Daughters for a Time by Jennifer Handford Page A

normal than the absence of it.

Chapter Seven

    The phone was ringing when I walked through the door. It was Davis and Delia, Tim’s parents, who were always both on the line when they called. And who were both always in the most cheerful moods.
    “How are you, darling?” Delia asked.
    “Good. I just walked through the door. I’ve been at Harvest for most of the day.”
    “And Tim?” she asked.
    “Busy! As usual. He’s still at the restaurant. I won’t see him for a few more hours.”
    “We just wanted to check in on you, dear.”
    “We’re good,” I said. “Really good.”
    “And the adoption? Is everything going okay?”
    “Yeah, as far as I know, it looks good.”
    “When you and Tim get back from China, we’ll come up and help you out.”
    “That would be great,” I said, thinking that all this talk of China meant that it was getting closer by the day.
    “Let us know when you have a date,” she said. “We’ll book a room.”
    “No you will not. You’ll stay with us. No arguing!” This was our obligatory back-and-forth every time they visited.
    “We don’t want to burden you, dear,” Delia said. “We want to help.”
    “Burden us? We love it when you’re here. End of discussion.”
    Many people loathed their in-laws. I adored mine. Davis Francis was the retired CEO of a string of manufacturing companies. With broad shoulders and a thick wave of black hair, à la Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wall Street , Davis was a towering man with an equally towering presence.
    Tim’s mother, Delia, was as petite as Davis was tall, and her presence as mild as Davis’s was imposing. A size four with tight brown curls, Delia had a way of looking at me that made my throat tighten and tears pool in my eyes. “You are so special,” Delia had said to me at the end of our first dinner together. She placed her petite hand on my cheek and added, “Cancer took my mother, too.” I fought for the breath that was stuck in my throat, but it was a lost cause; Delia’s words undid me. I cried that night—hysterically, cathartically, painfully—on the quilted down of Delia’s four-poster bed. She held me and I remembered thinking how long it had been since I’d found comfort in a mother’s arms, how uniquely curative they were, like a warm spoonful of chicken noodle soup on a rainy day.
    Davis and Delia regarded each other like fine wine—with reverence and adoration. I watched them in wonder as if I were observing exotic animals at the zoo. What is this creature called “loving husband and father,” I’d think. How did Davis grow into this caring human being who valued family more than anything, when my father had been overcome by husband-hood and fatherhood?
    Of course, there were no answers, and I didn’t really care; I was just so thrilled to be part of a family who loved so deeply and with such loyalty. “God’s smiling on us today,” Davis said to Tim and me on our wedding day. Davis then walked me down the aisle, and at the altar, he lifted my veil and kissed me on the cheek, his eyes filled with tears. He squeezed my hands andwhispered the word daughter sweetly in my ear just as I looked up to the back of the church to see Larry, standing in the corner, decked out in a three-piece suit. Against Claire’s advice, I had sent him an invitation to our wedding. At the reception, Larry sat awkwardly at a table with some of Tim’s relatives. At one point, I saw Claire talking to him in a corner, though when I asked her about it later, she waved it away as nothing. As the night went on, Larry stayed inconspicuously out of sight, blending into the background during the toasts, cake cutting, and first dances. When he said good-bye, he took an awkward step forward as if he wanted to hug me but stopped short and settled for a quick hand on my shoulder. He shook Tim’s hand, gave us a wedding card along with his congratulations, and left. That was seven years ago, the last time I had seen my