“Dylan Geer! Why would you…oh, you must want a balloon ride, huh?”
“A balloon ride?”
“That’s not it?”
“No, it’s something else. Something personal. Sorry.”
“No problem. I don’t think I have a private number for him, but I do have his balloon business number. Hang on. Let me get my address book out of my purse.”
Laura could hear her rummaging through her purse, then flipping through the pages of the book.
“I took my husband up for his birthday last year,” Rhonda said.
“So, he operates a hot air balloon business?” Laura asked. Not exactly what she’d imagined for Emma’s father, but interesting nonetheless.
“Yes. He totally changed after he left the airlines, you know.”
Laura was getting frustrated trying to sort the pieces of the puzzle together. “I don’t know much about him,” she said. “I didn’t know he worked for the airlines.”
“I don’t know what happened, but he quit quite a while ago, moved out to the wine country, started the balloon thing, and became something of a playboy, from what I’ve heard.”
Great. This did not sound promising.
“Here’s his number,” Rhonda said.
Laura wrote down the number, then quickly got off the phone.
“Hot Air Unlimited.” It was a male voice, pleasant and businesslike, and if she hadn’t been so nervous, she would have laughed at the company’s name.
“I’m trying to reach Dylan Geer,” she said.
“Speaking.”
“Dylan, my name is Laura Brandon. We met at a party at Rhonda Giddings’s house about six years ago.”
There was silence on Dylan’s end of the line. “Sorry,” he said after a minute. “I don’t remember.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. “Well, this is a bit awkward, and I’m sorry to dump it on you out of the blue.” She spoke rapidly, her nerves propelling her. “It was when Rhonda moved into that new house in Potomac. There was a terrific snowstorm. I met you there and we…well, we slept together that night. And the reason I’m calling is to let you know that I had a daughter…I conceived a child that night. Emma. That’s her name. And I didn’t ever plan to get in touch with you about it, because I got married shortly after that night, but my husband died recently, and Emma was traumatized by his death and now doesn’t speak, and her therapist suggested I see if—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dylan interrupted her. “Slow down. Start at the beginning. You’re saying we…slept together at Rhonda’s?”
“Yes. Six years ago. There was a snowstorm. We nearly got snowed in there.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember this at all. What’s your name again?”
“Laura Brandon.” She realized as she said her name that she might not have told it to him that night. “I’m about five-six. Light brown hair. Long.”
“Are you sure you have the right guy?” “Yes. I’m sure.”
“So, you think your daughter’s mine?”
“I’m sure she’s yours. There were no other possibilities.”
“Couldn’t she have been your husband’s?”
“I wasn’t married then.” It bothered her that he would think she’d sleep with him when she was married. Of course, what she’d done hadn’t been all that honorable, either. “I wasn’t seeing anyone.”
“But you said you had a husband—”
“I got married after that night. A friend married me when I learned I was pregnant. But he died a few months ago, and—”
“So now you need a new father for your daughter, and I’m the likely candidate?”
She didn’t like his tone. She felt like hanging up on him, but forged ahead. “Emma’s therapist suggested I see if her father—if you—might want to be involved with her. She thought it would help Emma to have a caring male figure in her life.”
“You know, this is crazy.” He laughed. “I don’t know who you are. You’re calling me out of the blue. You want me to be a caring male figure for a kid I know nothing about.”
“She’s yours.”
“I don’t think so. I have no recollection of even meeting you, much less sleeping with you.”
“Could we at least meet somewhere? Could we talk in person?”
She heard him sigh. “I don’t see the point,” he said. “I’m sorry if you’re having trouble with your daughter, but I don’t see how I can help. And I have a bunch of calls I need to return, so—”
“Maybe you can’t help,” she said, “but I’d at least like to—”
“There’s my other line,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry…Laura, is it? Good luck.”
With that he was gone. Laura held the receiver to her ear for a few more seconds before hanging up. She shouldn’t have done this by phone. If she’d gone to see him in person he might have recognized her. He wouldn’t have been able to escape from her and the truth quite so easily. But he sounded like a bit of a jerk. Maybe Emma was better off without him.
She and Emma went grocery shopping after dinner that evening. Before Ray’s death, Laura had to keep a constant eye on her daughter in the store because Emma would wander off, pick up unneeded products, talk to strangers. Now Emma clung to Laura or the shopping cart. She tried to climb into the basket, although she was far too big and Laura would not allow it. Strangers would still try to talk to her, but Emma would stick her thumb in her mouth and avert her eyes.
“Let’s get some peaches, honey,” Laura said, pushing the cart toward the produce section.
Well, how would she feel in Dylan’s shoes? she wondered as she watched Emma select the peaches. How would she feel if she were a guy and some stranger called her up, out of the blue, six years after the fact, to tell her she’d fathered a baby? She’d be worried about a paternity suit, that’s what. She’d guess the woman had fallen on hard times and needed financial support for her child.
