Kate and Jack left Johannesburg early on Friday morning, as they had planned, in an RV with a driver. They were going to drive eleven hours through Kruger National Park to see the animals in the bush and cross the border into the Mozambique province of Gaza to the village of Tomanini, several kilometers from the district capital, Guijá. Reed Phillips’s hospital was in Tomanini, which was tiny and extremely primitive. There was no electricity at all, the roads weren’t paved, and Kate’s father had warned her to expect rugged conditions. Her heart was pounding when she got in the car at six in the morning. She was thinking about the meeting with her father. The driver said that after the first few hours they’d be traveling over rough terrain. And she knew they’d be out of communication when they got there. There was no cellphone service or Wi-Fi, only the radio at the hospital, which was all they needed most of the time. In emergencies, they would have to drive to Guijá, to have internet and more modern communications.
The drive from Johannesburg was beautiful, and the driver indicated points of interest along the way. Kruger National Park made the long drive worthwhile, seeing the animals in the wild, particularly zebras, who looked so elegant. The driver told them that no two zebras’ stripes are alike—each zebra’s stripes are individual to it, like human fingerprints. Once the travelers were in Mozambique, there were small villages tucked into the bush with a few thin cows and goats and some huts. The driver explained that there were still occasional tribal wars there, with people killed and injured. It was hard to imagine. Everything seemed so peaceful, and the locals looked friendly.
They stopped at a small store along the way with a gas pump and women in colorful clothing standing around. They sold some small handmade trinkets, snacks, and bottled water. Kate had brought sandwiches, which they shared with the driver, who accepted gratefully, as they kept driving. There was nowhere they wanted to stop. Kate was eager to arrive, preferably before nightfall. They were slowed down regularly by the bad roads.
Kate was thrilled by everything she saw, and Jack took photographs with a new camera she had bought him. It was a long day, but there was so much to hold their attention along the way that the time flew. The road was rutted, narrow, and bumpy, so the drive took more than eleven hours, and they arrived at six o’clock. The driver knew the way, and drove into a dusty clearing, where there were children playing and a group of squatting women watching them as they laughed and talked.
They looked up as Kate got out of the car and Jack followed her. The hospital looked small to her, but it was clean and freshly painted, and there was a long row of tents behind it, and a small house. Kate was trying to take everything in. A small, sturdy-looking woman with short white hair, wearing a khaki jacket and shorts and heavy boots, came out of the hospital and approached them. She smiled as soon as she saw Kate, hastened toward her, and hugged her. Kate could guess who she was, as the woman directed the driver to take Kate and Jack’s bags to one of the tents behind the hospital, telling him precisely which one.
“You must be Kate,” the woman said with a smile. She had bright blue eyes, laugh lines near her eyes, and looked busy and cheerful. “I’m Pru, Prunella.” Her accent was different from the one they’d heard in Johannesburg. “I’m from the Free State, we’re mostly Dutch. We’re so excited to see you.” Kate hoped that was true of her father too. “Reed will be out in a minute. He just finished his last surgery.” They had a generator at the hospital, which gave them the electricity they needed. “Was the drive awful?” she asked, and Kate smiled. It was an unexpectedly warm welcome, more than she’d hoped for. Pru looked like she was Kate’s father’s age, in her early sixties. And Kate knew she was a doctor, from what her father had said in his emails. She was a pediatrician, much needed in the area, where the infant and child mortality rates were high, and malaria, TB, and cholera were frequent.
“It was bumpy but fascinating,” Kate answered. “We saw a lot of animals on the way, and little villages. The driver told us about the tribal wars.”
“It’s left over from the civil wars. They give us plenty of business,” Pru said cheerfully. Some of the squatting women waved at Kate, and she waved back, just as a tall man came out of the main building and hurried down the steps to meet her. Without even trying, she could see a resemblance with him. And she could see why her mother had been attracted to him. Reed Phillips was a handsome man, although he looked his age. He was serious and had a warm smile. She noticed that he was observing her closely and saw the resemblance too. Kate had always thought she looked like her maternal grandfather, but now she saw that she looked more like Reed, much more than she looked like her mother or sister. She was happy to see it, and she felt as though she’d found an anchor here, so far from home and in this very distant place, away from all the modern conveniences she took for granted every day. This was a whole different life, another world, entirely unfamiliar to her.
