Embracing Her Heart

by Melissa Foster

  Long after their breathing calmed, they lay on their sides, braided together beneath the starry sky.

  “Maybe I should have come down to the river that night after all,” she said with the sated voice of a satisfied lover. “That was so much better than éclairs.”

  He kissed her flushed cheeks. “I’m madly in love with your distraction techniques.”

  “Oh yeah?” She glanced at the river and squirmed free from his arms.

  “Grace…?”

  With a mischievous look in her eyes, she pushed to her feet and sprinted into the water. Reed ran after her, catching her around the waist. She shrieked and clung to him, kissing and smiling.

  “How was I ever stupid enough to let you go, Gracie?”

  “You weren’t stupid. We both needed to get out there and find ourselves. Now I know exactly where I belong.”

  Then stay was on the tip of his tongue. But that request would be unfair. “In my arms, babe. That’s where you’ve always belonged.”

  Much later, full on éclairs and drunk on love, they made their way home.

  “Do you want to put the shoe box away for now?” Grace asked.

  “I don’t know what I want,” he said honestly, drawing her into his arms. “Other than more of you.”

  “I can’t help but think…I spent all those years feeling hurt and deceived because I thought you left town for someone or something else. When we first saw each other again, if we hadn’t taken the time to clear the air, if you hadn’t pushed me to talk to you that night by the creek, we might never be where we are today. What if Frank has something to say that you should hear?”

  He thought he’d be ready to talk about Frank by now, but apparently he wasn’t, because his gut roiled at the thought of the man.

  Grace reached up and caressed his cheek. “I’m not saying you should talk to him. I will support whatever you decide to do or not do. Just be sure that when Monday comes and Frank leaves, you’re okay with your decision, whatever it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  GRACE ROLLED ONTO Reed’s side of the bed Thursday morning expecting to feel the tickle of his leg hair and his hard, muscular frame as he gathered her close. Instead, she landed on an empty mattress. Blinking the fog of sleep from her eyes, she said, “Reed?”

  “Right here, babe.”

  She crawled to the other end of the bed. Reed sat against the wall wearing only a pair of jeans, his long legs crossed at the ankle. The shoe box lay open beside him. He met her gaze with a pained expression, and her heart pitched.

  “Are you okay? How long have you been up?” She climbed off the bed, wearing one of Reed’s T-shirts over her panties, and sat down beside him. His hair was damp, and the scent of soap clung to his skin. How had she slept through him showering?

  He draped his arm around her and kissed her temple. “I’m okay. I’ve been up for a few hours, I guess.” He waved a photograph he was holding. “I just started going through these.”

  “You should have woken me so you didn’t have to face them alone.” She rested her head on his shoulder, and he held her a little tighter.

  He laid the picture on his thigh, and her breath caught in her throat at the young pregnant woman in the picture. She had thick dark brows and long lashes, green eyes that seemed almost too big for her slim face, full lips, and an angular nose, like Reed’s. Her hair was a few shades lighter than his, cut just past her shoulders. She was lying on a sofa wearing a red-and-white flannel shirt, which was buttoned only between her breasts and fell to the sides of her round belly. One hand rested over her chest, the other on her baby bump. She had a wondrous look in her eyes, as if she were having a secret conversation with her unborn child. She looked so young, so alive, it was hard to believe she had died giving birth.

  “It’s Lily, my mom, pregnant with me,” Reed said softly. “I’ve seen dozens of pictures of her, but never anything like this. Look at her face. It’s like she didn’t know the picture was being taken, and yet whoever took it must have been right there.”

  A lump formed in Grace’s throat. “Or she was too caught up in thoughts of you to care.”

  A half-happy, half-sad expression came over him. He picked up a few pictures from the box and said, “Look at her jacket in this picture. Suede collar, black fringe on yellow shoulders, and that choker…” He smiled and ran his fingers over the thin black choker circling her slender neck. A single jewel hung from the center. She was looking over her shoulder at the camera, and her hair was blowing across her face. In the sunlight her hair had a reddish tint. “She sure wasn’t boring, was she?”

  He set that picture down and studied another. His mother was laughing, her lips painted bright red, her eyes faintly lined. She stood with a man who could have been Reed’s brother, the same toffee-brown hair, serious, thoughtful midnight-blue eyes. His mother wore a fancy black dress with a white collar, and he wore a suit. Her hair was longer, and she looked younger than in the first picture. Eighteen, nineteen maybe?

  “I guess that’s Frank,” he said tentatively. “He looks nothing like that now.”

  She knew his parents had met at college and wasn’t surprised when he handed her another picture of the two of them sitting on the grass with a bunch of other college-aged kids in front of an academic-looking building. His mother’s expressive eyes were hauntingly carefree.

  He set that picture down and picked up the last two. One of his mother with a bowl of popcorn balanced on her pregnant belly, reading a book as she leaned against a tree.

  “I wish so many things right now,” Reed said quietly, “and it’s crazy knowing none of them can ever come true.”

  Grace hugged him. “I’m sorry.”

