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  “What exactly did your father say to you about the money?”

  She peeled Tilda’s dress over her head without jiggling her much at all, and in seconds, the nightgown had replaced it, and she was straightening it around her chubby legs, and then tucking the covers around her again. When she finished, she just sat there looking down at Tilda’s sleeping face, stroking her hair. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I just want all the information before I confront my father.”

  She turned and met his eyes, nodding slowly. She got up onto her feet, and picked up what looked like a small walkie talkie from a charger base. “Let’s go outside, all right?” She nodded toward the suite’s sitting room, and he saw the french doors in the back. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Do you have a drink?”

  “Yeah.” She walked into the next room, unlocked a cabinet, and took out two glasses and a bottle of burgundy wine. “It was waiting in the room, when we arrived. That Ida Mae knows how to treat her guests, right?”

  “Sure does.” He came and took the bottle from her, expertly removed its cork, and filled the glasses, giving the bottle a little twist at the end to prevent dripping. He handed one to her, then followed her through the doors and outside. The balcony was big enough to hold a small iron table with two matching chairs, all painted white, and a fern that probably ought to go inside soon.

  He didn’t sit though. He leaned on the railing, looking out over the back yard. There were gardens out beyond the swing set, through a little white gated archway. Paths wound all through them, though most of the plants were dead or dying. It was December after all. Over the hills, Christmas lights gleamed bright from almost every house in sight.

  Emily set the walkie talkie on the table and stood at the railing beside him, took a bracing sip of wine, then said, “My father handed me the money and said he knew it would be hard for me to end my pregnancy, but that everyone agreed it would be for the best. He said that the money was to make up for what I was going through and would help me with my education.”

  Joey felt her pain, knew it had been a horrible moment for her. Maybe the most horrible moment she'd had, up to then. God knew she’d had worse since. That day in her doctor’s office, getting the news that was a mother’s nightmare. She shouldn’t have had to face it alone. He should’ve been there, in both cases. But he hadn’t known.

  “We argued,” she said. “I asked if he was seriously asking me to get rid of his grandchild. He said he couldn’t stand to see me throw my life away. Like living my life for that little angel in there could ever be considered a waste.” She thinned her lips, shook her head. “I cursed him. I yelled at him. I told him to keep your father’s money, let it comfort him in his old age, because he no longer had a daughter to do it. And he certainly wouldn’t have grandchildren. Not ever.” She closed her eyes, took a healthy gulp from her glass. “And then I stormed out.”

  Joey turned to face her. “I’m so sorry, Em.”

  She was still staring out at the stars, the night. “I went back later that night. I was going to pack up my things and leave.” She lowered her head. “And that’s when I found him.”

  “That’s when you...oh my God, Emily. That was the night your father died?”

  She nodded. “My last words to him were shouted in anger. I’ll never have the chance to make that right.”

  He put his arms around her, and she came to him. It felt natural, normal. He held her, and she cried. Warm tears soaked through his shirt, touching his skin. He stroked her hair and ached for her pain.

  “I couldn’t see you or your family again. I just couldn’t. I was sure you knew. Daddy made it sound like you’d been a part of the whole conversation.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “As soon as he was buried, I went back to New Mexico. I left the money in the donation box at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Santa Fe, with a note. ‘You owe me one, Mother Mary.’ Funny, right? Like someone out there really had the power to do anything for me.”

  “You used to believe in…things like that.”

  “I don’t believe in anything, not anymore.” She sniffled, and lifted her head from his shirt to look up at him. Her puffy, wet eyes broke his heart. “I couldn’t give the money back to your family. I never wanted you or your father to know I hadn’t done what… what I’d been paid to do.”

  “Thank God you didn’t,” he said. He put a palm against her cheek. “Thank God you carried her, you gave her life. You took care of her. On your own, you did all that.”

  She closed her eyes. “I owe you for the years you missed.”

