The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [111]
She collected the photo albums and the stray pictures she’d been meaning to sort, and sat on the sofa where she could keep an eye on Phoebe, masked by her umbrella, rocking in the porch swing. She spread the recent photos on the coffee table, then took out a piece of paper and wrote to David.
Phoebe was confirmed yesterday. She was so sweet in her white dress, eyelet fabric with pink ribbons. She sang a solo at the church. I’m sending a picture of the garden party we had later. It’s hard to believe how big she’s gotten, and I’m starting to feel worried about what the future holds. I suppose this was what was on your mind the night you handed her to me. I’ve fought so hard all these years and sometimes I’m terrified of what will happen next, and yet—
Here she paused, wondering at her impulse to reply. It wasn’t for the money. Every cent of it went into the bank; over the years Caroline had saved nearly $15,000, all of it held in trust for Phoebe. Perhaps it was simply old habit, or to keep their connection alive. Perhaps Caroline had simply wanted him to understand what he was missing. Here, she wanted to say, grabbing David Henry by the collar, here is your daughter: Phoebe, thirteen years old, a smile like the sun on her face.
She put her pen down, thinking of Phoebe in her white dress, singing with the choir, holding the kitten. How could she tell him all this and then not honor his request to meet his daughter? Yet if he came here, after all these years—what would happen then? She didn’t think she loved him anymore, but maybe she did. Maybe she was still angry with him, too, for the choices he’d made, for never really seeing who she was. It troubled her to discover this hardness in her own heart. What if he’d changed, after all? But what if he hadn’t? He might hurt Phoebe as he’d once hurt her, without even knowing it had happened.
She pushed the letter aside. Instead, she paid some bills, then stepped outside to slip them in the mailbox. Phoebe was sitting on the front steps, holding her umbrella high against the rain. Caroline watched her for a minute before she let the door fall shut and went to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. She stood for a long time at the back door, gazing out at the dripping leaves, the wet lawn, the little stream running down the sidewalk. A paper cup was lodged under a bush, a napkin turned to pulp by the garage. In a few hours Al would drive away again. She glimpsed it, for a moment, how that might feel like freedom.
The rain came harder suddenly, hitting the roof. Something opened up in her heart, some powerful instinct that made Caroline turn and walk into the living room. She knew before she stepped out on the porch that she’d find it empty, the plate set neatly on the concrete floor, the swing still.
Phoebe gone.
Gone where? Caroline went to the edge of the porch and searched up and down the street, through the teeming rain. A train sounded in the distance; the road to the left climbed the hill to the tracks. To the right, it ended in the freeway entrance ramp. All right, think. Think! Where would she go?
Down the street the Swan children were playing barefoot in the puddles. Caroline remembered Phoebe saying, earlier that morning, I want a cat, and Avery standing at the party with the furry bundle in her arms. Remembered Phoebe, fascinated by its smallness, its tiny sounds. And sure enough, when she asked the Swan children about Phoebe, they gestured across the road to the copse of trees. The kitten had run away. Phoebe and Avery had gone to rescue it.
At the first break in traffic, Caroline darted across the road. The earth was saturated, water pooling in her footprints. She pushed through the brushy copse and broke at last into the clearing. Avery was there, kneeling by the pipe that drained water from the hills into the concrete ditch. Phoebe’s yellow umbrella