  Reed studied the last picture for a long time. It was a photograph of a tiny baby in a man’s arms. The picture covered the man chest to belly, the only identifying marks the scars on his arm.

  “Do you think that’s you?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I saw Frank’s scars.”

  “What happened?”

  Reed shrugged. “Who knows.”

  He set the picture down and picked up a faux-leather journal, his uneasy gaze shifting to her. The world seemed to still around them.

  Reed inhaled deeply and opened to the first page. They both silently read the inscription.

  Lils, thank you for bringing our love to life. Here’s to forever and a day, Frankie.

  Reed’s eyes misted over, and Grace was right there with him. She cuddled closer, hugging his arm and trying not to let her emotions swamp her. She needed to be strong for Reed. She was so glad he was going through the box. She knew how much courage it took, but as much as she wanted to tell him so and praise him for his strength, she didn’t want to break the spell and interrupt his search for answers.

  He turned the page, and Grace looked away, wanting to give him privacy. “I’m going to shower.”

  Reed pulled her closer and kissed her. “Thank you,” he whispered in a tortured voice, making it harder for her to walk away.

  She tried to shower quickly, but as the shower rained down on her, the ache inside her bloomed, making her chest feel full and sore. She hurt for Reed and all he could discover, for the pain of never knowing a mother who clearly loved him, and that pain morphed to guilt. She had a family who adored her. A mother who wanted nothing more than to continue having her children come and go from her house at all hours. A father who cared enough to be overprotective. And she had run far and fast at eighteen years old and had rarely looked back.

  Until now.

  Guilt sank deep into her bones as she leaned against the tile wall, sobbing into her hands, her tears mixing with the shower spray. And then that guilt shattered into a million pieces, slicing her like shards of glass, and she was no longer crying over what she had but for what Reed never would.

  After her shower, she found Reed pacing the living room, red-faced, swollen veins mapping his body, neck, and arms, and his eyes—those serious, loving eyes she fell
head over heels for day after day—were dark torrents of grief. She went to him, and he stopped cold, eyes drilling through her.

  “DON’T COME NEAR me, Grace,” Reed warned.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “What happened? That’s what I want to know.” He flipped open the journal and read from it. “‘I can’t wait to meet our baby. Frankie is beside himself, talking to my belly, telling stories about when he was a boy and about how we fell in love the day we met. He’s as in love with our unborn child as I am.’” He flipped angrily through a few more pages and continued reading. “‘Some days I don’t think I could breathe without Frankie. When my feet ache, he rubs them. When I’m sad, he dances with me. Dances! Our baby is the luckiest child in the world to have him as a father.’” Reed snapped the journal closed, gripping it tight.

  “But that’s all good, right?”

  Grace’s worry and confusion were as palpable as the fucking journal in his hand.

  “Good?” He scoffed. “It’s fucking wonderful. What happened to that guy? Where’d he go when she died? Because that man? That Frankie? He can’t be the man who left me behind.”

  “W-wha…?”

  “Exactly,” he seethed, and took the stairs two at a time, with Grace rushing after him. He grabbed a shirt from his drawer and tugged it on. Then he jammed his bare feet into his boots and headed downstairs.

  She followed him. “Where are you going?”

  “To get some fucking answers.”

  “Give me a sec to get my shoes on.”

  “You’re not coming, Grace.” He grabbed his keys.

  “You shouldn’t do this alone,” she pleaded. “You’re too upset.”

  “That’s exactly why I have to do it alone.” He reached for the doorknob, his hand fisted around his keys, and hesitated only long enough to say, “I love you, Gracie,” before storming out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  REED STALKED INTO the Marriott with tunnel vision, determined to get some answers, or at least to tell Frank what he thought of him for letting his late mother down. His heart hammered as he rode the elevator up to Frank’s floor and even harder as he strode down the empty hallway toward room 433 with the journal in his hand. Why the hell did Frank give it to him if not to fucking torture him even more?

  He stood before Frank’s door, battling rage and staving off no small amount of fear for how he’d react when he faced the man who had abandoned him. He pounded on the door, then pounded again. He heard the sound of the chain sliding, bringing a pulse of anxiety. The thunk of the dead bolt curled his hands into fists.

  Blinded by rage, the second the door opened Reed pushed his way inside, waving the journal. “You were a great husband, a great man. What the fuck happened?” He spun around, and his gut seized. Frank’s eyes were sunken, shadowed by dark crescents, his unshaven face even more gaunt than Reed remembered. His pallor was yellowish, contrasting sharply with his wrinkled white T-shirt. His flannel pajama pants hung from his frail frame. He looked more like eighty- than fiftysomething.

  Reed turned away, gasping a ragged breath. His eyes caught on pill bottles beside the bed, a half-empty glass of water, and a framed photo that nearly took him to his knees. In the photo, his mother’s hair was pinned up in a bun. She was kneeling on the grass, wearing a striped shirt bunched up below her breasts, her pregnant belly too big and round for her tiny frame. A big red heart was drawn on her belly, the words our love, our life written above the rounded tops of the heart. His father knelt behind her, his arms around her shoulders, holding her so tight it broke Reed’s heart. His father’s face was tilted down, eyes closed, his lips against her cheek. His mother’s eyes were also closed. She was leaning into the kiss, wearing the smile of a woman in love.

