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He pushed his empty plate away. “Okay,” he said, in a different voice. “Now I want to know what the hell you were thinking to tell your sister something that could put you at risk if it got out!”
“Don’t yell at me.” Was her lower lip poking out the way Emily’s did when anyone lectured her?
“Beth.”
Hearing the warning, she said, “I didn’t think of it that way. I was telling her what’s going on, that’s all. It didn’t occur to me that she’d pass on every detail of what I said, and especially not to Mom and Dad’s old friends. It’s not like she’d ever talked to any of them. Who knew they’d call her? And…” Her throat clogged. “Mom was killed an awfully long time ago.” Even more meekly, she asked, “You don’t really think I’m in danger, do you?”
Tony scowled at her. “Probably not, but—Damn it, Beth, I wish you’d kept that to yourself.”
“It’s so frustrating not to be able to remember!” she cried. “Maybe there isn’t anything to remember. We all get that déjà vu feeling out of the blue.”
“We do,” he said on a sigh, “but this is different. You knew these people. You could have seen her lover showing your mother another drawing, or she left one out and you saw it. You were in and out of the pediatrician’s office. Could some of his own art have hung on the wall in the waiting room or even his office? What about the others? Did you ever go with your mom to the law firm or get invited into the bank manager’s office?”
Frustrated, she only shook her head. “I don’t think so. You need to show the drawing to Dad. If any of their friends—or supposed friends—was that artistic, wouldn’t the subject have come up?”
“Yeah.” Tony seemed to brood for a moment. “You’re right. Maybe I’ve underestimated him.”
“I think I did, too.” Beth told him some of what her father had said when they had talked earlier. “I think he was ashamed of himself.”
“He should be,” Tony said bluntly. “And I know you don’t like it when I criticize any of your family members, but he used you. He’s still using you.”
She swallowed. “Or I enabled him.”
“Don’t turn this around so you can blame yourself. Go on out to the mall, Beth. Loiter near a group of teenage girls. Take a really hard look. You were a kid just like them, at least until you had to become the adult in your family.”
Her chin rose. “How’s the pressure your parents put on you any different?”
He didn’t move, maybe didn’t even breathe. “In one way it wasn’t,” he said finally. “The difference was I always knew if I let down one of my sisters or brother, it wasn’t a big deal. My parents were there being parents. My attitude would have been different if I’d really been needed. If Dad had died earlier—” He shook his head. “You had to step up because nobody else would.”
“You can’t have it both ways. Haven’t you been telling me Dad would have had to be the parent if I hadn’t made it easy for him to keep on the way he had been?”
“No,” he said quietly. “Enabling, that’s your idea. He may be dysfunctional in some ways, but he just told you he was aware of what was happening, and he chose to let you make sacrifices to make his life easier.”
She opened her mouth—and closed it. Because he was right. In one way, she’d been touched to have her father let her know that he did appreciate what she’d done. What she hadn’t entirely recognized was her resentment.
It was funny because at the time she hadn’t felt any. She’d been scared, desperate to hold her family together, to make everything as much like it had been as she could. But sometime in the intervening years, she’d brewed her own bubbling pot of anger.
“I don’t like being angry!” she burst out.
“I know. Hey, come here.”
His rueful smile caused a meltdown. She pushed back her chair and went around the table to be met with open arms. Tony helped her settle on his lap and cuddled her close. He had the most amazingly comforting shoulder. Except comfort wasn’t all she felt. The view of his strong neck and jaw, the shadow of stubble, lips that looked so soft, had heat curling inside her. She suddenly wanted to kiss his throat, maybe even lick that copper-brown skin, discover his taste. Feel the roughness of his cheek under her own lips.
