“And you think not loving me will do that?” The misery in her eyes was the only answer. “Dammit.” He rubbed his hand across his eyes, trying to erase an ache behind them. He stared away a moment before facing her. “I won’t give up on what’s between us.”
“I . . . I’m sorry, Daniel.” Her fingertips brushed his arm, then were quickly withdrawn. “Please try to understand.”
She backed away a few steps then turned and walked toward the parking lot. At her car, she looked back and saw him watching her. He thought he detected a moment of weakness in her resolve. Then she slid into the car and drove away.
Understand?
Hell no, he didn’t understand. Nobody could who wasn’t convinced he was going to crash every time he took a plane up.
But she’d come to her senses.
She had to.
*
Marti had browbeaten Kendra into coming up to the home ranch to watch old home movies of her youthful summers at Far Hills.
She hadn’t been in the mood for company, not even after a week of being a virtual hermit, but Matthew had a fine time forming a chorus of “Who dat’s” with Emily before they both drifted off to sleep. Meg and Ben, on the other hand, said little, but avidly watched the movies of their parents as youngsters–especially their father.
Ellyn had been totally silent until another reel started. “I don’t remember seeing these before.”
“You might not have. You remember them, don’t you, Kendra?”
Yes, she remembered them. She remembered her mother watching them hour after hour, night after night. “Mother had copies.”
“Not copies. These are your mother’s.”
“No. I threw those out when we cleaned out after mother died.”
“You put them in the trash, I took them out.”
A solidly built young man in an immaculate uniform, with a crewcut the same color as her hair strode into the frame. He put an arm around her mother’s waist and said something that made her grin. Then the two of them waved to someone still off camera. A girl in a frilly green dress ran into view, and was scooped up in one motion by Ken Jenner. Her. Her father holding her with the same casual strength that Daniel showed in holding Matthew. And with the same almost fierce expression of adoration. He tightened his hold on his wife, and the three of them smiled into the camera.
Kendra’s focus shifted from the dashing young man to that youthful, happy version of the mother she remembered.
I understand why you loved him.
She’d blamed her mother for falling in love with a man who didn’t take the safe route. She’d blamed her mother for giving her a father who didn’t come back. Now she understood. And forgave.
Something Ellyn had said the day Daniel arrived drifted into her mind. About why she’d chased the Taumaturgio story.
To find a man who showed up against all odds–in an airplane, by the way–to help children in need of rescuing. Haven’t you ever wondered about that?
She never had. Now she saw it. She’d been a child who’d needed rescuing from an unhappy reality, a rescue that could only be accomplished by a father who had gone off in an airplane and never returned. By chasing the story–some might say searching for her lost father–she’d found Daniel. Had she blamed him for being like her father? Or for not being her father?
She made hurried excuses to leave.
Marti followed her to the door, with Matthew vociferously objecting to the prospect of going to sleep, even as his eyelids drooped.
“Have you ever noticed that the tireder they are the harder they fight?” Marti asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Some of us–” Marti’s significant look left no doubt who she meant. “–never outgrow that. The closer they come to giving in, the harder they fight.”
But Kendra didn’t have time to consider Marti’s pronouncement. Back home, she tucked Matthew into bed, and went to the drawer where she kept important papers. She found the sheaf Daniel had given her weeks ago, and filled out the certificate to amend their son’s birth certificate.
*
Daniel smoothed the paper and stared at it.
He hadn’t believed first Ellyn, then Marti when they’d said Kendra had spent this week he’d left her alone to stew instead convincing herself that defining her relationship to him strictly as Matthew’s father was the only practical decision. Now he wasn’t so sure.
What kept ringing in his head was Marti’s question: “What are you going to do about it?”
*
One minute she was answering a knock to find Daniel on her back doorstep with the sun barely up. The next, she was in a small airplane, belted in.
“I’ll be right back,” Daniel announced, then disappeared.
It was her first real opportunity to think. Her first chance to consider her options, not just his orders.
He’d barged into her house, declaring, “The least you owe me is a chance to prove you’re wrong.”
“But–”
“No buts. Every but’s covered. Ellyn’s here to take care of Matthew. Your boss knows you won’t be in. And here–put this on.”
“What is this about, Daniel?”
“Not time to talk about that yet. We have all day.”
And he hadn’t budged from that stance as he’d bullied her into putting on the jacket, then whisked her off to the airfield and into an airplane. But now that the power of his will was absent . . .
She had her hand on the seatbelt buckle when the door opened.
“Just checking if you’re belted in safely,” announced Rufus.
He pushed aside her hand from the buckle and tugged it snugly.
“That’s good. Daniel’s in checking the weather–updates, since he’d called the Flight Service Station before he picked you up. Wouldn’t have gone up if there’d been anything. He’s real careful.”
“Rufus, I–”
“Here.” He shoved a paper into her hand. “Thought you could follow along on the pre-flight checklist. Daniel’s a stickler. It’s a pleasure to