  “I owe you for the years I wasn’t there to help you, to take care of you and our little girl.” Her tears were spilling over and his eyes were welling up too. “If I hadn’t been the guy I was, you would never have believed I knew about her and didn’t care.”

  “You were a kid.”

  “So were you.” He stared into her eyes. “But I’m here now, Em. I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Then he lowered his mouth to hers, and he tasted the salt of tears on her lips when he kissed her.

  #

  He tasted the same. He cupped the back of her head, kind of cradling it, just the way he used to. Every memory came crashing back to her, every delicious sensory detail about the way it used to be with them. Minutia she thought she’d forgotten, but they’d only been dormant, frozen in cryogenic stasis.

  They were real again now. He had the softest lips, yielding, moving so gently. Like they were imbibing her. Like she was air to him.

  He kissed her like Romeo kissed Juliet the night they said goodbye. He kissed her like that every single time. Like he couldn’t help himself.

  She went soft against him, sinking into his arms. They were muscled steel, the armor worn by his soul. It felt good to surrender herself to the embrace of someone stronger. It felt good to lean. To be held. And it felt even better to try on this new belief. To try and think he really hadn’t known.

  He looked down into her eyes, searching for something. For the old Emily, maybe. She didn’t think he’d find her. Hell, she didn’t think she could find her.

  “I wish things had been different,” he said. “Maybe we’d have been together all this time.”

  She lowered her head quickly, a sheer knee-jerk reaction. “No. We wouldn’t’ve been. I had to be in New Mexico taking classes, or I wouldn’t have the Vetmobile right now.”

  “I’d have gone with you.”

  “You’d have come here anyway, to be with your dad when you almost lost him. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have the Long Branch. You’d have missed out on knowing the whole giant, overwhelming, too-decent-to-hate, Big Falls branch of your family.” She blinked, gave her head a shake. “They’re a hell of a bunch of women. You know that, right?”

  “Of course I do.” He shrugged. “Goodness sort of shines from a woman. It’s what pulled me out to that pool I hated, summer night after summer night when you and your girlfriends would sneak in to go swimming.” He clasped her shoulders, stepped back a little to look at her from arm’s length. “You glow, Emily Hawkins. You always have, and I imagine you always will.”

  Then he grinned. “Tilda has it, too.”

  “You think Tilda made the moon, don’t you?”

  He glanced back into the suite, through the still-open bedroom door, at the sleeping angel in the big bed. “And the sun and the stars and all the planets. Don’t you?”

  “I do. I feel like I was born the day she was.”

  He nodded, and she knew he felt the same. She felt the empathic connection between them. There was a bond, now, wasn’t there? A bond between them as Tilda’s mother and her father. Not a romantic one, and not even a bond like friendship is a bond, but a bond of being goofy in love with their little girl.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve come to you, I should’ve faced you, but I was just…”

  “Heartbroken,” he said
. “Alone, and young and pregnant, and thinking I knew and didn’t care. You would’ve come around in a few days, once you’d had time to think. But then you lost your father.” He shook his head. “We need to let go of all that. Start over, right here, right now. We need to do that for her.”

  “You really turned out all right, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t go swelling my head, now.” He looked at her, then back inside, at Tilda. “I should go.”

  She nodded. He clasped her hand and leaned down to kiss her again, just as softly and sweetly, but shorter and with a little less certainty. “I promise I’ll talk to my father. I’ll get to the truth.”

  The violins in her head stopped playing with an ear-bleed inducing squawk. Her face felt as if it turned to stone, and she said, “I already told you the truth.”

  He blinked at her. “I still have to talk to him. I need to hear his side of the story.”

  “Fine. Talk to him. If he can come up with some other reason he might’ve handed my father fifty grand in cash immediately after a discussion about my pregnancy, you let me know. I love a good fairytale.”

  He blinked, managing to look as confused as if he’d just stepped out his front door and onto planet Mars.

