“I can offer you a glass of water or some lemonade,” his stepmother said, coming to a halt in the middle of the fake Oriental rug.
“Thank you, but I know you’re busy.” Gavin reached into his jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out the last letter from his mother. “I read my mother’s cards. And this last letter.”
Odelia sank onto a chair, her face shuttered. Gavin tried to hand her the letter, but she waved it away. “I know what it is. Ruth insisted on sending it to you. Just stirring up old trouble that can’t be changed.”
Gavin ran his index finger over the return address. Could nothing be changed? Allie believed differently, so he was going to give it a try. “I need to know why, Odelia. You owe me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything. I raised you as my child. That’s enough for any woman to do.”
“Just tell me why my father didn’t give me the cards or this letter.”
“Did Ruth know you were coming?”
“Not until today,” Gavin said. He could tell Odelia was stalling as she calculated how little she could say. “Give me an honest answer. Then I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Peace? I haven’t known a moment’s peace since I birthed my first baby.” His stepmother looked up at him. “Sit down.”
Gavin took the chair opposite hers, deliberately stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankle, a casual pose he knew would annoy her.
“Your father, God rest his soul, told me he didn’t give you the cards at first because he was afraid it would upset you. He figured you’d get over missing your mother faster if you didn’t get reminded of her all the time.”
As if his mother had ever been out of his mind for even a second in those months after she’d left. Gavin reached into his jacket pocket to touch the velvet box that held his mother’s locket. He’d had it messengered out from his house in New York, where it sat in a dark corner of his bedroom safe.
“Once we got married, your father wanted you to look upon me as your mother, so he went on hiding the cards. I told him he should burn them, but he said it wouldn’t be right because they were yours. I should have burned them myself after he died, but I honored his memory by keeping them.”
Thank God his father and stepmother had held on to at least that much conscience.
“It’s the plane ticket that’s got you all riled up, isn’t it?” Odelia looked down at her hands twisted together in her lap. “When your mother called up with that damn fool idea of sending the ticket, I knew you’d jump at the chance to run away to her, even though she’d left me to do all the hard work of raising her child. But your father said we had to give you the choice.” She lifted her head to glare at Gavin. “Only your father needed you here to help him with the store. I didn’t want him lifting those heavy feed bags anymore. It was going to kill him. It did kill him.” Her voice hitched on the last two words. She cleared her throat before she continued. “So I made sure to get to the mail before your father did. Once I had the letter, I told him Susannah had called to say she’d changed her mind, but she was too embarrassed to admit it to him.”
Disbelief rolled through Gavin, making him feel nauseated. Odelia had kept him away from his mother just to have a strong back in the feed store.
She looked away. “I tried to burn that cursed ticket about half a dozen times, but I’d hear your father’s voice saying that it wasn’t right, so I hid it until he died. Then I put it in his desk drawer with all the other cards. Until that interfering Ruth found ’em all.”
“But I went away to college,” Gavin said, still not quite able to grasp her motive. “I wasn’t home.”
“You came home for summers and holidays. Busy times at the store. You owed him that.”
And he’d hated every minute he’d spent in the store under the critical eye of his father. Whatever way he stacked the feed bags, it could have been done better. If he took an order on the phone, he should have known the customer wanted alfalfa, not timothy hay. His father always justified it by saying, “I’m telling you so you can do it properly the next time.”
Odelia turned her face back to him. “He shouldn’t have let you go away to college, but your father said he’d promised your mother, and he couldn’t go back on his word. So he worked himself to death, like I knew he would.”
“I sent him money so he could hire help,” Gavin said. “When he refused it, I sent it to Ruth, and she got Tobias to use it.”
“He didn’t need money. He needed his son to do his duty.”
Gavin felt a sudden buoyancy, as though he’d dodged a bullet he hadn’t known was aimed at him. For all the darkness he carried inside him, at least he’d escaped Odelia and his father’s vision of his future and made his own life—and a damned successful one at that.
While he watched, Odelia seemed to shrivel up and turn into a bitter old woman, but one who no longer held any power over him.
“I wouldn’t have stayed with you, no matter what you did,” Gavin said. “New York was always my goal.”
“None of us understood how much you wanted that until you up and left.”
“I was the cuckoo’s egg in the sparrow’s nest.” Gavin tucked the letter back into his pocket. It was good to know his father’s integrity had held firm. The idea of his father breaking a promise had unsettled him more than he realized.
His anger transmuted into a sense of triumph. Somehow his younger self had found the strength to stand against the pressures of his parents and gotten him to the right place. Maybe the difficulty of the journey made the destination that much more satisfying. Gavin stood up. “You won’t care, but I forgive you, Odelia.”
It was a gift he was giving himself. For Allie’s sake.
His stepmother shot up as though she’d been hit with a cattle prod. “I’ve got nothing to be sorry for, so don’t go acting like I do.”
Gavin turned on his heel and walked out of the parlor, out of the front door, and out of his miserable childhood into his future.
