It was a calculated risk but a risk nonetheless.  Steven Solari observed with apparent indifference, as his wife redecorated their tree for the third time this year.  Every day a new catalog arrived with a better idea than the last leaving her frantic to recreate it in her own home.  This particular option was hideous.

“What do you think Steve?”

The tone in her voice indicated that she wasn’t sure.  If he didn’t give an Oscar winning performance, she’d start all over in the morning. “Wow!  That is the most elegant thing I’ve ever seen.  So fresh and non-cliché.  I think you have a hidden talent for decorating.

Lynne preened a bit as she stood back to better admire the tree.  “I wasn’t sure about the black and silver but I think it works.”

“What it needs is one of those crystal encrusted huge stars as a focal point.”  He knew she’d love the idea and it’d take her a good week to find something like that.  He’d buy up everything in town if it meant she’d keep looking.  He’d never be frustrated at her lack of computer literacy again.

“Oh!  I have one of those upstairs!  I’ll go get it right now!”

“Lynne, first, I need to talk to you about something.  Come here.”

“I just-”

Steven reserved a tone for the rare occasions when he didn’t have the patience to be cajoling.  “No.  Now.”

She sat across from him in her favorite chair.  “What’s wrong?”

“Come here.  I’m not angry with you but I have some difficult news to tell you.”  His affection for his wife, while less than effusive, was genuine and he didn’t care to hurt her.  Even his few infidelities over the years had never reached her ears.  He ensured it.

“Steve?”  The trepidation in her tone almost stopped him.  Almost.

With a gentle arm around her, he pulled a copy of the article on Willow from his pocket.  “Remember this?”

“Yeah…”

“This girl, Willow Finley.  Steve knew her mother.  Well- he didn’t know her well but he went out with her once.”

“How do you know?”

He hesitated.  All of his mental deliberations flooded his mind again.  If he chose the wrong approach, it’d fail.  However, if Willow was going to be a part of their lives, he had to be honest or it’d backfire.  “Steve came to me and confessed he’d been out with a girl and got drunk.”

“Well, Steve didn’t hold his liquor very well-” she began.

“This time it held him.  He was rough with her and she could have pressed charges.”

His wife’s wide horrified eyes cut him to the heart.  Had Steve been alive, he’d have pummeled him just for the satisfaction of whipping him for hurting Lynne.  Everything hinged on where Lynne’s sympathies fell.

“She didn’t press charges but I felt obligated to try to make it up to her in some way- however inadequate.”

“That’s not the kind of thing you can-’ She paused and then gasped.  “Are you trying to tell me that Willow is Steve’s daughter?”

“Willow Finley is Steve’s daughter.  I checked it out; I met with the girl, and yes.  She is his daughter.”

“You met with her?”  Lynne’s mind spun.  She had a granddaughter.  “Why didn’t you tell me?  Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to meet my only grandchild?”

“I didn’t make the appointment with her.  She came to me.”

Lynne’s eyes narrowed.  “To demand more money.  That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?  Our granddaughter is a gold digger.”

“Quite the reverse.  When I discovered that my suspicions were correct, I immediately sent a check to cover her expenses to date.  I’d given her mother money years ago and honestly, I think the only reason she cashed the check was because she found out she was pregnant.  At the time, I thought the girl in my office took the check to share with the police.  I was ready to have it recovered if necessary.”

“Willow returned the second check?”  Something in Lynne’s voice heartened him.

“Yes.  She said she’d lived off of our support her entire life and she didn’t want any more.  I respected her for it.  She’s a lovely girl- not beautiful but she is attractive.”

“They lived for years off of the money you gave them?  How much did you give them!” Lynne demanded.

Steve took a deep breath, exhaled, and answered in the calmest voice he could muster.  “A million dollars.”

His wife jumped to her feet ranting and pacing wildly.  “Steve got drunk one night, got a ‘little’ rough with some tramp, and you paid out a million dollars to keep her quiet!  I don’t think so.  He raped her didn’t he?”

“Lynne, he was drunk-”

“He was a pig!  My own son-” She paused mid sentence.  “You saw her?”

“Yes.”

“When?  How soon after- When?”

“Two days later.”

She sank onto his lap, dropping he face in his shoulder and weeping.  “He hurt her badly didn’t he?  You wouldn’t have given that kind of money if she wasn’t visibly-”

“Battered, Lynne.  Battered.  You don’t want to know.  Trust me.”

“How did he get to be so evil-”

Steve held his wife and wept with her.  All the hopes, dreams, and plans he’d made for his son had vanished in the thrust of a knife over designer drugs.  “We did our best.  He just needed something we couldn’t give.”

