Twenty-Nine
Nate gazed out the passenger window of his father’s car as the Kansas City skyline receded, giving way to flourishing residential neighborhoods west of the city. He marveled again that he was actually back in the United States. The events leading up to his escape and the long journey to Bogotá remained a blur. It seemed they had happened a lifetime ago.
But he remembered clearly the moment Daria had walked into his hospital room. The elation he’d felt at finally seeing her beautiful face again, and at hearing from her own lips that she had borne him a precious daughter.
And today he would meet little Natalie, hold her in his arms. It had thrilled him when Daria told him that Natalie looked like him. He tried to envision a two-year-old female version of himself, but the only pictures that came to his mind were the tiny brown-skinned Timoné children. And he was also strangely frightened by the prospect of meeting her. What if she’s afraid of me? What if my scars repulse her?
He looked over at his father, who was concentrating on the heavy, noon-hour traffic.
“Dad, what time did you say Daria was planning to get here?”
Jack checked his watch. “I think she said one o’clock. She should be at the house by the time we get there. I’m sure Mom and Betsy will keep her and Natalie entertained. You nervous?” Jack asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“A little.”
Nathan pulled down the visor on the passenger side and looked into the undersized mirror. After nearly three years without seeing more than his reflection in a river stream, it still startled him whenever he caught a glimpse of his own face. His eyes were more crinkled at the corners than he remembered, and his cheeks were even thinner than they had been, but other than that, his face was unmarred by his ordeal. His hands and arms were another story. The long-sleeved shirt and jacket his mother had brought to the hospital for him covered the ugliest burn scars, but striations of scar tissue marred his hands as well. He had been deeply relieved to discover that he could still maneuver a pen, could still handle a razor without nicking himself, could still hold a woman in his arms.
He shook the thought off. He wouldn’t dwell on that now. What was important was that he could still practice medicine, could still provide for his family. In every way that mattered, he was whole.
His father turned onto a side street, and suddenly everything was familiar to him again. He was going home to the house he’d grown up in. A lump formed in his throat, but he was hard-pressed to identify the emotion it signified.
He swallowed hard. “Do the Milbrandts still live there?” he asked, pointing to a stately Georgian revival, attempting small talk.
“John Jr. moved in a couple of years ago. Berta died, you know, and they put John in a home.”
He didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter. They were just blocks away from the Camfield house, just a minute away from Daria and Natalie.
Jack reached for a remote control Velcroed to the dash. By the time they pulled into the driveway, the garage door had opened to allow them entry. The huge door slid closed slowly behind them, leaving them in the dim light of the garage.
The door that led to the large laundry room off the kitchen opened, and Vera appeared, her arms outstretched, her face crumpled by emotion. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re finally home. I can hardly believe it.”
His sister, Betsy, stood beside their mother, beaming. “Welcome home, bro.”
He reached out to return Betsy’s warm embrace and rumple her hair in a way that at one time would have made her furious, but now only made her cry with joy.
“Hurry, Nathan, come in. Natalie is waiting,” Vera urged, ushering them through the kitchen.
His heart started pounding, and his palms began to perspire. He followed his mother through the formal dining room and into the living room. Daria sat on the edge of a sofa across the room, as though she might spring up at any moment. But she remained seated, smiling sadly at him. “Hello, Nate. Welcome home.”
At her feet sat the most beautiful child he had ever seen. Her cherubic face was framed in wisps of white-blond hair, and she gazed at him with curious, hazel eyes. He saw Daria in the high cheekbones and the tiny, slightly pug nose, but they were undeniably—as Daria had told him—his own eyes that peered at him from beneath pale lashes.
Daria stood now, picked up the child, and walked toward him. He stepped forward to meet them.
Though her eyes were dry, Daria’s voice quavered, and Nate knew that she was struggling to maintain her composure. “Nattie, this is your Daddy Nate. This is Dwama-Dwampa’s son.” She spoke it like a line rehearsed for an important business meeting.
He smiled. “Dwama-Dwampa?”
Daria laughed and opened her mouth, but Vera jumped in with an explanation before Daria could respond. “It’s what she called us when she first started talking. We liked it so much we made it official. I’m Dwama,” she said unnecessarily.
Daria put Natalie on the floor and sat down again. Nate knelt in front of the little girl, put out his hand and touched her arm. “Well, hi there, Nattie. I’m glad to meet you.” It was all he could do not to take her into his arms and squeeze her tightly to himself.