Chapter 31
His mother’s neighborhood in Casa Grande, Arizona, was a weird patchwork of well-irrigated green lawns and arid cactus gardens. As they neared her address, he tried to guess which style Susannah would prefer. He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and stroked his fingers over the soft velvet of the locket’s case, trying to draw some reassurance about his mother’s welcome from her last gift to him.
He should have had Allie with him. But he’d lost the one person he could have counted on to understand how he felt. The one person who wanted him to be whole. This would be the test of whether he was capable of being the man Allie needed. He’d better not screw it up.
“This is it, Mr. Miller,” the driver said as the limo glided to a stop by the curb.
Gavin peered out the window. Maybe he should have given his mother some warning instead of appearing on her doorstep after more than twenty years.
While he gathered his courage, he let his gaze roam over the stucco house with its red-tiled roof, noting the huge saguaro cactus that dominated the front yard, catching the flashes of vivid color from the flowers in the large clay urns on either side of the front door. His mother had chosen native plants and patterns of rocks rather than a water-gulping green lawn. An intriguing entrance with an angled roof over a blue-and-white-tiled porch added eye-catching style while still working within the context of the houses around it.
His mother had always stood out in Bluffwoods without being flashy. He’d been proud to walk in town with her, knowing that she looked different in a beautiful way. Her house gave the same impression.
Gavin touched the jewel case once more before he swung open the car door. The brilliant sunshine made him blink as he strode up the concrete walk. Passing into the cool dimness of the porch was a relief.
He squared his shoulders and pressed the doorbell, hearing the chimes’ muffled echo. After a few seconds, the weathered wooden door swung open. “Hello?”
Gavin tried to absorb every detail about the
woman who stood in front of him as fast as he could. He didn’t know how long she would let him look at her. Her dark hair was cut short in a soft style that feathered around her face, a few silver threads gleaming in the light coming from behind her. The dramatic bones of her face showed more clearly than the blur of his memory because the roundness of youth had been honed away, and a few fine lines were etched around her lips and gray-green eyes. His eyes.
She wore navy trousers, a white blouse, and dangling turquoise-and-silver earrings, while a large, multicolored scarf was draped around her neck and shoulders. Her narrow feet were bare, the toenails painted bright orange.
Her expression went from polite inquiry to furrowed puzzlement to flashing joy. “Gavin? Gavin, it’s you! Oh dear God, it’s you!”
Guilt and regret tore at him as tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks, but her smile never wavered. She reached out to brush his shoulder with just her fingertips. “I thought you might be a hallucination, but you’re real.” She hesitated. “May I hug you?”
The feeling of suspension crumbled at her words. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him, even as he thought how fragile her shoulder bones felt under his palms. Fear crawled through him. She could die in her sleep tonight . . . and he would never get the chance to know her.
“Mom,” he whispered against her hair.
A sob broke from her. “I thought I’d never hear you say that again.” She leaned away from him to look up into his face, her expression one of wonder. “You’re so beautiful.”
“So are you.” He wanted to tell her that she was more than beautiful—that she was extraordinary, transcendent, radiant—but words, his stock-in-trade, couldn’t do her justice.
She shook her head and stepped back. “Here I am, making you stand on the doorstep when I’ve wanted nothing more than to welcome you into our home. Come in!”
Our home, she’d said.
When she turned and led him into the hallway, her movements summoned forth the ghost of his younger mother spinning around the living room. Now he understood her urge to touch him to make sure he wasn’t a dream. He wanted to throw his arms around her and breathe in the scent of her perfume as he had when he was a small boy.
“Let me give you a glass of wine, and we’ll go out on the patio.” He followed her into a combined kitchen and family room. Sliding glass doors led to a patio shaded by a trellis, dotted with urns spilling pink-and-purple flowers. Southwestern-patterned cushions made the wicker chairs look welcoming.
“You’re very quiet,” his mother said, pouring a glass of white wine. “Especially considering you’re a writer.”
He took the glass, noticing that her hands were the same slim, graceful shape he remembered. “I think all I want to say is contained in that one word. Mom.”
Tears streaked down her cheeks again. “I can’t hear it often enough.”
They settled in two chairs across from each other, she with her legs tucked sideways on the cushion. Gavin shrugged out of his jacket as the sun soaked into the leather. He waited for his mother to say something, but she just sat looking at him, smiling through her tears.
“Don’t you want to know why?” Gavin asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve learned not to ask questions when things are good.”
“I need to tell you.”
“Then I want to know.” She took a sip of wine without ever looking away from him.
He told her about the cards, about his confrontation with Odelia.
For a moment, anger tightened her jaw and made her eyes flash. “They had no right to keep those from you.” But then her shoulders slumped, and she stared down into her wineglass. “I should have called you. I should have made sure you knew I loved you. But I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me.” Her voice cracked. “That you wouldn’t want to talk to me. The cards were a coward’s way.”
“Odelia and Dad would have blocked your calls, too,” Gavin said. “And the cards led me here, so don’t regret them. The blame lies with Odelia, not you.”
