“Yes, I knew.”
“Apparently, he saw some very bad things, and that might have been why he first started having problems with alcohol. Carole didn’t talk about it until after the accident. I had no idea, honestly.” She paused and leaned closer. “And neither did his kids. I made a promise to Carole that we would never ever tell anyone what happened. There seemed no reason to put Ken and his siblings through such torment.”
“He went through torment,” she said quietly.
“But he never blamed his father.”
“No, he blamed Dad.”
Josie tipped her head. “We didn’t think that mattered in the long run of his life. We didn’t think you two kids were serious. You were fifteen years old. And, it was actually Carole’s idea to have a ‘nondisclosure agreement’ so she wouldn’t have to talk about it and so her kids would think she’d lose the money if they did.”
Beth literally held on to the table, reeling. “So why did Dad give me the papers if you both made this promise?”
“He didn’t know about the promise, Beth. That was between Carole and me. How Carole handled what John’s kids knew was her business as far as Dad was concerned. That’s why I had to get into your house.”
Beth’s jaw fell open. “You…what?”
“I didn’t get too upset about Ray giving you the papers, though he did it without consulting me, because you told him that you weren’t ever going to see Ken again.”
And she hadn’t planned on it until the pregnancy.
“But once I saw Ken at your house,” Josie said, “I knew that you two would start to get closer and closer. I was counting on the fact that you told Ray you weren’t ever going to read the papers and, even if you had, I could get rid of the autopsy report so Ken would never see absolute proof. So I came up with a way I could get into your house, knowing you’d be gone, and I could take that autopsy report out of the envelope.”
“Josie!” Beth was nearly breathless with disbelief. “You broke into my house? Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“In case you hadn’t read it yet, then I could have saved you from knowing.”
“But he’d go on hating and blaming Dad.”
She shrugged. “I made a promise to Carole. I’m sorry about the flood and the inconvenience, and I didn’t find the papers because you showed up while I was looking. I had to run out the sliding glass door.”
Beth gave a short, mirthless laugh. “So it was you.” She shook her head. “For a bit, I blamed Ken.”
“Don’t blame him,” she said. “This was all to protect Ken. Because I care about Carole, and my heart hurts for anyone who’s lost a husband.” Her eyes filled again. “When Landon’s father died, I was gutted.” She sighed and looked back down the hall from where they’d come. “I don’t think I can handle it again.”
Beth took Josie’s folded hands in hers. “You have to stay positive. And please tell me I can explain all this to Ken.”
“How much does he know?”
“He was working on something in my house and the papers fell, and he saw the autopsy. He wouldn’t know that John actually caused the accident. He accused Dad of faking the report so EDC didn’t get sued. Actually, I think that’s why he came to dinner. To confront Dad.”
“And ended up saving his life,” Josie said. “At least, I hope so.”
At the misery in her voice, Beth put her hand over Josie’s. “All these years I’ve thought Dad was the one trying to control things. It was you. And for some very noble reasons.”
She gave a sly smile. “Behind every controlling father is a way more controlling mother. Or stepmother,” she corrected.
They shared a warm look, but Beth’s phone vibrated, and they both jumped.
“The doc is out,” Beth said, pulling Josie up after reading RJ’s text. “Let’s go.”
They hustled down the hall to the ER, and when they arrived, Landon and RJ were talking to a tall, balding doctor. Beth and Rebecca flanked Josie and joined them.
“They’re doing therapeutic hypothermia,” Landon said.
“What does that mean?” Josie asked.
Beth knew from reading the medical sites on her phone, but she listened to the doctor explain the process of keeping the patient cold, and why, and how long it would take.
“Twenty-four hours at least in maintenance, fully sedated. No one can see him at all. Then we’ll start rewarming and examine the aftereffects of his cardiac arrest. You should all go home and get some rest. You’re going to need it for the next few days.”
“Is he out of the woods yet?” RJ asked.
The doctor zeroed in on him, the stress lines around the man’s eyes deepening. “No. But I will tell you this. The paramedics kept him alive. If he hadn’t been treated as instantly as he was, and by someone who knew exactly what he was doing…” He shook his head. “He’d have died within minutes.”
Josie put her head on Beth’s shoulder. “Ken is a good man,” she whispered. “He has my eternal gratitude.”
RJ gestured behind the group. “You can tell him yourself,” he said.
Beth turned in time to see Ken striding into the waiting area, looking as tired and kicked by life as she felt…and nothing ever looked better to her.
She didn’t even think, but went straight to his arms and let him hold her.
Chapter Twenty-three
Ken had waited outside the hospital for a long time, checking with some friends in ER triage about Ray’s status but firmly resisting the urge to intrude on the Endicott family’s privacy.
Until he couldn’t resist for one more minute and went bounding into the undersized waiting room exclusively for cardiology emergencies.
And as he felt Beth fold into him, he knew he’d done the right thing.
Still in deep conversation with the doctor, the rest of the family acknowledged him, but Beth let Ken lead her a few feet away.
