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“Bet you can’t dance as good as me,” I taunted, sticking out my tongue.
Mom held out her hand to him. He took it and followed her lead as she moved.
Dad picked me up and tossed me in the air. “You’re getting too big to do that.” He pretended like I’d broken his back.
I squealed with laughter. “Do it again, Daddy.”
I flew again. When he caught me, he kissed my head. “You’ll always be my boy.”
I sat paralyzedin my truck. The memory assaulted me from all sides. He’d erased with his ugliness most reminders that before my mother died he was loving. It may not have been natural, but she brought that out in all of us.
I didn’t want to think of him as he was that day. Eventually we’d all sang Cher so loudly the neighbors yelled for us to be quiet.
That man was as much of a ghost as my mother. More like a phantom who never really existed.
Anger infiltrated the numbing pain. Mom’s life was stolen from her, but our father had robbed us of a piece of our family. We’d needed him. He could’ve been part of what I had with Beau and Lincoln.
He wanted to chastise me about honoring my mother’s memory, buthewas the one who desecrated it. She’d be brokenhearted that I was sitting out in front of what was once our happy home, uncertain if I could go inside. Uncertain if I could be in the same room with him.
If you don’t go in there, Pepper will lose the rescue.
No one deserved to lose what they lived for. What had she said to me?
“I have to decide between your happiness and mine. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do both. And I can’t choose.”
So, I made the choice for her.
Pepper’s love for Miss Adeline, for the dogs, was so heartfelt, as if she couldn’t possibly live without them. She was right and she was wrong. My job was my world. It was my purpose. And yes, I had worked hard to get where I was. But suddenly, it wasn’t . . . everything.
I could tolerate more pain. For her.
I shoved open the door and jogged to the front door. When I pressed the bell, muffled chimes rang on the other side of the thick wooden door. The same ones that had been there all my life.
I put my hands in my coat pockets and rocked back on my heels, barely feeling the cold. When no one answered, I used the knocker on the brass lion’s head.
The door swung open wide.
“You always were impatient.”
The stoic face of the man who’d been the butler my whole life filled the doorway. An unexpected rush of emotion once again rendered me motionless.
“I’m happy to let you stand in the cold as long as you like, but I’m going by the fire.” Winston said in the same cutting way he’d always had.
I thrust out my hand. “You haven’t changed.”
He took my outstretched hand. Instead of shaking it, he pulled me in for a tight hug. “You have.”
This man had disciplined me, fed me, and cared for me. When I’d left my father, I’d had to leave Winston behind too. Yet another thing he’d stolen.
Or had I given it up?
“He’s waiting for you upstairs.” Winston held me at arm’s length.
“He is?”
“You’ve been sitting in your truck for half an hour.” He shoved me in the direction of the stairs.
Had it been that long?