Reed stood looking down at Kate with a warm expression, but he didn’t reach out to hug her. “Thank you for coming. It’s a long way to come to meet a man who’s never showed up for you. Would you like a tour of the hospital?” he asked her very directly. He didn’t know what else to say to her, and it was the best he had to offer, to show her what he’d done with his life. He was proud of it and, as they walked into the building, just the two of them, while Jack stayed with Pru, Kate saw that everything was immaculate. Her driver had told them that Reed had saved his little girl a year before. She had appendicitis and he operated before it burst, but it could have killed her. There was no other medical care within a hundred miles, and once a month Doctors Without Borders came in by plane. If they needed to, Reed and Pru could contact them by radio, but the two doctors handled most of the emergencies themselves, and all of the simple surgeries. They had three nurses in residence, and had trained several of the locals as medics, who were very good at handling minor injuries with one of the nurses at their clinic every day. Reed explained to Kate that his mission was to teach as well as heal and operate, so that the locals could become more self-sufficient and use better hygiene. Pru vaccinated all the local children. They were supported by donors from all over the world.
Kate could see that it was a tidy, well-run little medical unit. The families of some of the patients stayed in the tents behind the hospital until their family members got well and could go home. “That’s part of their culture,” Reed explained to Kate. “They don’t do well if they’re separated from their families and the people they know.” The local language was Changana, which he and Pru spoke fluently, and some Portuguese, the official national language, and Pru spoke Afrikaans, which was based on Dutch. “She grew up here on her parents’ farm and went to medical school in England. And afterward she came back here to work for Doctors Without Borders, when I was working for them, which is how we met. We’ve been married for thirty years. Our son, Austin, is in medical school in London. He’s twenty-five, the same age I was when I met your mother. She was very brave to have you on her own. I just wasn’t ready to settle down.” He went straight to the heart of the matter, which surprised Kate, as though he wanted her to know. She wondered if he felt guilty for abandoning her. “I didn’t marry Pru until I was thirty-three, seven years after you were born. I couldn’t have managed fatherhood and my internship and residency. I never had the guts to tell my family about you. They wouldn’t have understood how something like that could happen. They were very straitlaced and old-fashioned. I grew up on a farm in Ohio. It was hard enough putting myself through medical school. I couldn’t have taken on more. I knew I couldn’t do it. I told Pru about you when we got married. She thought that I should contact you. She’s suggested it often, but by then you were settled in your life, I knew your mother had gotten married, and I didn’t want to interfere. I had given up my right to when you were born. It was the right thing to do, for me.” He clearly had no regrets. He just wanted to tell her his side.
“I would have liked to hear from you,” Kate said as they sat down, after the tour, in his office with the battered desk and swivel chair, like the one her grandfather had had in his office in Vermont. In some ways, they seemed similar. Her mother must have thought so too, except her grandfather was nicer, and warmer.
“I didn’t know what to say to you,” Reed said. “You can’t explain to a child why you ran away. You’re a woman now, I can talk to you. I couldn’t then; even later. You were only a child.” But even as a woman she had trouble understanding why he had given her up and never contacted her. His clear reasoning and explanation didn’t justify it in her eyes. Even a birthday or Christmas card from him would have been nice, and appreciated, and would have taken so little effort on his part.
“Were you close to the man your mother married?” Reed was trying to ease his conscience, Kate could tell.
“I was. He was a good man. He was always very kind to me.” She didn’t tell him about her inheritance. It had nothing to do with him. And her mother’s life was so completely different from his. They were like two people on two different planets, but Kate could see that Reed was a serious, sincere person, and genuinely trying to help people at his hospital. He had dedicated his life to it. He had had none of the comforts she’d grown up with or had at any time in her life. Her life at home would have been completely foreign to him, and her mother’s even more so, after twenty-five years of wealth and luxury.
“Are you going to marry the man who’s here with you?” he asked her, curious and trying to make up for lost time and understand her life and who she was.
Kate hesitated before she answered. “I don’t know. I want to write a book. I’ve always wanted to. I’ve been blocked, and my psychiatrist thought it would help if I met you. You’ve always been the big unanswered question in my life, about why you left me and signed your rights away.” She hadn’t planned to ask him so soon, but they had jumped into the deep end very quickly. He had brought it all up immediately.
“I did it because I wanted to do what I’m doing here—just like you want to write your book—and I knew I couldn’t if I stayed with your mother and you. I didn’t want to work for your grandfather, which she suggested, or stay in the States. The need was greater here. I wanted to come to Africa one day. This was my life’s dream. I couldn’t give that up.” Not even for Kate, or her mother.
“Are you glad you did?” she asked with tears in her eyes, and he nodded.
“I am. Very. But I’m not glad I gave you up. You pay a heavy price for leaving a child, much more than leaving a woman. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.” It was comforting to hear that, even though he had put his dreams and career first. Pru stuck her head in the door then.
