Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер
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he felt. Whatever was going on had taken its toll on her. He wasn’t about to add to that by demanding she talk to him before she was ready.
June swallowed before she answered, the words sticking to the roof of her mouth, glued there by sheer disbelief.
Why? Why now?
“My father,” she whispered hoarsely. “My father’s back.”
He knew all about the story, had gotten it not just in bits and pieces from her, but from Jimmy and Lily as well. The story of the man who couldn’t stay put, who’d created a family only to abandon it, sacrificing it on the altar of his wanderlust. Everyone in town believed that he was gone for good, most likely dead.
“Are you sure?”
Her eyes darted to his face, anger leaping into him. He took no offense.
“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I know what my own father looks like?” she lashed out, then instantly regretted it. She pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”
He cut her short. “You don’t have to apologize. I’d feel just as shaken up as you in your place.” He spoke slowly, softly, not wanting her to fall apart. He’d gotten to know her pretty well in the past two weeks and had never seen her like this. She seemed so completely vulnerable. “Where did you see him?”
She shut her eyes for a moment. The image was burned into her mind. “At the cemetery.” She looked at Kevin. The pain that assaulted her was overwhelming. Why? It shouldn’t matter anymore. It should have stopped mattering a long time ago. She thought it had. “He was standing over my mother’s grave.”
That would explain why the tractor hadn’t been moved. “Is that where you were just now?”
June nodded. She looked off in the general direction of Cemetery Hill. “I go there sometimes,” she told him quietly, almost talking to herself. “To talk.” Realizing what she’d just said, she flushed. “Just to clear my head. You probably think that’s crazy.”
He smiled at her, refraining from taking her into his arms the way he wanted to. “No. I talk to mine all the time. They both wanted to be cremated, so there’s no actual grave to go to. Their ashes were scattered. In a way, I guess you might say they’re all around me. Kind of with me all the time.”
She looked at him, gratitude burrowing its way in between the walls of shock that had closed in around her. He understood, she thought. It meant a great deal right now to have someone understand.
“Did he recognize you?”
She laughed shortly. “He thought I was April. And then he said I looked just like my mother.” She dragged her hand restlessly through her hair. He noted with relief that some measure of color finally returned to her face. “He was just—there.” Her eyes searched his as if she needed him to understand. “Like it was all right. Like he hadn’t ever gone away.”
“What did he want?” Kevin asked gently.
She began to move around. He shadowed her steps, afraid that she might faint without warning. “To make everything crazy.”
That had been accomplished, he thought. “What did he say, exactly?”
Turning away from him, she tilted her head up toward the sky, blinking. Determined not to let the tears spill out. If you cried, it meant that you were weak, and she’d always been strong. Strong, just like April and Max and her grandmother.
She drew in a breath, composing herself. “That he was sorry.”
Kevin knew how small a word that could sound like. And how much it could really contain. But now wasn’t the time to take the side of a man who’d wounded her so badly. “He apologized for leaving?”
She clenched her hands into fists at her side as she swung around to face him. Her feelings were all over the map. Sadness, anger, confusion, they were all jumbled up inside of her.
“He tried to.” Her mouth grew bitter. “My mother’s dead because of him and he’s sorry,” she spit out. “He thinks that if he comes back and says that, everything’s going to be all right. That everything’s forgiven.” Anger flashed in her blue eyes as she looked up at him. “Well, it’s not.”
He could only guess at what she was feeling, but he did his best. “I know, June, I know. It’s going to take time.”
“There’s not that much time in the world.”
She couldn’t quell the bitterness that was taking hold inside her, the emotion that was the flip side of all the love she’d felt for her father as a child. He’d ruined it, ruined her perfect world, taken away her childhood before she had ever had a chance to use it. Before she’d had a chance to store it away.
Kevin placed a gentling hand on her shoulder. “I know you feel that way now—”
June shrugged him off angrily. “I’ll always feel that way,” she countered, moving away from him. “A couple of words offered up years too late aren’t going to change that.”
This was a great deal for her to take in all at once, Kevin thought. He appreciated that she was in the middle of an emotional earthquake, but she needed to calm down. If her father had really returned, she needed to begin the business of forgiving. For her own sake.
“Where is he now?”
She thought a moment, setting the jumbled scenario in order. “He’s staying at Luc’s hotel.”
Her father had called out the information to her as she’d driven away. She hadn’t wanted to hear him, but she couldn’t help it. He’d raised his voice over the roar of her engine.
She had no idea if he meant to stay here in Hades. The younger Wayne Yearling couldn’t wait to leave the confines of Hades, but her father was older now, and somehow smaller and far less robust than the man she’d looked at so many times in the wedding photograph.
Her eyes widened as more thoughts crowded into her head, making her realize the possible consequences of her father’s sudden reappearance.
She clutched at Kevin’s arm. “We’ve got to get him to leave.” Her voice rose excitedly. “He’ll ruin Max’s wedding. He’ll—”
“I can talk to him if you want,” Kevin told her. Though it wasn’t his place, he could ask the man to leave her alone, at least for the time being, until she got used to the idea that he was back. Until she could find it in her heart to begin to forgive him. “But I think Max and April need to know about this.”
“No.” She was adamant, and as protective of hers as he was of his. “It’s not fair to put them through this.” It was enough that she had experienced the shock of seeing her father alive and here. She didn’t want that for her brother and sister.
“You can’t make that decision for them, June. They might want to hear him out.” Kevin understood where she was coming from, from the very best place in her heart.
“Why?” she demanded, turning on him, feeling betrayed all over again. She’d expected him of all people to understand, to back her up, not take her father’s side. “So he can spin some more of his lies for them? So that he can make more promises he’s not going to keep?” She shook her head, rejecting the idea. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see my mother or my sister after he left. He broke hearts, Kevin,” she insisted, trying to make him understand. “He doesn’t deserve to have them anymore.”
“No, you’re probably right, he probably doesn’t deserve to have them back. But it’s still a decision that April and Max have to make on their own. You owe them that.” She opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off. He knew exactly what was going on in her head. “I know you just want to protect them, but you can’t. And you can’t punish your father for all four of you. You can just hold back yourself.”
“I’m not trying to punish him,” she