“That woman had her own issues,” his mother said with a sigh. “I lived in Bluffwoods long enough to know her first husband was abusive and drank every penny he earned. Then he got himself killed when his tractor rolled on him. Odelia must have thought it was a gift from heaven when Kenneth offered to marry her so he’d have a mother for you. I imagine she was afraid if you left, he wouldn’t need her anymore.”
Gavin shifted his perspective again as he fit in the information about his cold stepmother. “I used to dream that you would appear on the doorstep one day and take me away with you.”
Her chair creaked as she shifted. “At the beginning I had no way to support both of us. Kenneth offered me money, but only if I signed over my rights to you.” She gave him a quick glance. “I wouldn’t do that. Then I listened to your father when he said you had settled in with Odelia, and I would only make things worse for you.” She sighed. “I was so young, I thought he knew better than I did. Then you got rich and famous, and I didn’t want you to think your success was the only reason I reached out to you.”
“I didn’t look for you because I didn’t want to know if you were dead,” Gavin said. “I couldn’t even ask Dad. I told myself that he would let me know if you passed away.”
His mother took a deep breath. “Now do you want to know why?”
“Why you left?” Gavin saw the pain in her eyes and shook his head. “I don’t ask questions when things are good.”
“You’re kinder to me than I would be to myself,” she said before she sucked in a deep breath. “When I met your father, I’d been taking care of myself since my parents were killed in a car accident when I was seventeen, and I was exhausted. I was working in the accounting department at a feed company in Chicago that he did business with. I’d flirt with him when he came in.” A tiny smile of memory curved her lips. “I don’t think he’d ever been flirted with before.” The smile faded. “He seemed so solid and dependable. He could lift some of the responsibility for my own life from my sagging shoulders.”
She shrugged as though to shift the weight. “To him, I was like one of those garishly colored shirts you bring home from your vacation in Hawaii because you want to hang on to the rainbows and the sea turtles and the blue waves. Then you put the hot pink shirt on in your bedroom in Bluffwoods, Illinois, and you wonder what the heck you were thinking, because it looks cheap and out of place. No rainbows, no sea turtles.”
“You never looked cheap,” Gavin protested.
She smiled. “He couldn’t figure out what to do with that Hawaiian shirt he’d brought home by mistake, so he tried to pretend it was plaid flannel.”
There was so much sadness in her voice that he wanted to beg her to stop, but she needed to tell him her story as badly as he’d needed to tell her his story.
“He used to watch you,” he said. “When you danced around the living room. He’d pretend to read the paper or stare at the television, but I saw his eyes following you.”
“Wondering what crazy thing I would do next,” she said with a strangled laugh. “When I got pregnant, he was proud but panicked. Now he was stuck with me. But you”—she looked at him with so much love that it was hard for him to breathe—“you were pure joy to me.”
He felt a surge of old anger and hurt. If she felt that way, why had she abandoned him? But he let it sink back into the past he’d left at Odelia’s house.
“One day Kenneth wanted to punish you for reading a book when you were supposed to be doing some chore or other, nothing important. I wouldn’t let him, but even worse, I challenged him in front of you. He hit me.” She shook her head, as though to rid herself of the memory. “I think it shocked him as much as it did me. We both knew I had to leave.”
Rage scorched through Gavin. He knew his father had done something serious to drive his mother away, but he hadn’t expected physical violence. “The bastard. I didn’t know . . . wouldn’t ha
ve guessed.” He realized why. “He never hit anyone that I saw.”
“Thank God!” She met Gavin’s gaze straight on as she twisted the stem of the wineglass between her fingers. “I made him swear on the Holy Bible that he would never, ever strike you. Every month for about two years I called him at the store to make him swear he had not done so. I was sure he wouldn’t lie to me.”
His father had found other ways to make his life miserable.
“It took me longer than I had hoped to scrape together enough money so that I could support both of us. By that time, you had a stepmother and sisters and a home. You were settled in school and doing brilliantly, according to your father.” Her mouth twisted as she choked on a sob. “Kenneth told me in no uncertain terms that my rented apartment and paralegal job weren’t secure enough to risk uprooting you. He said he’d fight me for custody.” Now the sob broke loose. “I knew the law well enough to be afraid he would win, so I just kept sending cards and money and hoping for a miracle.”
Gavin knelt in front of his mother, taking the wineglass from her fidgeting hands before he gripped them in his own. “Dad was a man of powerful convictions. We were both too young to fight him.”
She pulled her hands free and wrapped them around his shoulders. Bending forward, she buried her face on his shoulder and wept full out. He held her, letting all his loneliness wash away with her tears. If he had suffered, she had suffered even more, because she carried a burden of guilt on top of all the other pain.
It reminded him of the day Allie had comforted him, taking on the storm of emotions battering him. Until now he had not understood how hard it was to see someone you cared about suffer so deeply. But Allie had stayed with him, offering her body for him to escape into, and her healing to bring him back to himself.
She had given him so many gifts, and he’d ground them under his heel at the first sign of trouble. He had to swallow a groan at the agony twisting in his chest.
His mother’s sobs quieted, and she lifted her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. “Thank you, my dear one. You’re a better son than I deserve.”
The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3) Page 33