  “And then there’s the fact that he never told you. My God, Joey, he never told you I was carrying your child.”

  “I know. Believe me, Em, I know. That’s why I need to talk to him. I need answers.”

  “He doesn’t have answers. Excuses maybe—”

  “I need to hear his side of it, Em. He’s my father.” He heaved a sigh, seemed about to say something more, then he shook his head and muttered, “I’m gonna go. If you need anything, you call me. Okay?”

  She pressed her lips to keep from asking him how he could doubt her word about this and instead just nodded. Then he turned and walked quickly but quietly across the sitting room and out the door. He closed it softly behind him. She barely heard his retreating boot steps, the hall was so thickly carpeted. And that was it. He was gone.

  And she was reeling with the knowledge that she’d opened her heart to him, and that he didn’t believe her.

  #

  Joey had time to think as he walked back to the Long Branch. It was a solid two miles and he was grateful he’d worn his lined denim jacket. Despite the earlier cool winter sunshine, it was chilly tonight. He could see his breath.

  Em was angry again. He wasn’t even sure why. Did she really think he could not talk to his father about this? It would be illogical to expect that, and he was pretty sure she’d realize it once she cooled down and thought about it a little.

  She’d always had a temper.

  Hell, he was angry, too. If his father had known about Emily’s pregnancy and not told him—he just couldn’t have. He couldn’t have done that.

  So he had to get things out in the open between him and Bobby Joe. And then he had to figure out how to feel about that.

  Until then, he figured he’d give her some space.

  But damn, until she’d got her dander up, things had been…magic between them. Like going back in time. No, like bringing time forward, bringing the past into the now. It was familiar, so familiar, but also new. Different. The feelings between them hadn’t gone away. They’d evolved.

  They were parents now. They’d created a life together.

  They’d made Matilda Louise Hawkins.

  His thoughts ground to a halt there, and his pace slowed down. “I want her to have my name,” he said. “Matilda Louise McIntyre.” He smiled, loving the sound of it in the night air, and said it again, louder. “Matilda Louise McIntyre. Now that’s a name that was meant to be.”

  The Christmas tree lights were still gleaming, but the parking lot was all but empty when he walked into the big driveway. Only a handful of vehicles remained, every one belonging to family.

  Bobby Joe had come back. He and Vidalia were waiting for him in the Long Branch, and so were his two brothers and sister-in-law Kiley, who sent him a worried smile when he walked into the dining room. They were all sitting around a big table in the back.

  “There he is,” Vidalia said, getting to her feet. “Your father has some explaining to do, Joseph.” Then she nodded to Kiley.

  Kiley got up too, and then both came toward him. Vi patted his shoulder. Kiley gave him a hug and then they went into the barroom.

  Joey stiffened his spine, bracing himself inwardly for the discussion to come, and strode to the table where his father was sitting. Bobby Joe was a handsome man. Rugged face and dark hair, heavy brows and a laugh that was infectious. But he wasn’t laughing tonight or even smiling. He was morose. And he ought to be.

  His brothers had inherited their father’s bone structure, and a softer version of his coloring.

  “Rob and I want to stay for this, Joe,” Jason said. “I think it’s a family thing. But it’s a you-thing first, so it’s up to you.”

  “You can stay.” Joe pulled out a chair and sat down. He was searching his father’s face across the table from him, sort of pleading from inside his own chest for him to say it wasn’t true. That Emily was wrong. But Bobby Joe couldn’t quite look him in the eye. His hands were on the table, one set of fingers kneading the other. His gaze bounced around the red checkered tablecloth to the glasses in front of each of them.

  Joey’s was clean and empty with a pitcher of beer beside it. He filled it up, took a sip, swallowed. “Dad?”

  Bobby Joe’s eyes met his. He said, “I made a bad decision, and it’s haunted me ever since, son. But I’m gonna tell you everything. All I ask is that you hear me out.”

