Clare forgot about the sweats and stared at her daughter as a cold chill settled down on her. “What?”
Katie took a deep breath. “I want to be in the Shakespeare Festival. I’ll be sixteen by July and that’s old enough.”
Clare stumbled to her feet. “Oh, no, Katie. You can’t give up MIT for that. I mean, it’s actors, it’s craziness, there’s no future—”
Katie lifted her chin. “Dad was an actor. Does that mean he wasn’t good enough? That he had no future? That he was so weird?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant—”
Katie stood up and set her hands on her hips. “I’m tired of this whole town treating my dad like he was some freak just because he wasn’t from here. And I’m tired of defending your choice to marry him. I’m going to be in the festival, and I’m going to prove that an actor can be a normal person, just like anyone else!”
Oh, Lord in heaven, this was not good. She couldn’t have Katie follow the same path Clare had taken. Clare had been seventeen the summer she’d worked at the festival and met Ed, only one year older than Katie. “It’s not your responsibility to defend your dad—”
“He’s dead, and you won’t do it, so who else is there?” Katie strode to the door, her fist bunched tightly around the strap of her backpack. “I’m going to school. We can talk later, but I’m not backing down.”
“But—”
“And by the way, Mom,” Katie said as she opened the door. “I’m fifteen, and I’m not an idiot. You could have told me you were sleeping with Griffin.”
Clare gawked at her daughter. “We’re not—”
“See? You’re ashamed of him, just like you’re ashamed of dad. Well, I’m tired of being ashamed. I’m going to be in that festival, and I’m telling all my friends that you’re sleeping with Griffin—”
“Katie.” Griffin opened the bathroom door, wearing Clare’s pink robe. “I appreciate you looking out for me, but I think that’s not the best way to do it.”
Clare groaned and buried her face in her hands. “And there goes my chance to deny it.”
“Oh, come on, Mom! His underwear is in your bed!” Katie turned to Griffin, her eyes flashing. “I’m not ashamed of you, Griffin.”
“And your mom isn’t either,” Griffin said. “But what she does in her private life isn’t the business of this town.”
“Everything is the business of this town!” Katie said. “Everyone already thinks you guys are sleeping together, so at least this way we can be proud of it and not let people make us feel bad.”
“No.” Griffin folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. The robe barely came to mid-thigh, and his attempt to close the neck and hide his chest was slowly failing. “Do you want people to know Jeremy kissed you and then told you he didn’t want to date you?”
Katie’s cheeks flared red, and Clare glared at Griffin. “That’s enough—”
“No, it’s not,” Griffin said. “Katie needs to understand that speaking up against the crowds is not always about spilling your secrets.”
Katie glared at him. “Don’t you get it? For my whole life, I’ve had people make this little face of disapproval whenever my dad was mentioned. The actor. The outsider. The reckless driver. And now, my mom’s doing the same thing to you, not defending you. I’m tired of it!”
Clare’s heart tightened for the pain she saw in her daughter’s eyes. “Katie, I’m so sorry. Your dad was a good man—”
“Then why don’t you ever say that when people talk about him?” Katie stomped her foot in visible frustration “Why do you just sit there with your mouth shut?”
“I don’t—”
“You do! But I don’t have to be like you. I don’t have to be ashamed of who I am, or who my father was.” She took a deep breath and gave Clare a haughty look. “I’m going to be in the festival, and you can’t stop me.”
“If you don’t like people judging your father,” Griffin said quietly, “putting yourself in the festival just to stop judgment may have the opposite effect.” He folded his arms over his chest. “And trust me, it won’t be any better if you tell people about me and your mom, because they will judge her in ways you don’t even want to imagine.”
Katie’s face paled, then she screamed with frustration and ran out of the room.
“Don’t you dare leave this house!” Clare rushed after her, but by the time she got outside, Katie was already climbing into the cab of a truck with Sara and her older brother. “Katie!”
“I’m going to school,” Katie yelled out the window. “Leave me alone!” Then the truck’s engine revved, and it drove off with her daughter. They were driving toward school at least, so that was good.
Clare’s first instinct was to grab her car keys and go after her, but she knew that would serve no purpose. No good words could come when they were both upset. She had to give her space.
But this was not good. Really, really, not good. She had no idea how to handle this. How to fix it. How to make it right with her daughter, because everything Katie had accused her of was true. She never defended Ed when people criticized him. Not once. There was no way she could lie about him. She wouldn’t hurt Katie by revealing the truth about Ed, but God help her, there was no way she could bring herself to lie and say he was a great guy, either. But if she did nothing, was Katie going to plunge straight into the life Clare had and get knocked up by an actor just to prove that her dad was okay?
Her skin went ice-cold at the thought, and Clare stumbled back toward the house, her bare feet aching on the gravel driveway. Her daughter was gone, but her words hovered in the air, reverberating like the thick humidity of summer.
And Clare was out of answers.
It was just too hard.
Chapter Eighteen
Griffin had managed to get his sweats back on by the time Clare came back inside. Guilt coursed through him at the haunted expression on her face. She looked furious and devastated at the same time, and she slammed the door shut when she came in. “How could you come out of the bathroom in front of Katie?”
