An Unlikely Father

“I’m not sick, Maddie, but I do need to see the doctor.”

“Well, like I said…”

“I know. Three days.” Helen twisted her fingers together, a habit she had when she was nervous, which wasn’t often.

Maddie came around the desk and took Helen’s elbow. “Sit down, dear, before you do something stupid like faint on me.” She led Helen to a chair, forced her onto the wooden seat and sat down next to her. “Tell me, what can I do?”

Even though she knew no one was in the waiting room but her and Maddie, Helen still scanned all four corners of the office. She looked out the windows, stared at the door. She figured she could trust Maddie, and since Doc Tucker was away, she was going to have to. She turned toward the older woman and said, “If I tell you something, you have to abide by patient confidentiality, right? Just like if I told Doc?”

Maddie patted Helen’s clenched hands. “I don’t know about the official rules, Helen, but I do know if you tell me something you want kept a secret, I’ll go to my grave with it.” She smiled. “Now, is that good enough for you?”

Helen nodded, swallowed, then plunged ahead. “Since Doc’s not here, I guess I need one of those things from the drugstore. One of those…” She couldn’t even say the words.

“Do you need a prescription?” Maddie asked. “Because if you do, I can’t give you one without Dr. Tucker’s say-so.”

“No. It’s over the counter. I need a…pregnancy test.”

Maddie fell silent for a moment before uttering a simple, “Oh.”

“I can’t go buy it myself,” Helen said. “Within a half hour, everyone on this island would hear about it.” She stared down at her hands, stilled now by the pressure of Maddie’s comforting hold. “I can hear it now, ‘poor ol’ Helen. Now she’s gone and got herself pregnant. And no husband.’”

Maddie leaned closer. “Do you want me to buy the test for you, hon?”

Helen looked up. Relief washed over her, and finally, the spasms that had gripped her stomach since she’d stepped into the office stopped. “Would you, Maddie?”

She nodded. “You betcha. I don’t suppose anyone in town would waste gossip on me. Five grandchildren is about as close to mothering as I’m ever going to get again.” She stood up. “You answer the phone till I get back. And tell any walk-ins that Doc’ll be back on Saturday.”

Helen agreed, gave Maddie a twenty-dollar bill and watched her go out the door and turn in the direction of Island Pharmacy. And then she paced. Buying the test was only the first round.

MADDIE HANDED THE white plastic bag to Helen. “I put your change in there, along with the test.”

Setting the bag on the desk, Helen knotted the two handles together at least a half-dozen times. Anyone who tried to see inside would have to have X-ray vision or a machete. “Thanks. Did Frank ask you any questions?”

Maddie smirked. “Of course. I swear that pharmacist thinks he’s got the right to know everyone’s business.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That my daughter was coming to town, and she asked me to pick up the test.” Maddie shrugged. “Heck, the way that girl reproduces, it could turn out to be true.”

Helen tucked the sack under her arm. “I appreciate this. You’re a good friend.”

Maddie stared at her as if she wanted to ask something. But she settled for saying, “It’s still quiet. Do you want to talk anymore?”

“No. I’ve got nothing to say, yet. I’ll see what this test shows and then, if…well, I’ll make an appointment with Sam if I need to.”

Maddie put her hand on Helen’s shoulder. “Okay. No need to get yourself upset unnecessarily.”

Helen headed for the door. “Thanks again for buying this.”

Maddie returned to her chair behind the desk. “Good luck, Helen. I don’t know what to wish for. Babies are awful sweet gifts, but in your situation, the responsibilities you’ve already got…”

Helen gave her a weak smile. “I know.” As she walked to her truck she analyzed what her situation was, exactly. She was thirty years old, unmarried and tied down to a job that demanded more from her physically than was expected of most men. She wasn’t complaining. But heck, if this test turned out to be positive, wasn’t fate asking more than she could give? But who said life was fair?

She tossed the sack onto the passenger seat and started the truck. As she rumbled down Island Avenue, she repeatedly stole peeks at the innocent-looking plastic bag rustling in the breeze coming in her open window. Pregnant. It wasn’t possible. Donny used protection. They were careful. She raked her fingers through her hair a couple of times. She didn’t even want to think about how Donny was going to take this news if the test was positive.