  He became aware of his father moving and forced more air into his lungs.

  “I lost her,” his father said in a defeated voice as he lowered himself down to a chair. “We lost her.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Reed said angrily, his gaze locked on the picture, drawing strength to ignore the meaning of what was so clearly before him: the pill bottles, Frank’s weakened state and pallor. He wanted to cling to his anger, to let it fuel the hurt and hatred he harbored.

  “No, I suppose for most people it wouldn’t be enough,” his father said. “She was my world, Reed. She was the reason I breathed from the time I was barely a man.”

  Reed spun around, hands fisted, ire pulsing through his veins, unable to keep it from burning out in hateful words. “Then how could you let her down? How could you turn your back on her—your—son?”

  Frank’s gaze drifted to the picture on the nightstand. “Because you weren’t mine to keep,” he said evenly, as if he didn’t have the energy to raise his voice.

  “What?” Reed snapped.

  Frank lifted sad eyes to Reed. “You weren’t mine to keep. You aren’t my son.”

  “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but cut the shit. I saw pictures of you when you were young. We look alike.”

  “No games, Reed. I don’t have time for them. When I lost my parents, I went off the deep end. Hit the bottle pretty hard. Your mother wanted no part of a drunk, and I didn’t blame her one bit for kicking me out. It was almost four months before I was clean and stable enough that she’d take me back. During our separation, she got together with a musician.”

  Reed’s entire body flexed, disbelief coursing through him.

  “She broke it off with him when we got back together. At least that’s what she told me. A few months later we found out she was pregnant. I thought you were mine. I had no reason to believe otherwise, and, Reed, I loved you then, and that love has never died.” He tapped his fist over his heart with damp eyes.

  Reed bit back the urge to call bullshit on the love part.

  “Then one day your mother gets a call. The guy she’d been with died. Overdosed. She collapsed right there by the phone into a sobbing mess on the floor.”

  Tears welled in Frank’s eyes, drawing tears from Reed—for his mother, his father, Frank, or himself, he had no idea.

  “That’s the day she went into labor. The day she told me the baby wasn’t mine. But she swore—swore on everything she’d ever known—that she loved us both, me and the other man.”

  Reed sank down to the edge of the bed, dragging air into his lungs, trying to process this new, awful information.

  “When she died,” Frank said, “part of me thought she’d just given up. That it was the other guy she loved and it was all too much. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but I was a wreck, and then I had this tiny baby, someone else’s baby, to take care of when I couldn’t even take care of myself. I had lost the woman I loved and found out the life she’d nurtured belonged to another man. I could barely function. I tried, Reed. I tried to do the right thing, but every time I looked at you, I saw her and another man. After two days in our apartment, the apartment where…” He swallowed hard, wiped his eyes with his palm, and said, “Where I loved her. The apartment that held her lies, it was overwhelming, like riding a train that had careened off the tracks. I hit the bottle again, woke up with you screaming in your crib, and I knew I couldn’t do it.”

  Reed clasped his hands behind his neck, staring down at the floor, and tried to remember how to breathe.

  “I never told a soul about the other man. I never knew his name, where he lived, who called that day. Nothing,” Frank said. “I didn’t even tell Roy or Ella. I didn’t want them to think poorly of her.”

  After all that, you protected my mother?

  Reed’s eyes remained trained on the floor, which seemed to sway beneath him. “So…what? You left me and never looked back?”

  “I left you with people who loved you and were capable of giving you the life I couldn’t. I knew if I was in your life, I’d only screw it up. I drove out of the state and kept going, stopping only long enough to get shit-faced, sleep it off, and start all over again. I came back to s
ee you once. You were so little and happy. You had people who loved you, whose entire worlds revolved around you. Lily would have wanted you to be with Ella and Roy. I thought maybe I could beat the alcohol again, but I was too broken, and seeing you only reminded me of everything I’d lost. I was too weak, and I’ll always be sorry for that. I knew you were better off without me, so I hit a bar. I took off the next day. I drank, lived in my car, on the streets, got by however I could. And then I got sick.”

  Reed pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the sinking feeling inside him.

  “Your mother came to me in a dream and told me to get to a doctor.” Frank’s voice was shaky. “My guardian angel, even after everything. I went to a clinic, had a bunch of tests. Been sober six months, and they say I have a year to live, give or take. Stage four liver cancer.”

  Reed closed his eyes, a pained noise escaping before he could stop it. His world had spiraled out of control, and he didn’t know what to hold on to or how to make sense of it. His real father hadn’t abandoned him after all; he’d died. Was that any better? Did his real father know his mother had been pregnant with his child? Had his mother loved the other man more than Frank? Those were questions he couldn’t ask, answers he’d never know. And Frank, this man who wasn’t his father, was dying? It hurt to breathe, to think…

  He looked at Frank, a broken man living on a timeline, putting himself through hell for…? “Why did you come back? Why put yourself through this?”