The Wager. Metsy Hingle

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СКАЧАТЬ father’s image—and all identifying him as Andrew Jardine. A sob tore from Laura’s throat as she spied the clipping dated only a dozen years ago of this smiling man who so resembled her father with his arms wrapped protectively around two young girls. “Andrew Jardine and twin daughters at school fund-raiser,” the caption read.

      Pain ripped through Laura like a storm. She squeezed her eyes shut, curled her hands into fists. How many times growing up had she wished that her father had survived that plane crash? That he’d been there to see her grow up—to carry her on his shoulders, to teach her to dance, to sit beside her at the father-daughter banquets at school? And how many times had she consoled herself with the knowledge that had he lived, her father would have loved her, been proud of the person she had become?

      Opening her eyes, Laura stared at the face in the news clippings. This man wasn’t her father. He only looked like him, she reasoned. Her mother would never lie to her—certainly never about something so important. Sucking in a breath, she told herself there was a simple explanation for the resemblance between the two men. There had to me. “Uncle Paul, who is Andrew Jardine? And why…why does he look so much like my father?”

      “Laura,” her uncle said, his voice heavy with anguish, “Andrew Jardine is your father.”

      Laura flinched, the words hitting her like a blow. She stared down at the damning news clippings, the images of the father she’d loved and never known. No, she wouldn’t believe it, refused to believe it. “You’re lying,” she accused, her voice hitching. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “He’s not my father. My father was Richard Harte. His plane was shot down in Vietnam, and he died before I was born.” She knew the story by heart, had listened to her mother’s tales about their great romance, the idyllic marriage cut short by her father’s untimely death. This man couldn’t be her father because that would mean…

      “Listen to me, Laura. There never was a Richard Harte. Your mother made up the name. Your father was Andrew Jardine. And he didn’t die in Vietnam. He died in New Orleans about five years ago.”

      “You’re lying!” Sobbing, she glared at him through tear-filled eyes. “Why are you doing this to me, Uncle Paul? Why are you making up such horrible lies?”

      “It’s the truth, Laura. I swear it on your mother’s grave. It’s the truth.”

      Oh, God! He was telling the truth, she realized. All these years, her mother and her Uncle Paul had lied to her.

      Which meant her life had been a lie.

      She wasn’t Richard Harte’s daughter.

      There was no Richard Harte.

      The heritage, the good name she’d been so proud of all her life, they weren’t really hers at all.

      Hysteria bubbled inside her. How many choices had she made based on who she’d believed herself to be? How many times had she found a relationship lacking because the man had not measured up to the sterling image of her father? When all the while her father had actually been…She choked back another sob.

      “I’m sorry, honey.”

      She thought of her mother, the person she’d loved and admired most in the world. How could you, Momma? How could you have lied to me all these years?

      “I know what a shock this is for you, finding out this way—”

      “Do you, Uncle Paul? Do you really have any idea how I feel?” Another bolt of pain ripped through her. Her heart ached as she stared at him—the honorary uncle she had loved and trusted all of her life. The man who had perpetuated the lifetime of lies her mother had told her. “I thought you loved me,” she told him, her voice breaking.

      “Laura, I do love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re like a daughter to me.” He gathered her to him, patted her back the way he had when she’d been a child and had fallen and skinned a knee.

      For a moment, because the ache inside her was so great, Laura took comfort in the feel of his sturdy shoulder beneath her cheek, the familiar scents of peppermint and pipe tobacco that she’d always associated with him. She wept, remembering how she’d crawled into her uncle’s lap as a little girl and listened to stories about his adventures in the navy and his close friendship with her father.

      And not a word of it had been true.

      The admission was like a knife in her chest. She lifted her head, took a step back and stared into his eyes. “How could Momma do this to me? How could you?”

      “Neither of us meant to hurt you. Please believe that. Hurting you was the last thing either of us wanted.”

      Laura mopped her wet cheeks with the handkerchief he offered her, then she clenched the white linen in her fist. “All these years I believed my father was a hero, that he and my mother had been deeply in love, devoted to each other.” The smiling face in the clippings on the table seemed to mock her as Laura recalled the child she had been, how each night she had gotten down on her knees and prayed for this man she’d believed to be in heaven watching over her. And all the while…all the while he hadn’t been in heaven. He hadn’t even been dead. He’d been alive and raising a family in New Orleans.

      Pain ripped through her at the sight of him with his arms around the twin girls. She pressed her palm to her breast, trying to ease the ache in her chest. When her mother had died in her arms that night on the dark, wet road, Laura had been positive that nothing could ever hurt her so deeply again.

      She had been wrong.

      Learning of her mother’s deception and then having the memory of the father she’d loved stripped away from her was every bit as wrenching. It was like losing both of them all over again.

      “I’m sorry, Laura. I’d sooner cut off my arm than hurt you.”

      But he had hurt her…terribly. So had her mother. Wrapping her arms more tightly about herself, Laura ignored the twinge in her left shoulder, the reminder of the accident that had left her with a separated shoulder, bumps and bruises, but had taken her mother’s life. Oh, God! She swallowed back the spurt of anguish that came as she thought of her mother asking her to forgive her. This was what her mother had tried to tell her that night.

      “Please, try to understand.”

      “I don’t understand. I can’t,” Laura countered. She looked at the jumble of clippings and photos on the table. “And I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

      “Believe that I love you,” her uncle told her, his voice softening. “And believe that from the moment your mother learned you were growing inside her and until the day that she died, she loved you, too.”

      “Is that why she lied to me all these years? Is that why you lied to me?”

      He brushed his fingers along her damp cheek where the last of the bruising from the accident had begun to fade. “It wasn’t my place to tell you. It was your mother’s.”

      Laura stepped away from his touch. “And she chose to deceive me.”

      Her uncle sighed. His hand fell to his side. “Juliet didn’t set out to deceive you. She only meant to help you. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

      “Why should I?”

      “Because СКАЧАТЬ