Judith Bowen - The Doctor's Daughter

They heard the toilet flush, then the faucet, and Robert came out, wiping his damp hands on his shorts. “I like this place, Mom. It’s cool.”

“Good. Now let’s get on our way. Mr. Yellowfly has lots of things to do this morning.”

Lucas groaned. “Oh, please, Virginia. Lucds. Listen, Robert...”

The boy looked up at him, a tiny smile hovering on his too-serious face.

“Promise to call me Lucas, okay? Don’t forget.

Never Mr. Yellowfly—never.”

“Okay...Lucas.” The boy grinned up at his mother. “He said to, Mom!” he protested when she murmured something about manners. Lucas hadn’t seen him smile like that yet. It suited the boy.

He stepped aside as they came back into the kitchen. “When do you want to go? Like I said, I was thinking of this afternoon. But if tomorrow’s better for you...”

“This afternoon will be fine.”

“I’ll pick you up at your parents’?”

“Great.”

“Let’s make it before lunch so we can buy Robert a Grizzly burger. I should be finished moving this stuff by then.” Lucas gestured to the stacks of boxes already neatly packed and piled on the kitchen floor. “Half-past eleven, say?”

Virginia smiled and nodded. As he left them on the sidewalk to make his way to the Chickadee Café for his usual two-over-easy and stack of hots, Lucas could hear Robert asking what a Grizzly burger was and Virginia trying to explain.

ROBERT’S EYES WERE HUGE when they drove up to the Grizzly Drive-in. The take-out diner, built in the shape of a bear’s head, was a landmark in Glory, and Virginia had many memories of late-night swoops to the drive-in with Johnny or some of her friends for burgers and malts.

Lucas obligingly growled—a Glory tradition, albeit one usually practiced by children—and Mrs. Perkins growled back.

“Say, that you, Virginia?” she exclaimed, bending low from the counter inserted into the snarling bear’s mouth to peer into Lucas’s pickup. “Well, I’ll be danged! Good to see you, dear. What’ll ya have?”

It was said that Mrs. Perkins never forgot a face.

Lucas ordered a burger and fries for Robert, an order of onion rings for her and got himself a rootbeer float. They parked on the side of the potholed parking lot and ate their meal with the windows of the pickup wide-open.

“What do you think, Robert?” Lucas asked, smiling at Virginia over her son’s head.

“Cool!” He had his carton of french fries on his bare knees and was squeezing the hamburger a little harder than necessary so that mayo and ketchup dripped.

“Yuck!” Virginia wiped at her son’s knees with a napkin.

“Here.” Lucas handed her some packages of moist wipes from the food bag, which she used to finish cleaning up Robert. She hated to be too hard on the boy; it wasn’t often that she’d seen him enjoy himself like this.

The onion rings were as good as she remembered. The hell with cholesterol, she decided, licking her fingers.

She sneaked a glance at Lucas as he sat, slouched back in his seat, one arm crooked out the window, the other holding his drink. He caught her glance and grinned. She smiled, suddenly brimming with good feeling. Simple. Uncomplicated. She’d found so few opportunities to relax in the past few years, certainly not with someone like Lucas, someone she’d known since she was practically a kid. She wondered who else from her school days was still living in Glory. Maybe she’d look up a few old friends soon.

Lucas seemed very relaxed, too. She was grateful for that. Obviously a lot of the stuff she’d thought about working with him was strictly in her own head. She’d have to make sure it stayed there.

They’d decided to drive to Lethbridge to check out Cooper’s Department Store. Calgary would have been a better bet for selection, but a big-city mall was the last place Virginia felt like visiting on a sunny late-August afternoon.

They were driving down the highway that led to Lethbridge, deep in the St. Mary River valley, when Robert suddenly spoke up from his position on the bench seat between Lucas and her. He’d been quiet for the last five miles or so.

“Are you my dad?” He looked at Lucas wistfully. Virginia wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. She’d never heard anything like that from her son before.

“Me?” Lucas’s startled eyes met hers over the boy’s dark head. “Your dad?”

There was no mistaking the alarm in his voice. Virginia had to say something.

“Robert—”

“No, it’s okay,” Lucas said, and smiled at the boy. Robert continued to gaze seriously at him. “No, I’m not your dad, pal. What made you think so?”

“You’re a friend of my mom’s. And you know her from a long time ago, so I just thought you might be my dad, that’s all,” Robert said evenly. He sighed and glanced up at her. She knew her face must be beet red.

“We’ll talk about this later, honey,” she said softly, about ready to die of embarrassment. Oh, Robert, why did you have to bring this up now? All she’d told her son about his father—and until now she’d seen little interest in the subject—was that he lived far, far away. Maybe Robert thought Glory qualified.

As though he knew intuitively that his question had unsettled the grown-ups, Robert went on, to Virginia’s dismay, “It’s just that I know I have a dad,” he said solemnly, looking up at Lucas again. “Everybody has a dad, right?” Lucas nodded and smiled encouragingly at the boy. “It’s just that I don’t know who he is.”

