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“Did we get any mail today?” Cody asked as Dani came into the house. The boy was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a glass of milk. Sweat was curling and darkening his hair and dripping from his flushed face. A dusty basketball was tucked under one of his arms and Runt, a small Border collie, was lying on the floor beneath the table.
Silently cursing her ex-husband, Dani shook her head and offered her son an encouraging smile. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to the box.”
“I’ll get it.” Cody finished his glass of milk, dropped the basketball and ran out of the room with the dog on his heels.
“Damn you, Blake Summers,” Dani said. “Damn you for getting Cody’s hopes up.” She stood at the kitchen window, leaned against the counter and watched her son run the quarter mile down the dusty, rutted lane to the mailbox. In cut-off jeans and a faded T-shirt, the black dog at his heels, Cody sprinted along the fence.
Dani’s heart bled for her son each time the boy brought up the subject of his father. Maybe she should have told him all of the painful truth—that Blake had never wanted the boy, that he’d had one affair after another, that he’d only married Dani because she’d inherited this piece of land, the Hawthorne property, from her folks, that the property Blake had owned, the Summers’ place, he’d sold to Caleb Johnson and then gambled the money away....
She squinted against the late afternoon sun and watched as Cody, his slim shoulders slumped, his tanned legs slowing, walked back to the house. Maybe It was time she talked to him about his father. At nine, Cody was nearly five feet and was just starting to show signs of preadolescence. Perhaps he was mature enough to know the truth.
She met her son on the porch.
“Nothin’ much,” Cody said, handing her a stack of bills and shrugging as if the missing letter didn’t mean a thing to him.
“You got your fishing magazine,” she said, trying to hand him back a small piece of the mail. He didn’t lift his eyes as he pushed open the screen door.
“Cody—”
The boy turned to face her. “Yeah?”
“I know you were expecting something from your father.”
Her son went rigid. His brown eyes looked into hers and Dani knew in that moment that she couldn’t talk against Blake—not yet. “What about it?”
“He didn’t say when he’d visit or write again,” Dani pointed out.
“But it’s already been three months.”
“I know. Maybe he’s been busy.”
“And maybe he just doesn’t care. Not about me. Not about you!” Cody’s lower lip trembled but he managed not to cry.
“Don’t think about it,” Dani said, trying to comfort him.
“Don’t think about my dad?” he repeated angrily. His small fist balled against the worn screen. “Don’t you think about him?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. Like now, when I know you’re hurting.
“You should be waitin’ for him to come home!”
Dani pushed the hair that had escaped from her ponytail off her face. “I waited a long time, Cody.”
“And then you divorced him,” the boy accused.
Dani forced a sad but patient smile. “I know it’s hard for you to understand but I can’t . . . we can’t live in the past.”
“But he wrote me!” Cody said, his voice cracking. “He wrote me a letter and said he was comin’ home!”
Dani leaned a shoulder against the side of the house. “I know he did, sweetheart—”
“Don’t call me that! It’s for babies.”
“And you’re not a baby anymore, are you?” She reached forward to push his hair out of his eyes, but he jerked away.
“Aw, Mom. Give me a break!” Cody walked into the kitchen and the screen door groaned before slamming shut with a bang.
