Eyes that had seen too much now looked at her. “April?”
She glared at him, stubborn, hostile. Damning him. “No.”
Recognition flooded him. She’d grown so much. How many years had gone by? He’d lost them all and lost count. “June.”
“Process of elimination?” Sarcasm wrapped itself around each word. “Simple enough, I suppose.” This was her father. Her father had returned. Why the hell had he done that now, when it no longer meant anything? When her mother could no longer fling herself into his arms and dampen his shirt with her joy? “You couldn’t very well say Max, now could you?”
His eyes swept over her, drinking in the sight. Tears stood still, shimmering against an intense field of blue. She had his eyes, but everything else belonged to Rose. “My God, June, you look just like her. Just like your mother.” His voice almost broke. “She was such a beautiful woman.”
“Not after all the life had been drained out of her,” June retorted coldly. She wanted to scream things at him, to tell him how horrible he was for leaving them all, for leaving her mother and condemning her to a life of sorrow until she completely wasted away. “What are you doing here, now? Run out of places to see?”
He tried to draw himself up but couldn’t. It was as if the weight of his transgressions had permanently bent him. “I came back to say I’m sorry.”
“Won’t do you any good.” June deliberately stooped down and picked up the flowers he had placed there, then tossed them aside. She replaced them with her own. “She can’t hear you.”
He knew it was too late for that. But not too late for everything. Not yet. “But you can. You and April and Max.”
“Just because you have ears doesn’t mean you can hear.” Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she looked at him. He hardly looked like the man in the photograph her grandmother kept. The man there had been laughing. It was his wedding day, his and her mother’s. She didn’t remember ever seeing her mother smile that way. Her expression had been one of hope. “You didn’t. She begged you to stay and you didn’t hear her.”
He rubbed his hand over his face, searching for explanations to things he could no longer even explain to himself. “You were too young to understand.”
“But April wasn’t.” Her sister had been eleven when their father had left them. And, in her own way, just as shattered as their mother had been by the event. But only April had rallied, because she needed to take care of them as their mother drifted away from reality. “Grandmother wasn’t. And they told me that my mother begged you not to leave. Begged you. And you left anyway. Said you felt as if this town was strangling you. And that we didn’t matter.”
“I never said that,” he protested, trying to take her arm.
She pulled away. “You didn’t have to. Actions always speak louder than words, especially up here.” She started to walk away, not wanting to share this hallowed ground with him. “And your actions spoke volumes.”
“June, wait, I want to make it up to you. To you and the others. What can I do?”
It wasn’t until she was back in her vehicle again that she gave him an answer.
“Leave.”
Chapter Nine
June wasn’t at the farmhouse when he returned with the extra containers of white paint he’d picked up in town. But she’d already told him she might not be, so he didn’t think anything of it at first.
It was only when he climbed back up on the ladder again, and his view of the surrounding area was much wider, that he began to wonder about her whereabouts. The tractor was exactly where she’d left it when she’d returned to the house late yesterday. If she wasn’t using the tractor, what was she doing?
As the question occurred to him, Kevin shook his head. There had to be a hundred different things that needed doing around a farm. She could be busy with any one of them. Not having been raised on a farm himself, he had no idea exactly what she was busy with or where.
And he had no idea why an uneasy feeling kept buzzing around in his head.
He was just a born worrier, he supposed. At least, that was what Lily had called him. Stretching, he reached over to a section he’d missed earlier.
He hadn’t always been a worrier, he thought. Growing up in Seattle, he’d been as carefree as they came, making plans for himself and the life he was sure was ahead of him, ripe for the taking. He’d wanted something to do with medicine, to be a surgeon and practice in a teeming metropolis, occasionally traveling to third-world nations to help people who would otherwise never even see their twenties without a doctor.
A smile teased his lips as he began painting another board he’d recently replaced. He supposed he and Jimmy Stewart had a lot in common that way, at least, the character Stewart had played in It’s A Wonderful Life. Planning one life, leading another.
Nothing had gone according to plan for him, not since his parents had both died within such a short period of time of each other. Rather than attending college with an eye out for medical school, he’d gone to work instead. He’d taken a few courses at night when time permitted and gotten a two-year degree in business to help him eventually take over and run the cab service that had allowed him to put food on the table for his siblings.
They were right—whoever had said that life was something that happened while you were making plans. His had happened while he shelved his own plans.
He didn’t make plans anymore. There was no real point. The three people he’d been providing for were providing for themselves now, and living their own lives.
No, no more plans, he thought, climbing down one rung, but damn, he had to do something with himself once this vacation was over.
He let his mind drift as he worked. Maybe he’d buy into that home security business he’d been looking into, when he got back to Seattle. Security at home was the kind of thing that was right up his alley, anyway.
Kevin started seriously considering it.
The sound of an engine approaching caught his attention and pulled him out of his mental wanderings.
