Slowly, she relaxed into his embrace. Let herself slump against his chest. When she finally spoke again, she sounded weary to the marrow.
“Okay. So...” Her voice was muffled against his tee. “Mom didn’t want me to say anything back then, and she’d probably want me to keep my mouth shut now too. The memories don’t hurt her like they used to, but what happened still humiliates her. A lot. Even my stepfather doesn’t know the full story.”
Holy shit. Had her fathermurderedsomeone? Or—
“All right, here goes.” She sucked in a deep breath. “You know when Mom and I suddenly left for California, right before graduation?”
He nodded and stroked his palm down her spine, trying like hell to remember whether anyone had ever found the Zodiac Killer. Also racking his brain for the last name of the Unabomber, which he couldn’t quite—
“My father had gotten his other wife pregnant. Again.”
Karl’s mind blanked. “His... what?”
Her chest rose and fell on a sigh. “As Mom and I found out right before prom, he had another family in NorCal. A wife named Cara, although their marriage wasn’t actually legal back then. Two sons in elementary school. He visited them on all his”—her fingers crooked—“‘business trips.’ And once he found out Wife Number Two was having another baby, he decided his mosturgent obligations were to them instead of us. Especially since I was graduating from high school and going away to college soon anyway.”
“Holy fuck,” he muttered, gathering her closer, and she rubbed her ear.
No wonder the woman had trust issues when it came to men. Between her ex and her father, she’d gotten up close and real damn personal with two incredibly crappy examples of the breed.
“I mean, he wasn’t wrong. Young kids do need a dad more than an eighteen-year-old does.” She tugged at a fold of his tee, straightening the fabric and avoiding his eyes. “But my mom was devastated and embarrassed. She needed the support of her family. So we moved.”
Just her mom, huh? No one else was devastated too?
He called bullshit. “What aboutyourhurt? What aboutyourembarrassment?”
“I wasn’t embarrassed.” A stout declaration. Sounded honest. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did my mother.” She paused. “Other than being a bit too naïve, I guess. In retrospect, Mom recognized lots of signs that something wasn’t quite right, and she beat herself up for ignoring them. But she loved my dad, and he was good to us both. So when he said his work required frequent trips out of state, she believed him. We both did.”
Karl hid his wince as he kept rubbing her back.
Yeah. The two most important men in Molly’s life? Both those bastards had yanked the rug out from under her. Punished her for having faith in them.
Karl had no idea what that kind of bone-deep betrayal would feel like. Hoped he’d never get the chance to find out.
“You’re right. No cause for anyone to be ashamed but him.” Gently, he tugged at a rumpled strand of her soft hair. “Bet it still hurt like hell.”
“Well...” Her neck bent, and she resumed smoothing his shirt. “He was... he was kind of my role model growing up?”
Aw, shit. Leaning down, he pressed a hard kiss to the top of her head.
Sadness crept into her neutral tone, freighting each heavy word. “Mom and I are similar in a lot of ways. Too similar to get along well, I think. As I grew up, Dad was the glue that held all three of us together.” She hesitated. “He was so warm. So outgoing andopen.”
Well...
She said it before he could. “Yes, yes, I know. He wasn’treallyopen. But I didn’t realize that back then, and I was a total daddy’s girl before...” With a swift circle of her wrist, a loose thread from his tee wrapped around her finger. She let it unwind, then repeated the process. “Before.”
He had no idea what the hell to say. “I’m so damn sorry, Molly.”
“He truly seemed to adore both of us. With all his heart.” Wind. Unwind. Wind. Unwind. “After a trip, he’d swoop into the house and shout, ‘Where are my best girls?’ Then he’d lift us up and swing us in the air while he went on and on about how badly he’d missed us and how much we were going to love his gifts.”
He stroked her hair until her fidgeting stilled and her body relaxed against his again. And when a small wet spot formed on the shoulder of his tee, he let her pretend it didn’t exist.
“So yeah, it hurt.” Because she was a consummate actress, there was no hint of tears in her voice. Just matter-of-fact pragmatism. “And maybe it would’ve hurt less if we’d stayed in contact withhim. But by the time I was willing to hear what he had to say, he’d given up trying to reach out months before. I decided to just let it be. If he wanted to contact me, he would.”
Karl couldn’t help but wonder whether talking to the man might bring her some necessary closure, even now. Or whether having her father back in her life might feel good, if both she and her dad wanted that. But a possible reunion wasn’t—would never be—Karl’s decision. Molly knew herself far better than he did. She could determine the bounds of her own life, her own heart, for herself.
In his opinion, the idea of closure was often a goddamn lie anyway, the search for it an excuse to delay accepting the inevitable. And far too often, even honest answers wouldn’t satisfy anyone. One more conversation, one more look, one more explanation wouldn’t do anything but dredge up old grief from where it’d been laid to rest.
Or maybe that was just the self-justification of a cowardly man who avoided difficult conversations whenever possible.
