“I’m warning you, girl,” he began in a terrible voice, “don’t play games with me. I know Matt flew back to see you, and I know what that telegram said, because I saw him and I saw that telegram!”
Meredith didn’t immediately register what he said about the telegram telegrams. “He—he came back to see me?” Something strange and sweet burst into bloom in her heart, and just as abruptly, it died. “That’s a lie,” she said flatly. “I don’t know why he came back, but it wasn’t to see me, because he didn’t do it.”
“No, he didn’t see you,” he jeered furiously. “And you know why he didn’t! You were in the Bancroft wing of the hospital, and you had him barred from it.” As if he’d finally expended most of his rage, his shoulders slumped, and he looked at her with helpless, angry despair. “I swear to God, I don’t know how you could do a thing like that! When you murdered your baby, he was wild with grief, but when you wouldn’t let him see you, it nearly killed him. He came back to the farm and stayed there. He said he wasn’t going back to South America. For weeks I watched him drowning himself in a bottle. I saw what he was doing—what I’d been doing to myself for years. So I sobered him up. Then I sent him back to South America to get over you.”
Meredith scarcely heard the last part of that; alarm bells were exploding in her brain and clanging in her ears. The Bancroft wing was named after her father because he had donated the money that built it. Her private nurse was employed by her father; her doctor was her father’s crony. Everyone she’d seen or talked to in the hospital had been accountable to her father, and her father despised Matt. Therefore he might have . . . he could have . . . A piercing happiness shot through her, shattering the icy shell that had surrounded her heart for eleven long years. Afraid to believe Matt’s father, and afraid not to believe him, she lifted her tear-glazed eyes to his stony face. “Mr. Farrell,” she whispered shakily. “Did Matt really come home to see me?”
“You know damned well he did!” Patrick said, but as he stared at that stricken face of hers, what he saw was confusion, not cunning, and he had an agonizing premonition he’d been dead wrong; that she didn’t know anything about any of this.
“And you saw that—that telegram I supposedly sent him—about my having an abortion? Exactly what did it say?”
“It—” Patrick hesitated, searching her eyes, torn between doubt and guilt. “It said you’d had an abortion and you were getting a divorce.”
The color drained from Meredith’s face, the room began to spin, and she reached out for the back of the sofa, her fingers biting into it as she tried to steady herself. Fury at her father pounded in her brain, shock shook through her, and regret almost sent her to her knees, regret for those anguished, lonely months after her miscarriage and all the years of suppressed pain at Matt’s desertion that followed them. But most of all what she felt was sorrow; deep, fresh, wrenching sorrow for her lost baby and for the victims of her father’s manipulations. It tore at her, ravaging her heart and sending hot tears pouring from her eyes and down her cheeks. “I didn’t have an abortion, and I didn’t send that telegram—” Her voice broke as she stared at Patrick through a blur of tears. “I swear I didn’t!”
“Then who sent it?”
“My father,” she cried. “It must have been my father!” Her head fell forward, and her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs. “It had to have been my father.”
Patrick stared at the weeping girl his son had once loved to distraction. Torment was etched in every line of her body, torment and anger and sorrow. He hesitated, shattered by what he was seeing, and then with a violent oath he reached out and pulled his daughter-in-law into his arms. “I may be a fool to believe you,” he muttered fiercely. “But I do.”
Instead of haughtily rejecting his touch, as he half expected her to do, his daughter-in-law put her arms around his neck and clung to him while deep, wrenching sobs racked her slender body. “I’m sorry,” she wept brokenly, “I’m so sorry—”
“There, there,” Patrick whispered over and over again, holding her tightly, helplessly patting her back. Through the moisture gathering in his eyes, he saw Joe O’Hara get up and walk into the kitchen, and he held her tighter. “Go ahead and cry,” he whispered to her, fighting back his rampaging fury at her father. “Cry it all out.” Holding the weeping girl in his arms, Patrick stared blindly over her head, trying to think. By the time she quieted, he knew what he wanted to do. He wasn’t so sure how to get it done. “Feel better now?” he asked, tipping his chin down to look at her. When she nodded a little sheepishly and accepted his handkerchief, he said, “Good. Dry your eyes and I’ll get you something to drink. Then we’ll talk about what you’re going to do next.”
