Father Of The Brat

As if roused by his musings, the woman in question came walking down the terminal toward him, her beige tailored skirt skimming just below her knees, her cream-colored shirt nearly obscured by her massive trench coat. She took her time approaching him, as if reluctant to get too close, her battered satchel banging against her calf all the way.

Funny, Carver thought as he contemplated the wellturned legs below the skirt, he’d never noticed before what great gams Maddy Saunders had.

She seemed to slow her pace when she looked up and saw him, something that convinced him even more completely that he’d been right about her identity. As soon as she was close enough for her to hear him, he dipped his head once in her direction and greeted her simply, “Maddy.”

She blushed as if she were a four-year-old child caught in her first lie. “So, you, uh, you remember me after all.”

He smiled wryly. “You’re not exactly someone I could easily forget.”

His statement didn’t require a comment, and she didn’t seem any too willing to offer one. Instead she only stood there looking at him in that unnerving way she had the day before. Little by little, the silence between them stretched and became more disconcerting. And little by little, Carver began to feel the same edginess Maddy Saunders had always roused in him.

“Boy, you sure whacked your hair,” he finally said, unable to keep himself from reaching out to tuck a short strand behind her ear. Immediately after completing the action, he dropped his hand back to his side, surprised and unsettled at how easily the gesture had come. Twenty years seemed to dissolve into nothing, and he was suddenly right back at Strickler High, sneaking up on Maddy to tug on the long, black braid that had always beckoned to him.

“I had it cut short a long time ago,” she told him as she lifted her own hand to put the strand of hair back where it had been before he touched her. He decided he must have imagined the way her fingers seemed to shake almost imperceptibly as she did so. “It was getting to be too much trouble to take care of. I didn’t have the time.”

He nodded, letting his gaze wander over the rest of her. “You’ve dropped a lot of weight, too.”

She sighed, as if giving in to what would be an inevitable line of questioning. “Yes. I have.”

“You’re too skinny.”

“I know.”

He frowned at her unwillingness to communicate—her unwillingness to spar with him—when that was what the two of them had excelled at in high school. Then he remembered that he’d always had a talent for saying something that would rile her into a state of agitated verbosity. He smiled. “And your name is Garrett now. Finally found some poor bastard to marry you, huh?”

She nodded, then hesitated only a moment before adding, “And divorce me.”

Carver’s smile fell. “Oh. Sorry. Or…or should I say congratulations?”

She stared him square in the eye as she said, “He left me six years ago for a grad student who was his teaching assistant. I couldn’t have been more surprised than I was when I came home one night to find him packing his bag. It just seemed like such a cliché, you know? Sometimes I still have trouble believing it happened.”

Carver nodded slowly and bit his lip. Yeah, he’d always known the right thing to say around Maddy, all right. And she’d always been able to make him feel like a total jerk. “I assume, then, that he taught college?”

Maddy almost smiled at his lame attempt to change the subject and cover his gaffe. Almost. “He still does,” she said. “Don’t worry. I didn’t set fire to him while he was sleeping or anything. Dennis is a physics professor at Villanova.”

Carver shoved his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans and tried to think of something to say. For some reason, he suddenly felt very awkward. Not that he hadn’t always felt that way around Maddy, but this was a different kind of awkward. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“Figures you’d marry a brain,” he finally said.

Maddy did smile at that. A small smile, granted, but it wasn’t bad. “Figures you’d never marry at all,” she replied.

This time Carver was the one to sigh. “Yeah, well, there never seemed to be time, you know? Or the right woman.”

Maddy nodded, but said nothing.

“So you’re not Maddy Saunders anymore,” he said.

“Not in any way, shape or form,” she assured him. Before he could press her to elaborate, she rushed on, “Rachel’s plane is going to be about an hour late getting in. You want to go grab some lunch while we wait?”

“Sure. Why not?”

They found their way to a small café and ordered sandwiches and coffee, then passed the time indulged in idle, meaningless chitchat. Hadn’t it been great going to college after having been so stifled by high school? Wasn’t it amazing how little they’d known back then about what it took to be a grown-up? How could anyone survive in this economy when interest rates kept going sky-high?

“Why did your husband take a powder?”

The words were out of Carver’s mouth before he’d even fully formed the question in his brain. He was appalled by his nosiness and lack of discretion. Then again, he reminded himself, he was an investigative reporter. His nosiness and lack of discretion had landed him some pretty great stories, not to mention that Pulitzer. Unfortunately, judging by the expression on Maddy’s face, he wasn’t about to win any awards for those characteristics today.

She stared at him from over the rim of her mug, her dark eyes revealing nothing of what she might be thinking. She took her time to sip her coffee, then carefully replaced the mug back on the table. Finally she replied, “Why do you ask? I would think you above all people would understand why Maddy Saunders would drive a man away. God knows you spent enough time making me feel like a misfit in high school.”

“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have asked,” he apologized. “It’s really none of my business. I don’t know what made me say that.” After a moment, he added, “And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel bad when we were at Strickler. I was a dumb kid back then. I never thought about anyone but myself.”

She picked carelessly through the remains of her sandwich, most of which, he noted, had been untouched. “You weren’t any worse than any of the others,” she said softly. “Hell, at least you took the time to notice me.”

Carver had never heard Maddy swear in his life. She’d always been way too nice to do something like curse. There were so many things about her that had changed over the years, he marveled. Not only did she look like a completely different person, but she acted differently, too. Maddy Saunders, though very nice, had never been the quiet, reserved type. Now just getting her to talk was becoming a challenge. He could scarcely believe she was the same person he’d known so long ago.

If she noticed his lack of a response, she didn’t let on. And in spite of it not being any of his business, she didn’t seem unwilling to share the facts of her past with him. She shrugged, sipped her coffee again, and said, “The fact is that Dennis left me for what he considered a very good reason. He wanted kids. I didn’t. So he found someone else who did. He and his new wife are expecting their second child in January.”

“Maddy, you don’t have to—”

“It’s no big deal, really.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I say so.”

Carver hesitated only a moment before pressing his luck. “It’s just that I always remember you saying you wanted to have about ten kids when you got married because the world needed more people like you in it, and—”

“It’s no big deal,” she repeated, enunciating each word thoroughly, as if he were a child incapable of understanding otherwise.

“Okay, it’s no big deal,” he relented, still wondering about the source of his sudden, unusually intense, curiosity about Maddy.

“Fine. Now that we’ve got that all cleared up…” She glanced down at her watch and quickly swallowed the last of her coffee. “We should be going,” she said pointedly, reaching out to collect the bill.

“I’ve got that.” Carver intercepted, snatching up the scrap of paper before she had a chance to grab it.

“It’s no trouble,” she assured him. “I’m on an expense account.”

“But it’s supposedly my kid we’re going to meet.”

“Carver…”

It was the first time she’d called him by his given name, and hearing Maddy say it again after so many years, in exactly the same, exasperated way she had in high school whenever he was giving her a hard time about something, made him smile. “I’ve got it,” he said again. “My treat.”

She smiled, too, and shook her head. “Being around you has never been a treat.”

His smile broadened. “Oh, come on, Maddy, admit it. You had a huge crush on me back in high school.”

He thought he saw a soft pink stain creep into her cheeks at his allegation, but he wasn’t sure.