At first, he thought it might be a plane flying low overhead. Shayne or Sydney making a quick run to Anchorage for one reason or another. But nothing was moving in the sky other than a flock of birds.
The engine roar was coming from a car. Looking round, he quickly zeroed in on the source. June swiftly approached the house, driving far faster than it seemed necessary.
From his vantage point, it looked as if she was going over eighty miles an hour.
She was coming from the general direction of the town. Something had happened. There was no other explanation for the sudden speed. The thought barely registered as Kevin scrambled down the ladder, paint splashing over the side of the can. The container almost tipped over as he hurriedly set it on the ground.
Running toward her, he saw that June’s face was the color of ashes.
Something had happened. He didn’t even want to speculate on what.
June brought the vehicle to a skidding stop less than two feet away from him. But instead of getting out, she remained sitting behind the wheel.
She was trembling, he realized.
At her side, Kevin was afraid to touch her. Her expression was like something he’d never seen before. Disoriented, lost.
“June, what happened? You’re shaking like a leaf.”
After she’d driven away from her father, the whole situation began to appear almost surreal to her, as if it couldn’t possibly have been true. Her father was dead, she’d been so sure of that. In her heart, she knew that was what April and Max believed.
Could she have hallucinated the whole thing? Hallucinations weren’t uncommon in places like this, but they were usually the result of severe cabin fever, or being lost in the wild for several days. At the very least, a high fever came into play.
And she had neither.
Trying to focus, to shake off the feeling that was struggling for control over her, she heard Kevin’s voice somewhere in the distance.
“June?�
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Somehow, she’d gotten out of the Jeep. Whether Kevin had lifted her out or she had climbed out on her own, she wasn’t sure.
The only thing she knew was that she didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want her father to be back. Not after all this time, not after she’d buried him in her mind years ago.
“June, what’s wrong?” He curbed the urge to try to shake her out of the daze she seemed to be in. “Did something happen in town? To you? To the others?” A dozen different things occurred to him. He refused to flesh any of them out until she gave him something to work with. “June.” His voice was urgent, even as it was soft, kind. “Talk to me, I can’t help you unless you talk to me.”
Desperate, Kevin thought of calling the clinic and having Jimmy drive out. From his limited medical knowledge, he thought that June looked as if she was in shock.
Had she gotten hurt? Been in a car accident?
Quickly he checked her limbs to make sure there weren’t any injuries not readily visible at first glance. But there were no cuts, no bruises. Nothing except the haunted look in her eyes.
As if she’d seen something she didn’t want to.
At a loss, Kevin picked her up in his arms to carry her into the house. It was then that she came to. With a small cry, she began to resist, pushing against his chest. “No!”
Had someone tried to attack her? He had a thousand questions and not a single answer.
“All right.” Kevin put her down on the ground again, trying to think of what to do.
He had no idea what was going on or why she was behaving this way, only that he wasn’t about to leave her until he had some kind of answer and she was herself again.
Carefully pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen into her face, he peered at her. The color wasn’t returning.
“You feel up to telling me what’s going on?”
Slowly her eyes turned toward him, as if she hadn’t really been aware that it was him who’d been talking to her. “He’s back.”
“Who’s back?”
Kevin thought of Haggerty, the man who’d tried to corner her at the Salty the other night. But the miner didn’t seem like the type to force himself beyond a point. And even so, he had every confidence in the world that June could hold her own against someone like that. This was something more. Something far more serious.
“Take your time,” he said softly, belying the impatience he felt. Whatever was going on had taken its toll on her. He wasn’t about to add to that by demanding she talk to him before she was ready.
June swallowed before she answered, the words sticking to the roof of her mouth, glued there by sheer disbelief.
Why? Why now?
“My father,” she whispered hoarsely. “My father’s back.”
He knew all about the story, had gotten it not just in bits and pieces from her, but from Jimmy and Lily as well. The story of the man who couldn’t stay put, who’d created a family only to abandon it, sacrificing it on the altar of his wanderlust. Everyone in town believed that he was gone for good, most likely dead.
“Are you sure?”
Her eyes darted to his face, anger leaping into him. He took no offense.
“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I know what my own father looks like?” she lashed out, then instantly regretted it. She pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”
He cut her short. “You don’t have to apologize. I’d feel just as shaken up as you in your place.” He spoke slowly, softly, not wanting her to fall apart. He’d gotten to know her pretty well in the past two weeks and had never seen her like this. She seemed so completely vulnerable. “Where did you see him?”
She shut her eyes for a moment. The image was burned into her mind. “At the cemetery.” She looked at Kevin. The pain that assaulted her was overwhelming. Why? It shouldn’t matter anymore. It should have stopped mattering a long time ago. She thought it had. “He was standing over my mother’s grave.”
That would explain why the tractor hadn’t been moved. “Is that where you were just now?”
June nodded. She looked off in the general direction of Cemetery Hill. “I go there sometimes,” she told him quietly, almost talking to herself. “To talk.” Realizing what she’d just said, she flushed. “Just to clear my head. You probably think that’s crazy.”