  Another sip, a longer one. Joey set the mug down and nodded. “That’s what I’m here for. If you hadn’t come back, I’d have come to find you. So go ahead. And this time,don't leave anything out.”

  He nodded slow, clearly tormented. “Henry came to me. He told me you had got his daughter pregnant. Went on and on about how she was a genius and how her whole brilliant future could be ruined.”

  “She is a genius. We always knew that,” Joey said.

  Jason nodded. Robby picked up his glass to punctuate the statement with an unspoken hear, hear!

  “I tried to calm him down,” Bobby Joe went on. “I assured him we’d do whatever it took to take care of Emily and the baby, that no son of mine would shirk his responsibilities, and so on. He said no, that she’d decided…” He lowered his head, closed his eyes. “That she’d decided to end the pregnancy.” A long sigh erupted from deep inside him. “I said she ought to talk to you first, and he said it was her decision to make and she’d made it. She was at the clinic already, and afterward would be going back to college. There was nothing you could do to change her mind.”

  “That wasn’t true, though,” Joey said. “Emily never had any intention of…that.”

  “That’s pretty obvious now, son, but it wasn’t then.” Bobby Joe shook his head sadly. “I believed him, believed it was a done deal. I knew it would break your heart, Joe. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you when you couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Joey heard his father, but he heard his own anger louder. “I had a right to know.”

  “I know you did. I know you did. But Henry died that very night, and Emily was gone. She just up and left, and I just….” He shook his head. “I made a mistake and I’m sorry.”

  Joe took a long, slow pull from his glass, set it down, and sought his brothers’ eyes. He saw sympathy and support there. Bobby Joe had been wrong in what he’d done and they both knew it.

  Setting the glass down, Joe got to his feet again, too full of anger and frustration to sit still. “What about the money, Dad?”

  “Money?” Jason blurted. He and Rob both looked from him to their father, clearly stunned.

  Bobby Joe pressed his lips tight, shaking his head rapidly. “A shakedown is what that was. All those years working for us. I was good to Henry. Paid him more than was even reasonable.”

  “You said you’d tell me everything.
So tell me why Henry had fifty grand in cash that he said came from you.”

  Bobby Joe nodded. “Henry went off about how his daughter deserved recompense. Recompense, that’s what he said. Probably the first time he’d used that word in his life. I was furious. It was obvious he was using the pregnancy to wheedle money out of us. But I wrote him a check. I also told him I’d give him a month to find another job.” He lowered his head. “He died that night. Not before he’d cashed the check, though. He must’ve gone from my office straight to the bank, the ungrateful….” He bit his lip. His heavy shoulders rose and fell tiredly. “When Emily took off without a word, I assumed she’d taken the money and gone back to school like her father told me she’d planned to do.”

  He got up and came around the table. Joey waited as his father approached. When they stood toe to toe, Bobby Joe looked him right in the eyes, and said, “That’s the truth, Joseph. I swear it on my love for Vidalia. That’s the truth. And I have been sorry for keeping it from you every single day since. It just…it got to where it was easier to just let it go.”

  Joey stared right back. It felt as if his chest was on fire. “You cost me three and half years with my daughter. And she might not have another year left.”

  Jason’s chair scraped the floor as he got up, too. “Don’t be thinking that way.”

  Bobby Joe said, “I know what Emily thinks I did. That the money was a payoff. I would never pay a woman to abort my own flesh and blood, and I think you know it.”

  Shaking his head, Joey backed away, turned and headed toward the stairs and up them. As he slammed into his room and locked the door, he knew, even through the haze of anger and regret and the sense of injustice, that he wasn’t going to gut the second floor of the Long Branch. He wasn’t going to turn it into one big bachelor’s paradise.

  He was going to build a house with a big play yard and a bedroom fit for a princess. He knew that with sudden, blinding clarity.

  What he didn’t know was how he was ever going to forgive his father.

  Chapter Eight