As Beth waited somewhere in the middle of Heathrow’s snaking customs queue, she wasn’t cross, exactly. In fact, overall, she felt lucky to have tracked down her quarry. “It didn’t have to be this hard,” she sighed as she dropped into the memory of their first meeting.
Beth had rushed in late to work on a rainy Friday morning, to find a strange man waiting in her office. Carl hadn’t been at his desk, so she’d had no advanced warning of her odd visitor.
And odd he was. He stood facing her full-length window, wearing breeches and a waistcoat, an unruly black mane of hair seemingly trying to escape behind him. As he turned toward her, an equally wild beard preceded his face, of which she could see little, beyond bushy eyebrows over deep blue eyes.
Not knowing quite what to do with her bizarre guest, she gestured for him to sit, offering a beverage. He silently moved, with surprising grace, toward the proffered seat, and sank into it, as if it were a throne. Only after she had taken her own seat behind her desk did he speak.
“I’ll tell you my life story for the price of a coffee. You can’t get a good cup of coffee in England.” He spoke with an American accent, though it was slightly off, as if he’d been abroad for a long time.
“Excuse me,” Beth said, “But who are you? Do you have an appointment?” She made a show of checking her appointment book.
“No,” the man replied, neglecting to give his name. “But I expect you want to see me. I made a promise, and I like to keep my promises.”
Beth concluded that a crazy person had found his way into her office. Or maybe someone unhappy with her law firm’s handling of one of its high-profile cases. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“I’m sure you do,” Beth said, inching her chair away from the desk. “But you need an appointment.” She tried not to seem frightened as she strode to the door and opened it, relaxing a bit when she spotted Carl seated at his desk just outside. “If you’ll check with Carl, I’m sure he can find you a time next week.
“I’m afraid that will be impossible,” the stranger said, rising from his chair with that odd grace he had earlier displayed. “I’m flying out tomorrow.” He seemed to consider for a moment, then smiled. “It’s probably for the best, anyway. I wish you all the best, Beth.”
Beth watched him until the elevator doors closed behind him. Then she rounded on Carl. “How did he get into my office?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to see him,” Carl said, blanching before the onslaught.
Guilt washed over Beth. Carl didn’t deserve this. “I’m sorry. You know I’ve been on edge with Mom so sick. Who was he?”
Carl’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “He said he was your father. I thought…”
Beth’s heart missed a beat. Then another. She ran for the elevator, but by the time she reached ground level, the stranger, possibly her father, was nowhere to be found.
Swallowing a profound sense of loss, she returned to her office and somehow made it through her day. Exhausted, yet determined to ask her mother about this man who claimed to be her father, Beth made her way to the hospital, an all too familiar route, these last few months.
Beth steeled herself for the inevitable confrontation. Her mother, never the easiest woman to get along with, had always refused to discuss Beth’s father. Today, Beth was going to force the issue.
As she rounded the corner to her mother’s ward, Nancy, her nurse stepped out of her room. Spotting Beth, her lips tightened, and her face fell. Beth knew without being told. She was too late. Her mother was gone.
After the funeral, Beth had found her mother’s journals. Dozens of them, which she had kept hidden from her daughter. They had revealed an entire life to which Beth had not been privy, a side of her mother she had not known existed. She had had hopes and dreams. There was more to her than the harsh, critical woman who had raised Beth. But she had never shown her a glimpse of that other self.
Working through the journals, as painful as it was, Beth slowly pieced together the story of a love affair and unexpected pregnancy, and of her mother not only refusing to marry her father but also denying him access to his child. He fought her for a time, then gave up and disappeared. Her mother speculated that he had gone to England, to family there. She called him only Joe, never mentioning a last name.
With so little to go on, Beth spent many more months trying to hunt Joe down. He had cared enough to find her, had somehow, she was convinced, known her mother was dying. He had kept a promise to someone to find Beth and tell her his story. And she had turned him away. It was her turn to find him.
Outside the airport, she met the driver she had hired and sat nervously in the back seat as the car wound its way through congested streets before finally reaching the outskirts of London.
City became country, and as the car moved from paved to gravel, then dirt roads, she wondered what kind of reception she would receive. She hadn’t made an appointment to see the Earl either. What must he have thought of her treatment of him? She realized now that the American overtones she had detected in his speech were from his years studying in the U.S., where he had met her mother.
The castle, though small, was magnificent, nestled among green hills, covered in farmland. Beth almost asked the driver to turn back. After all, it would be logical to assume that he would believe her interest in seeing him had come about only after learning who he really was.
She waited inside the entryway for the maid to announce her, again thinking she should leave. She had just decided to do so, when Joe, somewhat more neatly groomed than the last time she had seen him, appeared before her.
He watched her, not unkindly, waiting for her to speak, but she felt utterly incapable of doing so. Finally, after what seemed an interminable wait and no time at all, she managed to ask, “Who did you make that promise to?”
Smiling gently, Joe said, “To you, my daughter. I saw you briefly, at the hospital, before your mother took you away. As a foreign student, I had no standing, regardless of my position here. I promised you I would somehow find you again.”
“But how? And why then?”
“Your Aunt Gladys knew about me. When your mother was dying, she sent word and told me where to find you. But how did you track me down?”
Choking back tears, Beth said, “I followed the crumbs Mom didn’t realize she had left. There wasn’t much, but somehow they drew a map my heart knew how to follow.”
This story is just a little too long to count as a flash fiction. It popped into my head, unbidden, while trying to sleep. Needless to say, I turned on my laptop and wrote it. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Such a beautiful story. I love it ❤️
Yes, a very nice story!