Shit. He realized he’d totally screwed up. He really thought he’d done the right thing at the time. Once he realized Katie knew he’d been with Clare, there was no way he could have stood back and let Katie spread gossip about Clare, even if her motivation was pure, from a somewhat twisted teenage point of view. “She knew I was here, Clare. Nothing was going to be served by my hiding.” Griffin found his shirt and picked it up. Yeah, too little, too late, but it still felt like the responsible thing to do to throw his clothes back on.
“She’s fifteen!”
Griffin frowned, trying to understand Clare’s outrage. “She’d figured it out, Clare. She wasn’t buying the lies.”
Clare threw up her arms in frustration. “You were naked!”
“I wasn’t naked.” He felt a little uncertain how to respond. Historically, he didn’t have a great track record with diffusing the outrage of a woman, and he’d learned to stop trying. But he really wanted to figure it out with Clare. He wanted to make it okay. He wanted to work it out with her. There had never been a chance to work out conflict with Hillary, but he sensed it could be different with Clare, if he could figure out how to handle it. “I was wearing your robe. I thought it would lighten the moment.”
She glared at him, still fuming, but he saw in those eyes more than anger. Loss, anguish, uncertainty, and his heart softened, realizing that her anger wasn’t directed toward him, but that she was haunted by the interaction with Katie. “You were naked underneath it!”
“We’re all naked under our clothes. It’s the way it works.” He tossed his shirt over his shoulder, searching for the right words to help her. “Listen, I’m sorry that she walked in on us. I really am.” But he couldn’t quite muster up too much apology. Frankly, when Katie had defended him like that, he’d felt like the king of the world. Yeah, it hadn’t been Brooke, but if Katie could accept him, then maybe he had a chance with his own daughter.
Griffin crouched in front of her and stroked her hair, aching for her torment. “Hey, Clare,” he said quietly. “Other people don’t matter. You have to live your life—”
“I’ve tried so hard,” she said as she hugged herself tighter. “I’ve worked so hard to make up for my mistake with Ed, and now, I’ve made the same error again. I’ve aligned myself with a man who will leave, exposed my daughter to sex, and—”
“Hey.” Now he was pissed. “It wasn’t sex. It was the connection between two souls and it was amazing. If they can’t see that, who the hell cares what they think?”
Clare looked up then, tears brimming in her eyes. “Ed was leaving when he crashed.”
“Ed?” Griffin frowned, trying to keep up with the change in topic. “Leaving town?”
“Me.” There was such pain in her eyes that his heart broke for her. “He left me, Griffin. He walked out on me and Katie.”
“Oh.” Shit. He knew exactly what it felt like to be walked out on. It sucked beyond words. Griffin sat down beside her and leaned against the wall. He rested his forearms on his knees. “What happened?”
Clare was still hugging herself, and she looked so vulnerable he wanted to gather her in his arms and protect her. But he was smart enough to know that the last thing she wanted right now was him, not in that way.
“Katie was two months old, and I was working at Wright’s part-time while Ed was working on his acting skills in our basement. I came home one day, and his duffel bags were packed. He said he was an actor and he had to follow his path, and that being in this town was stifling him.”
Bastard. “There are a lot of theatres in Portland. That’s not too far away.”
Clare shook her head, her eyes glimmering with tears. “He said that I was killing his soul, and he wanted out. He couldn’t be married to someone who had no vision beyond this town.”
Griffin swore. “That’s a bunch of crap. You’re an incredible woman.”
“I was just me, nothing glamorous or exotic. I just wanted to be a mom and a wife, and live in Birch Crossing. It wasn’t enough for him.”
Stupid bastard. How could anyone walk away from Clare and Katie? “Fuck him.”
Clare laughed softly, but he could see the pain still etched on her features. “I tried to stop him. I cried. I begged. I told him I couldn’t do it by myself. I told him that Katie needed him.” She looked up at Griffin. “I even told him I’d go with him.”
“And?” He didn’t even need to ask. He could see from the expression on Clare’s face that the stupid bastard had been completely unable to see the gift that Clare was.
“He told me he didn’t want us. So, he took the car, our only car, this rusted old truck that barely ran, and he left. He crashed on his way out of town and died at the scene.”
Son of a bitch. “How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Shit.” He could only imagine the weight on Clare’s shoulders on that day. “Were your parents around to help you out?”
She shook her head. “My dad had died when I was younger, and my mom was already sick at that point.” She looked up, her eyes luminous. “I’ve never told anyone the truth about Ed. I was too ashamed to admit to everyone that they were right about him. Katie has no idea. As far as she knows, he adored her and his death was a tragic loss. How do I defend him to the town when I know they’re right? He walked out on his beautiful daughter, Griffin. What kind of man does that?”
“A bastard.” Griffin leaned his head back against the door, trying to imagine how Katie would respond if she knew the truth about her father, that he hadn’t loved her. Maybe it would free her from his memory instead of dragging her down. “Would you consider telling Katie what he was really like?”