“How is he?” he asked, stroking her face, which looked pale and ravaged from a tough night.
She tipped her head and nuzzled into his hand for a brief moment. “Not in the clear yet, according to the doctor.”
“Are they doing therapeutic hypothermia?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s what the doctor is explaining now. Is that a good thing?”
“It’s very good.” Ken pressed her closer to his chest. “How are you doing?”
“I’m—”
RJ came over and placed a hand on Beth’s shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt, but you need to hear this,” RJ said. “We’re making some decisions.”
“Okay,” she said, giving Ken’s arm a squeeze. “Give me a minute.”
“Of course.”
RJ smiled at him. “The doc was clear about one thing, man.” He shook Ken’s hand and added an unexpected embrace, patting Ken’s shoulder. “He wouldn’t have made it if not for you. My family owes you.”
“No, not at all,” Ken replied. He gave a gentle nudge to Beth. “Go and I’ll wait right outside in the hall.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then stepped away and he walked into the hall, far enough not to eavesdrop on the family conversation.
Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes and thought about all that had transpired that day and that night. During the events, he realized that three things had driven him since the day his father died: his desire to save lives, after feeling so helpless that day; his longing for a family so he could somehow honor his father by re-creating a relationship like they had; and his simmering hatred for the man he blamed for his father’s death.
In a way, his father’s death had formed him…and deformed him.
He’d arrived at dinner to make a public and formal apology, but he would likely never get a chance now. The odds weren’t in Ray’s favor, and for all he knew, they were being told that right now. Eighty percent of SCA victims died, and many of those who lived suffered life-changing brain damage.
Beth walked into the hall and reached for Ken again, sighing into another
embrace.
“We’re working out a schedule to stay here while he’s in hypothermia,” she said.
“Not you, Beth.” He cupped her cheek and examined her red eyes with dark circles. “You’re pregnant.”
“So’s Selina,” she added, then she sighed and lifted her brows in question. “Why’d you come to the restaurant tonight, Ken?”
“I wanted to talk to your father.”
She stared at him, waiting.
“I called my mother today,” he said. “She told me everything.”
Beth’s eye’s shuttered. “Then she’s probably not mad at Josie, who committed at least one crime trying to keep her promise that you’d never find out.”
He gave a soft grunt, thinking of all Josie and Ray had done, and how no one had told Ken any of that all these years. “I went to the restaurant to apologize to your dad, to your whole family, actually. And you. Especially you.”
“You did a lot better than say you’re sorry,” she whispered. “No apology could have been more meaningful.”
“You know, I thought it’d be a grand and dramatic gesture that we could follow up with the happy announcement that we’re having a baby.” He added a rueful smile. “Me and my big ideas.”
“Oh.” The word slipped out of her mouth, sad and rich with disappointment.
“Would you have liked that?” he asked.
“I’d have liked it better than what happened.” She exhaled with bone-deep exhaustion. “I’m glad you came. And I’m glad you came here tonight.”
Hope punched through the worry that had fogged his brain since he’d left the restaurant. “Glad enough that we can get back to where we were, Beth?”
She didn’t answer for a long time, and each second that passed, his heart broke a little more. “You don’t hate my father anymore,” she finally said.
He snorted softly. “No. Apparently, I spent a long time hating the wrong man.”
“You hate him, now?”
“Well, I—”
“Then we can’t get back to where we were.” She dropped his hands and crossed her arms in front of her.
“Why not? You just said yourself I don’t hate your father anymore. I hate mine.”
“Ken, don’t you see?” She shook her head. “You can’t love anyone when your heart is filled with hate.”
He reached for her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “They don’t cancel each other out, Beth. I can despise my father for the lie he lived and the way he wasted his life and the pain he left in his wake and still love you.”
She slipped out of his fingertips with the same ease he could feel her heart slipping away from him. “No, you can’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Until you forgive him, Ken, you are carrying a burden of hate that is going to fester in your heart and eat up all the space I want for me. And for our baby.”
He stared at her, each word like a fire ax against his chest. “I can love you and our baby.”
She turned a little, glancing into the doorway to check on her family before looking back to him. “You have to forgive your father, and that means you have to love him every bit as much today as you did yesterday. To honor his memory and the kind of father he was, warts and addictions and mistakes and all.”
“Forgive him?” He practically choked on the idea. “He essentially killed himself, Beth. How can I think of him any other way now but drunk on the job, hiding his disease, taking chances on his own and other people’s lives?” He spat out the words. “He’s the polar opposite of anyone I could love. The polar opposite of the man and father I want to be.”
“He’s the same man he’s always been to you,” she said. “You know more about him, but you shouldn’t love him less or hate him now.”
He dropped his head into his hands, leaning on the wall. “I can’t forgive him,” he admitted in a cracked, broken voice. “I don’t know how.”
“You can, Ken. You have to. He had a disease and he made a mistake. That doesn’t change how much he loved you.”
“I…can’t.”
