“In the accident, my face was...damaged. They had to...rebuild it with plastic surgery.”
“Did it hurt?” Of course that would be the question his sweet, empathetic son would ask.
“Some of it did. I don’t remember most of the first surgeries. I was in a...in a coma. Kind of like being in a deep sleep. But the...later ones did a little.”
“I had to have stitches in my leg last summer when I fell riding my bike.” He pulled up the leg of his jeans to show off the tiny scar that had only taken three stitches to close.
“Ouch.”
“Do you have scars?”
Elizabeth nodded. “More on my...leg than my face. Under my hair I do. You can still see some of them, if you look closely enough.”
Bridger approached her and looked into her face without any sign of recognition. Luke wouldn’t have expected any since their son had been less than a year when she left.
“I might look different, but I’m still...the same person.”
Cassie didn’t look at all convinced. “If you’re really my mom, what song did you always sing when I was little?”
Confusion clouded Elizabeth’s blue eyes. “I sang a lot of songs. I don’t know which one—” Her voice broke off and comprehension slowly dawned. “Oh. The Cassiopeia song. I had...forgotten.”
She began to sing a tune he remembered she had come up with herself, with lyrics about how much she loved Cassiopeia in the night sky, among the stars.
He had forgotten it, too. If he had remembered, he would have tried to sing it to his daughter himself, though his voice wasn’t all that great.
How long had she been waiting for someone to sing it to her?
Tears trickled down his daughter’s face as she listened to Elizabeth’s soft voice.
“Why did you go?” she finally asked, her voice anguished, and Luke curled his hands into fists, wishing he could pull her into his arms for a hug. This wasn’t about him right now. This was about a girl crying out for her mother.
Tears had begun dripping down Elizabeth’s face, too. “Oh, honey. I don’t...have a good answer for that. I was sick. Hurting. I...I left because I thought it was better for you.”
“We thought our mom was dead. How would that be better for any kid?” She swiped angrily at her cheeks. Luke cursed himself. He shouldn’t have just thrown this information at them without warning. He should have brought in some kind of professional, maybe the grief counselor he had finally taken Cassie to a few years earlier.
“Cassie, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want to hear how sorry you are,” she cried. “Sorry isn’t good enough.”
“I know.”
“You know what some of the kids at school say, like Rosie Sparks? They say Dad’s a murderer. They say he killed you and hid your body somewhere. Dad doesn’t even kill spiders. If he finds one, he catches it and puts it outside! But kids still call him a murderer. You should have come back before now so people wouldn’t say that about him.”
“What other people say doesn’t matter. We knew the truth,” Luke tried to tell her.
“But everybody else should have known you would never do something like that! I hate what some people say about you!”
“I was wrong to go,” Elizabeth said, more tears trickling down. “So wrong.”
Bridger looked as baffled and out of his depth with Cassie’s outburst as Luke felt. He tried to hug his sister but she shrugged him away.
“You could have made it right and you didn’t,” she yelled at Elizabeth. “All this time, we thought you were dead and you let us! I don’t care if you are my mom and you’re back. We don’t need you. We’ve been fine without you. I hate you. I wish you’d stayed away. You never should have come back.”
She raced out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and a moment later they heard the slam of her bedroom door.
“Wow. Why is she so mad?” Bridger looked baffled.
“She has every reason to be mad,” Elizabeth said, her voice shaking. “You do, too.”
She looked defeated, heartsick. Luke longed to comfort her but knew nothing he said could make this right.
“I don’t remember you much,” Bridger said simply. “Cassie does.”
Of all of them, Bridger seemed to be handling his mother’s sudden reappearance in their lives with the most aplomb. Luke wouldn’t have said his son was unfazed but he seemed more curious than anything, probably because he had been so young when she left.
“I should probably go talk to her.” Luke was reluctant to leave Bridger alone with Elizabeth—for her sake as much as their son’s—but if nothing else, he owed Cassie an apology for springing her mother on her that way without warning.
“Yes.” Elizabeth looked devastated. “I...I hope she’ll be all right. Do you want me to talk to her?”
“I’d better do it.”
He headed for the stairs. As he did, he heard Bridger ask, “Why did they have to redo your whole face?”
“I broke...just about every bone in my face in the accident,” he heard Elizabeth say.
“You really don’t remember what they did?”
“No. I told you I was in a coma while my body was healing. When I woke up, I found a different person in the mirror.”
Luke wanted to stay on the stairs and listen to more but his curiosity would have to wait. His daughter needed him right now.
He felt completely inadequate when it came to dealing with the mood swings that had hit Cassie over the last six months or so. Some days it was easier to just let Megan talk to her. He was tempted to call his sister in for her preadolescent girl expertise but he knew that would be taking the easy way out.
He knocked on the door, pushing away his trepidation.
“Go away,” Cassie snapped.