“Dinner is in ten minutes,” she said with a smile. She had been entertaining Jack while Kate talked to her father. She didn’t like all his answers, but they were real, and so was he. “Do you want to go to your tent and wash up a bit?” Pru asked Kate, and she and her father stood up and he exchanged a warm look with his wife. They seemed very well suited to each other. They were businesslike and efficient and seemed in perfect harmony. “We eat in the dining hall behind the hospital. I showed Jack where it is. He has certainly been reading up on the area. He knows more about it than I do.” She looked amused.
“He loves projects like that. He’s very thorough,” Kate said with a smile, and followed them back to where Jack was waiting for her. They went to their tent together.
“I like Pru. She’s a nice woman. How was it with your father?” Jack asked her, curious.
“It was good. I got some answers.” Which was what she came for. She still had more questions, but they had come far for the first night. Kate wondered if Reed had loved her mother, but realized now that maybe she didn’t need to know. They hadn’t stayed together. And that was their life; she had her own. She still had to figure out how much Jack meant to her. She was never sure about that or whether or not she wanted to marry him. Sometimes he was so annoying, but at other times she was grateful for his company. At thirty-seven and forty-two, they both had to figure out what they wanted and if they had a future. She could never decide. Maybe she could do that here.
Dinner was simple, but satisfying, a mixture of European food and some of the local dishes. After that, Kate thanked her father and Pru, and she and Jack walked back to their tent. Her father and Pru lived in the little house, and Austin lived there with them when he was home. He had grown up there. They had a house in Johannesburg, where they would live one day when they retired and life became too hard in the bush. They rented it for now and were saving it for their later years. Austin would inherit it one day. They had their future all mapped out, and Kate’s father had followed his plan. There had never been room in his life for her, not like there was with Andrew, who had made so much generous space for her. She wondered if she had room in her heart for both of them, though maybe Reed didn’t belong there. He had never done anything to earn it. He had chosen not to be a father in her life. She didn’t know if she could have made that decision to reject a child. She didn’t think so. She was glad her mother hadn’t. Reed was unapologetic for having chosen his career plans over her, and justified his choice. Kate wondered what kind of father he was to his son, if he put his career first with him too. Maybe that’s who Reed was. He was doing good deeds for his patients in Africa, but he never had done any for her, not even a letter or a card.
The next day, on Saturday, Kate and Jack toured the area with one of the local boys in Pru’s car, an open Jeep. He took them on the back roads where they could see more wildlife. They came back at lunchtime and had lunch with her father and Pru. Reed told her more about the work he was doing at the hospital. He had started a maternity program several years before. Kate admired his work, but she noticed that he never asked her about her book or what she wanted to write. Pru catered to him, and he was the king of his little fiefdom. Kate’s adoptive father had been a much warmer and more empathetic man, and a better father than Reed would have been. They were related by blood, but that was all, and she wondered if it was enough, or if maybe blood didn’t matter, and the heart mattered much more. She had never seen it that way before in her fantasies about Reed. She had dreamt of him as a warmer person and he wasn’t. He cared more about medicine and his hospital than anything else.
They had dinner together on Saturday night too, and Jack expounded about the history of the tribal wars and the earlier civil war thirty years before in the area, based on the books he’d read about it. He had been accurate in his research, but his audience was bored. To him it was all theory. To them it was real. They played Scrabble after dinner, which they all enjoyed, and Pru won.
On Sunday, Reed went to Guijá to send some emails and get some supplies. He looked sober when he returned. The others were at lunch when he walked in. Pru could see something was wrong. “Was everything all right in town?” she asked him.
“I heard some shocking news. There was an attack on New York two days ago, terrorists like 9/11. They all but destroyed the Empire State Building, the new World Trade Center, and an enormous mall area with apartment buildings adjacent to it. Thousands were killed, and many more injured. All U.S. cities are under lockdown, the borders are closed, and the airports are shut down. Nothing can get in or out of the States right now. Have you heard from your mother?” Reed asked her.
Kate looked worried. “I don’t get cell service here.” Reed nodded and knew that was true.
“I’ll drive you back to Guijá later, and you can try there or send her an email. I hope she’s all right. I’m sure she is. Does she live close to any of the damaged buildings?” Kate shook her head, shocked by what he’d told them.
“She lives in midtown. She just moved in. Those buildings are all downtown. Did they say who did it?”
“It sounds like they don’t know, or they’re not saying. It’s obviously foreign nationals.”