“I know exactly what I’m going to do next,” Meredith said fiercely, dabbing at her eyes and nose. “I’m going to murder my father.”
“Not if I get to him first,” Patrick said gruffly. He drew her toward the sofa, pushed her down, and vanished into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
Meredith found his gesture completely endearing, and she smiled as he handed it to her and sat down beside her.
“Now,” he said when she’d finished the chocolate, “let’s talk about what you’re going to tell Matt.”
“I’m going to tell him the truth.”
Trying unsuccessfully to hide his delight, Patrick nodded emphatically. “That’s just what you should do. You’re still his wife, after all, and he has a right to know what happened. And because he’s your husband, he has an obligation to listen and believe you. Both of you have other obligations too—to forgive and forget, to comfort and solace. To honor your wedding vows—”
She realized then what he was getting at, and she paused in the act of putting her cup on the table. Patrick Farrell was the son of Irish immigrants. Obviously he had deep convictions about people being bound to each other for life, and now that he knew the truth about what had happened to his grandchild, he was prodding hard. “Mr. Farrell, I—”
“Call me Dad.” When Meredith hesitated, the warmth faded from his eyes. “Never mind, I shouldn’t have expected someone like you to want to—”
“It isn’t that!” Meredith said, her face burning with shame as she recalled the contempt she’d felt for him before. “It’s just that you mustn’t get your hopes up about Matt and me.” She needed to make him understand that it was much too late to salvage their marriage, but after the pain she’d just put him through, she couldn’t bear to hurt him more by telling him bluntly that she did not love his son. What she did want was a chance to explain to Matt about the miscarriage; she wanted to ask for his understanding and forgiveness. And she wanted to give him hers. She wanted that desperately. “Mr. Farrell—Dad—” she corrected herself awkwardly when he frowned, “I know what you’re trying to accomplish, and it won’t work. It can’t. Matt and I knew each other for only a few days before we separated, and that isn’t enough time to—to . . .”
“To know if you love someone?” Patrick finished when Meredith trailed off into helpless silence. His bushy white brows lifted in mockery. “I knew the moment I laid eyes on my wife that she was the only woman for me.”
“Well, I’m not that impulsive,” Meredith said, and then felt like sinking through the floor because Patrick Farrell’s eyes suddenly gleamed with knowing amusement. “You must have been pretty impulsive eleven years ago,” he reminded her meaningfully. “Matt was with you in Chicago for only one night, and you were pregnant. He told me himself you hadn’t been intimate with anyone before him. So it looks to me like you must have made up your mind pretty fast that he was the one for you.”
“Please don’t go into that,” Meredith whispered shakily, holding her hand up to fend off his words. “You don’t understand how I feel—how I’ve felt about Matt all this time. Lately, some things have happened between Matt and me. It’s all so complicated—”
Patrick shot her a disgusted glance. “There’s nothing
complicated about it. It’s very simple. You loved my son. He loved you. You made a baby together. You’re married. You’ll need some time together to find the feelings you used to have for each other. And you will. It’s as simple as that.”
Meredith almost laughed at his gross misstatement of the entire situation, and his brows shot up when he saw that she found his remarks humorous. “You’d better make up your mind about what you’re going to do pretty fast,” Patrick said, shamelessly trying to force her hand by implying Matt was considering remarrying, “because there’s a girl who loves him plenty, and he just might decide to marry her.”
She assumed he was referring to the girl whose picture was on Matt’s desk, and her heart gave a funny little lurch as she stood up to leave. “The one in Indiana?” He hesitated then nodded, and she tossed a halfhearted smile in his direction as she picked up her purse. “Matt’s been refusing to take my calls. I need to talk to him now, more than ever,” she said in a voice that implored him for help.
