Chapter Eighteen

The phone rang in the dormitory just after Melody returned from her jog around the campus. With trepidation she picked it up. On the other end of the line was Wanda, sobbing uncontrollably. "Your father -- your father's dead."
Melody was numb. She couldn't believe what she'd just heard. Stephen Tinker, the rock of the family, the man who'd seen her off to college it seemed like only a few days earlier, was gone. "W-what happened?" she stammered.
"He was gone before the paramedics arrived. He was at his bench -- you could say he died doing what he loved."
After Melody hung up the receiver and slumped down underneath it, Marla came near. "What happened?"
"That was my mom. She said my dad had a massive heart attack and died." Melody buried her head in her arms.
"Oh, my gosh, I'm sooo sorry!" Marla put her hand on Melody's shoulder. She followed Melody upstairs to her second-story dorm room to help her pack a few clothes for an unexpected and unwelcome trip back home. Melody couldn't get her mother's wails out of her head.


A soggy, chilly late-fall day in Bluewater Village ended with the funeral of one of its founding citizens, Stephen Tinker, owner and proprietor of Tinker Toys. After Melody delivered a moving eulogy to her late father, Stephen's grieving widow, Wanda, his companion, playmate, best friend, and wife of many years, stood at his gravesite and wept unceasingly. She cradled his lookalike toddler daughter, Harmony, in her arms, playing with her dark bouncy curls.
Ever since Melody's unceremonious departure from Bluewater -- and some time before it -- the talk about her and her "odd ways" continued to fester, and now it seemed the eyes of the entire town were on her. They were watching how she looked, how she acted, and picking for anything they could possibly say about her. She knew that while returning here, she'd have to be on her very best behavior. The townsfolk's attitude towards her, in her mind, confirmed the reason she'd left in the first place.

Melody approached her mother and tried her best to console her. Having just received a full scholarship to the prestigious Academie Le Tour, she didn't want to come home to a task this unpleasant. She had to get her father's affairs in order, pay off his debts, and above all be strong for her devastated mother and kid sister. She was far too young to be in this position. Not now. She hadn't even lived yet. Florence Delarosa of Delarosa Flowers had done the gorgeous floral arrangements surrounding Stephen's newly erected tombstone -- free of charge -- and Denise Jacquet had cooked all the food for the funeral dinner.



