by Brenda Novak
But was Robert really clueless enough to think what he’d done could ever be forgotten? That Dallas wouldn’t feel more loyalty to Jenny, if not his mother?
“You okay?” Cal came up to her while wiping his face with a handkerchief. He still worked as hard as a much younger man. She loved how strong and driven and eminently good he was. “You were so happy a few minutes ago.”
“And now I’m worried,” she admitted.
“The wedding will come off without a hitch. We’re almost ready. What’s left to do?”
“I’m not worried about the wedding.” She checked to be sure Dallas, Liam and Bentley couldn’t hear her. “Robert Ogilvie is out of prison.”
Concern entered his expression. “Dallas’s father? Already?”
“Already?” she echoed. “It’s been nearly a quarter of a century.”
“But he was sentenced to forty years. And it’s my opinion that he should never get out. He murdered his wife and daughter!”
“True, but he cooperated with the police, confessed and showed remorse—once he was caught. That, along with good behavior, must’ve shortened his sentence. His age probably factored into it, too. I bet the parole board no longer saw him as much of a threat.”
“Hey, he’s only in his sixties.”
Cal was sixty-one, eight years older than she was, but she was too caught up in this latest development to laugh at his wounded pride. “Statistically speaking, men your age don’t commit murder.”
“Well, he’d better keep his distance from you and Dallas, or I might prove to be an outlier.”
She knew he was only joking, but she also knew he’d do anything to protect her, if necessary. “He’s here, in Silver Springs, Cal.”
He lowered his voice. “How do you know?”
“Eli called. Robert was over at the school, looking for me and asking about Dallas.”
“You don’t think he means to harm Dallas in any way...”
“No. But just reentering his life could push Dallas into a very dark place.”
“What should we do?”
“We have to prepare him, let him know that his father is no longer behind bars. What other choice do we have?”
Cal rubbed the salt-and-pepper beard growth on his chin. “Dallas is a man now, Aiyana.”
“What does that mean?”
“We can no longer protect him. As difficult as it might be, he has to be the one to deal with this. Once he learns Robert is in town, he might head back to Vegas, which would mean he’d miss the wedding, but—”
“That’s how you think he’ll react?”
“I do. I think that’s what all those hours of climbing are about—they’re his escape. But, considering the circumstances, you wouldn’t hold it against him if he missed the wedding, would you?”
She’d been looking forward to having all of her children home, was planning to have a family photograph taken. But she would never ask Dallas to stay if he would be happier elsewhere. “Of course not.”
“Just be sure to let him know that, so he feels he can leave if he needs to.”
“Actually...”
“Uh-oh, I know that look,” he said. “What are you thinking now?”
“Before I tell Dallas that Robert’s in town, why don’t I try talking to Robert? Maybe he’s not as bad as his past would indicate. It could be that he’s sincere in his remorse. He stated as much in his letter. And if that’s the case, I might be able to convince him to leave without contacting Dallas. If I have to, I might even offer him some money to leave us alone. Then we can enjoy the wedding and Christmas as a family before we have to break the bad news.”
“If you could work that out, it’d be better than blowing up everything and having to deal with all that emotionality and upset right now, when we have so much going on,” he agreed.
“Yeah. Why let Robert ruin Christmas and the first family get-together we’ve had in recent years? The boys come back whenever they can, but it seems as though we’re always missing someone. Because of the wedding, this will be the first time in a long while that they’ll be here all at once.”
She expected Cal to chime in again, as supportive of this idea as she was beginning to feel, but he didn’t do so quite as readily as she would’ve liked. “What?” she said, looking for reassurance.
He put an arm around her. “It’s a bit of a risk, but I suppose you can determine how receptive Robert is once you’ve talked to him.”
She nodded, somewhat relieved just to have worked out a course of action. Even if Robert was every bit as bad as history would indicate, and she had to rely on bribery alone to get him to leave, she was willing to give him a significant sum, if only he wouldn’t ruin the next two weeks. “Can you keep the boys busy here while I go talk to him?”
“They won’t be happy when I mention more work—they think they’re done—but I can come up with something. How will you find Robert?”
“He told Eli where he’s staying.”
“You’re not going to his motel! We’re talking about a known murderer, Aiyana. I don’t want you over there, not unless I’m with you.”
“I’ll be fine. You stay here and keep the boys with you. I’ll call the motel and have Robert meet me somewhere else.”
“Demand that it be a public place.”
She didn’t want to meet him at his motel, but she didn’t want anyone to see her talking to him, either. “He has no reason to kill me.”
“I don’t care,” Cal said. “He’s fresh out of prison. I’m not willing to take the chance.”
She decided to have Robert meet her under the pavilion at the park. It was a public place, so she wouldn’t be ignoring Cal’s wishes, and yet there weren’t a lot of people who frequented the park during the rainy season.
It would be public but private. “Okay,” she said as she rose up on tiptoe to kiss him.
