Love Letters: A Rose Harbor Novel (28 page)

“Yes, I lied.”

“But why?” That didn’t make sense to Ellie.

Again her mother lowered her head as though ashamed. “I have no excuse … I told myself it was a protective measure. If you had negative feelings about your father, then he wouldn’t have a chance to hurt you the way he did me.”

“Oh Mom.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, Ellie.”

“You said you tried to reach him again later?” She’d gotten sidetracked but wanted to hear what else her mother had to say. “When I was five and wanted a doll for my birthday.”

“Yes.” She hesitated long enough to swallow and seemed to need to collect her thoughts. “My parents meant well, but my mother spoiled you something terrible. You were her only grandchild and the apple of her eye. But I could see how badly you needed a father’s influence. My dad tried, but he was older and often impatient. I was beginning to feel like a burden living with my family. Then you started asking questions about your daddy and I couldn’t bear it. I looked for Scott and was willing to do anything to bring him back into our lives, even if it meant standing up to my parents.”

“Did you find him?” Ellie asked, and her voice, too, had dropped to a whisper, as if she were afraid speaking out loud would somehow dissuade her mother from explaining the truth.

Virginia wrung her hands and nodded.

“And?” Ellie pressed.

Again it seemed to take several minutes for her mother to gain her composure enough to continue. “I found him … he was living in the Tacoma area. I went to see him.”

“Did Grandma and Grandpa know what you were doing?”

“No, I didn’t dare tell them … at least not until afterward, when …” She bit off this last part as if she couldn’t find it in her to say the words aloud. “Once I told them what happened, my mother was deeply upset. She’d warned me about Scott again and again, but I refused to listen. When Dad heard what I’d done, he was furious with me.”

“You found my father?” Ellie didn’t want her mother to sidestep what had happened at their meeting. It was important that Ellie know, especially before she met her father for dinner. Already she knew more than she ever had, and she wanted to keep the flow of information coming. “You went to Tacoma to find my father.”

“Yes,” Virginia answered simply.

“What did he say?” Ellie asked, more gently this time, seeing how fragile her mother looked. Her shoulders had slumped slightly forward, as if weighted down by years of sadness and pain.

“I … I didn’t speak to him.”

Ellie noticed that her mother struggled to keep from weeping. Feeling dreadful for her, Ellie reached across and gripped hold of her mother’s hand. “Why not, Mom—you’d come so far?” Seeing that she’d defied her parents and gone to the trouble to locate Scott, something dreadful must have taken place that prevented Virginia from following through.

“I discovered Scott had a new wife and a new family,” her mother whispered brokenly. “I saw them all together … and they were happy, laughing and joking together. Scott was out in the front yard tossing a baseball back and forth with two young boys. I sat in my car, watching them all.”

Ellie could easily picture the scene. Her mother parked against the curb, gathering her nerve to walk up to the front door and knock, only to have Scott come out front to play ball with his stepsons.

One of whom must have been Tom. Ellie swallowed back her hurt and disillusionment.

“I don’t know how long I sat in my car, but eventually a woman came outside with a tray filled with glasses of lemonade and cookies.”

Ellie knew her mother’s heart must have sunk at this perfect picture of the idyllic family.

“Then,” her mother continued in the same low tones, “Scott wrapped his arm around this other woman’s waist and kissed her. He’d found someone else to love. The boys called him Dad, and that told me everything I needed to know. I was too late. If I’d gone to talk to him I would only have been an embarrassment.”

This explained a great deal to Ellie. It was from that point on that her mother’s love for her father had turned to something just short of hate. That was the only way Virginia had found to deal with the rejection and the loss. Keeping Ellie away from her father was a form of protection for them both. While that was an excuse, it hadn’t been right. Deep down, Virginia recognized that Ellie deserved to know her father.

“I can understand why you left without speaking to him,” Ellie assured her mother. Seeing how miserable she was stuck with overbearing parents and a strong-willed child while her ex-husband had found a new family and a new life. To rub salt in her mother’s wounds, by all appearances her ex-husband was far happier than Virginia had ever made him.

“I couldn’t make myself do it,” her mother whispered. “I returned home, sobbing the entire way, and when I got to the house I confessed to my parents what I’d done.”

It went without saying how upset her grandparents would have been with their daughter.

“Mom tried to comfort me, but Dad said I deserved what I got by running back to that riffraff.”

Ellie remembered something else. “Grandpa bought me the doll.”

“He did.”

“And I loved it.”

Her mother looked stricken. “You didn’t, Ellie, you didn’t at all.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie could remember the delight she felt when she got the special gift she’d longed for the year she turned five. “I was so excited when I opened that present.”

“You loved that doll until you learned it wasn’t from your daddy. From that point on, you rarely played with it.”

Ellie didn’t remember it like that.

“In fact, I had to take it away from you because I found you jumping on it and crying. You’d never done anything like that before. I was shocked and put the doll up and out of sight.”

That hardly seemed possible. Ellie was always a well-behaved child—at least that was the way she liked to think of herself.

“After a while I gave it back to you. Before I could stop you, you grabbed hold of the doll’s arm and tossed it against the wall, claiming you hated that toy.”

“I didn’t.” Ellie’s hand came up to her chest in shock that she would treat any of her things in such a manner. Her grandfather would have been outraged.

“You cried and cried and said you didn’t want it any longer. I was sure you’d change your mind, but you didn’t. In the end, I took it away from you.”

The reason was obvious, although Ellie had no memory of any of this.

“A couple years later we gave the doll away to a charity.”

All Ellie recalled was how desperately she’d wanted this special doll, but hearing her mother recount the story told her that what Ellie had really wanted was the father she’d never known.

