A Carol for Kent

Chapter 3-3

He had no idea how to even begin, so he decided to start with his defense. From the look on her face, though, he wasn’t sure she would even hear his words. “I didn’t know, Carol.”

Carol put a hand to her temple as if warding off a headache. “What are you doing here, Bobby? Why are you here?” she repeated in a weak voice.

He took a step toward her. “I swear to you, Carol, they never told me. They lied to you. They lied to both of us.”

He heard the sound of two pairs of feet running across the porch. A look of panic flashed across Carol’s face. She spun around as the screen door flew open. “We have fifteen kids and their parents showing up in less than an hour. I can’t deal with this right now,” she declared over her shoulder through gritted teeth.

He watched as she kept her back to them and intercepted Lisa before she made it completely into the kitchen. Bobby had a chance to see a flash of hair and the toe of pink sneakers, but Carol blocked the rest of his view. It took every single ounce of willpower in him to keep from shoving her out of the way to look at his daughter for the first time in his life.

His daughter.

“Mom. You should see the baby horse!” Lisa yelled, her voice rising in excitement with every word.

Carol opened the door and guided Lisa outside. Bobby could hear her speaking as she said, “Come show me, babe. Then we need to set up the tables. Grandpa isn’t feeling well.”

Bobby walked over to his parents and looked down at them. He felt no sympathy at the sight of their ragged faces. “It is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to her,” he said. He put his palms flat on the table and leaned closer. “It is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to me. But most of all, it is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to your own granddaughter, my daughter.”

Bobby waited until both of them looked away from his face. Then he straightened and walked slowly outside. He was going to have to bank his rage until the party was over. He wasn’t going to disappoint Lisa any further.

“Bobby,” his father said from the doorway. Bobby stiffened but didn’t turn around.

“You know what, Dad? Fire up the grill. We have a birthday party to host today.”

Robert stepped out onto the porch. “Bobby, we can’t have a party right now. Your mother isn’t up to it, and we need to sit down with Carol and talk about all this.”

Bobby swung around and advanced on his father. “I could not care less whether my mother is ‘feeling up to it’ or not. There’s a little girl in that barn who’s waiting for all her friends to come over and celebrate her birthday, and as sure as the sun is shining, you aren’t going to spoil that for her or her mother. Nor are you about to spoil my little girl’s birthday for me. I’ve already missed seven of them, and I’m not going to miss the eighth.” Robert’s back was against the door, and Bobby was almost nose-to-nose with him, his fists clenched.

“We had our reasons, son.”

“I’m sure you think you did and I’m prepared to hear you out on some later date. But in my opinion, there isn’t a reason good enough for what you’ve done. Not one reason under God’s blue heaven could possibly be good enough.” He turned and walked away before he actually let his temper get the best of him and punched his own father.

Bobby headed to the storage shed to pull out the tables that needed to be set up in the yard. He carried the first one out and nearly ran into Carol. She had her arms crossed over her chest, rubbing them as if she felt cold, and her eyes stood out from her pale face, dark circles shadowing the skin under them. If he thought it would have done any good, he would have given her a hug, but he didn’t think she would welcome that right now.

“I don’t want to tell her yet,” she said. Her voice sounded very strained.

It took a few heartbeats for him to process what she meant. Then the meaning of the words tore through him, and he felt his jaw tighten, and his eyes slit. He set the table down and faced her. “Are you telling me she doesn’t even know who I am?” he demanded.

“She knows your parents are her grandparents. But, she doesn’t know that your parents are your parents. I didn’t want to tell her who you were, and it wasn’t until this year that she realized that her father’s parents didn’t come with a face for a father.”

“Oh? May I ask why?” He kept his voice low, calm, and steady despite the fact that he felt his heart rate increase and heard his pulse roar in his ears like ocean surf. He thought he might just explode with all of the emotions rushing through him.

Carol ran a hand through her hair with jerky movements. “Because everyone knows you. You wouldn’t have been some faceless man that never came back. She could have turned on any radio in America and heard you or looked through any magazine and seen a picture of you alongside Melody Mason or some other starlet.”

“Melody Montgomery,” he corrected automatically as if it mattered. He tasted something sour in his mouth. He didn’t like it, but she made sense. “Then tell her. Then she’ll know, and I won’t be some faceless man, and I won’t stay away anymore now that I know she exists.”

Carol’s eyes filled with tears, and Bobby felt certain that she wasn’t a woman who gave in to tears very often. “I wasn’t prepared for this. Give me some time to work out what to do.”

He relented, but wouldn’t give up everything. “I want to get to know her,” he stated. “Carol? Hey. I want to know my daughter.”

He watched emotions play across her face, anger, mistrust, but eventually acceptance. She finally nodded. “I’ll tell her when the time is right. Until then, please don’t say a word.”

Relief poured through him, then he turned to go back to the shed. “You better see what my mother hasn’t done yet. She’s been in the shape she’s in now all morning.”

“Bobby,” she said. His heart skipped in anticipation of the softness of her tone. He turned and looked at her, and she shifted her eyes away, as if uncomfortable. “Lisa’s spending tonight at her friend’s house. If you want to come over tonight, I’ll tell you about her. Show you some pictures. I don’t know. Maybe the right way to tell her is to tell her together.”

He nodded and had to force the words past the lump in his throat. “Thank you.”