She paid careful attention to Emma’s behavior in the store, watching how the little girl avoided the few male shoppers, slipping into the space between Laura and the shelves each time a man walked toward them. Had she always done that? The move was subtle enough that Laura was not really sure.
Men yell. Men kill themselves.
When she got home from the grocery store, Laura looked up the number to Dylan’s balloon business again. Without stopping to think through what she was doing, she dialed the number and was relieved to reach a recording. Raising her voice an octave, she gave her name as Susan Lane, the first name that flew into her mind, and said she wanted to schedule a balloon ride to celebrate her fortieth birthday. When she hung up, she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, wondering how Laura Brandon could have done such a wacky thing.
12
IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN LAURA REACHED THE WINE COUNTRY. Dylan had told her to be at his house by 5:00 a.m. so she’d have a good view of the sunrise from the air.
“At your house?” she’d asked, surprised.
“I keep the equipment in a barn on my property,” he’d explained. “I have a field I can use for takeoff when the wind is right.”
The drive was about half an hour from Lake Ashton, through country that would be beautiful in daylight. Leaving Emma practically in the middle of the night had posed a problem. Laura solved it by bringing Shelley, Emma’s teenage babysitter from their old Leesburg neighborhood, out to the lake to stay over the night before. Shelley would be there to take care of Emma when she woke up this morning.
Pulling to the side of the road, she turned on the car’s overhead light to look at the printed directions Dylan had sent her. His street was just around the next bend. She turned onto it and drove through woods so thick and deep that they would have been dark even in the daytime. Then she saw the mailbox described in the directions. It was an ordinary wooden mailbox, but sailing from the top of it, lit up by a small, hidden spotlight, was a wooden replica of a colorful hot air balloon.
The driveway curved through the woods for a
nother half mile before a house slipped into view from the darkness. Lighting along the ground illuminated this part of the driveway, and the windows of the house were aglow. She parked next to a van in front of the garage and got out. From somewhere to her right, she heard voices, and in the dusky light, she could make out a barn at the edge of a field. A couple of people stood in the center of the field, setting up the balloon, she supposed. She felt the first twinge of anticipation about the balloon ride itself. Until now, she’d had far bigger things than the ride on her mind.
The house was actually a log cabin, she saw as she approached. Small and relatively new. She climbed the porch steps, and Dylan came out the front door before she had a chance to knock.
“Susan?” he asked.
Laura nearly lost her voice. In the porch light, his resemblance to Emma was remarkable. Those blue eyes and the dark hair. Even his quick smile was Emma’s. At least, it was the smile Emma used to have.
“Yes.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to remember her, but he shook her hand without a hint of recognition. She must have made quite an impact on him that night. Or perhaps she’d changed a great deal in the last six years. In the light from the house, she could see that Dylan now had a little gray at his temples and his hairline was beginning to recede. He was wearing a short-sleeved jumpsuit, either blue or gray, with a hot air balloon design above the breast pocket.
“The crew’s setting up the balloon in the field out back,” he said. “Come watch.”
They walked together toward the field. “Do you fly only in the morning and evening?” Laura asked, making conversation in an attempt to calm her nerves.
“Uh-huh. Weather conditions are best then.”
“What if it’s raining?”
“Rain’s a problem. Wind is even worse. I end up canceling about forty percent of the scheduled flights.”
“Guess I lucked out.” The morning was balmy, the sky clear. “What do you do during the rest of the day?”
“Sleep.” He laughed. “I’m up at four nearly every morning.”
They’d reached the center of the field, where a huge fan blew air into the mouth of the balloon. The balloon lay on its side, and she could see the billowing of the fabric, although she could not quite make out its colors. A truck stood nearby, and two men worked near its rear bumper.
“Hey, Alex. Brian,” Dylan said. “This is Susan.”
The men looked up from their work. They seemed very young, at least in the dim light. One of them had long hair tied back in a ponytail. The other wore a heavy beard. Both wore gloves.
“How’s it going, Susan?” one of them asked.
“Okay,” she answered. “Hope you guys know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too,” Dylan said. “Today’s their first day working for me.”
Laura cringed.
“Just joking,” Dylan said, touching her arm. “They’ve been working with me a couple of years.”
“Oh. Good.”
He was suddenly all business as he told her where she should stand in the balloon, what sort of emergencies might arise and what she should do in each case. She tried to listen carefully, nodding in the appropriate places, but she was having a great deal of trouble concentrating. At any moment, she expected him to recognize her.
“Ready,” one of the men said.
“Excuse me,” Dylan said, leaving her side to walk toward the balloon. He lit the burners at the top of the basket, sending a roaring blue-and-red flame into the mouth of the balloon. Slowly, the fabric of the balloon swayed and billowed, rising into the air, like a huge animal coming to life. She could see now that the balloon had a swirling striped pattern, and it was immense.
Once the balloon had inflated above him, Dylan hoisted himself into the basket.
Laura listened as the three men ran through a preflight checklist, then the man with the beard set a stepladder next to the basket.
