This did not sound promising.
“Here’s his number,” Rhonda said.
Laura wrote down the number, then quickly got off the phone.
“Hot Air Unlimited.” It was a male voice, pleasant and businesslike, and if she hadn’t been so nervous, she would have laughed at the company’s name.
“I’m trying to reach Dylan Geer,” she said.
“Speaking.”
“Dylan, my name is Laura Brandon. We met at a party at Rhonda Giddings’s house about six years ago.”
There was silence on Dylan’s end of the line. “Sorry,” he said after a minute. “I don’t remember.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. “Well, this is a bit awkward, and I’m sorry to dump it on you out of the blue.” She spoke rapidly, her nerves propelling her. “It was when Rhonda moved into that new house in Potomac. There was a terrific snowstorm. I met you there and we…well, we slept together that night. And the reason I’m calling is to let you know that I had a daughter…I conceived a child that night. Emma. That’s her name. And I didn’t ever plan to get in touch with you about it, because I got married shortly after that night, but my husband died recently, and Emma was traumatized by his death and now doesn’t speak, and her therapist suggested I see if—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dylan interrupted her. “Slow down. Start at the beginning. You’re saying we…slept together at Rhonda’s?”
“Yes. Six years ago. There was a snowstorm. We nearly got snowed in there.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember this at all. What’s your name again?”
“Laura Brandon.” She realized as she said her name that she might not have told it to him that night. “I’m about five-six. Light brown hair. Long.”
“Are you sure you have the right guy?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“So, you think your daughter’s mine?”
“I’m sure she’s yours. There were no other possibilities.”
“Couldn’t she have been your husband’s?”
“I wasn’t married then.” It bothered her that he would think she’d sleep with him when she was married. Of course, what she’d done hadn’t been all that honorable, either. “I wasn’t seeing anyone.”
“But you said you had a husband—”
“I got married after that night. A friend married me when I learned I was pregnant. But he died a few months ago, and—”
“So now you need a new father for your daughter, and I’m the likely candidate?”
She didn’t like his tone. She felt like hanging up on him, but forged ahead. “Emma’s therapist suggested I see if her father—if you—might want to be involved with her. She thought it would help Emma to have a caring male figure in her life.”
“You know, this is crazy.” He laughed. “I don’t know who you are. You’re calling me out of the blue. You want me to be a caring male figure for a kid I know nothing about.”
“She’s yours.”
“I don’t think so. I have no recollection of even meeting you, much less sleeping with you.”
“Could we at least meet somewhere? Could we talk in person?”
She heard him sigh. “I don’t see the point,” he said. “I’m sorry if you’re having trouble with your daughter, but I don’t see how I can help. And I have a bunch of calls I need to return, so—”
“Maybe you can’t help,” she said, “but I’d at least like to—”
“There’s my other line,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry… Laura, is it? Good luck.”
With that he was gone. Laura held the receiver to her ear for a few more seconds before hanging up. She shouldn’t have done this by phone. If she’d gone to see him in person he might have recognized her. He wouldn’t have been able to escape from her and the truth quite so easily. But he sounded like a bit of a jerk. Maybe Emma was better off without him.
She and Emma went grocery shopping after dinner that evening. Before Ray’s death, Laura had to keep a constant eye on her daughter in the store because Emma would wander off, pick up unneeded products, talk to strangers. Now Emma clung to Laura or the shopping cart. She tried to climb into the basket, although she was far too big and Laura would not allow it. Strangers would still try to talk to her, but Emma would stick her thumb in her mouth and avert her eyes.
“Let’s get some peaches, honey,” Laura said, pushing the cart toward the produce section.
Well, how would she feel in Dylan’s shoes? she wondered as she watched Emma select the peaches. How would she feel if she were a guy and some stranger called her up, out of the blue, six years after the fact, to tell her she’d fathered a baby? She’d be worried about a paternity suit, that’s what. She’d guess the woman had fallen on hard times and needed financial support for her child.
She paid careful attention to Emma’s behavior in the store, watching how the little girl avoided the few male shoppers, slipping into the space between Laura and the shelves each time a man walked toward them. Had she always done that? The move was subtle enough that Laura was not really sure.
Men yell. Men kill themselves.
When she got home from the grocery store, Laura looked up the number to Dylan’s balloon business again. Without stopping to think through what she was doing, she dialed the number and was relieved to reach a recording. Raising her voice an octave, she gave her name as Susan Lane, the first name that flew into her mind, and said she wanted to schedule a balloon ride to celebrate her fortieth birthday. When she hung up, she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, wondering how Laura Brandon could have done such a wacky thing.
12
IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN LAURA REACHED THE WINE COUNTRY. Dylan had told her to be at his house by 5:00 a.m. so she’d have a good view of the sunrise from the air.
“At your house?” she’d asked, surprised.
“I keep the equipment in a barn on my property,” he’d explained. “I have a field I can use for takeoff when the wind is right.”
The drive was about half an hour from Lake Ashton, through country that would be beautiful in daylight. Leaving Emma practically in the middle of the night had posed a problem. Laura solved it by bringing Shelley, Emma’s teenage babysitter from their old Leesburg neighborhood, out to the lake to stay over the night before. Shelley would be there to take care of Emma when she woke up this morning.
Pulling to the side of the road, she turned on the car’s overhead light to look at the printed directions Dylan had sent her. His street was just around the next bend. She turned onto it and drove
