother passed away, well, you were just so small, then…plain scared me to death, if you want to know the truth. So I left you to Dobrina. It was easier, you know. Not to feel. And I…well, I b’lieve it got to be a habit, one I didn’t know how to break. Maybe never occurred to me I should. When you left…” He moved a hand just slightly, but it was enough. Charly clamped a hand across her mouth, stifling a sob of protest in her throat.

I can’t do this, she thought. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

“When you left,” her father went on in a quiet, trembling voice, “I thought I’d been given the judgment I richly deserved. But I brought the boy home regardless, and appealed to the Lord in His mercy for a second chance. For a long while I thought He hadn’t seen fit to grant it to me. Then it came to me that maybe He’d just given it to me in a different way-that the boy was my second chance. Now I see-” he coughed again, and lifted his head to glare at her through eyes rimmed in red “-I see that the Lord has been more merciful to me than I ever could have imagined. And now that I have been given that chance, I ask you-”

Oh, God, Charly prayed, please don’t do this. Please don’t let me cry.

But it seemed the Lord was busy right then, answering someone else’s prayers.

“I ask you…to forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Charly squeaked, still managing to hold back sobs even as, in spite of all her efforts, the tears began to overflow. “But I’m the one that left. I ran away and never let you know…how I was or where. I meant to hurt you. I did-I know that now. But at the same time I just wanted you to love me.”

“I always loved you,” her father said stiffly, jerking as if she’d struck him. “Always.”

“I only wanted you to be…proud of me,” Charly whispered, dashing away tears. “That’s why I didn’t come back-I wanted to make myself…someone you could be proud of. I didn’t know…what a terrible thing I was doing-to you…to my son…”

“What you did to me, I deserved,” her father said, then slowly shook his head and was very much the judge again, for a moment. “The boy did not. You will have to find a way…find the courage… to do what I have done. Beg his-”

“I think it’s too late for that,” Charly interrupted in a low voice, desperately needing a tissue. “He won’t-”

“He will.” Her father put his head back on the pillows and closed his eyes. “Give him some time-he’s a good boy, but he can be stubborn at times.” He paused, and his lips curved themselves into a wry smile, one Charly was used to seeing in her own mirror from time to time. “Has a lot of his mother in him.”

She touched her nose with the back of her hand, astonishing herself with a laugh that was more than half a sob.

“Talk to the boy.”

“I will,” she whispered. “I’ll try.” Then she looked down at her father’s gray, exhausted face, and fear clutched at her once more, turning her body cold. Fear for him, and for the son she’d hurt so badly. And for herself. It’s not too late, she prayed. Please, don’t let it be too late…for any of us.

“Charlene…” His eyes were open again, searching her face like a man lost. He lifted his hand slowly, reaching toward her.

Inside her chest Charly felt a strange, giving feeling, as though something hard and constricting-a band, or a chain, perhaps-had broken. Where for years there had been only pain, something warm and healing began to flow.

“Daddy.” She reached out blindly and grasped her father’s hand, and finally whispered the words they both needed so badly to hear. “I forgive you.”

Chapter 13

January 5, 1978

Dear Diary,

Well, it is official. Yesterday the school principal called and told the judge that I will not be allowed to come back to school tomorrow when it starts up after Christmas vacation. So I guess I am now officially the Town Slut. Nobody is speaking to me-and I do mean nobody. Not even Kelly Grace. She acts all nervous around me, like maybe she thinks what I have is catching or something. Well, I could tell her it is, and if she doesn’t watch herself she might catch it too, but not from me!

Colin’s parents won’t let him come over anymore. He’s not even supposed to call me, which I think is totally unfair. We write each other notes, though, and hide them in this place we know of in the woods. Colin thinks he