Heartstrings (23 page)

Following Sunday church services, Emily came home with Abby and Seth. Abby had dreaded meeting Mike at church, but her mind eased when she learned he was working, which she found odd. He never worked on Sundays, and if Tammy Jo’s moodiness was a good guide, she found it strange, too. Then Emily said he was at the Circle R. He had something to take care of.

The confrontation with her ex-husband didn’t happen, but her nerves were raw with anxiousness. She wasn’t looking forward to the conversation she should have had with her daughter a long time ago.

If Seth’s tense movements and brooding as they prepared lunch together were any indication, he was as on edge as she.

She set the plate of tuna sandwiches and a salad on the table while he poured sweet tea over the ice in tall glasses. He glanced at her when Emily entered the kitchen. Her big, yellow tomcat followed and meowed at the sliding glass door. Emily let the cat out, and he plopped down in the bright sunlight on the deck.

She turned and looked from Abby to Seth. “You two look like someone died.” Scrunching up her face, she shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans shorts. “No one died, did they?”

Abby went to Emily and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. “No. No one died.” She looked at Seth. He pulled out the chair, and Abby guided her to it. “Sit down and let’s eat.”

With suspicious looks at both them, Emily slowly took her seat. Seth held the back of Abby’s chair at the head of the table, then sat in his across from Emily, who watched them as he took one of the sandwiches and Abby filled her salad dish.

Emily ate her sandwich in silence for a few moments. “Okay.” She sipped her tea and set the glass on the table with a thump “Something’s going on. Seth, you’ve mutilated that sandwich, and Mom, if you mix that salad much more it’s going to become mush.”

Abby set her fork on her plate and met Seth’s troubled gaze.

“Just tell me what’s up with you two. You didn’t run off and elope last weekend and now are afraid to tell me, did you?”

“No, sunshine. Your momma and me didn’t elope.” His voice was so low it rumbled through Abby’s chest.

“Em, sweetheart, Seth and I do have something we need to tell you. And it won’t be easy.”

Emily’s eyes widened a bit and her shoulders squared. She bit her lip as she looked from Abby to Seth and back again. “Sounds scary.”

Seth pushed his chair back and stood, taking his plate with him. He smiled, but it never reached his eyes. “Not at all. C’mon, help me with the dishes, then we’ll all have a sit-down in the living room.”

Ten minutes later, her heart pounded so hard and fast she feared the beat could be heard clear to Amarillo. She sat on the couch, Emily took the chair by the piano and Seth eased in beside her on the sofa. She swallowed and looked up at him, hoping he knew how to explain their mistakes to their teenage daughter.

He took a deep breath, leaned over his long legs and rested his elbows on his thighs. As he stroked his beard, he said, “Emily, fifteen years ago your mom and me made some really stupid mistakes.”

Emily sat board straight and her face went white.

Abby laid her hand on his forearm, and he met her gaze. Her mouth went dry and blood rushed in her ears when she faced her daughter. “I want you to know I’ve always loved you and wish I’d never done what I did.”

With stark white shock draining her face, leaving the light freckles to stand out in stunning relief over her aristocratic nose she’d inherited from Seth, Emily started shaking her head.

Dear God, she’d figured it out on her own.

“That picture.”

“What picture?” she asked, glancing at Seth.

“At your house.” Emily stared at him. “The woman you said was your grandma... She looked a lot like me.” She paused and shook her head. Her gasped, quiet words bounced off the walls in the room to echo in her throbbing head. “You’re my father.”

“Yes.” His deep voice rasped.

“Did you know about me?”

* * * *

Acid swirled in Seth’s gut. He’d wanted her to know about him being her father ever since that day she answered Carolann’s door, but now he realized her knowing meant he had some explaining to do.

Explaining that didn’t blame anyone else but himself.

Not Mike, not Abby, not even his parents.

He stood, moved around the coffee table and knelt before Emily. He brushed loose strands of auburn hair from her forehead. His fingers lingered, barely touching her ashen face. “I knew about you, sunshine.”

She puckered her brow, and her green eyes glistened with pain, betrayal and confusion. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you... Didn’t you want me?”

Her quiet question stabbed him in the heart and twisted. His sinuses stung and his eyes burned. He struggled for a jagged breath. He pulled her into his arms and held her. But how did he answer her question? Yes, Abby’s marriage to his best friend and Mike’s words regarding his ability to be a good dad because of his parents’ messed up life had led to his staying away, but he’d made a conscious decision not to be part of Emily’s life.

A decision he would regret for as long as he lived.

He buried his nose into her hair, breathed the scent of strawberries and young girl, and fought the noose around his neck, but lost the battle.

“I told Seth not to be part of your life.”

At Abby’s tear-laced words, he looked over his shoulder at her. She met his gaze. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her face was etched with heartache.

“What?” Emily pushed away from him and looked at her mother. “Why?”

Abby knelt beside him and sniffed. “I was scared. And I loved him. The last thing I wanted to do was screw up his chance at having a music career. So, I told him to go. That–that I didn’t need him or want him around.” She wiped at the tears on her face and looked down at her hands. “When Mike asked me to marry him, I did. Seth came home and thought I betrayed him. I thought he’d betrayed me and neither of us was smart enough to talk about what happened.”

“Does–does Daddy know?”

