Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ better decades. “Saying I’m sorry,” he replied quietly, addressing his words to the body beneath the soil.

      June could feel her spine stiffening. “Why would you be sorry? You didn’t know her.” There was a stillness in the air, not even the sound of an insect whizzing by. Nothing. Only the words hung there between them. “Did you?”

      “Yes. For a little while.” Each word was slowly measured out, like precious drops of water in the desert. “She was my wife.”

      June raised her chin, anger and defiance warring within her for control even as her voice remained steely. “That’s not possible. She was only married once. And he’s dead.”

      Eyes that had seen too much now looked at her. “April?”

      She glared at him, stubborn, hostile. Damning him. “No.”

      Recognition flooded him. She’d grown so much. How many years had gone by? He’d lost them all and lost count. “June.”

      “Process of elimination?” Sarcasm wrapped itself around each word. “Simple enough, I suppose.” This was her father. Her father had returned. Why the hell had he done that now, when it no longer meant anything? When her mother could no longer fling herself into his arms and dampen his shirt with her joy? “You couldn’t very well say Max, now could you?”

      His eyes swept over her, drinking in the sight. Tears stood still, shimmering against an intense field of blue. She had his eyes, but everything else belonged to Rose. “My God, June, you look just like her. Just like your mother.” His voice almost broke. “She was such a beautiful woman.”

      “Not after all the life had been drained out of her,” June retorted coldly. She wanted to scream things at him, to tell him how horrible he was for leaving them all, for leaving her mother and condemning her to a life of sorrow until she completely wasted away. “What are you doing here, now? Run out of places to see?”

      He tried to draw himself up but couldn’t. It was as if the weight of his transgressions had permanently bent him. “I came back to say I’m sorry.”

      “Won’t do you any good.” June deliberately stooped down and picked up the flowers he had placed there, then tossed them aside. She replaced them with her own. “She can’t hear you.”

      He knew it was too late for that. But not too late for everything. Not yet. “But you can. You and April and Max.”

      “Just because you have ears doesn’t mean you can hear.” Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she looked at him. He hardly looked like the man in the photograph her grandmother kept. The man there had been laughing. It was his wedding day, his and her mother’s. She didn’t remember ever seeing her mother smile that way. Her expression had been one of hope. “You didn’t. She begged you to stay and you didn’t hear her.”

      He rubbed his hand over his face, searching for explanations to things he could no longer even explain to himself. “You were too young to understand.”

      “But April wasn’t.” Her sister had been eleven when their father had left them. And, in her own way, just as shattered as their mother had been by the event. But only April had rallied, because she needed to take care of them as their mother drifted away from reality. “Grandmother wasn’t. And they told me that my mother begged you not to leave. Begged you. And you left anyway. Said you felt as if this town was strangling you. And that we didn’t matter.”

      “I never said that,” he protested, trying to take her arm.

      She pulled away. “You didn’t have to. Actions always speak louder than words, especially up here.” She started to walk away, not wanting to share this hallowed ground with him. “And your actions spoke volumes.”

      “June, wait, I want to make it up to you. To you and the others. What can I do?”

      It wasn’t until she was back in her vehicle again that she gave him an answer.

      “Leave.”

Chapter Nine

      June wasn’t at the farmhouse when he returned with the extra containers of white paint he’d picked up in town. But she’d already told him she might not be, so he didn’t think anything of it at first.

      It was only when he climbed back up on the ladder again, and his view of the surrounding area was much wider, that he began to wonder about her whereabouts. The tractor was exactly where she’d left it when she’d returned to the house late yesterday. If she wasn’t using the tractor, what was she doing?

      As the question occurred to him, Kevin shook his head. There had to be a hundred different things that needed doing around a farm. She could be busy with any one of them. Not having been raised on a farm himself, he had no idea exactly what she was busy with or where.

      And he had no idea why an uneasy feeling kept buzzing around in his head.

      He was just a born worrier, he supposed. At least, that was what Lily had called him. Stretching, he reached over to a section he’d missed earlier.

      He hadn’t always been a worrier, he thought. Growing up in Seattle, he’d been as carefree as they came, making plans for himself and the life he was sure was ahead of him, ripe for the taking. He’d wanted something to do with medicine, to be a surgeon and practice in a teeming metropolis, occasionally traveling to third-world nations to help people who would otherwise never even see their twenties without a doctor.

      A smile teased his lips as he began painting another board he’d recently replaced. He supposed he and Jimmy Stewart had a lot in common that way, at least, the character Stewart had played in It’s A Wonderful Life. Planning one life, leading another.

      Nothing had gone according to plan for him, not since his parents had both died within such a short period of time of each other. Rather than attending college with an eye out for medical school, he’d gone to work instead. He’d taken a few courses at night when time permitted and gotten a two-year degree in business to help him eventually take over and run the cab service that had allowed him to put food on the table for his siblings.

      They were right—whoever had said that life was something that happened while you were making plans. His had happened while he shelved his own plans.

      He didn’t make plans anymore. There was no real point. The three people he’d been providing for were providing for themselves now, and living their own lives.

      No, no more plans, he thought, climbing down one rung, but damn, he had to do something with himself once this vacation was over.

      He let his mind drift as he worked. Maybe he’d buy into that home security business he’d been looking into, when he got back to Seattle. Security at home was the kind of thing that was right up his alley, anyway.

      Kevin started seriously considering it.

      The sound of an engine approaching caught his attention and pulled him out of his mental wanderings.

      At first, he thought it might be a plane flying low overhead. Shayne or Sydney making a quick run to Anchorage for one reason or another. But nothing was moving in the sky other than a flock of birds.

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