Gift of Gold

stepped forward impulsively to wrap her arms around Emerson’s waist. He felt as strong and sturdy as he always had.
    She had taken that strength for granted ever since the day the two of them stood in a hospital room beside her mother’s bed, clasping the limp fingers of a dying woman they both loved with all their hearts. Amanda Ames had been the victim of a drunk driver. Verity had learned that day when the terrible news came that the universe could no longer be counted upon to play fair. Her father, who had known that truth all along, had helped her accept it in his own assertive way.
    “You take care of our little girl, Emerson,” Amanda Ames had ordered gently.
    “I’ll do better than that,” Emerson had promised. “I’ll teach her to take care of herself. She’ll be okay, my love. I swear it.”
    Amanda had nodded. “I know,” she had whispered. “I know. I can trust you to take care of her. I love you both very much, you know. Don’t spend too much time grieving. Life is for living. You’ve always been very good at living, Emerson. Teach Verity to be good at it, too.”
    Amanda had closed her eyes for the last time then and Verity had learned an important lesson about men. It was all right for a strong man to cry. She and her father had shed their tears together and then Emerson had taken Verity to the Caribbean.
    “We both need a change of scene,” he had explained as he bought two tickets to Antigua. “Let’s go sit on a beach somewhere and think for a while. Guess we’d better take along a few books. Don’t know when you’ll get back to school.”
    “You better write a note to my teacher,” Verity had said, ever mindful of the proprieties, even at the age of eight.
    “Nah, we won’t bother your teacher with this. She’ll only get upset and so will everyone else at your silly school. The thing about bureaucracies, Red, is that they tend to get upset over all the little piddling details and ignore the really big, important things.”
    Verity had never been enrolled in a formal school again. Emerson had laughed about it more than once during the years that followed. “Just think,” he had told her, “you may be the only kid born in North America who doesn’t have to go through the torture of putting on a school play.”
    “And you’re saved the torture of having to sit through one,” Verity had retorted shrewdly. She was twelve at the time and starting to hone her sharp tongue.
    Emerson had roared with laughter. “I also am saved from having to perjure myself writing excuse notes for the principal’s office. I always dreaded having to write those things. Your mother made me do one every time I took you out of school to go to the ZOO or the museum or the race track. She said if I was going to be the cause of your missing so much school, I had to assume the responsibility of thinking up the goddamned excuses. Talk about creative writing!”
    Standing in her kitchen, her arms around her father, Verity’s mind skipped laserlike over a thousand small scenes from her youth.
    Through countless hotel rooms, beachside cottages, and boardinghouses, her father’s strength and love of life had always been reassuring constants. In his own way, Emerson had always been there when she needed him. He had been there during the long, lonely nights when she had cried for her mother. It was he who had explained the facts of life to her in a blunt, straightforward fashion. And it was he who had given her the defenses she would need against the more predatory members of his sex. He had taught her to take care of herself in all the ways that counted. And he had loved her. Verity remembered that and blinked rapidly, clearing a suspicious dampness from her eyes along with all the footloose memories.
    “Dad,” she asked, listening to him chew the last bite of a sesame seed cracker. “Are you really in trouble with this Yarington character?”
    “Worrying about your old man, Red?” He patted her shoulder again with his big paw of a hand. “Don’t fret. I’ve been in worse situations. This one is under control if your friend Quarrel comes through for me, I’ll be free and clear of Mr. Reginald C. Yarington, international loan shark, soon enough.”
    Verity stepped back out of his arms, scanning his face for reassurance. She was about to ask another question when the back door of the cafe opened and Jonas strolled into the kitchen. He smiled blandly at Verity, looking for all the world as if