Heartsong (Logan 2)

"I'm sorry, Kenneth," I said. "I--"

"Yes? Tell me. How do you justify breaking and entering my private place? Go on," he taunted and challenged. "Let me hear your excuse."

"I was looking for the truth," I cried through my tears.

"The truth?"

"About you and me and my mother," I said. "Everyone thinks you're my father, and you told me that you couldn't tell me what you knew, so I thought . . . I thought you were ashamed of it or just didn't want to have a daughter," I wailed back at him.

He shook his head, speechless for a moment. I co

uldn't stop my crying. My shoulders heaved and fell and my stomach felt so weak and twisted, I had to wrap my arms around myself.

"Everyone thinks I'm your father? Who's everyone?"

"Uncle Jacob, for one. He says that's why you offered me the job. It was your way of trying to amend for your sin of never acknowledging me."

"Jacob would say something like that." He laughed. "It's nice to know how his parents treat him," he said.

"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head in confusion.

"Never mind. Look, Melody, if you were my daughter, I would tell you immediately. I thought by now you would have realized that I admire you and certainly wouldn't be ashamed to acknowledge you were mine, but it's not true. I wish it were true. You have no idea how much I wish it or how long I've wished it.

"That," he continued, "is the real reason why your mother sent me the picture of you and her and wrote 'I'm sorry' on the back of it." He took a deep breath and sat on the sand. "She wasn't just

apologizing for not living up to my hopes for her; she was apologizing for not being able to be the woman I loved. It wasn't all her fault either," he added, sighing as he closed his eyes and leaned forward, his knees up, his arms around them.

I stopped crying, sucked in my breath, and sat beside him.

"Then you loved my mother?" I asked softly. "Yes, very much."

"And those pictures of her in the room?"

"She enjoyed posing for me. She was so beautiful I wanted to capture her forever and art was a way to do it. Eventually, it became the only way to do it, and that made it both wonderful and painful for me. I got so I couldn't look at those pictures and had to keep them under lock and key, almost as if I were locking them away from myself as much as anyone else.

"As you and your boyfriend saw when you went in there," he continued, bitterly, "there were cobwebs over the door. That's how infrequently I enter to gaze upon those pictures. After you arrived, I thought about Haille constantly and I couldn't resist going in there again. That's when I made the discovery."

"I'm sorry, Kenneth," I said. He was silent, so I reached out and touched his hand. He nodded.

"Well, I can understand what you're going through, I guess. Living with Jacob, hearing his moralistic trash. He never really knew or understood your mother. He was always jealous of her affection for me, too. And when Chester came to her defense-- " He shook his head. "Did anyone tell you they actually had a fist fight on the beach?"

"Yes, Grandma Olivia mentioned it."

"Chester whipped him, of course, which helped widen the chasm between them and the whole family. Haille enjoyed having men fight over her. All that I told you about her was true," he said. "She was bedazzling, tormenting, a tease with a capital T, but all of us let her get away with it."

He smiled, remembering. Then he looked at me.

"I should have made it perfectly clear to you that I wasn't your father, that Haille and I never . . . that I never had the opportunity to be your father."

This revelation came as a shock to me, but I knew now was the time to press on for more information. "Then who is my father? Is he someone here in Provincetown?"

"I really can't say, not because I don't want to, but because I don't know." He shook his head. "It all happened so fast. She and I weren't seeing each other much at the time."

"Why not?"

"That's something very personal to me, Melody. All of us have to hold on to something. It doesn't have anything to do with what you want to know. Just like everyone else close to your family at the time, I heard that Haille was pregnant, and the next thing I heard was she had accused Samuel. I knew that was untrue. I had been at their house often enough to see that Samuel treated her the way he would treat a daughter and not a lover. He was always charming and kind and probably spoiled her. It's sort of an example of biting the hand that feeds you. When it came time to blame someone, for some reason, a reason she wouldn't reveal to me, she turned on him. He seemed the most logical, I guess."

"Why?"