As promised, Reed drove Kate back to Guijá that afternoon. Kate couldn’t get a phone line, due to disturbances on the line in the area, but she was able to send an email, telling her mother she was fine, and hoped she was too. She tried to reach Felicity in France but couldn’t get through to her either. It sounded like a replay of 9/11. She read the reports on the internet and was shocked at the descriptions and the photographs she saw of Friday night in New York. It was very unreal. The images were devastating, and it all seemed so far away right now, so surreal.
She talked to Jack about it that night. “Maybe we should go home,” she said hesitantly.
“I thought you wanted to spend time with your father.” He looked puzzled and disappointed. He was having a good time. And he liked Pru.
“I did, I do. We’ve had some good talks, but I don’t want my mother alone in New York, and Felicity is in France. But they say the borders are closed. We can’t go back until they open them, and the airports.”
“That could last several weeks. We might as well stay here, since we’ve come this far.” Africa felt like it was light-years from home. Jack was in no hurry to leave. He had an audience here and was enjoying showing off his knowledge of the local tribes.
They drove back to Guijá again on Monday to get more news. When Kate was able to use the Wi-Fi connection, she got an email from her mother saying she was fine. The reports of the dead and injured were heartbreaking. Kate cried when she read them. She announced at dinner that she should go back to New York as soon as the borders opened. She didn’t want her mother to be alone. And what if there was another terrorist attack, and that had just been the opening salvo? That had been one of the primary fears of 9/11 too, although a second wave of attacks had never happened.
“I don’t think they would attack again,” Reed said, and Jack agreed.
“It sounds like they did enough damage to satisfy them on Friday night, from what you read,” Jack added. He wanted to stay. “If we do go back, we should go up to your place in Vermont. We’ll be safer there.”
“I’m not leaving my mother when I go back,” Kate said firmly, wishing she could reach Felicity, but it seemed hopeless to try and contact her sister, or even her mother, by phone. The service was just too poor.
Kate was uneasy for the next several days. It was a long week until she read on the internet in Guijá that the borders were now open and planes were flying again. Kate had been in Tomanini for a week by then, and it seemed long enough. She had met her father and discovered that he was a hardworking, responsible, and respectable man, doing good work helping others, but she had fewer illusions about him now. He was a man, like any other, with his flaws, and you couldn’t turn the clock back, to recapture all the lost years. He’d been happy to meet Kate, but he was far more interested in his own daily life than hers, and didn’t try to hide it, or pretend otherwise. Pru catered to his narcissism, which suited him. New York was so far away, it was hard for him to relate to it. At the end of the week on Saturday they went to Guijá again, and booked a flight for Monday. On Sunday Jack and Kate made their way back to Johannesburg with Pru’s car and a driver, and stayed at a hotel for the night. Jack went out to dinner with his cousin Chad alone, and Kate stayed in her room to try to contact her mother and sister. She was able to reach both. It had been a stressful week in New York, under lockdown, and Felicity was flying back from Paris on Monday too. Kate and Felicity agreed that they would all feel better once they were back in New York and they knew more about what was going on. But at least their mother was safe.
When Kate left her father’s hospital on Sunday, she felt that she had been given the time she needed to at least understand who he was. She no longer had the regrets she had before about his giving up his parental rights to her. She had been well loved by her mother and grandfather, and then by the father who adopted her.
“Thank you for coming,” Reed said to her politely, as though Kate had come to tea or for a weekend, and not halfway around the world to meet him and hear his side of the story. Pru hugged her and wished her a safe trip home. Reed hugged her too, but she realized now that he wasn’t a warm person, or he could never have done what he had thirty-seven years before. He had kept his own goals in mind and stuck to them, and never looked back. He had no regrets about leaving her. It had been the right thing for him. What she had seen of him was enough to put her heart at rest at last. His rejection of her wasn’t personal, he just didn’t have it in him. Discovering that had freed her.
“I enjoyed it, didn’t you?” Jack said, looking relaxed and pleased with the trip, after they drove away. “Do you think it will help your writing?” he asked her, and she nodded, thinking about it. It had done much more than that, for her personally.
“Yes, I do.” She had come to find her father, and instead, she had found herself, which was more important.
“Do you think you’ll come back?” he asked her, and she looked pensive, and shook her head. She no longer had a pressing desire to meet her half brother either. They weren’t her family. They weren’t even friends.
“I don’t think so,” she answered Jack. “I don’t need to.” She had learned all she needed to. She was free now. Reed wasn’t her father. He never had been. He had given all that up thirty-seven years before. Now she was ready to give him up too. It was long overdue.