She rubbed his arm and said nothing as pain consumed him. He hadn’t felt like this since that day on the job site.
No, this was worse. His heart was being ripped out for a second time, and his dad was dying all over again. It left him hollow, with nothing to fill that space but hate.
Except Beth wanted to replace it with love.
“A person isn’t one dimension, Ken. A person can’t be the sum total of one really dumb mistake he made. There was so much more to your father.”
“But it’s all I’ll ever think about when I think of him now.”
“Which is exactly why your mother and Josie worked so hard to keep the truth from you.”
Slowly, he nodded and put his hands on her face. “God, Beth,” he whispered. “Your father is in critical condition, and you’re here helping me come to terms with mine.”
“Then do come to terms with it,” she said. “Forgive your father, Ken. Stop living with any hate in your heart.”
He pulled her into him, letting their foreheads touch, an emotion welling up so powerfully it took his breath away.
“I need you to be strong,” she said. “Because I have a bad feeling that the poster girl for independence is going to need someone to lean on for the next few days.”
“And years,” he whispered. “Decades, in fact.” He felt her slip closer to him. “I want to be there, Beth. I want to be there for you. For this, for everything life throws at us. I’m so…I’m so…”
In love with you.
He didn’t give voice to the words, looking at her, letting this one last realization press down on his chest and fill him up with a sensation he didn’t remember ever feeling before. He wanted to tell her, but not here, not in a hospital waiting area at two in the morning with her whole family on the other side of—
“Well, this is not good!” Josie’s voice cut through his thoughts, separating them with a quick look of surprise.
Instantly, Beth started back to the small waiting room and Ken stayed right next to her. Inside, the family was huddled around Josie, arguing in low voices.
All except Josie. Her voice rose to that pitch of complete loss of control Ken heard so often in a crisis.
“I can’t go home and sleep while my husband is sedated and freezing!”
“Well, we don’t need to all stay here,” a woman Ken guessed was Landon’s wife said, her voice also strained with exhaustion.
“Someone does!” Josie exclaimed. “What if he dies?”
“Shhh, Mom,” Landon tried to calm her with a gentle tap on her shoulder. “We all need sleep. We’re useless without some rest and the doctor said—”
“I’ll stay.”
Every eye in the family turned when Ken spoke, silent with surprise for a moment, then they all muttered responses like “no” and “you’ve helped us enough,” but he could tell most of them loved the idea. Including Josie.
As if she’d just noticed Ken was there, she walked forward, reaching her hands to him. “Yes. You can stay here.” She took Ken’s hands in hers. “You’re like family tonight.”
He gave the slightest smile. “Maybe for more than just tonight,” he said softly.
Her eyes welled up as she nodded. “Carole will be proud to hear about this.”
“I talked to her today,” he said, thinking again of the long conversation with his mother. “She loves you, Josie.”
“And I love her.” She took a long breath and looked around her family, some composure returning. “Let’s all get some sleep while Ken is on duty here. Landon and Rebecca will bring me back in the morning. RJ, you’ll do the afternoon. Beth—”
“I’m staying with Ken.”
But even as Beth made the pronouncement, he could have sworn she swayed a little.
“No,” Ken said. “You need rest, Beth. You’re…” He swallowed the word and she gave him a slow smile.
“I’m pregnant,”
she finished for him, earning a soft gasp from a group who almost couldn’t take any more shocks in one night.
“Holy guacamole, Beth.” RJ put his arm around her. “You, too? How come you didn’t tell us?”
She gave a soft, resigned laugh. “Waiting for the perfect moment, I guess.”
“You are going home to rest, young lady,” Josie ordered as they gathered around Beth, and Landon came over to shake Ken’s hand.
In the small melee, Beth and Ken were separated, but they held each other’s gaze.
“Thank you,” she mouthed.
“I love you,” he mouthed back, making her eyes go wide as she nodded silently.
That little nod was all he needed. That would get him through the night as he stood and watched the family spirit Beth away and leave him behind on duty.
There was no small irony in the fact that he was left to watch over Ray Endicott while the man fought for the chance to meet his grandchildren. No small irony at all.
And Ken was honored to have the privilege.
* * *
I love you.
Beth clung to the memory of Ken’s soundless admission, rolling the words around in her heart, longing to say them back to him over and over again.
He still had wounds to heal, some fresh, some twenty-five years old. But she would be there to help him, and he would be here to…love her.
I love you.
She thought about those words all the way back to the resort, barely able to keep up a conversation with Selina and RJ, who used Beth’s news to talk about something other than Dad. She insisted they drop her off at her car so she could drive it home. She didn’t want to be home with no way to leave overnight in case she had to get back to the hospital in a hurry.
Landon, Rebecca, and Josie had followed to get something from Josie’s car, and the whole family had one more group hug in the parking lot.
At home, she parked in the driveway and let herself in the front door, carefully locking it behind her as she’d been chided to do by so many people lately. People who cared about her. People who loved her.
Barefoot at Moonrise (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 2) Page 22