Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,82
to tell him yourself, but he needed some good news. He needed to know that he had something to come back to,” he repeated.
There was accusation in his voice. And why wouldn’t there be? She felt truly sorry that Jack Camfield had had the odious task of telling his son that Daria had remarried. She wanted to ask him how Nate had taken the news, but she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear the answer. Her thoughts were spinning out of control. What must Nate think of her. She couldn’t imagine how she would feel if the tables had been turned and it was she who returned to find that Nate had left her for dead and gone merrily about his life. She thought then of the baby, Cole’s baby. Had Jack told him about that, too? Oh, dear Lord, please help Nate to understand!
“Daria, please. I need to know. Will you be there to meet his plane?” Jack was pressing her for an answer.
“No, Jack! I-I can’t make a decision like that yet. Please, I’m so confused. I can’t.” Fearing she might faint, she whispered into the phone, “Would you please speak with my husband?”
She handed the phone over to Cole, scarcely realizing the irony of the words she had just spoken: my husband. Who was her husband?
She was vaguely aware that Cole was jotting down addresses and numbers on a notepad, speaking with Jack in terse sentences. Finally he hung up the phone and slumped into a kitchen chair beside Daria. He put his head in his hands and moaned.
They sat in silence for several minutes. When Cole finally looked up, he placed his hands on Daria’s shoulders. “You need to decide what you’re going to do.”
“Cole, I—”
“Daria, the man you were married to first is alive.” His voice had lost all expression. His eyes were glazed as he continued. “Nathan is on his way home, and he is going to need to see h-his wife and”—his voice caught, and he choked out the final words—“his daughter.”
With a loud scraping sound that echoed through the house, Cole pushed his chair back from the table and walked out the back door.
Twenty-Four
Cole opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. The house was quiet. He walked through the dining room and saw Daria lying on the sofa. She appeared to be asleep, but her face was swollen and red from crying. Natalie was curled in the curve of Daria’s body, sleeping soundly. Everything in him wanted to go to them, to lie down beside them and take them in his arms and never let go. Everything he loved in this world was lying on that sofa—his wife, the precious little girl who called him Daddy, and the baby God had created of his and Daria’s love. And he was going to lose them all.
He longed to awaken Daria, to wrap her in his arms and tell her how sorry he was for running out on her the way he had an hour ago. But he had lost the right to do that. Daria belonged to someone else.
With leaden feet, he climbed the stairs to their bedroom and lay down on top of the quilt fully dressed. He stared at the ceiling, wishing that Daria would come to him, wishing he knew where he stood with her. He drifted off to sleep, and when he next opened his eyes, he heard Daria and Natalie downstairs.
He went to the bathroom to wash his face. When he went down to the kitchen, Daria was standing there in her jacket, her purse over her shoulder, writing something on the notepad by the telephone.
“Oh,” she said when she saw him. “I-I didn’t want to wake you.” She seemed so awkward, so stiff, as if they were strangers.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to take Natalie to my folks. I think it’d be best if she was with them for a few days while we…decide what we’re going to do.”
He nodded, but he thought bitterly that it wouldn’t be “we” who made a decision. This was completely out of his hands. It was a decision Daria would have to make alone.
He heard Natalie pad down the hallway. When she saw him, she ran to his side. “Daddy, I goin’ to Grammy’s house!” she chirped.
He gulped back tears, and his voice cracked when he told her, “I know, sweetie. Mommy told me. You be good for them, okay, Nattie?”