But Natalie turned suddenly shy and scrambled up onto Daria’s lap, burying her face against her mother’s shoulder. “Can you say hello?” Daria coaxed.
Natalie burrowed deeper into the sleeve of Daria’s corduroy shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Daria offered.
Nate held up a hand. “It’s okay. Give her time. How are you?” he asked, taking a seat in a wingback chair near the sofa.
“I’m doing all right.”
An uncomfortable moment passed. Finally Vera got up. “Why don’t I fix us some tea?” she asked brightly. “Nate, would you rather have coffee?”
“No, Mom. Tea is fine.”
“How about you, Daria?”
Before she could reply, Natalie announced suddenly, “I want sugar in my tea, Dwama.” They all laughed.
Vera rose and headed for the kitchen.
“I’ll help you, Mom,” Betsy said, going after her.
Jack took his cue and followed them. “I’ll be sure Dwama puts plenty of sugar in your tea, Nattie,” he said, laughing nervously.
“Well, she knows what she wants.” Nate grinned, then cringed inwardly, afraid Daria might infer another meaning from the inflection of his words.
But Daria smiled back and, in a stage whisper over Nattie’s head, told him, “She does have a mind of her own. She’s sometimes more than we can handle.” Daria cleared her throat, obviously embarrassed by her innocent reference to Cole.
He tried to think of something to say that would put her at ease, but before the words came, Natalie pointed at his hands. “My daddy doesn’t have that on his hands,” she stated matter-of-factly.
Her mention of “my daddy” hurt far more than the fact that she had drawn attention to his scars.
“Natalie!” Daria’s voice came out in a horrified whimper. “Oh, Nate, I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t think to warn—to tell her that you’d been burned.”
He waved her apology away and turned to the child. “These are scars I got from a very bad burn,” he explained patiently.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not so much anymore. It hurt very, very badly when it first happened.”
“Was it in the trash?”
He looked to Daria for an interpretation.
“We live in the country and burn our own trash,” she explained.
“Oh. No, Natalie, it wasn’t the trash. A hut—a building—caught on fire while I was inside.”
“My daddy says never, never go by a fire, and don’t never, never, never play wif matches.” She shook a finger in his face.
“He’s right,” Nate agreed, charmed by her sweet seriousness, in spite of the pain the exchange caused him.
He glanced up at Daria and saw that she was crying. He leaned back in his chair. “This isn’t easy, is it?”
She only shook her head.
Afraid that Natalie would notice her mother’s tears, Nate attempted to distract her. “Natalie, shall we go see if Gram—I mean, Dwama—has that tea ready yet?” He stood and held out a hand to her. She reached up and intertwined her tiny fingers trustingly into his scarred, rough fingers. She smiled up at him, and he wasn’t sure he could hold back his own tears as Natalie pulled him to the kitchen.
Daria sat on the sofa and sobbed, scarcely able to control herself. Her stomach churned and she felt achy, as though she were coming down with the flu. But when she heard Natalie calling her from the kitchen, she pulled herself together, wiped her eyes, and went toward her daughter’s voice.
From the doorway, Daria watched Nate. He had never been so thin, and it was hard to get used to his hair being cut so short. His voice still sounded a bit hoarse, and the scars were disturbing to her. But being up and around and nicely dressed, he seemed much improved from that first day she’d seen him in the hospital.
Natalie was sitting at the counter beside Nate, who was blowing on her little plastic cup of tea in an effort to cool it enough that it wouldn’t burn her tongue. Natalie had always warmed to people easily, but she was watching Nate with such unreserved adoration that Daria wondered for a moment if she instinctively sensed who Nate was.
Nate poured a little more milk in Natalie’s cup and stirred it, then put the spoon to his lips. “There,” he declared. “That’s just right. Hang on. I’ll carry it to the table for you.”
He scooped her from the counter and set her on a high stool at the table in the breakfast room just off the kitchen, where Jack was already settled with a cup of coffee. Then he went back for her tea, delivering it with a gentle warning, “Sip it slowly now. It’s still pretty warm.”
Vera noticed Daria. “Oh, Daria, there you are. Do you want milk for your tea, dear?”