“No, never,” Clare shook her head emphatically. “What’s the point of telling her that her father didn’t love her? As long as she believes her dad loved her, she can hold onto it. And maybe he did. Maybe he would have reached the Maine border and turned around. We’ll never know.”
Griffin looked at her. “You know.”
Clare sighed. “Yes, I do. He never wanted to stay, not for a minute, and the only reason he did was because I got pregnant and Norm chased him down with a gun and told him he had to do right by me.”
Griffin liked the old man already, but now? He’d buy that man a beer, or thirty, the next time he saw him. “A real shotgun wedding?”
“Yeah, well, Norm and Ophelia are the only ones who know Ed had to be threatened into marrying me. The rest of the town thinks he was a loser because he died. No one knows how bad it was.” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because I’m safe. I’m an outsider and I won’t judge you.”
She groaned and let her head flop back against the door with a thud. “Of course you can still judge me.”
“But I won’t.” Unable to resist the need to comfort her, Griffin moved so that his shoulder was against hers. He gently unwrapped her arms from her knee and took her hand, holding it between his. “Listen to me, Clare.”
She turned so she could see him, still using the door to support her head. “What?”
“You’re an incredible woman. What you’ve managed to do with the life you were handed is extraordinary.”
She watched him, but said nothing. No denial, but no acceptance either. “I should have found a way to keep him alive for my daughter,” she said quietly.
“No. You can’t blame yourself for any of that. The choices you made fifteen years ago were the best you could make at the time. They have no reflection on today.” He rubbed her hand, not liking how cold it was. “It wasn’t your fault that Ed left.”
“I made a bad choice, and Katie has suffered for it.”
“How? She’s a happy kid.”
“You heard her! The town ridicules her dad. That’s not fair to her.” She groaned. “And now she wants to do that festival. Do you realize what that means? She might meet a boy there like I did, and start down that path and that life. I can’t let that happen, Griffin. I have to protect her from that. She needs to get a good education and have the tools to handle whatever life throws at her. I don’t want her to deal with what I faced.” Tears filled her eyes. “What if she got pregnant by some actor? She’ll be sixteen this summer. Sixteen.”
Griffin pulled her onto his lap, and Clare melted into him as the tears came. He had no words to comfort her. He couldn’t tell her that she was fabricating the horrors that might befall her daughter, because he knew they weren’t imaginary. It was like his dream, and Katie was heading straight into the proverbial ocean, and Clare couldn’t stop her.
And the worst thing of all, for her, was the truth that everyone in town who gave her grief about her choice to marry Ed had been proved correct, at least in Clare’s view.
She had married a bastard. An outsider who had screwed up her life and then abandoned her in more than one way. Griffin kissed the top of her head as she cried in his arms, holding her and giving her comfort as best he could.
And now, after surviving through it all, here she was again. With an outsider who was going to abandon her...Son of a bitch.
Maybe his daughter was right.
Maybe he was a bastard, too.
* * *
Clare cried for the loss of her childhood dream. She mourned the loss of a man she’d loved with such innocence and hope. She grieved the deprivation of a family for herself and for Katie. And she cried for the truth that she hadn’t been enough to keep her husband alive.
She hadn’t cried when Ed died.
She’d sat at the funeral in stunned silence, holding her tiny baby, silently resolving that she wou
ld not abandon her daughter the way Ed had. In that moment, she’d shut down her heart, she’d closed off emotions, and she’d gone into full drive to create a safe haven for her daughter.
For fifteen years, she hadn’t slowed down enough to grieve. She hadn’t let herself mourn the life she wasn’t ever going to have. She hadn’t paused to let herself feel the loneliness of an empty bed. She hadn’t dared take a moment to breathe, to feel, to think.
Until now.
Until Griffin had made love to her all night and held her in his arms until dawn.
Until his own pain with his daughter and his kindness to Katie had cracked a hole in Clare’s heart that she couldn’t glue shut anymore.
And now... God, she wished she couldn’t feel anymore. She wished she was the woman she’d been for fifteen years. Because the anguish in her heart, the pain in her soul, the sheer devastation of her spirit was beyond what she could handle.
She should push Griffin away. Run for the door. Climb a mountain and shout her strength from its peak.
But she couldn’t. She simply had nothing left. The weight of fifteen years of fighting on her own was simply too much.
“Come on,” Griffin said as he swept her up in his arms and stood up.
Clare clung to him, unable to stop the tears, the pain, the sobbing, and she didn’t care where he took her. “Just don’t leave me,” she gasped through her tears.
“I won’t.”
Her relief at his reassurance was mind-numbing. How could she be so afraid of being alone? She had to be able to be alone, to handle it on her own. That was her life. That was what she did. She couldn’t get weak. She couldn’t get weak.
But there were no reserves to draw upon. No courage. No strength. No plucky mantra. Just pain. Grief. Loss. Hopelessness. Griffin felt like her only anchor, the one thing she could hold onto to keep from being sucked down into the abyss.
Griffin set her down on the bed, and she clung to his neck as the bed sank beneath his weight. He rolled onto his side and pulled her into his body, tucking her against him like she was a tiny child and he was a great protector.
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