Page 45 of Blue Jean Summer

For as long as I had known Catherine Foster, it had just been her and her mom. I had never known anything about her father.

“I’m not going to ask for anything you don’t want to tell me, but if there’s something you want to get off your chest, I’m a good listener.” I caught her eye and cracked a smile. “Besides. We’re about to be married.”

She let out a nervous breath. “Yeah.”

Silence lingered between the two of us as flecks of hay and dust danced in the sunlight.

“By the way, we need to get wedding bands,” she said out of the blue. “They don’t have to be anything fancy. I can take care of it. I just don’t know your ring size.”

Her M.O. was way too obvious, changing the subject to avoid talking about it. There were much more subtle ways to get around it, but I didn’t press. If Catherine wanted to talk about her father, she would.

I draped my arm around her shoulders. “Let me know when you want to go into town.”

Catherine sat silently for a few more minutes before she spoke up again. “My dad doesn’t…acknowledge me.”

“Then he’s missing out.”

Catherine eased into my side as I traced abstract shapes along her bicep. “That’s what my mom always said.” She let out a deep breath. “She’d always tell me that it was his problem and that there was nothing wrong with me.” There was a pregnant pause. “But then she would do everything she could to make me worthy of him wanting me. Wanting us.” Pain was woven into each word.

“What do you mean?”

Catherine dropped her shoulders in a passive shrug. “She gave me a proper name. Something long and stuffy. Something that would be appropriate in his high-society circles. Catherine Grace Foster. She started me in pageants when I was five. Put me in respectable extracurriculars like riding and piano lessons. Growing up, people called me Catie. When I was—oh, I don’t know—eleven or twelve, she told me I should start going by my full name because it was more polished. Enrolled me in cotillion and etiquette classes. We didn’t have a lot of money, but Mom did everything she could to make it look like we were fine. She made all of my pageant dresses out of old prom dresses she would find at the thrift store. She’d take apart the seams and make something new. When I was little, the prize money would keep the lights on. When I got older, it turned into scholarship money for college. Pageants put me through my undergrad and MBA.” Cath shook her head. “All that and it still wasn’t enough for him to acknowledge us.”

“Sounds like a lot of pressure to put on a kid.”

Catherine’s lashes shadowed those pretty eyes. “Sometimes I’m glad she put me through all of it. It definitely got me further than I would have gone in life otherwise. Sometimes, though…I resent her for it because I wasn’t enough for her. Then I feel guilty for resenting her because she did everything she could to give me a good life. But she used me to get him to notice us and I hated that. Still, when I was a kid, I wanted to know my father. Sometimes I still do. Sometimes I hate him.”

“Grief sucks,” I said.

Catherine swallowed. “Yeah.”

I looked down at the worn toes of my boots. “My parents died in a car accident three days before Christmas. They spun out on black ice, crossed the center line, and got hit head-on by a tractor trailer. They had gone out to buy my Christmas presents and I was home with a babysitter. I’ve gone through every scenario of wishing that they hadn’t gone out that night. Sometimes I resented the fact that they went out. Or that they had waited until that close to Christmas. I know what that guilt feels like.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as she rested her head in the crook of my arm and chest.

“It was a long time ago,” I said, though we both knew that the old saying about time healing all wounds was a dirty lie.

Cath looked up with those devastating eyes. “Time doesn’t change how it feels. My mom hasn’t been gone nearly as long as your parents but I can’t imagine it getting any easier. My father is still alive, but I’ve grieved his absence for decades.”

“You don’t have to invite him to the wedding, you know.” I held her closer and rested my temple on top of her head. “You don’t have to have someone to walk you down the aisle.”

“I should,” she said as she brought her knees up and hugged them. “This is about optics, right? That’s why you picked me. Because I fit the bill of someone who’d marry into your family. Him being there would sell it.”

Her words were sharp like a lance, cutting deep. Guilt dripped from the entry wound. Catherine wasn’t wrong. That was the exact conversation I’d had with Hallie. But hearing her say it after what she had gone through with her father stung.

“Who’s your father?” I asked.

Catherine looked at her knees. “Governor Grant.”

Holy shit.

“That stays between us,” she said with a tone that was not to be crossed.

Governor Maxwell Grant had a soaring approval rating, a stellar record as a former senator, and a picturesque family with two grown children who were around Catherine’s age. He came from a long line of political royalty. Rumors of Maxwell being on the short list of vice presidential candidates for the next presidential election had already started to swirl.

He had also run out of my granddad’s funeral like his ass was on fire when Catherine came close.

He knew exactly who she was.