The fact that she knew what sort of man he was and knew that she could trust and believe him didn’t really make it any easier. “I had a baby. A girl. I was sixteen.”
Sol’s eyes softened in sympathy. He gently moved a strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her softly on the cheek, encouraging her to continue.
“My parents were trying to do the best thing for me. They were loving and supportive and took me to an agency that counsels girls in, uh, that situation.” She stopped for a minute. Sol waited patiently, but lifted his head so she would know he wanted to hear the rest. “The counselors laid out my options, but they made such a good case for adoption that I ended up feeling like the worse thing I could do for my baby was to keep it. They swore that my baby would have the best life possible, parents with good values and good resources who wanted a baby more than anything and would give mine the world.”
She paused again, while a lone silent tear slid out of the corner of her eye and downward toward her ear. “I thought I was doing the best thing. The right thing. When she was born I didn’t get to see her or hold her. I asked and they said she was a girl.”
Sol cleared his throat and swallowed. “And you regret the decision.”
“Every hour of every day. She’ll be twenty-eight soon.”
Looking at the wishful and wistful expression on her face, he had to ask, “Have you thought about looking for her?”
“Of course, but what would I say? I was so young that my brain wasn’t fully developed yet? I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t and by the time I understood that it was too late?”
“Yes,” Sol said with exquisite simplicity.
Farnsworth breathed in a big sigh that made her chest heave. “I guess it looks simple from your vantage point.”
“Yeah. I’m not you. I get that. I know mistakes can’t always be corrected, but sometimes some of the sting can be soothed.”
“You think I should look for her?”
“You curious?” She smiled and nodded as a couple of tears slid away from her eyes. “Well,” he said as he placed little kisses on both sides of her face, “it just so happens that I work for an outfit that can pretty much find out anything.”
She laughed. “Yeah. I might have heard of them, but you didn’t answer my question. Do you think I should look for her?”
“Yeah. I do.”
The next day they got up determined to make their last days of vacation so special that the memory would last a lifetime. If necessary.
Sol looked out at the Atlantic while he sipped his coffee. The surf was high. The wind wasn’t just noisy, but pushing against the piers and posts that the elevated house was built on. He was looking at the high surf and thinking that it had been hard to get any sleep with the house moving around. Still, he wasn’t complaining.
He knew he couldn’t fully enjoy the sensations of being cuddled next to Farnsworth’s warm body when he was asleep. So he took pleasure in holding her in his arms, feeling her breath on his chest, and listening to the phenomenon of a howling Atlantic wind.
A slight rustling alerted him that she was coming up behind him. He turned and gave her a big grin.
“Let’s go rent a dune buggy and then fly a kite.” He set down the coffee, grabbed her and twirled her around.
“Have you lost your mind?” He shook his head like a little boy, still grinning. “You can’t charm me into doing something insane. I’m too old for that.”
He grabbed his crotch and said, “I’ve got somethin’ right here that says that’s not true.”
She looked from his face to his crotch and back to his face. He wiggled his eyebrows, which was so cheesy it made her burst out laughing in spite of her determination to draw a boundary in defense of his outrageous behavior. Outrageous behavior that was both fun and unexpected.
“Come on. Get dressed. Let’s go get bacon and eggs and pancakes at that diner up the beach and then wake up the dune buggy guy.”
“Sol, it’s too cold out there. The dune buggy guy isn’t going to open up until June.”
He stepped back and looked serious. “Where is the Farnsworth who can perform miracles?” She blinked slowly and opened her mouth. “Okay. Just pretend with me. I’m one of the knights. I’m standing in front of your counter telling you that I have one day off and it’s my fondest desire to get a dune buggy rental on Cape May. Today. What are you going to do?”
She continued to stare for a couple of beats, but then smiled sheepishly. Her pride in her work trumped her bluff and bluster. “I guess I’d find a way to make it happen.”
He laughed. “And that’s my girl.”
Two and a half hours later they were bundled against the cold, full of diner pancakes, and flying down the sand in a glittered magenta fiberglass dune buggy. Sol whooped and hollered every time they hit a bump that temporarily lifted them out of their seats. It wasn’t her favorite recreational activity, but he was having such a good time that she wouldn’t put a stop to it even if she turned into a popsicle.
She turned to look at him just as he let out a huge whoop. Then the horizon was turning the wrong direction and the ground was coming toward her like it was falling down on top of her. When she landed on the wet hard pack sand, her breath was knocked out of her and every last nerve ending was frozen in shock from the impact. Lying there, she had no way of predicting whether that paralysis was temporary, permanent, or some sort of prelude to dying.