Page 53 of Summer Weddings

“Cheers,” Ben said and touched the rim of his glass to hers.

“To a special…friend,” she said and took her first tentative sip. The liquid fire glided over her tongue and down her throat. When it came to drinking alcohol, Bethany generally stuck to wine and an occasional beer, rarely anything stronger.

Her eyes watered, and this time it had nothing to do with her emotions.

“You all right?” Ben asked, slapping her on the back.

She pressed her hand over her heart and nodded breathlessly. Her second and third sips went down far more easily than the first. Gradually a warmth spread out from the pit of her stomach, and a lethargic feeling settled over her.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked, surprising herself by asking such a personal question. Perhaps the liquor had loosened her tongue; more likely it was the need to hear this man’s version of his affair with her mother. This man who’d fathered her…

“In love? Me?”

“What’s so strange about that?” she asked lightly, careful not to let on how serious the question really was. “Surely you’ve been in love at least once in your life. A woman in your deep, dark past maybe—one you’ve never been able to forget?”

Ben chuckled. “I was in the navy, you know.”

Bethany nodded. “Don’t tell me you were the kind of sailor who had a woman in every port?”

He grinned almost boyishly and cocked his head to one side. “That was me, all right.”

Although she’d solicited it, this information disturbed Bethany. It somehow cheapened her mother and the love Marilyn had once felt for Ben. “But there must’ve been one woman you remember more than any of the others,” she pressed.

Ben scratched his head as though to give her question heavy-duty consideration. “Nope, can’t say there was. I liked to play the field.”

Bethany took another sip of the brandy. “What about Marilyn?” she asked brazenly, throwing caution to the winds. “You do remember her, don’t you?”

“Marilyn?” Ben repeated, a look of surprise on his face. “No… I don’t recall any Marilyn.” He sounded as though he’d never heard the name before.

Ben might as well have reached across the counter and slapped her face. Hard. She hurt for her mother, and for herself. Before she met him, she’d let herself imagine that her mother’s affair with Ben had been a romantic relationship gone tragically awry.

In the past few weeks, she’d begun to think she shared a genuine friendship with Ben. A real bond. Because of that, she’d lowered her guard and come close to revealing her secret.

Bethany clamped her mouth shut. She wanted to blame the wine. The brandy. Both had loosened her tongue, she realized, but she’d been on the verge of telling him, anyway. She shook the hair out of her face and stared past him.

“Three years ago,” she began resolutely, struggling to find the right words, knowing she couldn’t stop now, “the doctors found a lump in my mother’s breast.”

“Cancer?”

Bethany nodded.

Ben glanced at his watch. “It’s getting kind of late, don’t you think?”

“This story will only take a couple more minutes,” she promised, and to fortify her courage, she drank the rest of the brandy in a single gulp. It raged a fiery path down her throat.

“You were talking about your mother,” Ben prodded, and it seemed he wanted her to hurry. Bethany didn’t know if she could. Those weeks when her mother had been so sick from the chemotherapy had been the most traumatic of her life.

“It turned out that the cancer had spread,” Bethany continued.

“For a while we didn’t know if my mother was going to survive.

I was convinced that if the cancer didn’t kill her, the chemo would.

I was still in college at the time. My classes usually let out around two, and I got into the habit of stopping at the hospital on my way home from school. ”

Ben nursed his drink, his eyes avoiding hers.

“One day, after a particularly violent reaction to the treatment, Mom thought she was going to die. I tried to tell her she had to fight the cancer.”

“Did she die?” Ben asked. For the first time since starting her story she had his full attention. Either she was a better storyteller than she realized, or Ben did remember her mother.

“No. She’s a survivor. But that day Mom asked me to sit down because she had something important to tell me.” At this point, Bethany paused long enough to steady herself. After all this time, the unexpectedness of her mother’s announcement still shocked her.

“And?”

“My mother told me about a young sailor she’d loved many years ago.

They’d met the summer before he shipped out to Vietnam.

By the end of their time together, they’d become lovers.

Their political differences separated them as much as the war had.

He left because he felt it was his duty to fight, and she stayed behind and joined the peace movement, protesting the war every chance she had.

She wrote him a letter and told him about it.

He didn’t answer. She knew he didn’t approve of what she was doing. ”

“Whoever this person was, he probably didn’t want to read about how she was trying to undermine his efforts in Southeast Asia,” Ben said stiffly.

“I’m sure that’s true.” Bethany’s voice quavered slightly. “The problem was that when he refused to open her next letter, he failed to learn something vitally important. My mother was pregnant with his child.”

The snifter in Ben’s hand dropped to the floor and shattered. His eyes remained frozen on Bethany’s face.

“I was that child.”

The silence stretched to the breaking point. “Who took care of her?” he asked in a choked whisper.

“Her family. When she was about four months pregnant, she met Peter Ross, another student, and confided in him. They fell in love and were married shortly before I was born. Peter raised me as his own and has loved and nurtured me ever since. I never would’ve guessed…

. It was the biggest shock of my life to learn he wasn’t my biological father. ”

“Your mother’s name is Marilyn?”

“Yes, and she named you as my birth father.”

“Me,” Ben said with a weak-sounding laugh. “Sorry, kid, but you’ve got the wrong guy.” He continued to shake his head incredulously. “What’d your mother do—send you out to find me?”

“No. Neither of my parents know why I accepted the teaching contract in Hard Luck. I gave your name to the Red Cross, and they traced you here. I came to meet you, to find out what I could about you.”

“Then it’s unfortunate you came all this way for nothing,” he said gruffly.

“It’s funny, really, because we are alike. You know the way you get three lines between your eyes when you’re troubled or confused? I get those, too. In fact, you’re the one who mentioned it, remember? And we both like to cook. And we—”

“That’s enough,” he snapped. “Listen, Bethany, this is all well and good, but like I already said, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“But—”

“I told you before and I’ll tell you again. I never knew any woman called Marilyn. You’d think if I’d slept with her, I’d remember her, wouldn’t you?”

His words were like stones hurled at her heart. “I don’t want anything from you, Ben.”

“Well, don’t count on a mention in my will, either, understand?”

She nearly fell off the stool in her effort to escape. She retreated a step backward. “I… I should never have told you.”

“I don’t know why you did. And listen, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go spreading this lie around town. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, and I don’t want your lies—and your mother’s—

besmirching my character.”

Bethany thought she was going to be sick.

“It’s a damn lie, you hear? A lie!”

“I’m sorry. I—I shouldn’t have said anything,” she stammered.

He didn’t answer her right away. “I don’t know anything about any Marilyn.”

“I made a mistake,” Bethany whispered. “A terrible mistake.” She turned and ran from the café.