“Here you go,” he said, reaching an arm toward her. “Hop in.”
He held her hand as she climbed the stepladder, and Dylan took her other hand from inside the basket as she stepped over the rim.
“Step on the propane tank,” he said. “That’s it.”
She stepped onto the tank, then onto the floor of the basket, moving to one of the corners as he’d instructed her to do. At least she remembered that much of what he’d told her.
“All set?” Dylan asked.
She nodded.
“Let her go!” he called to his crew.
The bearded member of the crew untied a line from the axle of the truck, then helped Dylan store it on the bottom of the basket. Dylan sent two short blasts of flame into the balloon, the sound nearly deafening. The man with the ponytail, who’d been holding on to the rim of the basket, let go, and the balloon began to rise.
The ascent was slower, gentler than she had anticipated, taking her breath away in small increments. In the east, the sky was beginning to color.
“This is beautiful,” she said, thinking that he must hear that word dozens of times in a day’s work.
They began to drift above the treetops, but there was no sense of motion whatsoever inside the basket. And, except for the occasional roar of the flame, the world was silent.
“Couldn’t find anyone gutsy enough to come with you for your birthday, huh?” Dylan asked.
“Actually, I wanted to do this alone.”
“I can appreciate that,” he said. “There’s nothing like being up here alone. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, though. I’ll try not to intrude.”
Tearing herself away from the sunrise, she faced him. The golden light made the blue of his eyes translucent. She’d seen the same phenomenon in her daughter’s face and remembered why she was here. She took a deep breath. “Dylan,” she said, “I’ve lied to you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “About?”
“My name’s not Susan…” She couldn’t even remember the last name she’d given him. “I’m Laura Brandon.”
He didn’t seem to register the name.
“I called you last week,” she said. “About my daughter.”
His smile was gone in an instant, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “What the hell is your game?”
This had been a terrible idea. How else could she have expected him to react except with anger?
“I knew you didn’t believe me on the phone the other day,” she said, “but if you’ll just take a look at Emma’s picture, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.” She extracted the picture from her shirt pocket, her hand trembling, and tried to hand it to him. He wouldn’t take it. “You’ll know she’s yours if you’d just look at her for two seconds,” she pleaded.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “They should lock you up.”
“I know.” She was still holding the picture toward him. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done. But I’m sane, I swear it, and—”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” he said. “And frankly, I hope never to see you again.” He took the radio from his belt.
“Come in, Alex.” He spoke into the radio, then to her he said, “You thought you’d have me captive up here and I’d have to listen to you, huh? Well, sorry, but you’re wrong.”
“Yo, balloon.” Alex’s voice crackled on the radio.
“We’re coming down,” Dylan said.
“Mechanical problem?” Alex asked.
“Nothing that simple,” Dylan answered, his voice tight. “I can make Del Russo’s orchard in a few minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” Alex said.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he’d hung the radio on his belt again. “This was a mistake.”
“Don’t talk to me, all right? I’m working.”
She decided it was best to say no more as they descended. Facing the direction the balloon was drifting, she kept her eyes riveted on the trees below. They floated over them, the bottom of the basket brushing the leaves. Suddenly, the t
rees fell away and an orchard appeared below them, grapevines stretching into the distance in neat rows.
Two men were running toward the spot where the balloon appeared to be headed, and it was a minute before she realized they were Alex and Brian. The balloon was aimed directly at a row of grapevines, and she braced herself for the impact. But Dylan tugged on a line at the side of the basket, and the balloon instantly dropped to the ground, landing with a barely perceptible thump, neatly, tightly, between two rows of vines. Within seconds, the balloon was transformed into a pile of colorful rags strewn over the orchard.
“Help her out,” Dylan said to the men, his voice gruff.
The man with the ponytail produced the stepladder again, and she climbed out of the basket, her legs like jelly.
“Take her back to the house for her car, Brian,” Dylan ordered without looking at any of them.
Laura caught the glance that passed between Alex and Brian as they tried to figure out what had caused their boss’s sudden sour mood.
“Yessir.” The young man with the beard turned to her. “Let’s go.”
She followed him through the orchard, the sunrise coloring the vines a creamy yellow.
“Didn’t feel too good up there?” Brian asked as they neared his van.
She nodded. It was not a lie.
He opened the van door for her, and she got in and fastened the seat belt.
“Don’t feel bad,” he said as he drove away from the orchard. “It happens sometimes. My girlfriend got really sick. I’ll never get her up again.”
“Thanks,” she said, then fell quiet again. She would let him think her silence was due to illness rather than embarrassment and regret.
He drove her back to Dylan’s log cabin, and she thanked him and got into her car. She drove down the driveway a short distance, far enough so that Brian would not see her, and stopped the car. Leaning her head against the seat back, she shut her eyes and tried to still the shivering in her legs. What an imbecile she’d been! He’d been quite a jerk himself, but she could hardly blame him. He must have thought he was trapped up there with a loon.