* * *
No one was around when Emery got home. In the winter, the store closed early on Sundays, even through the holidays, so it was only six-thirty. She figured Dallas, Aiyana and the others were still at Cal’s, getting ready for the wedding.
She considered going over to see if they needed another pair of hands. She hadn’t been able to do much before work. But she was becoming infatuated with Dallas and thought it might be wise to take a step back. Now that she was capable of leaving her room and being seen in public, she was going to meet an old friend, Cain Brennan, for dinner, who was in town for the holidays and recognized her when he’d come into the store earlier.
After a shower so that she would no longer smell like fresh-baked cookies, she got ready and hurried out of the house. She didn’t have to meet Cain for an hour yet, but she wanted to be gone before Aiyana and her family could return. Otherwise, she was afraid she’d cancel her dinner with Cain. She was far more interested in seeing Dallas, hadn’t been able to quit thinking about him all day.
She drove slowly but still arrived far too early to go in. She sat in the parking lot and called her mother, who immediately asked if she’d spoken to her father and started to complain about the mess she was in.
Emery hung up as soon as possible so that she could call her father. She’d been putting it off. She felt fragile enough without having what would, no doubt, be an upsetting conversation with the man she’d believed she could always rely on, but who had let her down right when she needed him most.
Even after she sent the call, she checked her watch, hoping for an excuse to hang up and continue to procrastinate this conversation. But she still had thirty minutes before Cain was due to arrive. Considering the brevity of her conversations with her father these days, that would be more than enough time.
You can’t cry. That was the only caveat. If she was going to meet an old friend who may have heard of her humiliation, she was at least going to do it with some dignity and not walk
into the restaurant with swollen eyes, a red, splotchy face and smudged mascara.
“Hello?”
The second she heard her father’s voice she tightened her grip on the phone. He felt like a stranger to her. That was something she could never have imagined growing up. “Dad?”
“Emery, what’s going on?”
He asked that question so casually it was hard to believe he’d been paying the slightest attention to the catastrophe that had destroyed everything she’d built.
Or he no longer cared. That was the possibility that really hurt.
“Nothing,” she said. Why bother telling him, yet again, that she’d been deeply wronged and had no idea how to cope with the embarrassment and humiliation? That she’d lost her job and wasn’t likely to find another one, at least in TV, not with such a scandal on her record.
She was an adult. She had to stop leaning on her father at some point.
She’d just never expected to lose his support so suddenly or so completely. “I’m calling about Mom.”
“You mean you’re calling for her.” He sounded bitter, but she forced herself to overlook the tone of his voice.
“She has no money, no way to get by.”
“Why can’t she work like the rest of us?”
Emery drew a steadying breath, once again warning herself not to get emotional. “She has worked. It hasn’t been for a paycheck, but she has done a lot for our family.”
“You’ve been grown for years now.”
“But she’s never really held an actual job. And she didn’t see the divorce coming, had no time to get prepared. It’s not easy to jump into the workplace when it’s been decades. What is she trained to do? Technology has changed so many things over her lifetime. Let’s face it—she’s not even that great at working the television remote.”
“She can learn, can’t she?”
Spoken with true sympathy. Emery gritted her teeth. “She was your wife for thirty-one years. And she’s got Grandma to take care of. She can’t train for a job and enter the workforce right now.”
“Her mother isn’t my problem.”
He’d never really liked Adele. She could be controlling, difficult. No doubt he was taking some small pleasure in being able to walk away. “What if your roles were reversed?” Emery asked.
“My mother is already gone.”
“That’s beside the point, and you know it.”
“Look, I don’t want to argue about this. If Connie needs money, all she has to do is sign the offer my attorney sent over.”
By not helping her, he was trying to force her to accept his latest offer. This was a part of her father she’d never thought she’d see; she didn’t want to see it even now. “She told me she would, except it’s not a fair offer.”
“How isn’t it fair? I’m the one who’s earned all the money. It was my schooling, my hard work that’s carried us the past thirty-one years. She should be grateful for what I’m offering her. Instead she’s being greedy.”
Was this really her father talking? Or the woman he was with? No doubt Deseret was demanding he hang on to as much of his money as possible so that she could spend it.
There were so many arguments Emery could launch. But she had a feeling Connie had already tried them all. So she simply said, “When you refuse to help her, I have to step in, and I’m in no position to be sending money to her and Grandma right now.”
“Then don’t. I just told you, she has other options.”
“She can’t sign that deal, Dad. It’s not fair.”
“How do you know? What’s not fair is having her involve you and complain about me. It’s not fair that she’s turned you against me.”
“Dad, please,” Emery said. “I can’t take this right now. I’m not in a good situation myself.”
“You should never have gotten involved with Ethan Grimes. You signed that agreement, knew you weren’t supposed to.”
“So that makes everything that’s happened my fault?” she cried. “Are you really saying that? You’re living with your medical assistant, for crying out loud. Obviously, you’ve had an in-office romance, too. Only what you did was much worse. At least neither Ethan nor I was married!”