Robert folded his hands in his lap and looked straight ahead. Virginia met Lucas’s gaze again. He winked. “It’s okay, you know,” he said quietly. “I can handle tough questions. I’m a lawyer, remember?”

His remark, making light of Robert’s query, made her feel a bit better. Next thing she knew, Lucas pointed out one of the hydraulic pumpers that dotted the landscape and was explaining to Robert how it brought oil out of the ground.

Later at the department store, while Robert tried out some of the BarcaLoungers, Virginia tried to explain. “Look, I’m really, really sorry—” she began.

“Hey!” Lucas put one hand on her shoulder in a casual gesture and squeezed gently. “It’s no big deal. I can understand where the kid’s coming from. He’s just curious, that’s all.”

She looked into his dark eyes, waited a moment or two, then blurted out, “You wonder what the hell’s going on, don’t you?”

“Not really.” Lucas shrugged. “It’s none of my business, and to tell you the truth, who really cares? Except Robert, that is. It’s your business.”

“I’m not married. I’ve never been married. Robert was... well, he was an accident, I suppose you could say.” She stared defiantly at Lucas, daring him to comment. He said nothing. “I’m a single mother. I’ve always been a single mother.”

“I understand,” he said. “You don’t need to give me any explanations. These things happen.” He shrugged again. “Let’s go see the bunk beds, shall we?”

He steered her in the direction of the bedroom furniture, and Robert hopped off the BarcaLounger and followed them. “Oh boy! Bunk beds.”

Virginia bought a maple model with drawers under the lower unit and headboards that had space for a row of books. Two mattresses and a child-size wooden ladder completed the purchase. Lucas sought her advice on some leather upholstered furniture, then ordered a sofa and chair in dark green, to be delivered on Saturday. She wasn’t crazy about them and he said neither was he, but they’d do for his den. He also took Robert’s advice and bought a white-lacquered single bed frame, mattress and matching dresser the boy thought suitable for a girl.

Lucas murmured to Virginia that it was a little fussier than he remembered his niece being, but ordered it, anyway. Virginia was warmed from the inside out that Lucas took Robert’s opinion seriously. Robert had had very few men in his short life. Virginia had been so focused on work and on her son that she hadn’t had time to develop relationships with men. Not that, after her horrific experience with Johnny Gagnon, she’d had any desire to.

The department-store employees loaded Robert’s bunk-bed frame and mattresses into the back of Lucas’s pickup. Their delivery van would bring the leather sofa and chair, as well as Tammy’s new furniture on Saturday. Virginia settled on the passenger side for the return trip, wondering what questions her son would come up with on the way back.

Robert was quiet, paying attention to the landmarks Lucas pointed out, responding in his usual sober manner. Sometimes Virginia wasn’t sure what to think about her small, serious son. She hoped this move to Glory meant he’d finally be able to make some real friends. He spent far too much time with his video games and watching television, in her opinion. Kindergarten would be a big change in his life. They’d moved so often that it had been hard for Robert to establish the kinds of relationships that meant birthday-party invitations and afternoon play sessions with friends. When she’d worked in Red Deer, she’d placed him in a licensed day care, but Robert had become so withdrawn and miserable that she’d taken him out and gone back to relying on baby-sitters, as she’d done when he was a baby.

That was something else she’d have to think about—after-school care. Her experience working with lawyers had shown her that the hours could be erratic. She’d have to find someone reliable to pick Robert up from school and stay with him until she got home from work. Maybe Lucas could give her some leads.

She bit her lower lip and glanced sideways. She’d already presumed on her former acquaintance with Lucas far too much. Besides, what would he know about child care or baby-sitters? His niece, Tammy, was arriving Sunday and he’d find out soon enough how much was involved in looking after children.

Lucas dropped her and Robert off at her parents’ house at the top of the hill, insisting that he’d get a friend to help him unload the bunk beds at his old apartment. After that, he said, he’d have his hands full getting settled into his new place. He seemed about to add something else—had he been going to ask her to help?—but apparently thought better of it. She was amazed to realize she felt let down that he didn’t ask. It would’ve been fun helping him arrange his furniture, and a way to pay him back a little for the outing they’d had today.

Robert wanted to in the hammock that hung between two huge linden trees at the back of the Lake property, so Virginia went in through the kitchen door. She heard murmurs from the sitting room when she entered the house. Her mother must have company.

She’d paused to open the refrigerator door to inspect the contents for a cold drink when she heard the raised voice of her aunt Lily beyond the swinging doors of the kitchen.

“But, Doris, you have to insist she tell you who the boy’s father is. I know Virginia’s headstrong—she’s always been a handful—and I realize what you and Jethro have had to put up with over the years, but don’t you see? People are already asking. What am I supposed to tell them? That no one knows?”

She heard her mother’s soft, fretful reply and suddenly Virginia lost her thirst. She shut the refrigerator door quietly and went up the back stairs to the room she and Robert were sharing.

Busybodies. All of them. Especially Aunt Lily. What if Robert had overheard that remark? Virginia felt her face flush. They made her so mad. What business was it of theirs? What was it about small towns that made everyone so dam nosy? It’d been like that when she was a girl here, and apparently nothing had changed.