He smiled at her, refraining from taking her into his arms the way he wanted to. “No. I talk to mine all the time. They both wanted to be cremated, so there’s no actual grave to go to. Their ashes were scattered. In a way, I guess you might say they’re all around me. Kind of with me all the time.”
She looked at him, gratitude burrowing its way in between the walls of shock that had closed in around her. He understood, she thought. It meant a great deal right now to have someone understand.
“Did he recognize you?”
She laughed shortly. “He thought I was April. And then he said I looked just like my mother.” She dragged her hand restlessly through her hair. He noted with relief that some measure of color finally returned to her face. “He was just—there.” Her eyes searched his as if she needed him to understand. “Like it was all right. Like he hadn’t ever gone away.”
“What did he want?” Kevin asked gently.
She began to move around. He shadowed her steps, afraid that she might faint without warning. “To make everything crazy.”
That had been accomplished, he thought. “What did he say, exactly?”
Turning away from him, she tilted her head up toward the sky, blinking. Determined not to let the tears spill out. If you cried, it meant that you were weak, and she’d always been strong. Strong, just like April and Max and her grandmother.
She drew in a breath, composing herself. “That he was sorry.”
Kevin knew how small a word that could sound like. And how much it could really contain. But now wasn’t the time to take the side of a man who’d wounded her so badly. “He apologized for leaving?”
She clenched her hands into fists at her side as she swung around to face him. Her feelings were all over the map. Sadness, anger, confusion, they were all jumbled up inside of her.
“He tried to.” Her mouth grew bitter. “My mother’s dead because of him and he’s sorry,” she spit out. “He thinks that if he comes back and says that, everything’s going to be all right. That everything’s forgiven.” Anger flashed in her blue eyes as she looked up at him. “Well, it’s not.”
He could only guess at what she was feeling, but he did his best. “I know, June, I know. It’s going to take time.”
“There’s not that much time in the world.”
She couldn’t quell the bitterness that was taking hold inside her, the emotion that was the flip side of all the love she’d felt for her father as a child. He’d ruined it, ruined her perfect world, taken away her childhood before she had ever had a chance to use it. Before she’d had a chance to store it away.
Kevin placed a gentling hand on her shoulder. “I know you feel that way now—”
June shrugged him off angrily. “I’ll always feel that way,” she countered, moving away from him. “A couple of words offered up years too late aren’t going to change that.”
This was a great deal for her to take in all at once, Kevin thought. He appreciated that she was in the middle of an emotional earthquake, but she needed to calm down. If her father had really returned, she needed to begin the business of forgiving. For her own sake.
“Where is he now?”
She thought a moment, setting the jumbled scenario in order. “He’s staying at Luc’s hotel.”
Her father had called out the information to her as she’d driven away. She hadn’t wanted to hear him, but she couldn’t help it. He’d raised his voice over the roar of her engine.
She had no idea if he meant to stay here in Hades. The younger Wayne Yearling couldn’t wait to leave the confines of Hades, but her father was older now, and somehow smaller and far less robust than the man
she’d looked at so many times in the wedding photograph.
Her eyes widened as more thoughts crowded into her head, making her realize the possible consequences of her father’s sudden reappearance.
She clutched at Kevin’s arm. “We’ve got to get him to leave.” Her voice rose excitedly. “He’ll ruin Max’s wedding. He’ll—”
“I can talk to him if you want,” Kevin told her. Though it wasn’t his place, he could ask the man to leave her alone, at least for the time being, until she got used to the idea that he was back. Until she could find it in her heart to begin to forgive him. “But I think Max and April need to know about this.”
“No.” She was adamant, and as protective of hers as he was of his. “It’s not fair to put them through this.” It was enough that she had experienced the shock of seeing her father alive and here. She didn’t want that for her brother and sister.
“You can’t make that decision for them, June. They might want to hear him out.” Kevin understood where she was coming from, from the very best place in her heart.
“Why?” she demanded, turning on him, feeling betrayed all over again. She’d expected him of all people to understand, to back her up, not take her father’s side. “So he can spin some more of his lies for them? So that he can make more promises he’s not going to keep?” She shook her head, rejecting the idea. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see my mother or my sister after he left. He broke hearts, Kevin,” she insisted, trying to make him understand. “He doesn’t deserve to have them anymore.”
“No, you’re probably right, he probably doesn’t deserve to have them back. But it’s still a decision that April and Max have to make on their own. You owe them that.” She opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off. He knew exactly what was going on in her head. “I know you just want to protect them, but you can’t. And you can’t punish your father for all four of you. You can just hold back yourself.”
“I’m not trying to punish him,” she cried. Her words echoed back to her and she sighed. “All right, maybe I am. But why shouldn’t I?” she demanded heatedly. “He deserves it. All he had to do was just stay and everything would have been all right.”
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