apart. Having Molly back was like stepping into the past with all the old needs and desires.
And as if that weren't enough, Carrie was there, demanding resolution in the turmoil of his thoughts. He didn't know how old she was. He didn't know her birthday so he couldn't make exact calculations, but there was no question: Carrie was his daughter. Joy washed over him like applause. A healthy daughter. A miracle, a gift he'd never dared hope for. He cried, helpless to stop the tears. For nine years he'd been a father and not known. While he was trying to forget Molly, Carrie was drooling, and gurgling, and learning to sit up. She had learned to walk and talk and sing nursery rhymes without him. Her “father” had taught her to ride a bike while he had been practicing self-destruction in Yugoslavia. Someone else had taken her to her first day of kindergarten and bought her her first sundae and held her close when she woke up at night with bad dreams.
She was beautiful.
And was never told.
He and Molly had some talking to do.
Leaving the park bench, oblivious to the jacket tossed across the slatted seat, he started to retrace his route to Molly's.
Molly was halfway down the hall to her bedroom when the phone rang. Rushing back to her desk, she breathlessly picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”
“May I come up?” Carey asked brusquely.
“Yes, where are you?”
“On the corner in a phone booth.”
“Where've you been?”
“Walking.”
“I'm sorry about Bart.”
“I'll be there in two minutes,” he declared, ignoring her apology. “I want to talk to you.” He sounded grim.
Greeting him at the door, Molly led the way upstairs into the living room. He didn't touch her, hardly looked at her. Only said, “Hello,” in the polite tone of a stranger. Apprehensively she watched him stalk across the room. She'd seen him go into a cold rage once when someone had challenged his control over his life, and she was uncertain how deeply the scene with Bart had affected him.
Sitting down, she invited him to, but he didn't. Instead he paced to the bank of windows facing the city, briefly looked out, then restlessly moved back toward her. “Would you like a drink?” Molly nervously inquired.
He shook his head, skirted the end of the peach silk couch, and strode back toward the windows.
“Something to eat?” she queried into the deathly silence.
Stopping, he spun around and stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. His mouth opened, then shut again in the same hard, determined line. His pale hair was ruffled, as if fingers had repeatedly raked through it. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows; he no longer had on the cream linen sport coat.
“Would you sit down, at least,” she said forcibly, his restless stride making her increasingly nervous. “You're pacing like a new father.” It was not a good choice of words.
His shoulders stiffened. Stopping abruptly, he walked over and dropped into a chair near Molly. “So who was the man you were playing with when I walked in?” he accused her in a hard voice.
“I wasn't
His eyes which had been studying his steepled fingertips, flashed upward and pierced hers like lasers. “You could have fooled me.” Although his voice was flat and passionless, the muscles in his neck were rigid.
“Don't get authoritarian with me, Carey Fersten. I'm not eighteen anymore, and I don't care if you're used to pulling rank on half the world.” Spreading her arms along the back of the couch, she straightened her spine and added, “I don't give a damn how important you are. But to clear your suspicious mind, I kicked Bart out right after you left. Supposedly he'd come over to see Carrie, but kept trying to pry into my private life.”
Carey relaxed fractionally. “Really?”
“Cross my heart,” she said. “Is that good enough, or would you like a blood oath?” The flowing white of her robe against the silky peach couch set off her golden-haired beauty like a framed portrait. Her long hair glistened, her rich blue eyes stared directly at him, her cheeks were touched with a rosy blush of anger. She was too beautiful for any other man to touch. An inexplicable feeling from a man who until now had calmly accepted the more liberal modes of human relationships.
“I'm jealous as hell, Molly,” he said quietly, his familiar, brooding eyes gazing at her. “It's a novel sensation, but damnably real.”
“Coming from the darling of the international jet set, I suppose I should be flattered.”
“Don't believe all the hype. I lead a quiet life, and I'm not trying to flatter. It's God's truth.”
“Thank you, then,” she replied stiffly.
“You're welcome,” he answered, equally unyielding.
They sat facing each other in the golden glow of silk-shaded lamps, across a short distance of pale green Imuk carpet crafted a century before they were born. Although his long legs were sprawled in front of him, Carey's posture was tense, adversarial. The lamplight burnished his pale hair like gold brushwork on eleventh-century gospels. His bronzed face was angular, cautious, his dark eyes compelling like some pagan god. After a short, spare silence, Carey said, “Why didn't you tell me about Carrie?”
“I know what it looks like,” Molly replied, understanding his question although it was ambiguously worded. Dropping her arms to unconsciously clasp her hands, she went on, “but Carrie isn't-”
“That child is mine.”
“No!” Her exclamation was filled with disbelief and poignant pain. “Oh, Carey,” she cried, her glance anguished, “don't you think I wish she were? But it isn't true.”
“Why not? The last time I was with you was only a few days before your wedding.”
“Two weeks before.”
“Twelve days,” Carey said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “to be exact.” Molly's wedding date was etched on his heart, and the years had never erased that pain.
“But I had a period after that,” she explained. The bizarre turn of conversation clouded the sequence of events that had until a few moments ago, seemed logical and clear.
“What kind of a period?”
How did he know, she wondered, looking at him with trepidation. Even though it had all happened years ago, she knew the answer as though it were yesterday because it had been so unusual. “Only slight bleeding,” she whispered at last.
“It looks as though you were pregnant with Carrie when you married,” he said. “You never had a period, after all.” His gaze captured her blue eyes and held them in a glance that demanded an answer. “Did you?”
“I don't know. It was years ago,” Molly dissembled, trying to avoid the collision course facing her, too confused now with complex emotional conflicts to want to come to terms with the unbelievable idea Carey was so relentlessly pursuing.
“All you have to do is look at her and you'd know.”
He was right. The physical resemblance was the most telling argument, the most damning evidence. Carey and her daughter were so remarkably similar, she marveled at her obtuseness all these years. “It can't be,” she declared with a stubbornness that still clung to the tenuous substance of her own misplaced convictions. “Carrie was born too late. She was born almost ten months after the wedding.”
“My mother's pregnancy was close to ten months. It was a family joke, how I didn't want to leave the security of the womb.”
“No, don't say that,” she pleaded, her eyes huge and liquid. “It's too unreal.” Covering her face with her hands, she sat there trembling. “It's not the way it happened,” she whispered, looking up. She was holding back tears, the struggle visible on her face.
He only said, “Thank you for giving me a daughter.” And then, uncurling himself from the depths of the chair, he walked over and lifted Molly. He held her protectively in his arms, kissing her tear-streaked cheeks, murmuring, “I love you, Honeybear. I always have. Always… always…”
Nestling close, she clung to him like a small child clinging to the only security it's known.
He whispered his love and brushed his warm lips over hers. “I'm going to take care of you both,” he