“That might work on TV but it doesn’t in our house,” Luke said calmly. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“You tell me what to do all the time.”
“That’s because I’m your dad. It’s my job. I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.”
The telling her what to do part, anyway. The rest of it, not so much.
After a moment, Cassie reluctantly opened the door. Her face was red and blotchy and she had several balled-up tissues in her hand.
“Is she gone? Did you tell her we don’t need her? We’re doing fine. We have Aunt Megan and Mrs. Mulvaney. She should have just stayed away.”
He sighed, unable to admit to his daughter that he agreed with her to some extent, though an aunt and a housekeeper, no matter how beloved, weren’t quite the same as a girl’s mother.
“You should know I went to get her, Cassie. That’s where I went when I had you stay with Megan. I brought her back to Haven Point.”
Her outrage shifted to him. “Why? She didn’t want us. She left us.”
“Because I had to take care of a few things and I needed her here for that.” He sat on her bed and put his arm around his beautiful, courageous daughter, who faced the world with her shoulders back and her chin out.
Would she have become so strong and resilient if she’d grown up with Elizabeth in her life?
“This is hard, grown-up stuff, kiddo. I wish things had been easier for you. I wish you and Bridger both had your mom here all these years to help you through hard times and be a friend and help you out with homework and teach you how to do hair. You know I stink at that.”
She gave him a tiny smile but she still looked upset. “You really do.”
He hugged her and she nestled against him, his sweet little girl. His children meant everything to him. Their uncomplicated love had healed many of the scarred and broken places inside him from his own childhood.
He felt a little ache inside for Elizabeth, who had missed so very much over the years.
“We can’t change wha
t happened. I know it’s hard to understand. I still don’t completely understand everything myself. I only know your mother was going through a really hard time when she left, and as she said, she didn’t feel like she had any choice but to go.”
“She did have a choice. She could have stayed and been our mom.”
He kissed the top of Cassie’s head. “I know. But she was sick and felt like she needed to go so she could get better.”
As he said the words, he felt a sort of release, a lifting of his heart as a little more of the anger and hurt he had nursed over the years rose up like a weight had been cut from a hot air balloon.
“I can also tell you she never meant to stay away so long. She was trying to come back home to us when she was in the accident.”
A few hours earlier, he never would have imagined he would be trying to defend Elizabeth to their daughter. His world had completely shifted and he still felt a little off-kilter from the reverberations.
Then again, some of his lingering disorientation could be from that emotional, intense kiss they had shared, he had to admit.
“We can be mad about what happened, that we didn’t have the time with her we might have wanted. That’s completely normal. It’s been hard not having a mom. I know that.”
She hugged him. “Not that hard when I have the best dad in the world.”
Oh, that was far from the truth and they both knew it, but he appreciated her for saying it.
“It’s fine to be mad about what happened. I would never tell you what you’re feeling is wrong. But you do have to be polite. She is still your mother and she would like to stay in Haven Point long enough to see your school program next week. How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t want her to. She’s not my mom. Not really. I don’t even know her and she doesn’t know me.”
“I know she’s a stranger to you but will you give her a chance? You don’t have to be best friends with her. But it’s Christmas. We’re supposed to open our hearts and be kind all year but especially during this season. Do you think you can do that? Politeness. That’s all I’m asking.”
She sighed and flopped back onto her bed. “I can try.”
“Thanks, kiddo. I left her with Bridger and he’s probably talking her ear off by now. I’d better go back down. She’s been staying at the Riverbend Road house and I probably need to take her back.”
“Do I have to go with you?”
Normally he would say yes. She was not quite ten, and while she was generally responsible and mature for her age and insisted she could handle herself, he didn’t like leaving her alone yet.
In this case, he would only be gone a short time, long enough to drive Elizabeth to the little house and back. He sensed Cassie would benefit from a little time alone to come to terms with her jumbled feelings toward her mother.
“You can stay here. We won’t be long.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She hugged him again. “I guess the best thing about her coming back is that at least people will see how wrong they’ve been about you.”
“Yeah. There is that.”
Over the years, he had tried not to let it bother him, but drip by drip, whisper by whisper, being the subject of speculation and gossip had worn him down.
He rose and headed for the door. “I’ll work on dinner when I get back. I’ll lock the doors downstairs and alarm the system. Keep your phone close.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad.”
She was growing up. He couldn’t stop time, as much as he might want to.
“We’ll let you know when we’re back.”
She nodded and he headed back down the stairs to find his wife.
Chapter Thirteen
“I played soccer and baseball this year because I couldn’t decide which one I liked more. But I think I like baseball more. I’m better at it, anyway. So I kind of think maybe I’ll see if I can play more baseball. Maybe I’ll skip soccer this year. That’s what my friend Will does. He only plays baseball, not soccer. When I’m older, I could play on two baseball teams. I don’t know. What do you think? Should I play soccer and baseball?”
