“I saw you a time or two when you were just a baby. I can’t believe so much time has passed.”
He knew her when she was a baby. Her heartbeat accelerated. Did that mean he was her father?
But wouldn’t someone who professed to be a man of God have stepped up to take care of his personal responsibilities, if he knew he had a child? Yeah, she’d only spent a few hours in his presence, but it was clear everyone in the youth group adored him. Would that kind of guy really have walked away from his daughter?
“Do you...remember much about my mom?”
They were almost back at the youth center and she was wishing she had waited until after everyone else left to ask questions about Natalie, especially when she saw sadness cross his features again.
“Your mom. She was a bright star. Sweet. Too sweet for the road she chose to walk, you know?”
Why had she? What had made a young woman from a loving home start using drugs and eventually throw everything away for them? That was the mystery that haunted her.
“I grieved when she died,” Pastor Jeff said quietly. “I grieved hard. But in the end, her death saved me, I guess you could say. It made me see that I was headed for the same fate if I didn’t do something fast.”
“You were her pot dealer.”
He made a small sound, like an animal caught in a corner. “How do you know that?”
“She left a diary,” Caitlin confessed.
He was quiet for a long time. By now, they had reached the church and Pastor Jeff stood by the door while the other young people went inside. “I can’t deny it. I told you I had a misspent youth. I hurt people. People I cared about. You should know, I was your mother’s friend, too. I could justify and say it was only pot and I never supplied the hard stuff she eventually started using. I could also tell you I stopped dealing to her the first time she went into rehab, but by then she had found another source. She tried to get clean so many times. She wanted that for her and for you. You should know that.”
Caitlin felt the familiar knot in her stomach whenever she thought about her mom, who had given up custody of her to Mimi and had died of an overdose just hours after being released from jail, which Caitlin had learned wasn’t uncommon for addicts who had been clean for a while, then abruptly returned to their old ways.
“You were her pot dealer. Any chance you’re also my dad?”
“What? No!” Pastor Jeff looked shocked and so completely horrified at the possibility, she wished she had never said anything.
It was too late to back down now, though. “My mom left no information about my father and she never told anyone who he was, either. I’ve gone through her journals and other information I can find from that time and I’ve been trying to track down all the men she mentioned. That’s the real reason I came tonight.”
“Ah.” He didn’t seem offended by her honesty.
“You’re sure there’s no chance?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Caitlin. There was never anything like that between your mom and me. We had a friendship and, for want of a better word, for a time we had a business relationship. That was all.”
She was more disappointed than she had expected to be by this development. “All right. Thanks for answering my questions and for letting my friend and I tag along tonight.”
“You are still welcome anytime you want to come back. We would love to have you.” He was quiet and then gave her a piercing look that seemed to see deep inside her. “For the record, I would have been delighted to find out I was your father.”
His voice was so kind and honest that she couldn’t help smiling back, even though her heart ached a little.
He pointed to his collar. “And forgive me for being a little preachy for a minute. Even if you never find out who your earthly father is, don’t forget that you have Someone else who loves you and will never let you down.”
“You have to say that. You’re a pastor.”
“As a man who received a second chance I still don’t feel like I deserve, I would say it anyway,” he said quietly, then headed inside, where the rest of the youth group was probably wondering what was taking them so long.