“How dare you!” He was yelling now, too. “Who do you think you are?”
“I used to be your daughter.”
“Don’t start with that. I don’t have to put up with your judgments!”
“My judgments? You’re the one looking for any excuse not to do the right thing.”
“I have other people in my life right now. I can’t think only of you and your mother. It’s time you both took a little more responsibility for your own lives.”
Those words hit her like a punch to the gut. Was he really that desperate to please the young woman he’d taken up with? “Forget it. Mom and I will get by without you,” she snapped, and hung up.
She was breathing hard as she checked the time. Sure enough, their conversation hadn’t lasted long. It hadn’t gone well, either.
She started the car. She needed to get out of there. She didn’t feel like going out with someone she hadn’t seen in years, didn’t have the fortitude to explain why she was in town—if Cain didn’t already know—working for minimum wage at a cookie store. What she wanted was to see Dallas, to feel his hands on her body, and what had just happened made her crave that contact even more than she had before.
What was he doing tonight? Should she text him? See where he was?
No. It doesn’t matter. The way things were going, it would be far too easy to wind up hurt all over again.
Determined to stay the course, she texted her mother that her father wasn’t going to soften, that she’d done all she could where he was concerned and they’d talk about it in the morning. Then she turned off her car and got out.
She’d wait in the restaurant. Maybe if she was inside, and she’d already checked in with the hostess, she’d be more likely not to cancel dinner with Cain and go find Dallas.
* * *
Aiyana had no idea what to expect. She’d never met Robert Ogilvie. He’d been in prison for eight years before Dallas ever came to New Horizons. She’d seen pictures of him, of course, when she researched his crime in order to gain some perspective on Dallas, who’d been her student before he became her son. But Robert hadn’t even been forty years old in the articles about the shooting where she’d seen his mug shot and another picture of him being led out of the courthouse when he was on trial.
What did he look like after almost a quarter of a century behind bars? From all reports, he’d been handsome and congenial in the beginning—not someone anyone would believe to be dangerous. She’d read that the neighbors had been shocked when they learned what he’d done. But the number of years it’d been since then, and being locked away for so long, had probably taken a toll.
Would she be able to recognize him?
Although it started to drizzle while she waited, she was sheltered by the pavilion. She pulled her coat closed for warmth and shifted nervously, keeping an eye out for movement. He didn’t have a vehicle, so it wasn’t as if headlights would announce his arrival. He’d said he’d walk, that his motel wasn’t far. Being more familiar with the area, she’d known it would take him at least thirty minutes, and he’d be soaked by the time he arrived, but she hadn’t offered him a ride. That defeated the purpose of meeting him out in the open.
Finally, a tall, lean figure emerged from the darkness. He was wearing a stiff pair of brand-new Levi’s and a cheap button-down shirt, with no coat.
He walked tentatively, swiveling his head around every few seconds as though scouring the trees for some kind of threat. Did he think he was about to be ambushed? That her invitation had more to do with revenge than the discussion she’d suggested they have?
Or was he just jumpy from having spent forty percent of hi
s life in a cage? Child killers typically didn’t fare well in prison.
“Over here,” she called, and squared her shoulders. She’d soon be face-to-face with a man who’d taken the lives of his wife and daughter and would’ve killed Dallas, too, if he could’ve found him. Just because Robert had served his time didn’t change the depravity of what he’d done.
But she was a little less scared of him once she could see how timid and uncertain he was—and how careful he was to stand far enough away from her.
She drew a calming breath. “I’m glad you could make it,” she said, keeping her voice cordial. He looked enough like the man in the article from twenty-three years ago that she could tell who he was. She could even see a little of him in Dallas. But she wouldn’t have recognized him if she hadn’t expected to encounter him. He’d lost a lot of his hair, had big bags under his eyes and he was rail thin. Prison had aged him by a lot more than the years he’d spent there.
“Thank you for calling me,” he said politely, almost obsequiously. “I don’t mean to bother you, especially during the holidays, but I was hoping to speak to Dallas.” He lowered his voice. “I know he might not be excited by the idea of...of hearing from me, but I’d appreciate the opportunity to apologize in person—if possible.”
“That’s why I gave you his post office box. So you could apologize,” she said tartly. “You didn’t mention that you were getting out, or that you would try to visit him.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t respond if I told you that,” he admitted. Then, more defensively, “Regardless of everything else, he’s still my son.”
She felt her spine stiffen. “No, he’s not. He’d be dead if it were up to you. He’s my son. And I’ll be damned if you’re going to get anywhere near him.”
He stepped back as if blown there by the power of her conviction. No doubt he was surprised; she was known for her kindness. Not only that but he’d lived with his crimes—and men who had committed similar terrible acts—for so long he’d probably lost all perspective. But, like any other mother, she could be fierce when one of her children was threatened.