“The farm is the perfect place to do it,” Patrick announced, grinning as he abruptly arose. “You’ll have plenty of time on the way there to think of the best way to tell him everything, and he’ll have to listen. It’ll take you only a couple hours to get there.”
“What?” she blinked. “No, really. Absolutely not. Seeing Matt alone at the farm isn’t a good idea at all.”
“You think you need a chaperon?” he demanded incredulously.
“No,” Meredith said half seriously. “I think we need a referee. I was hoping that you’d volunteer and that the three of us could meet here, when he gets back.”
Putting his hands on her shoulders, he said urgently, “Meredith, go to the farm. You can say all the things you need to say to him right there. You’ll never have a better chance,” he cajoled her when she hesitated. “The farm’s been sold. That’s why Matt is there now; he’s packing up our personal things. The phone’s been disconnected, so you won’t be interrupted. He can’t get in his car and drive off because he had car trouble on the way there, and his car had to be towed into the shop. Joe’s not supposed to pick him up until Monday morning.” He saw her begin to waver and he joyously increased the pressure he was applying. “There’s been eleven long years of hatred and hurt between the two of you, and you could put an end to it this very night! Tonight! Isn’t that what you really want? I know how you must have felt when you thought Matt didn’t care about you or the baby, but think how he’s felt all these years! By nine o’clock tonight, all that misery could be behind both of you. You could be friends like you used to be.” She looked ready to capitulate, yet she still hesitated, and Patrick guessed the reason. Slyly he added, “After you’re done talking, you can go to the Edmunton Motel and stay there.”
The more Meredith considered his arguments, the more she realized he was right. Without a phone at the farm, Matt couldn’t call the police to have her arrested for trespassing; without a car he couldn’t drive off and leave her. He would have to listen. She thought of how Matt must have felt—and must still feel—about that telegram he’d gotten, and suddenly she wanted desperately to do what Patrick had suggested, to put an end to all the ugliness between them right away and to part friends. “I’ll have to stop at my apartment and pack an overnight case,” she said.
He smiled down at her with such heartwarming tenderness and approval that a lump of emotion grew in her throat. “You make me proud, Meredith,” he whispered, and she realized he knew that confronting an angry Matt was not going to be nearly so easy as he’d made it seem. “I guess I’d better go,” she said, and then she rose up on her toes and pressed an impulsive kiss to his rough cheek. His arms went around her, enfolding her in a tight bear hug, and the affectionate gesture almost undid her. She could not remember the last time her own father had hugged her.
“Joe will drive you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s started snowing, and the roads could get bad.”
Meredith stepped back and shook her head. “I’d rather take my own car. I’m used to driving in the snow.”
“I’d still feel better if Joe drove you,” he persisted.
“I’ll be fine,” she countered emphatically. Meredith turned to leave, then she remembered she was supposed to have dinner with Lisa that night and attend a showing at an art gallery of Lisa’s boyfriend’s latest work. “May I use your phone?” she asked Patrick.
Lisa was more than disappointed. She was a little angry when Meredith canceled, and she demanded an explanation. When Meredith told her where she was going and why, Lisa was furious—at Philip Bancroft. “God, Mer, all these years, and you and Matt each thought the other . . . and all because your bastard father—” She broke off in the midst of her disjointed tirade and said somberly, “Good luck tonight.”
After Meredith left, Patrick was silent for a long moment, then he looked over his shoulder at Joe, who’d been eavesdropping in the kitchen doorway. “Well,” he said with a beaming grin, “what do you think of my daughter-in-law?”
Joe shoved away from the kitchen doorframe and sauntered into the living room. “I think it would’ve been better if I’d taken her out to the farm, Patrick. That way, she wouldn’t be able to leave, because she wouldn’t have a car either.”
Patrick chuckled. “She figured that out for herself. That’s why she wouldn’t let you drive her there.”