Once home, I unloaded my purchases from the farmers’ market and immediately dealt with the clams and fresh salmon, storing them in the refrigerator. I found my conversation with Corrie McAfee enlightening. Little by little, I was learning details about Mark, and key elements were starting to come together in my head. He had money, or did at one time. If so, he lived frugally. What Corrie said about him possibly having served in the military came as a surprise. As we walked back to the inn I asked Mark about that and he’d actually warned me off. Unfortunately the conversation had gotten out of hand, which I regretted.

“Leave it,” he’d said to me.

“Leave it,” I’d echoed, and then, because he’d irritated me, I’d added, “What exactly does that mean?”

Mark arched his thick brows as if the question caught him off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t say something like that to me and expect it to go unchallenged.”

His forehead creased with a deep frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” I insisted. “You more or less just warned me off.”

He shook his head as if I was speaking utter nonsense and then had the audacity to say, “No, I didn’t.”

If he thought he could downplay the comment, then he was wrong. Maybe I should accept that challenge. “What I should do is call Roy McAfee,” I said, staring him down, “and pay him to do a background check on you.”

“Go ahead.” Mark didn’t appear the least bit threatened. He grinned and appeared to be enjoying our outlandish exchange. “There’s nothing to find, but if you want to waste your money, then feel free.”

I glared at him, half expecting him to laugh. His face, to my disappointment, remained completely deadpan. “I hope you know how much you irritate me.”

“I irritate you?” he asked, as if astonished. “You’re the one who’s constantly harping on me.”

“I most certainly am not.” Oh, the man was impossible. “I am probably one of the most even-tempered, likeable women you’ll ever meet.” I didn’t take this insult lightly. “You know what?” I said. “It might do us both a world of good to stay away from each other for a while.” I wasn’t sure how serious I was, but I wasn’t willing to back down.

He shrugged as if it wouldn’t matter to him one way or the other. “That’s fine with me. Would you like me to stop work on the gazebo? Don’t think I haven’t got plenty of other projects in the works. If you want me to stay away, then far be it from me to trespass where I’m not welcome.”

All of a sudden Rover let loose with a piercing howl that startled both of us. I gasped with surprise, and Mark looked equally taken aback. Rover sat on his haunches and stared up at the pair of us as if to comment that this disagreement had gone on long enough.

“He doesn’t like to hear us fighting,” I suspected.

“Probably not.” Mark looked down and shuffled his feet.

I was willing to admit that I’d let my temper get the better of me. This was rare for me. Generally, I’m not one to fly off the handle or make idle threats. I’d pounced on Mark and felt I owed him an apology. “Rover’s right. You’re a good friend and whatever is in your past that you’re hiding is your business. It’s none of my affair.”

His brows came together in a thick frown. “Who says I’m hiding anything?”

“Right.” It was better not to broach that subject, seeing that we clearly disagreed.

Mark sighed. “I guess I got pretty hot under the collar, too. I take it you still want me to work on the gazebo.”

“I do.” The one thing I didn’t want was for the gazebo project to linger on for months, the way the rose garden had.

He nodded, accepting my peace offering. “If you really want to make it up to me, I’d take a few more of those cookies you baked yesterday morning.”

The man was so predictable. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Jo Marie?”

“Yeah?” I turned back from the cookie jar to find him staring at me intently. It looked as if he wanted to say something but felt unsure. “What?” I asked.

“I’ve noticed something about you.”

“Oh?”

He hesitated. “You’ve been acting a bit off lately.”

“I have?” I nearly laughed out loud. I was sure this was an exaggeration. Although to be fair, I felt I should give him the opportunity to explain himself. “How do you mean?”

He shrugged as if uncomfortable with the conversation, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t very well stop. “First off, you’ve been prying into my life.”

“Yeah, well …”

“And you’ve been moody, too.”

“No, I haven’t,” I argued. Really, this was too much.

“And odd.”

“Odd?” This time I couldn’t stop myself, and I gave one short laugh.

Mark stuffed his hands into his pockets. “The other day, out of the blue, you started talking about Paul’s sweatshirt.”

I froze.

“You made some nonsensical comment about it losing its scent.”

I didn’t move, barely breathed.

“We were talking about something else entirely and then you blurted this out, and for a moment I thought you were about to cry. I don’t understand it.”

He waited, as if he wanted me to explain. I couldn’t. “Is that all?” I asked, making light of it.

“No, there’s something else.”

There was more?

“You’ve been in this cleaning frenzy, rearranging cupboards, putting down shelf paper, bringing items out of the attic, and that’s only what I’ve seen. A couple nights I’ve looked at the inn and your light is on well past midnight. You’re having trouble sleeping, too, aren’t you?”

That was true, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“As best I can tell, all this odd behavior started about the time you got Paul’s last letter.”

“Oh.” I probably should have put up a defense, explained that he was wrong, completely off base. I wanted to but didn’t, mainly because I feared he might be right. This wasn’t easy to admit.

All of a sudden his gaze narrowed. “You okay?”

“Of course I am,” I insisted, with more bravado than I felt.

He seemed to be waiting for me to hand him the cookies. I did, but still he lingered. “You don’t look okay.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, and let it be known that I didn’t appreciate him pressuring me.

He shrugged as if to say he wasn’t willing to argue about it. “If you say so.” Before he left, he thoughtfully filled Rover’s water dish and then stepped back as my “comfort dog” eagerly lapped it up, splashing water over the sides of his bowl.

After Mark was gone, I couldn’t seem to hold still. I moved from room to room with no purpose or destination in mind. I was at a loss; the more I thought about what he’d said, the more upset I got. I wrapped my arms around my middle and fought off the urge to cry.