“Makes you understand why people become religious.  Maybe all that faith stuff really does make people behave better.”

“I’m not sure about that.  Those religious nuts don’t allow wine even though Jesus made it, sex, even though Jesus invented it, or dancing even though the ‘man after God’s own heart’ danced.  I think they’re a bunch of hypocrites blaming the devil for their own devilish behavior.  At least we’re honest about ourselves.”

“I want to meet her.”

This was the crux.  He had to tread extremely carefully or Lynne would never agree to his plan.  “She doesn’t want to meet us.  You can’t blame her really.  Her mother was treated terribly by our son and I obviously insulted her trying to make up for twenty years of neglect.”

“That’s true.  Maybe if I wrote her a letter.  Maybe coming from a woman-”

“I doubt she’d read it but I do have an idea.  You’d have to be a little deceptive but-”

Her eyes narrowed.  Lynne wasn’t as blind to her husband’s strong-arm tactics as she assumed he thought she was.  She knew how he operated but forced herself to focus on the pleasant results in her own life and ignored the source.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think if she could meet you- without knowing she was going to, it’d make a huge difference.  You could drive out that way, park at her gate, undo several wires under your hood, and walk to her door to use her phone.”

“Why not use my cell phone?”

He sighed.  She was so literal sometimes.  “You’ll let the battery run down before you leave.”

“But I have the charger-”

“Leave it home then!” he protested.  “Look Lynne, she’s a simple girl in a lot of ways.  Intelligent, but from the sound of that article and my research, they don’t even have electricity!  You go out there, mess with the wires, tell her what happened- you heard a noise and tried to stop it and now you don’t know what goes where again, and can she call for help?”

“So when she finds out who I am-”

“I’d be honest with her.  I’d go right up to her door and say, ‘I didn’t mean to do this- I just wanted to see where you lived but then my car started making noises so I tried to fix it- and now I think I messed something up.  I’m really sorry.”

“You think it’ll work?”

Steven kissed his wife’s temple.  “Of course it’ll work.  Who could resist a woman like you?  She has no family.  Everyone needs family.”

***

David watched his wife surreptitiously.  She’d been agitated all evening.  Either the meeting went extremely well and she was nervous about admitting it in the face of his previous antagonism or it had gone terribly wrong.  Perhaps his granddaughter wasn’t a likeable person.  He had to know but didn’t care to ask.

“Dave-”

“Carol-”

She smiled at her husband and reached into the closet pulling out a large gift bag.  As Carol handed it to him, Dave teased, “But Christmas is still two weeks away.”

“It’s from Willow.”

Cautiously, David pulled the snowy white afghan from the bag and shook it out around him.  “It reminds me of that lacy one you saw years ago and was too expensive.  I’ve looked for one so many times and haven’t found it.”

“Kari remembered it and made it.”

“Kari made this,” he exclaimed surprised.  “She hated crafty things.”

“Apparently she became excellent at all things crafty.  Look in the bag.”

David withdrew the banded journal and his eyes widened at the cover.  As he glanced through the pages, he realized that it was a facsimile copy and that Kari had indeed become very artistic.  A few words caught his attention.  “… Labor was horrible.” He read aloud. “I will never have another child.  I won’t marry and I won’t ever allow myself to be vulnerable to a man again.  Childbirth is truly the curse that God promised.”

The couple wept in each other’s arms for some time.  All the years of loss and heartache flooded back into their hearts reopening every wound caused by Kari’s disappearance.  “Do you feel it?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“That’s what my meeting was like.”

“Oh Carol.  I should have gone.”

She shook her head violently.  “No, you would have reacted against her and it wasn’t her fault.  She didn’t do this to us David.”

“Is it wise to bring her into our lives?  Is it wise to potentially hurt her in the process?”

Carol moved to her favorite chair, sat across from David, and took a deep breath.  “I told her I’d talk to you about going to visit her farm after the first of the year.”

“And you think that is a good idea?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.  “I want to say yes.  I want to swallow my pain and pride and throw myself into Willow’s life until it no longer hurts but I don’t know if I can.  She seems pleasant enough- she bought lunch.”

“Oh you shouldn’t have let her- We don’t know how she’s set financially.”

“She’s sitting pretty from what I gathered.  Solari obviously paid Kari off well.”

“I’d love to give that man a piece of my mind.”

She didn’t want to say it.  The last thing she wanted to do was give David the one piece of information that could push the decision in any direction but for nearly fifty years, they’d never kept a secret from one another.  Now was not the time to start.

“Kari thought that Solari threatened her and subsequently the child.  She left and didn’t tell us because she thought if Solari knew about Willow, their lives, and probably ours I would imagine, would be in danger.”

“Oh Carol!”

“I know.”