“Matt’s not gonna be happy to see her,” Joe warned. “He’s mad as hell at her. No, he’s worse than mad. I’ve never seen him like he is now. I mentioned her name to him yesterday, and he gave me a look that chilled my blood. From some phone calls I heard in the car, he’s thinking of movin’ in on that department store of hers and taking it over. I’ve never seen anybody get under his skin like she can.”
“I know that,” Patrick softly agreed, his smile widening. “I also know she’s the only one who ever has.”
Joe studied Patrick’s pleased expression, his brow furrowed. “You’re hoping that after she tells Matt about what her father did and after Matt cools down, he might not let her leave the farm, aren’t you?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Five dollars says you’re wrong.”
Patrick’s face fell. “You’re betting against it?”
“Well, normally I wouldn’t. Normally I’d bet ten bucks, not five, that Matt would look at that beautiful face of hers, and see the way her eyes look when she cries, and then he’d take her straight to bed to try to make it up to her.”
“Why don’t you think he’ll do that?”
“ ’Cause he’s sick, that’s why.”
Patrick relaxed and grinned smugly. “He’s not that sick.”
“He’s sick as a dog!” Joe persisted stubbornly. “He’s had that flu all week, and he still went off to New York. When I picked him up at the airport yesterday, he coughed in the car and it made me shudder.”
“Care to raise the bet to ten dollars?”
“You’re on.”
They sat back down to continue their checker game, but Joe hesitated. “Patrick, I’m calling the bet off. It’s not fair for me to take your ten bucks. You haven’t seen Matt hardly at all this week. I guarantee you, he’s going to be too sick and too mad to want to keep her there.”
“He may be that mad, but he won’t be that sick.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I happen to know,” Patrick said, feigning absorption in his next move on the checkerboard, “that Matt got a prescription from the doctor before he left for Indiana, and he took it with him. He called me from the car on the way to the farm and said he was feeling better.”
“You’re bluffing—your eye’s twitching!”
“Care to raise the bet?”
34
When Meredith left her apartment with her overnight bag, it had merely been snowing, but by the time she drove across the Indiana line, the storm was becoming a blizzard. Sand trucks and snowplows were working the highway, their yellow lights swirling like b
eacons. A moving van passed her, throwing slush onto her windshield; two miles ahead, she passed the same moving van—jackknifed in a ditch, the driver standing outside it, talking to another trucker, who had already pulled off to help him.
According to the radio, the temperature was twenty-two degrees and dropping, with a total snowfall of twelve inches expected, but Meredith was only semi-aware of the treacherous weather. All her thoughts were concentrated on the past, and on her need to get to the farm and make Matt understand what had actually happened. When Patrick had insisted she go to the farm, she’d still been half numb with the shock of her discoveries. Now that the shock had worn off, she felt a sense of urgency to make amends, to explain, that far surpassed Patrick’s.
Even now, thinking of the way Matt must have felt when he got that telegram made her sick to her stomach. And still he had flown home to see her in the hospital—only to be refused admittance like some beggar without rights of any kind. He had never abandoned her or their baby. The knowledge filled her with sweetness and a consuming desperation to make him understand that she had not done away with their baby or barred him from her life.
Her headlights gleamed ominously on the highway ahead, and Meredith eased off the accelerator, her breath catching as the car slid onto the patch of ice, racing forward without traction, then grabbing on the snow-covered ground again. As soon as the BMW was under control, her thoughts returned to Matt. Now she understood the reason for the underlying enmity she’d sensed in him. She understood it all, including his furious parting remark in the car last week: “Cross me one more time, just once more, and you’ll wish to God your mother had aborted you!”
Given the incredible injustices done to him, Meredith could understand why he was retaliating in ways that had seemed so extraordinarily vicious. Considering everything he believed she’d done years before, it was amazing that he’d tried to be friendly at the opera and at lunch. In his place, Meredith wouldn’t have been able to be civil, let alone friendly.
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