Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ looked into the face of her son-in-law.

      The years hadn’t been kind to him, she noted. Good. His once-handsome features were dulled and etched with the lines of hardship. There was no joy about him, nor excitement or lust for the open road. She hadn’t recognized him.

      There’d been a thousand different things she’d planned to say to him if she ever saw him again. But all she could do was sigh. It spoke volumes.

      “What are you doing here?”

      He met her gaze head-on, though he looked as if he wanted to look away. “I’ve come to apologize.” He took a step forward, then stopped. “I know I can’t make amends, but I want to try.”

      Painful memories assaulted her in waves. She did her best to ignore them, to beat them back. Ursula laced her hands together in front of her. “Rose is dead.”

      The words seemed to cut into him. He closed his eyes. “I know. I was at her grave today.” When he opened them again, tears shimmered there. “Was it painful?”

      Crocodile tears, Ursula told herself. “Broken hearts usually are.”

      It vaguely occurred to her that men who were irretrievably lost at sea probably wore the same desperate look. “Ursula, I—”

      She didn’t want to hear words that would do no good. The past couldn’t be fixed. She was only concerned with the present and whatever future there was before them. She always had been.

      She thought of gesturing him toward a chair, then decided that he needed to stand.

      “You know, when she first died, I thought about finding you and killing you myself with my bare hands. Tearing your body from limb to limb and scattering the remains from here to Nome.” She’d gone over that scenario at great length in her head as she lay awake at night. In the beginning, it was what kept her sane.

      Ursula looked up into the face of the man who’d cast such a irreversible spell over her only daughter. The hatred, she discovered, had long since left her heart. A heart given to hate withers and dies and she’d had grandchildren to care for.

      “But the truth is, you weren’t responsible for Rose’s death. She was. I lost three men. All good.” She looked at him pointedly. “Better than you, no doubt.” She didn’t wait for his grunted response. “The trick to life is that you just keep on living it.” She picked up the mail again and continued sorting. “Keep on looking for the good in it. Rose had good in her life.” Stopping, she peered over her shoulder at her grandchildren’s father. “She had three kids who loved and needed her. But she chose to look only at the negative. So, in the end, it wasn’t you who did her in—it was her.”

      She picked up another batch and began to slowly sort through them by route. Since none of her grandchildren had called to tell her that Wayne Yearling was in the area, she assumed that she was his first stop. “This making amends thing, does it include your kids?”

      “Yes.”

      “Good.” She nodded, approving. “You should try to connect with them. They’re still young. They can come around in time, although I wouldn’t be holding my breath about any parties being held in your honor real soon.” This was, she knew, going to take a great deal of time.

      The pause behind her was so long she thought he’d left the building. “I’m dying, Ursula. The doctor gave me maybe six months. Maybe a little more.”

      Her hands were stilled for a moment as she took in this latest curve ball that life was throwing her way. And then she went on sorting briskly.

      “We’re all dying, Wayne. You just happen to know more or less when. My way of thinking, you’ve got a jump on the rest of us.” She shoved a letter into a space that was already crammed. Gilhooly hadn’t come by for his mail in a long time. She wondered if she should be forwarding it somewhere. Tabling the thought for now, she turned around to look at the man who’d managed to drop two bombshells in as many minutes. “To make those amends you mentioned before you have to stand in front of the postmaster general in the sky.”

      For the first time since he’d entered, there was a trace of a smile on his lips. “Ursula, I don’t know what to say to you to—”

      “Then don’t try,” she cut him off. She didn’t need or want his apologies. She wanted her son-in-law to move on to the next level. “I’ve made my peace with all this, Wayne. With you, so to speak. Spend your energy on the others.”

      The mention of others had his smile fading. “I saw June at the cemetery.”

      Her mouth curved slightly. June. The fierce one. “I’m surprised you’re still standing. She took your leaving and her mother’s death just as hard as the others, even though she was just a bit of a thing.” Maybe even more so, because she’d been in need of all the nurturing that had to come from different quarters. From her and April and Max.

      He seemed to read her thoughts. Despair had Wayne sinking into a chair, his tanned, long fingers knotting before him, like a schoolboy at a loss how to make things right again. “How do I make them understand that I’m sorry?”

      That, she knew, wouldn’t be easy. “By staying. By not giving up when they turn their backs on you.” And they will, at first, she thought. He couldn’t expect anything less. His expression was so disheartened, she was compelled to say something encouraging to him. “But you’re their father. They’re so angry because they loved you. Anger’s easier to break down than indifference.”

      Talking wasn’t going to change anything right now. Not even his mood. He needed something to keep him busy. She looked down at the mail sack on the floor. “How are you at the alphabet?”

      There was a note of hope in his voice, as if her making the suggestion meant that she wanted him to remain. “I know it.”

      “Good.” She pushed the sack in his direction with her foot. The bag toppled. Mail spilled out. “Then come here and make yourself useful.”

      Eager to make amends, he was quick to comply.

      He’d been lying here in bed for the past twenty minutes, holding her to him and feeling her heart beat. He didn’t want to let the moment end. But it had to. They couldn’t remain like this indefinitely.

      He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. They’d made love again and he was absolutely drained. “Still want me to talk to your father for you?”

      She wriggled out of bed, reaching for her clothes. “No, I can fight my own battles.”

      He sat up and scanned the room, looking for his own clothes. “This isn’t a battle.” He quickly got into his underwear and jeans. He meant to give her privacy as she got dressed, but it was hard averting his eyes. Hard not wanting her again. “From what you’ve told me, he wants a reconciliation.”

      She jammed her arms into her shirt as if she were firing a weapon at an unseen target. “What he wants doesn’t concern me.”

      Pushing her hands away, he buttoned her shirt for her, his eyes intent on hers. “June, he’s your father.”

      It was a term that meant nothing in this case. “He’s a man who just happened to be there at the moment of conception, that’s all. To be a father is something else altogether. СКАЧАТЬ