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“What do you want to know?” Claire asked.
“Is he as bad as Sean says?”
Claire gritted her teeth. The ache in her heart had ceased long ago, when she’d first learned that Paul was having an affair. It probably hadn’t been his first as he was forever attracted to younger women. Now all she felt was shame and remorse. “Your father isn’t bad,” she said, wondering if she were lying. “He’s just weak.”
“Weak?”
“Yes. He, uh, likes women.”
“Girls,” Sam corrected.
Anything in a skirt. “Yes, sometimes girls, too.”
“Then he is bad.”
“I don’t want you to think of him that way.”
“But you do,” Samantha charged, her eyes showing only a little of the pain that had to be echoing through her young body. She drew her legs up, balancing the arches of her feet on the edge of the counter and resting her chin on her knees. There was dust caked on Samantha’s long legs, dirt in the cracks of her bare toes, but Claire didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time to turn the subject to matters of cleanliness or germs.
“I just don’t want to think about him period.” Claire decided to be honest. Kids could see through lies too easily.
Sam wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. Me neither.” She gnawed on the corner of her lip. “Will he go to prison?”
Shame burned up Claire’s neck. “I don’t know. Maybe—or he could get a reduced sentence and be on probation, I suppose, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Well, if he’s a jailbird, I don’t want to see him,” Samantha decided, tossing her head. “Even if he isn’t. What he did was wrong.” Her chin trembled. “Dads aren’t supposed to do anything wrong.”
“No, honey, they’re not,” Claire said, walking to the counter and wrapping her arms around her daughter’s slim shoulders. “But they’re just human and sometimes . . . sometimes they make mistakes.”
“He should never have done it.”
“I know.” Claire felt Sam’s tears, hot and wet, drip onto her blouse.
“We didn’t deserve it.”
“No, baby, we didn’t,” she agreed, as Samantha coughed loudly. “But we have to face it. Like it or not.”
Samantha shuddered, then lifted her tear-streaked face. “Sean says this sucks.”
Claire nodded even though she hated the crudity of Sean’s language. “This time, he’s right. Come on, I’ll make you a cup of cocoa, and we’ll try and find a movie to watch.”
“A happy one,” Samantha said, sliding down from her perch.
“Yeah, a happy one.”
Twenty-four
It was nearly midnight when Claire, restless, threw off the thin covers of the bed. Without snapping on the lights, she slid her arms through her robe and padded barefoot down the hallway past the open doors of her sleeping children’s rooms before heading downstairs. Her mind was spinning, images of Kane and Harley and Paul all racing through her brain as if they were in a tornado, whirling ever faster, confusing her.
She stopped in the kitchen for a book of matches, then hurried out the French doors of the dining room and down the weed-choked path to the lake. She stopped only to light the citronella torches planted every ten feet on the dock, and hoped to keep the marauding mosquitoes at bay.
Her match sizzled in the night and soon six torches glowed, giving off their sweet-acrid scent and allowing her to sit on the last board of the pier, her bare legs swinging out over the water, her face uplifted to the heavens. Thousands of stars twinkled brightly and a slice of gleaming moon hung low in the sky, giving a silvery sheen to the dark waters. Fish jumped, splashing in the lake, crickets chirped, and, not far away, an owl hooted softly.
Claire had always loved it here. Despite all the heartache and pain of her childhood and the tragedy of Harley Taggert’s death, she felt a great peace in the house and on the shores of Lake Arrowhead. Her gaze drifted across the glassy waters to the Moran cottage, its windows bright squares of light in the darkness, and she wondered about Kane. What was he doing? Working on that damned book? Digging deep into the past? Discovering secret truths that were better left hidden? Her heart ached a bit and she realized that years before she’d loved him with a passion that was as foolish as it was fierce. There was something about him that could turn her inside out, cause her to give up reason for desire, seduce her to sacrifice everything—even her stubborn pride—to be close to him.
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath. No man was worth a woman’s dignity. No man. But, oh, even now, if she had the chance to kiss Kane, to touch him, to feel his hard, naked body straining over hers . . .
“Stop it,” she hissed, angry with the wayward turn of her thoughts. “You’re not a teenager anymore. For heaven’s sake, you’re over thirty! A mother! You’ve been hurt so many times before!” If she were only more like Miranda. Strong. Independent. Courageous.
