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With practiced skill, he turned the chicken over with a pair of tongs. “She’s never complained.”
“Oh Dad,” Carla said with a rush of inner sadness. She respected and admired her father and had never thought of him as oblivious of the stress his career had placed on their family. “Are you really so blind?”
His mouth tightened, and the look he gave her was piercing. “I said she’s never complained. It takes a special kind of woman to love a man like me.”
Carla lifted her gaze to Philip, who was examining the meticulously kept flowerbeds, and her father’s words echoed in her mind. Carla didn’t know if she could ever be that special kind of woman.
Rachel appeared at the sliding glass door. “Carla, would you help me carry out the salads?”
“Sure, Mom.” Carla followed her mother into the kitchen.
Rachel stuck a serving spoon in the potato salad, handed it to Carla, and turned away. “Philip mentioned that he had to be back tomorrow because he’s on duty. You did say he was a doctor, didn’t you?” Her voice was unnaturally high, and her hands were busily working around the sink.
“No, Mom.” She’d wondered how long it would take for her mother to pick up on that. “Philip’s a police officer.”
A glass fell against the aluminum sink and shattered into little pieces. Rachel ignored it as she turned, her face suddenly waxen. “Oh Carla, no.”
Eight
“Your flight will be boarding in a minute.” Carla stood stiffly in the area outside of airport security. The lump in her throat was making it hard for her to talk. The crazy part was that she didn’t want Philip to leave, and at the same time she couldn’t bear to have him stay.
The meal with her parents had been an ordeal. As she had suspected, Philip and her father had gotten on like soul mates. They were alike in more ways than Carla had first suspected. Their personalities, ideas, and thoughts meshed as if they were father and son.
Rachel had remained subdued during most of the meal. Later, when Carla had helped clear the picnic table and load the dishwasher, a strained tension had existed between them. Her mother had asked a few polite questions about Philip, which Carla had answered in the same cordial tone.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to become too serious with this young man,” Rachel said as they were finishing. Her casual attitude didn’t fool Carla.
Fleetingly, Carla wondered what reason her mother would give. Philip wasn’t the careless type, and even the most casual observer could see he wasn’t lazy. She was bound to say everything but what was really on her mind.
“Why not?” Carla implored. “I thought you said you liked him.”
“I do,” Rachel replied quickly, in a defensive tone. “But he’s too much like your father, and I’ll love that man to my death.” The poignant softness of Rachel’s voice cracked the thin wall that stood between mother and daughter.
“And you,” Rachel continued with a wry grin, “are too much like me: vulnerable, sensitive, tenderhearted. Our emotions run high, and when we love, we love with a fervor. Philip could hurt you, Princess.”
Her mother so rarely called her by that affectionate term that Carla lifted her head in surprise.
“There are plenty of men in this world who will make life a thousand times easier for you than someone involved in law enforcement.”
“But you married Dad,” Carla argued, studying her mother intently. This was as close as they had ever come to an open conversation.
“Your father joined the force after we were married.”
“I…I didn’t know that.”
“Something else you may not know is that Joe and I separated for a time before you were born.”
Shocked, Carla’s mouth dropped open. “You and Dad?”
Rachel busily wiped off the kitchen counter, then rinsed out the rag under the running faucet. “There are certain qualities a policeman’s wife should have. I…I’ve never been the right woman—” She stopped in mid-sentence as Philip and Joe sauntered into the kitchen.
Mother and daughter had been unable to finish the conversation, but Carla had felt a closeness with her mother she had never experienced. She realized now that they had always been too much alike to appreciate each other.
—
“Carla?”
Philip’s voice brought her back to the present, and to the reality of his leaving.