Elizabeth had to fight back tears while listening to what was largely a monologue from Bridger. Her son—her son, whom she had never exchanged two words with except for when he was an infant—was asking her advice.
She couldn’t seem to contain the joy washing over her like a summer rainstorm in the desert, cleansing the parched and thirsty landscape of her heart.
“I’m not sure what to tell you,” she admitted. “It’s...never a good idea to close your options off. You might end up changing your mind down the line about which...sport you prefer. Who knows? In a few years you might...like soccer better.”
“Maybe. But I really, really, really like baseball,” he said. “Really.”
She smiled, wishing they had the kind of relationship where she could hug him or at least tousle his hair a little.
“This reminds me of when I was...younger and wanted to be a gymnast. It was...all I ever thought about. I was sure I would go to the...Olympics.”
“Really? How old were you?”
“From about the time I was seven until maybe fifth grade. How old is that?”
“Cassie’s in fourth grade and she’s almost ten. So ten or eleven.”
“Right. That’s about right. I used to go every day after school to...train. Then in fifth grade, I broke my ankle...in gymnastics.”
“Oh no! Did it hurt?”
Compared to everything else she had been through, that injury seemed minimal. “You know, I...barely remember it now. I’m sure it did hurt but it was so long ago, I don’t...recall. The mind has a funny way of helping us deal with pain by allowing us to...forget a little.”
Bridger took on a wise expression. “That’s true. I told you I got stitches last summer when I crashed my bike. I know it hurt, but I can hardly remember how it felt.”
She really hoped he might one day be able to get over the trauma of his mother walking away from him.
“The point is, I loved gymnastics more than anything else in the...world. After I broke my ankle, I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Not even after you got the cast off?”
She shook her head. “My leg was never...as strong as it had been before. I knew I was going to have to find something else to love.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Many things. I tried out for a play at school and...really loved it. My best friend had horses and I fell in love with those, too. When I was old enough, I got a job at the garden center in Shelter Springs and discovered...how much I loved working with plants. If you love baseball and want to...only focus on that, fine. But don’t close yourself off to other possibilities completely. You never know what might happen.”
“Okay,” he said cheerfully, then launched into a story about the game he and his best friends had invented at recess that largely sounded like a variation of the freeze tag she used to play with her friends, where a person could only be “unfrozen” if they yelled out the name of a favorite television show.
“It sounds like lots of...fun,” she said.
“Oh, it is. Except when we run out of TV shows. Will wanted to use YouTube channels but we had to say that wasn’t fair. There are, like, a million of them and some kids don’t watch YouTube.”
“I guess you have to draw the line...somewhere,” she answered. She wouldn’t mind spending all day here in this warm kitchen talking to her son, but Luke came down the stairs and joined them a few moments later.
Her heart kicked in her chest and her breath seemed to catch. Had she really kissed him only a short time earlier? She could still taste him on her lips, minty and delicious.
He was the only man she had ever slept with. The only one she had ever wanted to sleep with. She thought that part of her life was over with the accident but
apparently not. Desires that had been dormant for years were beginning to blossom to life.
He had kissed her twice, she reminded herself. Once in anger and once with a tenderness that stole her breath. That did not mean he ever intended for it to happen again. She might have to be content with her memories.
“Is Cassie...all right?” Elizabeth asked, in a voice that only wobbled a little.
“She will be, eventually. I’m afraid it will probably take some time.”
Was it possible that she might have the chance someday to sit and talk with her daughter, as she had just done with her son? She was almost afraid to hope.
“She’s angry and hurt right now. We have to give her that and let her work through it on her own time.”
“Of course. It’s a...lot to process.” She didn’t know what else she could say.
“Hey, Bridge. We need to take your mother back to the old house. Grab your coat and you can be my wingman.”
“Sure!”
Their son jumped off his chair immediately, his features as delighted at the prospect of driving a few blocks as he might have been if his dad announced he was taking him to Disneyland.
“You’re leaving...Cassie here by herself?” Elizabeth asked after Bridger headed into the mudroom for his coat.
“She’s a pretty independent kid. She’s almost ten and keeps telling me she’s old enough to be on her own. We’ll only be gone a few minutes. More than anything else, I think she needs her space right now.”
He was a wonderful father. She had noticed it before in her clandestine visits to Haven Point. Even from a distance she could see how he always seemed to pay attention to the children, even when other adults tried to talk to him. They were his focus. How very grateful she was that he had stepped up to care for the children when she could not. She had not given him much choice, but Luke had taken the situation and made the best of it.
She was quiet as they drove back to the little house on the river, suddenly drained and exhausted from the emotional day. When she had waited for Luke to pick her up that morning, she had known the day would be tough, filled with the unveiling of difficult truths, but she had never expected her day to run as long as it had, into late afternoon.
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