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 should tell that he’s the father, but I don’t want him to. If he does, our parents will probably try to make us get married, and I for sure don’t want to, not to Colin or anybody else, either. I don’t know about you, but I think sixteen is way too young to get married, pregnant or not!

The judge wants me to go to stay with his sister, Aunt Irene, in Birmingham until after the baby is born. What a horrible thought! I can’t stand Aunt Irene, and Uncle Wesley is worse. Besides, this is my home. My friends-if I have any left-are here. The judge is really mad at me because I told him if he tried to make me go I would run away and never come back. Also because I won’t tell him who the father is. He says I’m the stubbornest and most selfish and immature person he ever saw. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. I get to feeling so scared, sometimes. Like, I get this sick, hurty feeling inside when I think about…things. About Colin, and getting married, and going away, and having a baby. So I just try not to think about it at all, which is getting harder all the time, now that the baby is moving around inside me. It’s kind of neat, but…weird, too. Spooky.

One thing I didn’t tell you. I don’t know why, I guess I was in a State of Shock at the time. Anyway, back when I first told Aunt Dobie about the baby, she asked me if I wanted to get an abortion. I didn’t know what to say-I didn’t even know you could do that-legally, I mean-but I guess they passed a law or something so now you can get one anytime you need one. So I didn’t say anything, and Aunt Dobie never said any more about it, either. I’m glad she didn’t. I don’t know what I would have done. I was pretty mixed up, and besides, it kind of wasn’t real to me then. It’s getting real now, though-boy, is it ever! I saw the pictures in these books the doctor gave me, so I even know what he looks like. Oh by the way-did I tell you? I think it’s a boy.


(Almost forgot) Thought for the Day: I guess that was it. Isn’t that enough to think about?

Troy was pacing the floor in the ICU waiting area, taking breaks now and then to glare at his watch or to minutely examine the carpet mosaics with a Blue Ridge Mountain theme that adorned the walls. Those mosaics served two purposes, it looked like to him, being both decorative and a convenient cushion for fidgety family members driven to beating their heads against stationary objects.

It was a compulsion he could well understand and sympathize with, at the moment. He might have been considering those extreme measures as a way of releasing his own tensions, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the young man sharing the waiting room with him looked as if he might be needing to blow off some steam himself, and Troy thought he ought to do his best to set the boy a good example of manly patience and fortitude.

But damn if he didn’t feel just like an expectant father. Or anyway, like he thought an expectant father might feel, which was, first of all, worried about the well-being of someone he cared about, knowing she was in a lot of pain right about now. And most of all, helpless and frustrated because there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to help her.

He thought about calling his brother again to see if he had any more good advice to offer, since Jimmy Joe had actually been in this situation a time or two, the last time pretty recently, as a matter of fact. Then he remembered how, on that occasion, while Mirabella was giving birth to little Amy Jo in his truck, his little brother hadn’t had a whole lot of time to spend on pacing and hand-wringing, since his role in the delivery had been a good bit more active than that.

Which, Troy thought, was his whole problem in a nutshell. He was used to being in an active role himself. He’d been in tense situations a good many times before, sometimes when lives-a lot of lives-had hung in the balance. But he’d been prepared for those situations, well armed and well trained to handle anything that might arise. He’d known what he was supposed to do, and how to do it, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Right now he didn’t have a clue.

The boy, for example. Cutter. Lord, it was hard for Troy to believe that tall, good-lookin’ young man could be Charly’s son-he couldn’t even imagine how it must be for her, seeing him like this, and for the first time since the day she’d given birth to him. He thought it must be hard for a parent to see their kids all grown-up, even when they’d gone through all the stages with ’em-from cute, drooling babies like Amy Jo, to bony ten-year-olds with chipped front teeth and bandages on their knees like Jimmy Joe’s boy, JJ., and all the ones between. But this scowling, hostile twenty-year-old who already thought he knew all the answers? How would you even know where to begin?