Helen could have driven narrow Gulfview Road blindfolded. She’d lived with her father all her life in a two-bedroom cottage next to their private dock that jutted into the Gulf of Mexico. And she’d traveled the two-mile journey into town more times than she’d like to admit. Her world had always been this island, these few acres, these twisting, palm-lined roadways.

Once away from the moderate traffic of midisland, she pressed her foot to the Suburban’s accelerator and mindlessly cruised toward home and the task she had to face when she got there. She hugged the side of the road and careened around a bend, feeling the shocks of the old truck moan in protest as she leaned into the curve. And then she saw it—a pearl-gray automobile parked half on the asphalt and half against the roadside underbrush.

The driver’s door of the sedan opened as Helen approached, and a pair of trouser-clad legs swung from the interior. She jerked the truck to the left as a man holding a cell phone to his ear stepped onto the road. In the instant before she swerved on two wheels away from his vehicle, she noticed the man’s eyes—large, round and filled with terror.

A loud crash, followed by the screech of rent metal and the squeal of her own brakes, made Helen’s heart thud against her chest. She turned her wheel sharply to the right, buried the hood of the Suburban in a thatch of sabal palms and thrust the gearshift into Park. For one brief second she folded her arms over the top of the steering wheel and dropped her head to her wrists. “Oh, shit.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The gray sedan was visible, but there was no man standing beside it. Had she struck him? Was he lying in the middle of the road? Did he still have the damn cell phone so she could at least call 911?

She heaved her shoulder against the driver’s panel, mumbling a few obscenities under her breath about the rusty old hinges that required a body slam to open the truck door. She jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward the sedan, which was a hundred yards down the road. Before she reached it, she saw the driver’s side door halfway between the car and her truck. It rocked innocently on the pavement like a delicate wing ripped from the body of a great silver bird.

Without pausing, she sprinted the rest of the way to the car, relieved that she didn’t see a body sprawled on the road. “Hey, mister!” she called. “Where are you?”

“I’m in here.”

Slowing her pace for the first time, Helen walked hesitantly to the gaping hole that had been the driver’s door. She peered into the car’s interior at the tasseled tops of a pair of oxblood loafers and the twin peaks of bent knees encased in perfectly creased tan chinos. “You okay?” she asked.

The knees parted and an ashen face lifted from the passenger seat. Deep brown eyes stared at her with numb shock. After a moment, the man squinted and exhaled a burst of air. “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again in my life,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“At least you fell back into the car instead of onto the road,” Helen said. Spotting his cell phone, she picked it up and examined the keypad to see that the battery light was on. “You need an ambulance?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She reached into the car between his thighs. “Here, give me your hand.”

He did, and she pulled him upright. Once his feet hit the road, he gaped at the mangled mess in the car’s framework that had once connected the driver’s panel to the rest of the vehicle. “The door’s gone,” he said.

Helen pointed down the road. “No, it isn’t. It’s right there.”

He leaned out. “Oh, right. My mistake.”

Deciding the guy wasn’t hurt, Helen held the phone toward him. “You might need to use this.”

He remained motionless while she set the phone in his hand. “I was sort of trying to use it when you dissected the car,” he said.

She wiped her damp palm along the pocket of her shorts. “Yeah, I saw you with the phone. You lost, or something?” Scrutinizing his automobile, which she now noticed was a Lincoln Town Car and would probably cost about a million bucks to fix, she added with a mental wince, “You’re new to Heron Point, right? That would explain why you’d pulled over in such a dangerous place.”

His eyebrows arched in astonishment. “What do you mean, ‘dangerous’?”

“This is a busy road. All the locals know you can’t just park your car on the side like you did.” She shrugged her shoulders with all the bravado she could muster. “Makes you a target for oncoming traffic.”

He stood up, towering over her by several inches. “Oh, sure. A target for any vehicle that barrels around that curve at sixty miles an hour.” He nodded toward the Suburban, which was idling like a tethered dinosaur, smoke hissing from its radiator. “And, by the way, that death trap of yours is the only car that’s come down this busy road in the last ten minutes. I should know. I’ve been waiting to hail the first vehicle that showed up.” He wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead and stared at it on the back of his hand as if he’d never perspired before. “Just my luck, you were driving it.”