A few minutes after the small, intimate service, Wanda, wearing a black widow's veil and a shawl, called Melody aside. "Honey," she began haltingly, tears streaming down her white-washed face, "there's something I've got to get off my chest."
Not knowing what to expect, Melody followed her mother back in the house, where they sat at the dining room table. Learning that she had a secret was a surprise to her. Wanda told her to sit down and held her hand. Taking a deep breath, she began. "Steve and I had been dating, and we had talked about getting married, but we weren't engaged yet. One night my physics professor, Dr. Marcel Hyden, called and I thought we were just going to have dinner. We ended up going to this place downtown, I can't remember the name. I got drunk, and we woohooed in the photo booth and continued it in the car."
All Melody could do was look at her mother in disbelief. She couldn't console or comfort her. She couldn't say or do anything. She had to continue to listen.
"I didn't know how to tell Steve. When I left Marcel's apartment downtown, I went over to Sim State to see him. Steve proposed to me on the spot, we left college, and the next day we were married. The morning of the wedding, I realized I was pregnant. The most important day of my life, I was miserable. Then, lo and behold, you were born. That day should have been the happiest, most fulfilling day of my life, because all I'd ever wanted was to be a mother. Instead I was filled with doubt. You were such a beautiful baby but I wasn't sure whether you were Marcel's or Steve's. I hoped you were Steve's so our family would be complete.
"Then as you grew up it became obvious to me that you weren't Steve's child. He never knew, but I cried myself to sleep at night. I felt like I'd failed at the one thing I'd really wanted to do. There was no way I could keep up with your energy. You were everywhere, doing everything. The day you leapt in fright from the jack-in-the-box was the day I knew for sure that you were Marcel's child. Steve went ahead and bought the telescope because you'd wanted it, and you spent your nights up there, just gazing at the stars. I couldn't bear to tell Steve. Chalk it up to being chicken or whatever, but I just couldn't do it. I knew it would break his heart." Wanda continued to sob uncontrollably. "I was never completely satisfied until after Harmony was born. That's when I knew our family was complete."
Melody took a deep breath. She saw this surreal conversation with her guilt-ridden mother as an opportunity to answer some of the long-pressing questions in her mind. She'd always known she was different from her family but didn't know exactly why. Now she knew. She was the daughter of a college professor she'd never met, a man she never knew, a man whose fate remained a mystery. Stephen Tinker was the man who'd raised her, the man she'd called daddy for many years -- but he wasn't her father. Not biologically, anyway.
It all made sense now. Melody always felt more at home around books and gadgets than around her parents' toys. Nobody in the family had the interests she had. "Tell me about Marcel," Melody demanded. "What was he like?"
"Marcel was a brilliant man, incredibly charming and handsome. He was perfect in every way -- almost, in a way, too perfect. I could look into his deep brown eyes all day and all night, but I think I was seduced by his intellect more than anything else. I could listen to him talk all day."
"Were you in love with Marcel?"
"I guess you can say that in some respects, I was. Marcel was a different type of man from Steve. He seemed so worldly, so cultured. It was like he was from another place and another time. He was so well-traveled, it seemed like he'd been everywhere and done everything. He talked about fine wines, opera, foreign foods. He seemed to know everything, like you do at times. I will always be incredibly grateful to Marcel because he gave me you."
As Wanda continued to wipe tears from her eyes, Melody looked at her. She wasn't sure exactly how to react to her mother's stunning revelation. She'd grown up believing that Stephen Tinker was her father, and that because she wasn't interested in toys or toymaking like the rest of her family that she was a misfit. Now, of course, she knew that she wasn't truly a Tinker after all. Processing all this in her mind, she wondered what exactly she would do if placed in her mother's impossible situation. "Mother!" she exclaimed, more in disbelief than in anger. "All this time!"
"I know, sweetheart. I've been racked by this for years."
"So you mean dad went to his grave thinking I was his child."
"Yes, he did. I feel terrible about it! I couldn't tell him. I was chicken." Wanda sighed in resignation.
Melody walked away from the scene and the conversation in disbelief, with a lot to ponder. At that moment she knew what she had to do. She had to locate this man.

When Wanda returned from the house, Florence Delarosa put an arm around her. "I feel so sorry for your loss. My condolences to you and your family."
Wanda looked up from her tears. "Thank you."
"Do you want some tea? I have some left over from this morning."
Thanking Florence for her kindness, Wanda followed her to her home on Lake Meadow Circle, which was around the bend. The walk was good exercise for Wanda, it helped to clear her head.
Wanda was in awe of the exquisitely decorated garden and the surrounding pond, thinking to herself that the environment looked serene. After they got there, Florence handed Wanda tissues and a cup of tea. Wanda proceeded to tell Florence everything she had just told Melody, and Florence, like Melody, simply listened. "So Melody wasn't Stephen's child?" Florence asked.
"No," Wanda sobbed. "And I feel terrible about it! He loved her so much -- adored her, really. She was his heart."
"Don't," said Florence in her soft, kind voice. "This man took advantage of a naive, vulnerable college girl, but in return you got the greatest gift you could ever hope to receive."
"And I love her to pieces, but we're just so different. Personality wise, Melody is a lot more like her father than she is like me."
"She keeps to herself," Florence said silently.
"I first suspected she was Marcel's child back when she was a toddler. She would jerk away from any toy we'd make for her, and then when she got older she began burying herself in books. We couldn't keep any books out of her hands. Then she taught herself how to paint, then she asked for the telescope -- I mean, I saw all the signs. I put them out of my mind, hoping they weren't real. And no matter how I tried to believe she was Steve's child, deep down in my heart I knew I just couldn't --"
"She's a lot like I was when I was her age," Florence said gently. "Head full of dreams and ambitions. I left home at sixteen -- my obsession was with plants -- and I started this flower shop. After my parents died -- one after the other -- I sold the family home and came here."
Wanda looked at Florence with disbelief. "When I was a girl, all I wanted was to get married and have a bunch of children. But Melody -- she doesn't seem to want any of that."
"Times change, people change, dear," added Florence, putting a hand on Wanda's shoulder. "People of your daughter's ilk will take over the world."