“Sorry about the way I reacted the other night,” he said, “when you told me.” He thought about it a second. “I felt robbed, like she was just stolen from me.”
“You can’t keep her,” Rachel said. “But you don’t have to lose her. Ben, this is one of those moments when you have to get it right.”
“I look at her and I see all the ways she can be hurt,” he said.
“That’s called being a parent. It’s a permanent condition.”
When Rachel had told him she was pregnant with Emma, almost fifteen years ago now, he was frightened that he might turn into a monster himself and hurt his own child. He knew the abused sometimes became the abuser, like some sickness gestating in the child. He was so frightened, he wouldn’t change a diaper at first, wouldn’t give Emma a bath. Rachel thought it was simply the stupid limitations of men, and she told him so. But he was terrified. Later he realized that he wasn’t capable of doing such a thing, that his feelings toward his daughter were normal; the love, a love like nothing he had ever felt, was completely and wonderfully paternal, and he knew then he would do anything, any necessary thing, to protect her.
“This professor—this programmer,” Ben said. “Do you trust him? I mean, do you trust him with Emma?”
“Do I trust him?” Rachel said. “Like do I leave him alone with Emma while I go get my nails done?”
“Is he safe?”
“Ben, you have to have a little faith in me.”
“There’s a lot of bad people out there, people you’d never expect.”
“There’re more good than bad.”
He glanced at her. She was right, of course she was right, but it didn’t feel like it.
“You have to have a little faith in your daughter, too,” Rachel said. “That first night at the hospital, I was falling apart. I mean, I couldn’t think straight seeing you like that. It was Emma who calmed me down. She’s tougher than you think.”
Emma had ridden over to the hospital on her bike every day after school. He hadn’t asked her to. She just did it. She had stayed with him, read to him, hunted down nurses when the painkillers wore off.
“So this boy, Lance,” Ben said. “Is he a nice kid?”
“He’s not the brightest bulb,” Rachel said. “But he seems sweet enough. I talked to his parents. They know the situation. I think we’ve got things under control—at least as much as we can.”
“So you took her to the gynecologist?”
“Yes.”
“Got a prescription?”
“Yes.”
Ben nodded, letting that one settle in his chest.
“Ben, you can be upset, but you—we—don’t have much of a choice about this. She’s not ours. We just get to love her.”
—
“GUS IS ITCHING to go riding,” Emma said when Ben came into the barn.
“He misses you when you’re not around,” he said.
She glanced at Ben and then finished the liniment on the back legs, Gus lifting his foot with each touch.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” Ben said. “I wasn’t ready for that. I kind of lost it.”
Her hand stopped on Gus’s knee for a moment, and then she worked the liniment down to the fetlocks.
“Can we just skip talking about it, Dad?” she said. “It’s kind of embarrassing, you know?”
“Yeah, it’s not a topic I’m so comfortable with, either.”
He watched her in silence as she started working a currycomb down Gus’s hindquarters. The horse blew air in appreciation.
“Listen, when I was thirteen,” Ben said, “I met someone. I thought they loved me.” He didn’t know where he was going with this, but somehow he wanted to reach her. He wasn’t sure, though, what it was he wanted her to understand. “This person, they bought me things, took me places, and, because I needed the attention, I thought I”—he started to say “loved” but changed his mind—“cared about this person, too.”
Emma stopped combing the horse, her ear turned toward him, listening.
“I would do anything for this person,” he said, “because I didn’t like myself very much and this person seemed to think I was worth something.” He hesitated, looked out the barn window, and watched a hawk circle on an updraft. “I understood later that it wasn’t love. But not then, not for a long time.”
“So you were in love before Mom?”
“No.”
“Did she dump you?”
He stared at her. “The point is, Em, I want to make sure this boy isn’t using you.”
“He’s not.” She straightened up now and looked at him across Gus’s swayed back.
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said.
“You know what hurts me, Dad?” she said. “This.” She pointed in the vague direction of the house. “You up here and me and Mom down there, in that little shitty condo. You know what hurt me? Listening to you two fight at two in the morning, having to speak the few dozen words we know in Spanish at dinner so I don’t have to listen to you scream at each other.”
There were tears in her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
“You think I’m stupid?” she said. “You think I can’t make my own decisions?”
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“You think I don’t like myself very much?”
“I was talking about me.”
“He didn’t pressure me or take advantage of me, you get it?” She looked him straight in the eyes. “I mean, I had to ask him out.” She sighed. “I didn’t tell you,” she said, “because I knew you’d pull all this ‘my little girl’ crap on me and it’d make me feel like Hester Prynne or something. And it does. It makes me feel terrible. Like I’m a slut or something.”
A punch in the gut. “I don’t want you to feel like that.”
“I really like him, Dad.”
“You’re moving a little too fast for me, sweetheart.”
“He’s really nice,” she said. “You’d get along. I mean, you both like waves.”
“I’m trying, Em. I’m trying.”
HUNTING THE HUNTER