“No, thank you.” She really didn’t want tea at all. She pulled her loose corduroy shirt tighter around her, suddenly feeling chilled. Her stomach still felt queasy, and she’d begun to feel cramps in her lower abdomen. “Maybe a little honey if you have it,” she told Vera. “Can I help?”
“No, no, I’m just about finished. You have a seat,” Vera told her.
Daria went to sit between Betsy and Natalie at the table, and Nate brought his steaming mug of tea and took a seat across the table from them.
Vera joined them, and for a long moment, the quiet sipping of tea and the clock on the wall counting off the seconds were the only sounds.
“Your plants sure look healthy, Mom,” Betsy said finally, reaching over to pluck one yellowed leaf from an English ivy that trailed over the edge of a shelf in the bay window.
“They are beautiful, Vera. You have such a green thumb,” Daria offered.
Vera waved off their compliments. “Oh, it’s just this window. They get light from three directions. They can’t help but flourish.”
Silence.
From her perch, Natalie reached for Daria’s spoon.
“Wait, sweetie. Let me get it before you fall off your stool,” Daria said. “Do you need to stir your tea?”
“I stir it,” Natalie insisted when she saw that her mother intended to help her.
“All right, but you be very careful.”
The little girl looked in Nate’s direction as though to be sure she had his attention, then she put the spoon in her half-empty cup and stirred slowly as she had seen him do earlier. She dipped a spoonful of tea and slurped it loudly.
“No, Natalie. It’s time to put the spoon down now,” Daria said gently, grateful that her daughter obeyed without debate.
“Is that pretty good stuff, Natalie?” Nate asked her.
“Uh-huh,” she nodded, gazing at him over the rim of her cup.
“I have more,” she said, holding her cup out to Nate.
“What do you say, Nattie?” Daria prompted.
“Peese?”
Nate smiled and pushed back his chair.
“I can get it, Nate,” Daria said.
“No, please. I’m already up. Would you like another cup, Daria?”
“No. Thank you.” She was grateful not to have to get up. She was still experiencing some mild cramping, and her head had started to throb.
Nate took Natalie’s cup to the counter and began to prepare the tea. Daria watched him stir in a generous amount of milk, testing to be sure the liquid wasn’t too hot. His simple gestures warmed her heart.
He brought the tea back to the table and set it down in front of Natalie.
Again Daria reminded her daughter of her manners. “Nattie?”
“Tank you,” she told him shyly.
“You’re very welcome.”
They sat in silence again.
Jack cleared his throat. “Hasn’t this weather been something?”
They murmured their agreement and fell into silence once again.
After a while, Jack pushed his chair back from the table and took his dishes over to the sink. “Vera,” he said, “I need to run to Wal-Mart for a minute. Why don’t you and Betsy come, and she can help us find that new plant food she was telling you about.”
Vera started to protest, then apparently realized his brazen pretense. “Let me get my jacket,” she said. It was generous of them, and Daria smiled her appreciation, especially knowing how desperately Nate’s mother longed to remain with them to keep an eye on the way things were progressing.
Natalie noticed them putting their jackets on, preparing to leave. She slid down from her stool. “Me too! I wanna go to Wal-Mart too!”
“No, honey,” Vera coaxed. “You stay here and spend some time with your daddy.”
Natalie screwed up her face and put her hands on her hips. “My daddy’s not here, Dwama,” she said, as though Vera were the dumbest woman on the earth.
“Nattie! You don’t talk that way to your grandmother,” Daria chided.
“Well, he’s not!” Natalie huffed.
Vera knelt down beside her. “I meant your Daddy Nate, honey. Dwampa and I will bring you back something from Wal-Mart, okay?”
That seemed to appease Natalie, but when they’d gone, leaving Daria and Natalie alone with Nathan, Daria felt awkward. There was so much they needed to talk about. Nate seemed strong and in control now, but she didn’t want to upset him again as she had in the hospital. She pulled her shirt around her and folded her arms over her stomach. She carried her babies “inside,” as her mother always said, so it wasn’t hard to conceal her pregnancy. And yet she wondered why Nate hadn’t noticed the change. He was a doctor, after all.
She and Nate went back to the table in the breakfast room while Natalie sat on the carpet, leafing through the picture books Vera kept on a shelf especially for her. Twice she and Nate both started to speak at once and ended up laughing together over the absurdity of it.
Nate rubbed his arms briskly. “This cool weather is hard to get used to after Timoné. Was it like that for you, when you first came back?”
“Well, it was summer when I came back.”
