Where Love Has Gone by Harold Robbins

Author:Harold Robbins [Robbins, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action/Adventure, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Published: 2010-06-10T23:00:00+00:00

PARTFOUR

The Part of the Book

About DANI

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1

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When Dani had been very young and did not want to stay in the dark, she would look up at me from her bed and say in her tiny little voice, “Daddy, turn the night out.” And I would snap on a small light in her room and she would close her eyes and go to sleep, safe and secure in a familiar world.

I wished it were as easy as that now. But there was no turning on a light to turn out the night anymore. The coroner’s jury had made sure of that.

I watched Gordon get into his car and drive away. I turned and stared up at the courthouse for a moment, then walked over toward the parking lot on Golden Gate Avenue where I had left my car.

The old nursery rhyme kept running through my head: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

For the first time I knew how the king’s men must have felt when they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. Like fools. They shouldn’t have let him fall off in the first place. I shouldn’t have let Dani fall either.

Maybe it was my fault. I remembered sitting in her little room out at Juvenile Hall yesterday afternoon and trying to explain to her why I could not come to see her. I remembered too how it sounded. Even if it were the truth, and I knew it was, I found it hard to believe.

And Dani was still a child despite the cigarette she smoked so expertly. What did she believe? I couldn’t tell. But I could tell that she wanted to believe me, that she wanted to trust me. Still she wasn’t quite sure that she should. I had gone away before and I could go away again.

It wasn’t said like that. Not in so many words. But it was there just the same—lying under the surface of her thoughts, her actions. She was too old to say it aloud and too young to hide it from me. There were so many things we had to tell each other, so many things to relearn about each other, and there just wasn’t enough time.

The unspoken words clung to us like an invisible cloud when it came time to say goodbye. “I’ll come to see you tomorrow.”

“No,” she said. “They don’t allow visitors during the week. But I’ll see you Tuesday. Miss Spicer told me that there would be a hearing.”

“I know.”

“Mother will be there?”

I nodded. “So will your grandmother.” I bent down and kissed her. “You be a good girl and don’t worry about anything, kitten.”

Her arms went up around my neck suddenly. She pressed her face to my cheek tightly. “I’m not afraid of anything now, Daddy,” she whispered fiercely. “Now that you’re home again.”

It wasn’t until I was outside in the daylight that I realized what she had meant. But I hadn’t come home to stay. It was only for a visit.

It was four o’clock when I got back to my motel.

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