Page 23 of Unwanted Vows

Paul looks up at me. I want to punch Andrew for springing this on me, but I don’t want to alarm my son. I look down at him and say, “I’ll explain it all later. But he really is your dad.”

“Yeah?” Paul looks skeptical. “Some of my classmates have parents who are split up and they have to spend time with them. Did you know who he was?”

“I always knew,” I say.

“I didn’t,” Dr. Lane says, softly, apologetically. “I left at the end of the week after I met your mom. I went to Africa so I could hide from my grandfather. It seems I should have taken your mother with me. But I’m not sure it would have been good for you. Perhaps it was better this way.”

“It was better that I didn’t know about you?” Paul asks, looking up at his father.

“I live a dangerous sort of life,” Dr. Lane explains. “I went to places where there were contagious diseases, and where people were shooting at each other. They weren’t good places to raise a family. But I might have done things differently if I’d known about you.”

“Would people have died if you weren’t in those places?” Paul asks. He is the calmest of the three of us. I am inwardly seething. I can only guess at what he might be feeling. “My homeroom teacher read an adventure book about Dr. Livingstone, the explorer. Was it like that?”

“Not quite like Dr. Livingstone,” he says. “If I’d had a family, it is likely some other doctor would have been sent to the dangerous places, and I would have been sent to places not quite so scary. One of my friends brought his family along. They were assigned to a missionary village in a peaceful area.”

“Did he do important work there?” Paul asks. It was clear from his expression that he didn’t think caring for a peaceful village sounded as exciting as risking getting a terrible disease or doing medicine while people were shooting at each other.

“Very important work,” Dr. Lane says solemnly, just as if Paul was an adult at a committee meeting. “He gave vaccines to the children, learned about local medicinal plants, set broken bones, and treated animal bites. His wife taught English and mathematics at the local school.”

Paul is quiet for a minute, then asks, “Why didn’t you ask my mom to go with you so the two of you could do that?”

For a moment neither I nor Dr. Lane know what to say.

Leland walked in from the other room. Had he been there listening all the time? “Good question,” he says. “I gather this is your dream woman? The one you weren’t quite sure whether it was a real memory or a fever dream?”

“Yes,” Dr. Lane says. “But I never thought. . .”

Austin cuts in, sarcastically and more than a little harshly. “Someone forgot to give you the talk? You cut class the day your medical school instructors taught about the birds and bees?”

“Hey!” Dr. Lane protests.

Rylie enters the hall, and soothes everyone. “I think we’d all like to hear this story. And I believe there is more than one side to it.”

Kandis has also crowded in and adds, “Why don’t we get some food in here, and we can have a story time with everyone chipping in their parts. We’ll have to keep it clean for the children’s sake, but I think they deserve to know why they were snatched.”

In short order, Jason Wintergreen was sent off with a security force, and everyone was gathered around the big table.

When everyone is seated, Richard says, “All right. I think chronological order is the best way to run this storytime. So let’s start with Andrew. How did you meet Maddy?”

Dr. Lane clears his throat. “I was celebrating my acceptance into Doctors Without Borders. I met Maddy at a party one of my friends was throwing as an end-of-residency celebration. We danced, we talked, and we found we had a lot in common – including being at the same teaching hospital. That led to a week of parties, culminating in the big send-off my friends threw for me. Neither of us were enjoying the party, so we went to my studio apartment and threw our own celebration.”

“Just what were the two of you drinking at this celebration?” Richard asks.

“Soda,” Dr. Lane says.

“Just Coke,” I say at the same time.

I feel my face grow hot, and Dr. Lane blushes a bright fire engine red.

Leland says, passing the salad to his wife, “So what happened next? Let’s start with you, Andrew.”

“We . . . discovered we liked each other a lot. I was feeling more than a little angry and confused. The morning after the last party, I had a meeting with Dad and Grandfather Aims. They told me about this girl I’ve been engaged to since I was still sleeping in a bassinet. Some sort of compact made with this Tulok dude who runs a dating service for royalty. I told them that arranged marriages went out with crinoline, then I caught my plane to Africa.”

Pops Quinn made a strangling noise, and hid his face in a napkin to keep from snorting his drink all over the table. Mimi Quinn pats him on the back. “Mind the tablecloth, dear,” she says.

Andrew picks up his glass and drinks from it. He looks embarrassed. “I should have told Madeline about the arrangement, but I was too humiliated and embarrassed.”

“So why didn’t you?” Mimi Quinn asks.

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