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The harsh truth spilling from her lips kills me and my arm pulses around her.
‘I wanted you,’ I say.
The words are fierce and from the very heart of me, giving me away, but she’s too lost in her sadness to see it.
‘Katherine did too.’
Her smile is so sad and I return it, my hand soft on her cheek as I sweep a stray tear from her skin.
‘She did. She didn’t care about all the homes you’d been through. She only cared about giving you this one. She wanted to be the parent who...who...’ My voice chokes as her lower lip trembles, her lashes lowering to hide further tears from me.
‘She wanted to be the one who saved me?’ she whispers.
‘Yes.’ It’s barely audible as I stroke her hair and press a kiss to her head, lift her chin so she will look at me and see the truth in my gaze. ‘She chose you because she wanted you to come back home again.’
Her glistening blue eyes hold mine. ‘She wanted you to come home too.’
‘I know.’
I don’t state the obvious. That Gran wanted us to make a home together, to be a real family...
I don’t know what Gran’s letter to Summer said, but surely she must know her true intentions. That whatever Gran had seen back then, whatever she’d seen in the intervening years, she believed we belonged together.
But this was Summer. Summer who’d never truly felt loved as a child. Her own mother had rejected her, then the system had failed her for a decade, tossing her back and forth foster homes, more and more rejection... Until Gran. Until Glenrobin.
How could I have threatened her with taking it away?
You were sitting on a twenty-year-old hurt. You felt betrayed by your grandmother. You were grieving and confused.
But does that justify how I’ve treated her?
I don’t know.
I know I need to fix things now, though.
‘This place will be your home for however long you want it to be, Summer.’
‘You can’t promise me that.’
‘I can.’
She shakes her head, pushes against my hand to hide her eyes from me. To hide herself from me.
‘One day you’ll want to settle down...make a home with someone,’ she says into my chest. ‘That someone won’t want me around.’
You are that someone.
The words are burning a hole in my heart, desperate on my tongue.
‘Never, Summer. That I can promise you.’
A scratching at the door breaks the heavy silence that descends, and she lifts her head. ‘It’s Rufus.’
She starts to rise and I pull her back gently. ‘I’ll get him.’
She smiles, but it slays me, her eyes are so haunted by the past.
‘You know he sleeps with me every night?’ she confesses, and I smile back at her.
