A Dad for Billie by Susan Mallery

he’d smiled at her from across a room. She’d publicly humiliated him, had rejected him in the worst way possible. He’d worked hard for all he’d achieved. To think that she might have destroyed that. She shuddered.
    She had hoped that by getting him to admit his anger now, she might lessen her own guilt. Another selfish act. She had forced Adam to relive those horrible days. And now, they both felt worse. As she’d said earlier. Stupid.
    A soft hand touched her arm. Jane blinked, then tried to smile at Charlene.
    “Are you all right?” the older woman asked. In the church the shadows muted the bright color of her hair, but the other woman was still a robin in a flock of sparrows.
    “Fine.”
    Those wise eyes studied her. “There’s no way to escape the past, my dear. You must make peace with it.”
    “Am I that obvious?”
    “Only because I care about you.”
    “I’m just beginning to understand all the trouble I’ve caused,” she said, averting her face from the probing glances of curious neighbors. “It’s not flattering.”
    “You were young, child. You made the best decision you could at the time.”
    “Everyone paid a high price for that.”
    “Including yourself.”
    “I don’t care about me. It’s Billie that I’m worried about.”
    “And Adam?”
    “Yes,” she admitted.
    It was as if Charlene’s words conjured him out of the morning. He and Billie walked in together, the child’s small hand held securely in his. They were speaking about something. Both their heads tilted toward each other.
    The best decision possible at the time, Charlene had said. That wasn’t true. All she’d accomplished by running was to keep father and daughter apart.
    Adam said something and they both laughed. Their smiles were mirror images. How long before everyone guessed the truth? He glanced up at her, then turned away. Inside, a cold lump formed and pressed against her heart.
    She’d been hiding, she realized in that moment of rejection. Hiding from the truth. The list of reasons she’d used for coming home—a good job, a small and friendly town in which to raiseher daughter—had all been a smoke screen. She hadn’t come home for a teaching position, or even for Billie. She’d come home looking for forgiveness and a way to set the past right.

Chapter Five
    D espite the board covering the broken window, night noises drifted into Adam’s office. He stared at the folders spread open in front of him and struggled to concentrate. The loan committee would meet Monday morning, as it had for decades. He could imagine the looks on his employees’ faces if
he
wasn’t ready.
    Normally he could shut out any distractions. Whether it was neighborhood kids or grunts from Charlene’s favorite Sunday night wrestling. But tonight—He closed the top file and sighed. Jane had called Billie in for her bath about fifteen minutes before. The eight-year-old’s arguments as to why she didn’t need washing had taken the better part of ten minutes. At the end, he’d been grinning broadly at her imagination and inventiveness. What a kid.
    But it wasn’t Billie’s chatter that kept him from working. Nor was it Charlene’s television shows or the crickets. It was Jane. He’d gone to church in that same building for the past nine years. Except for an occasional service missed because of illness or vacation, he’d been faithful in his attendance, and his attention. This morning, as now, his mind had wandered. The past, so easilydisposed of when there was no reminder, slipped around the walls of his control. It weighed on him, made him lose track of the sermon or his notes on a loan.
    When she had left, all those years ago, he’d been able to occupy his mind with the details of picking up the pieces. All the things he’d complained about to Jane that she’d left him to handle had filled his time and his thoughts. The act itself had been pushed aside, first for a few days, then indefinitely, until he’d lost track