Abby nodded, but before she could speak, he’d had enough of her taking all the blame for his actions. “He married her to prevent her from having you alone.” Emily didn’t need to know Mike’s real reasons. She’d figure those out on her own eventually. “She never had a good childhood, sunshine. When her mom was killed and her dad paralyzed in a car accident, he took to drinking and being mean. Your mom dealt with mean people all her life just because of her ethnicity and the mistakes of her parents.” He wrapped his arm around Abby’s quivering shoulders. “She thought she was protecting me.”

Abby closed her eyes and shook her head. “Sweetheart–”

Again, he interrupted her. She’d inflicted enough wounds with her own sword. “And I was too easily convinced my way was the only way. I never thought I could be a good father. I probably wouldn’t have been, but I was wrong to stay away. I wish I’d been here for you.”

Emily stared up at him with teary, red-rimmed eyes. He laid his big hand on the side of her small face and dried her tears with his thumb.

“Why did you think you wouldn’t be a good dad?”

He sniffed–damn, his sinuses burned–and shifted his weight onto his other leg. “You and my dad spent a lot of time together. Did he ever tell you how my mom died?”

She shook her head. “He just said she died a long time ago.”

“My mom was a singer. When she was twenty, she sang at the rodeo over in Amarillo and a talent scout wanted her to come to Nashville. She’d just had me and married my dad. He wouldn’t let her go. Dad never wanted her to be a singer.”

“Why?”

He shook his head, remembering the letter. “Fear. I think. He was afraid that she’d leave him if she became famous. I’m not sure my mother ever loved my dad, but he loved her.”

“How did she die?”

He swallowed hard and glanced at Abby. Her understanding and love shone in her eyes and gave him strength. “Mom committed suicide when she was twenty-three. I was a few months shy of turning five.” Emily’s eyes widened and he averted his gaze. “After Dad refused to let her try her luck in Nashville, she started drinking and taking drugs. She overdosed. My dad became mean and hated that I wanted to be a singer. He told me all my childhood I was just like her.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. They burned like hell-fire. “When your mom told me she was pregnant with you, I was just eighteen. I had just won a spot on the talent show
America’s Rising Star
.”

“You were afraid you’d end up like her.” Emily touched his face with cool, shaky fingers.

He snapped his gaze to hers, and nodded because speech was impossible. He was just like her.
I abandoned you the same way my mother abandoned me
.

Abby rubbed his back and laid her free hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Your Dad–Mike–said some things when Seth came home after you were born that he shouldn’t have.”

Emily’s pale face contorted into confusion. “What did he say?”

He said, “It doesn’t matter what he said, sunshine. I stayed away, but I shouldn’t have. Will you ever forgive me?”

Emily stared at him for a long time, her pain and grief playing over her blanched face before she ran from the room. The raw ache in his soul hadn’t hurt this much since the night Abby had told him she didn’t love him.

She called out Emily’s name as the front door slammed.

She stood to run after her, but he caught her. “Let me, Abby.”

“She’s so mad at both of us.”

“Yeah, she is. But it’s me she’s furious at. I can’t lose her now that I found her. I just can’t.” He grabbed his jacket, left by the front door and stepped off the porch into the pouring rain.

He slid the barn door closed. His eyes quickly adjusted to the low glow of the single fluorescent light. Emily stood by her horse’s stall. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I think I need to talk to you.”

She looked over her shoulder at him.

His gut twisted into knots at her pain. He held her gaze. “I’ve always loved your mother, Emily. I still do. Some day I’d like for us to be a family.”

She shook her head and turned back to the mare. “No. I already have a father.”

He stepped closer and fisted his hands in his pockets. “I’m not asking you to stop thinking of Mike as your dad. I just want to be a part of your life too.”

She tilted her head and shivered. Her damp t-shirt was much too thin for the chill of the day. He took off his jacket and set it across her shoulders. She looked up at him with big green eyes so much like his own, his breath caught. He studied her face. The shape of her chin was his. The way her lips pulled downward at one corner when she was bemused mirrored him.

“Maybe you’re a little too late.”

Her bitter words bored into him and settled in his chest. He turned to leave the barn.

“Your dad. He knew...about me, didn’t he?”

Turning to face her, he sucked in a breath of the damp air, heavy with the scents of the horses and sweet hay. “Yeah. You stand to inherit a lot of his money when you turn eighteen. And from me too.”

Emily widened her eyes at him.

He shook his head and stared at the hay-littered floor. “Emily, I know you may not believe this. But I’ve always loved you even though I didn’t know you.”

He turned and escaped into the dismal gray day, glad the rain mixed with the bitter tears he could no longer hold in.

* * * *

Abby stopped pacing the moment the front door opened.

“I want to go to Dad’s.”

She rushed over to the doorway of the living room. “You’re drenched.”

Emily shook with cold and the force of her tears. Abby lifted Seth’s leather jacket from her shoulders and brushed her damp hair from her forehead. Emily jerked away from her touch.

She fisted her hand. “Oh, sugarbaby, I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I’m calling Dad. I can’t stay here.”

“Emily.” She waited until her daughter stopped. Emily squared her shoulders and turned. “There’s something about your dad you should know.”

Emily folded her arms and shifted her head in impatient defiance. “Why should I believe you?”