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Cash grew quiet and seemed to struggle to find his words and, as much as Jackson wanted to prompt and prod him, he knew he needed to be patient.
And that totally wasn’t his strong suit.
Before his father spoke again, he glanced over his shoulder toward a closed door and he had to wonder if that’s where Savannah was and if there was something he didn’t want her to hear. But before he could question it, Cash started speaking.
“I know nobody is going to believe me, but…I had no intention of leaving town the way that I did the last time. Everything that I promised, I meant,” he began quietly. Then he looked up and met Jackson’s gaze. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to be there to see Garrett open his own veterinary clinic or to see Austin finish his and Mia’s house.” With a pause, he sighed. “Sometimes life throws you a curveball and you’re forced to make a decision that you know is going to hurt somebody and there’s no way to avoid it.”
“So you chose to hurt us,” Jackson commented lowly. “Again.”
“Here’s what you don’t know,” Cash replied, sounding a little stronger. “I had a choice to make. If I walked away from all of you—again—you still had each other. You were in no better or worse of a situation because of me. If anything, you’d all get to band together and hate me again. But if I turned my back on…”
He glanced toward the closed door again and rather than it answering any questions, it raised that many more.
“Savannah? You left us all in the lurch because ofSavannah?”
“She has no one, Jackson. No one. You’ve lived your whole life with a big family.”
“Except for a father…”
“You had your brothers, your mother, your cousins, your great-grandfather! Dammit, Jackson, you had people around you who loved you! Do you know who that girl had? A revolving door of people who disappointed her until there was no one left! As shocking as this may sound, I was it. I was the only person—the only constant she had in her life!”
“So you chose her over us. Got it.” He was about to stand—ready to leave—but Cash’s words stopped him.
“No, you really don’t,” he said with disgust. Shaking his head, he glared at his son. “Are you even going to pretend to keep an open mind or am I just wasting my breath?”
Motioning for him to continue, he said, “We’ve come this far. Might as well go all the way, right?”
Frowning, Cash shifted in his seat. “Savannah was put up for adoption when she was nine months old. She was sick—really sick. Her parents were young—barely out of their teens—and couldn’t afford to take care of her. So she went into foster care and went through a lot of years with far too many health issues. My buddy Henry and his wife Kathryn adopted her when she was five. I didn’t know any of them yet, mind you, but they’d been very open about how they became a family. Anyway, Savannah required a lot of care—she was in and out of the hospital a lot and it took a toll on them.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“She was born with only one fully functioning kidney. The other was there, but…it was slowly dying. She’d had multiple surgeries where they tried to…I don’t know…fix it, I guess, but ultimately, it was removed. The meds she was on made her very sick and because she was in the foster care system for so many years, she didn’t get the best care. She didn’t have an advocate on her side. When Henry and Kat got her, they thought she’d finally get the help she needed, but everything was a struggle.”
“Damn.” Now it was his turn to glance toward the door.
“Fast forward five years and they’re financially tapped out, Henry lost his job, and Kat just…she couldn’t handle it. Any of it. She left and then a year later, she died in a car accident.”
“Oh my God!”
Cash nodded. “I met Henry two years later at a homeless shelter. Obviously, it wasn’t a place I ever thought I’d be, but I’d been there for a while and one night this guy walks in with his daughter and…I can’t explain it, but…I took one look at her and I knew she needed help—medical and emotional. We all became friends, and I vowed I was going to do whatever I could to help them. I found a job working on a loading dock and Henry and I would take turns watching Savannah. I talked to every social worker I could find and did my research to figure out how to get her the help she needed. It took a year, but the three of us moved into an apartment together. Henry and I shared one room so Savi could have one to herself.”
“Savi?” he repeated.
He grinned. “My nickname for her.” Sighing, he sat back again. “We found a great doctor for her and finally had her medications leveled out and for a few years, things were good. Stable. When she was sixteen, she asked about finding her biological parents.” He shook his head. “She was feeling a bit rebellious and hated the way our lives were and thought everything would be better if her ‘real’ parents came back for her now that she was healthy.”
It didn’t take a genius to know this part of the story didn’t have a happy ending either.
“The mother had died of a drug overdose the year after she gave Savannah up for adoption, and the father died in a prison fight a few years later. So…”
“Holy crap. What the hell?”
“Yeah, still think you had it so bad?”
There was no way to respond to that.
“So she was a total handful after that and the year after she graduated high school, she ran off and married her high school sweetheart.” He snorted with disgust. “That kid was a total dumbass and a real loser and there wasn’t a damn thing Henry could do to stop her.”
Staring down at his clasped hands, Jackson nodded.
