Don't Say a Word - Barbara Freethy [99]
"I keep wondering if I'm going to see my father in a few minutes. What will I say? What will I do?" "You don't know that Rick Sanders is your father." "I know my mom mentioned me specifically and then added that she'd had another daughter. He has to be someone she knew before she married Gino." "That still doesn't make him your father." "I need to be ready just in case. I used to think about meeting my dad, especially when I was a teenager. I'd look in the mirror, and I wouldn't see my mother in my features. I kept thinking that there was someone else in the world who looked like me. Of course, I didn't imagine that it was a little girl in a Russian orphanage," she said with a halfhearted smile. He grinned back at her. "Good. You still have your sense of humor. That's important." "Why is that important?"
"Laughter can get you through life. I've spent a lot of time in Africa, in villages where half the parents are gone, dead from HIV and other diseases. I couldn't believe these people could find anything to smile about, but every time I took out my camera, that's just what they did. They smiled in the face of unspeakable poverty." Julia turned in her seat to look at him. His eyes were on the road, but she could tell his thoughts were in the past.
"I gave this one little boy a pen and a piece of paper," Alex continued. "You would have thought I'd just handed him a million dollars. He couldn't stop smiling. He played and drew all day long until there wasn't a centimeter of empty space on that piece of paper."
"Did you ever see him again? Do you ever see anyone again-the people whose pictures you take?"
He shook his head. "Most of the time I don't go back to the same location. Occasionally I do. I did return to that village about a year later."
"Please don't tell me he was dead." She hated to think of such a sad thing.
"I don't know what happened to him. The whole village was gone, wiped out by a flood. They said some people got out, but they had scattered to other villages. No one knew about that particular boy."
"So maybe he's still there playing with your pen and smiling."
He offered her a tender smile. "You have a soft heart, Julia. That could get you into trouble."
"I suspect it already has."
"Is that why you let things drag on with Michael? You didn't want to hurt his feelings?"
"Partly. I do care for him, and he treated me well. I never wanted to hurt him." She paused. "But I wasn't referring to Michael. I was thinking about my mom, how I never had the guts to ask her the questions I'm asking now. I let her put me off, because I didn't want to make her mad or upset her. And look where that got me."
"You said you had a good relationship with her, so your silence bought you that."
"I suppose. We talked all the time, even when I moved out of the house. She always knew what I was up to. She just couldn't stop checking up on me."
"How long was she sick?"
"About two years from start to finish. The last six months were particularly bad. It was difficult to watch. At least we had time to say our good-byes. I thought we had taken care of everything important. But I know now that my mom concentrated on things in the present or the future. She never spoke of the past in all the time she was sick. She only wanted to discuss what we would do later, after she was gone. Up until the very end of her life, she kept her secrets. I wonder if I'll ever know why."
"There's a good possibility you will know why, but you may wish you didn't before this is over."
"At this point, I'd take any truth over the uncertainty."
Alex shot her a speculative look. "Easy to say now. You don't know how bad it could be."
"Are you trying to prepare me for something? Do you have some suspicion you haven't shared?"
"I know what you know," he replied. "But I've seen some crazy shit in this world. You never know what people are capable of doing."
She probably didn't know. She'd led a sheltered life, protected from the harsh side of reality, protected by her mother. She sighed as she glanced