Angel's Peak (Virgin River #10)(13)

Once they were both in the car, she said, “You’ll have to give me directions. I’m not sure where I’m going.”

“Just take me to my car,” he said. “It’s at the grocery store.”

“No, I’m taking you to Luke’s,” she said. “You can’t drive after a possible head injury. You’ve been enough trouble without weighing on my conscience anymore. Where am I going?”

Sean sighed audibly. He really didn’t feel up to fighting with her. “South till you get to Highway 36, then east on 36 for about twenty minutes. I’ll tell you where to turn off—Virgin River is about ten miles off 36, kind of hidden away in the mountains.”

“I’ve been out on 36. Cute, how they call it a highway—it’s only a two-lane,” she said. “It’s harrowing.”

“Yeah, all these mountain roads take some getting used to. This is very nice of you, Francine. Or is it revenge? You’re going to push me out on a sharp turn?”

She ignored him. “Here’s what I’m going to do for you, Sean. I’m going to give you my cell-phone number and you can call me. When I can spare some time—like a half hour—I will meet you for coffee. We can have this conversation you’re set on. Maybe we’ll straighten a couple of things out. After that, you are going to stop hounding me. Got that? Because I’m in no mood for this bullshit. You’ve had plenty of time to make up your mind about me and you were very clear. No commitment. No family. Now, I’ve gotten on with my life, and if you haven’t, it’s time to do so. Understand?”

What Sean understood was he now had thirty more minutes than he’d had before. He’d have to figure out a way to make good use of the time. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Franci,” he said softly. He hoped he said it tenderly.

“And yet it is,” she informed him.

After dropping Sean off at Luke’s house, Franci headed back down 36, the darkest highway she’d ever driven. She had plenty of time to think and admit that she had received his voice mails—all two of them. The first one came while she was in labor, six months after they’d parted ways, and he had said, “Hey, Fran! How you doing, babe? Give me a call. We should stay in touch, huh?” The second one came when she was at home at her mother’s with a ten-day-old baby, alternately nursing, walking the floor, sleeping and crying. That one was no better than the first. “So, Franci—you gonna call me back? Come on, babe—no reason we can’t talk, is there? I wanna tell you all about the U-2. Gimme a call.” That might explain her blind rage when the big guy in the grocery store casually referred to her as babe.

Back then Franci realized she was listening to those two calls over and over, alternately planning his death and praying he would come for her. She knew she was in trouble. After several weeks there hadn’t been any more contact from him so, to save herself, she had the cell shut off and got herself a new number. She changed her e-mail address. Then she started looking for a new job and a path out of Santa Rosa.

She had always known, from the time she’d said goodbye to Sean four years ago, that she would have to deal with him eventually. She wasn’t sure exactly when or how, but she’d thought she would have a little more time.

Her daughter, Rosie, three and a half and as precocious as an only child can be, had just recently asked, “Where is our daddy?” Funny she would say our daddy, but then the whole concept was new to her as she had just noticed that they didn’t have one. Preschool had its share of separated families, but almost all the other kids seemed to know where both their parents were. Most were being picked up alternately by their moms and their dads.

And Rosie hadn’t asked who is our daddy, but where.

“He’s flying a very fast, very high jet in the air force,” Franci answered. “It goes all over the world and he’s busy doing a very important job.”

Rosie had said, “Oh.” She probably didn’t understand much beyond the important fact that Franci knew where Rosie’s daddy was. But what Franci knew was that in a few months, maybe a year, maybe two, as her world became larger, Rosie would ask things like, “What’s his name?” “Why doesn’t he come to see us?” And eventually, “Why aren’t you married?” These would be increasingly difficult questions to answer. And those questions formed the primary reason Franci had not wanted to face this—she couldn’t imagine how she would tell Rosie that her daddy just didn’t want anything to do with her because he absolutely, positively did not want to be a father.

Franci didn’t tell her mom about Rosie’s question because her mother had asked her so many times how she intended to handle her situation. From the beginning Vivian had disapproved of this approach. “Fine, don’t marry him,” she had said. “Don’t have expectations of him. Don’t be disappointed in his behavior. But he deserves to know he has a child.”

Under any other circumstances, Franci would agree. “Mom, he was adamant! He did not want children. He didn’t want marriage, either.”

“All that has a way of changing when there’s a child actually on the way,” Vivian had said.

“Exactly,” Franci argued. “That’s why I want to handle this on my own, at least for now. Because I’m only interested in marrying and having a child with a man who loves me as much as I love him, who wants our child as much as I do. Don’t you get that?”