“Oh. Of course.”
There was a long pause.
“Nate, I-I want to talk to you about what happened in Timoné. About why I left—”
He held up a hand. “Daria, Dad told me. I know you thought I was dead. We don’t have to go there. It sounds like the mission did everything they could. I don’t blame anyone for what happened.”
But she rushed on. “Quimico and Tados told me—they told everyone—that you’d died in the fire. Tados said no one survived. I don’t know why he would have lied to me. He brought me your gold watch, Nate. I was sure then that you were dead!”
“Tados was a good man, Daria. I don’t think he lied. I think he probably thought I had died in that fire. I still don’t know where he and Quimico were that day. They…”
A faraway look came to Nate’s eyes, and he narrated his memories in a voice that was scarcely a whisper. “I know they were starting to distrust Peetro—the leader of the Chicoro. They tried to talk me into leaving before things got out of hand, but I was making progress, Daria. There hadn’t been a new case of fever for several days. I was close to getting it under control, and I was determined to stay until I did.”
How many times had she heard that tone of ardent persuasion in his voice? It startled her to realize that it was exactly the tone Natalie used when someone tried to thwart her plans. She reached out and touched the sleeve of his shirt. “Your daughter has that same determined streak, Nate.” She said it proudly, with a smile, but he didn’t return it.
“My stubbornness nearly got me killed, Daria. It’s not something I want her to be proud of—her stubbornness.”
“I know,” she said, chastened.
“We have to direct that streak in a godly way, Dar. Maybe if we catch it while she’s little she won’t have to struggle with it like I have.”
“Nathan—”
He looked at her and started, as though he’d just realized the implication of his words. “I’m sorry. I’m…assuming things I have no right to assume.” His eyes held the pain of a wounded animal.
“Are you happy, Daria? Do you love him?” he asked suddenly.
“Of course I love him, Nathan. But, I-I love you, too.”
“But you can’t. You can’t love both of us.”
“Tell my heart that,” she said, her voice breaking.
“I want to watch my daughter grow up, Daria. Every single night I lay on that hard dirt floor and begged God to get me out of there. I begged him to bring me back to you so we could finish the work God called us to do, so we could raise children together. In a way I’m glad I didn’t know about Natalie then. It would have killed me to know she was growing up without me. I don’t understand why things happened the way they did, but I have to believe that God allowed me to live, allowed me to escape, and brought me back here for a reason. I have to believe Natalie is part of that reason.”
“Cole loves her too, Nate. H-He’s been good to Nattie, and he loves her like his own.” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Not just because of the fresh pain they brought to Nathan’s eyes, but because they reminded her of the secret she still kept from him, the secret that churned within her even as she spoke the words.
“Well, she’s not his own!” Nate barked.
“I didn’t mean—”
He scraped his chair back from the table and went to the window, looking out over the muddy garden.
“Nathan, I’m sorry. Of course Natalie is your child. But please don’t blame Cole. He had no idea—neither of us knew that you were alive!”
“I said I don’t blame you, Daria. That’s not the issue here.”
“What is the issue?”
“I think you know very well what it is.” He looked down at Natalie and continued softly, “Natalie is my child, and I want to be part of her life, Daria. I want us to be a family, the family God meant us to be.”
“Oh, Nate, I wish it was that simple.” She had to tell him the truth. They couldn’t have this discussion when she was withholding the fact of her pregnancy. Her stomach was in a knot and her head pounded, but she knew she must tell him.
She opened her mouth, not sure how to begin. “Nathan, there’s something I have to tell—”
At that moment, a sharp pain sliced through her back, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out. She excused herself and started down the hall to the bathroom. By the time she reached the door, the cramping was excruciating. She had thought she was feeling ill because of the emotional distress of this day, but now she knew something else was terribly wrong. The cramps felt too much like labor contractions. She locked the door behind her and was horrified to realize that she was bleeding. She began to tremble, terrified that she was losing the baby. “Dear God, help me, please,” she prayed.
What an awful way for Nathan to find out the truth. She reached for the door and started back to the kitchen, leaning on the wall at intervals for support.
“Nathan,” she croaked, as another contraction swelled. “Nathan!”
He met her in three long strides, took one look at her face and put a supporting arm around her. “Daria, what is it?”
“Oh, Nate, something’s wrong. I’m bleeding! Something’s wrong with…the baby.”