His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1) (20 page)

Hesitating long enough to take another drag off her cigarette, she answered, “Not that aunt.”

If she was trying to confuse him, his mother was doing an excellent job. “I don’t have any other aunts.”

“Yes, you do,” she barked. “Your father’s sister.”

That news hit hard enough to send him back a step. “You’ve always said you didn’t know who my father was,” he argued. “What game are you playing here?”

As a little boy, Spencer had asked over and over when his father was coming home. By middle school, he’d figured out there would be no father-son reunion, but he’d still wanted to know something about the man who’d contributed to his existence. Finally, in the middle of his freshman year, she’d confessed that she didn’t know who his father was. That he’d been nothing more than a drifter passing through town and she couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup if she had to.

A childhood that had been anything but positive had shattered into a million pieces that day. The only dream that had kept him going, that his father would someday take him away from the messy floors, empty cupboards, and occasional backhands across the face, died with his mother’s hateful words. From that point on, Spencer knew he would have to get himself out, and that’s exactly what he’d done.

“Do you really think that I would have a kid and not know who his father was?”

“What else was I supposed to think when that’s exactly what you told me?” He growled the words, vibrating with the urge to grab this sorry excuse for a mother and shake the truth out of her.

Snatching a bottle of beer off the tiny counter, the woman who’d made his life miserable dropped into the scarred recliner. “His name was Crawford. Doug Crawford.”

Hearing his father’s name should have felt like a gift, but Spencer was too numb to feel anything at all. Then the tense of her statement hit him.

“Did you say
was
?”

She nodded. “That’s the news. He died last month.”

Employing every ounce of strength he had, Spencer stayed upright. His thoughts seethed like a pack of wolves in a feeding frenzy. A month ago, he could have shaken hands with his father. He could have looked him in the eye and maybe seen his own image, only older, staring back. Now he’d learned his father’s name and lost him in the same breath.

“Where?” he asked. “How?”

“Texas,” she answered, her voice devoid of emotion. “Somewhere around Dallas, I guess. Lung cancer got him.” She took a long drag after the last statement, completely unaware of the irony in the action. As if lung cancer were a criminal that randomly killed innocent bystanders and had nothing to do with the chemicals she was sucking down her windpipe.

And then, when Spencer didn’t think she could shock him any further, she pulled an envelope from beside the cushion of her chair and held it out to him. “There’s a picture. I thought you might want it.”

Unable to lift a hand to take the offering, he stared at the crumpled paper. “You thought I might want it? Did you ever think that I might have wanted it twenty-five years ago?”

Shaking the missive, she said, “You gonna take it or not?”

Spencer swiped the letter from her hand and turned to leave. If he stayed one second longer, he would not be held responsible for his actions.

“Did you say you brought me some money?” she had the nerve to ask as he stepped through the door. Without answering, he walked to his truck, started the engine, and put it in gear.

Lorelei hummed along with the radio, enjoying her new kitchen utensils and mixing bowls more than she’d have expected. As soon as she’d
seen the ad that the kitchen supply store down the interstate was having a going-out-of-business sale, she’d begged Granny to go with her, promising they could eat anywhere the older woman wanted.

Knowing her grandmother’s love for Cracker Barrel, and constant disappointment that Ardent Springs lacked the establishment, Lorelei knew where they would end up. The menu didn’t feature many light and healthy options, but she’d made do, and it was worth the extra calories to see such simple joy in the older woman’s eyes.

In fact, Granny must have still been running on the carb high that morning, since she hadn’t once pestered Lorelei about going to church. She’d dropped a kiss on her cheek, warned her not to set the new pot holders on fire, and bid a toodle-oo. An hour after her departure, and five minutes into Lorelei’s first batch of peanut butter cookies being in the oven, Spencer stormed through the front door like a man running from a horde of zombies.

“I can’t believe she could be so mean,” he said, one hand holding an envelope in a death grip. He didn’t look at Lorelei as he spoke, but paced the space between the kitchen and the living room, his eyes unfocused and surprisingly moist.

Spencer never cried. This had to be serious.

Lorelei left the cookie batter on the counter and wiped her hands on her apron. “What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to catch him by the arm, but he paced away. “You’re scaring me, Spencer. Calm down.”

He spun, waving the envelope in the air. “She said she didn’t know who he was.”

“She who?”

“That bitch who calls herself my mother, that’s who!” His voice reached a volume Lorelei didn’t know was humanly possible. Ginger skittered up the stairs, and Champ whined at the front door. “It was all a lie,” he snarled, his cheeks a deep red that said his blood pressure was reaching dangerous levels. “All of it.”

She’d never liked Spencer’s mother, and the feeling had always been
mutual. There wasn’t a maternal bone in the woman’s body, and the fact that Spencer had turned out to be such a sweet guy was the closest thing to a miracle Lorelei had ever seen. That she’d lied about something was no surprise, but what she’d lied about was still unclear.

“You need to calm down, hon. Let’s sit on the couch.” She led him into the living room, but Spencer wouldn’t sit.

“All this time, she could have told me. Given me a name.” The pacing resumed. “But no.”

The only name Spencer had ever wanted was the one that belonged to his father. Even Paula Boyd couldn’t be that horrible, to know all these years and keep the secret.

Putting her body in his way, Lorelei cupped Spencer’s face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what happened,” she said, holding eye contact until his pupils started returning to normal. And then he clasped her wrists and laid his forehead on hers.

“My whole life, she knew who my father was,” he whispered, pain and betrayal making his voice crack. “She never told me, and now he’s dead.” Spencer rolled his head from side to side against hers. “He’s dead and it’s too late.”

Tears filled her own eyes, and all she could do was hold him. Lorelei pulled his head down to her shoulder as his body shook. Spencer’s arms squeezed the air from her lungs, but she held on without complaint, giving him as much support as she could. Having never known the identity of her own father, Lorelei understood the longing for information. The emptiness of never knowing where you came from. Never knowing if there was something you could have done to bring him back.

To finally get answers when it was too late would be devastating. Like being given the world and having it yanked away before you could even get your hands on it.

Once the shaking subsided, Spencer pulled back, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and the hem of his shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said, which was so like him.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said, dabbing at her own eyes. The letter was still in his hand, crumpled and bent. “What’s in there?”

“She says it’s a letter. From his sister.” Spencer loosened his grip and tried to smooth out the paper. “There’s a picture inside.”

“Have you looked at it?” she asked as he stared at the envelope as if it held the eighth wonder of the world. And for him, it did.

A shake of his head was the only response.

Rubbing his arm in a desperate need to comfort, she asked, “Don’t you think you should?”

This time he gave a nod of affirmation.

“We need to sit down for this.” If he fell apart again, Lorelei wasn’t sure she could hold him up. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure she could hold herself up, considering what was in that envelope.

Spencer turned and dropped to the couch, never taking his eyes off the letter. Lorelei plopped down, too, pulling up a knee and turning her body so she was facing him.

“His name is Doug Crawford,” he said, then corrected himself. “Was. Was Doug Crawford.”

“That’s a good name,” she said, completely out of her depths for an appropriate response when someone told you his long-lost father’s name for the first time. “The return address says Annie Ramirez. So that’s your aunt?”

“Yeah. That’s what Mom . . .” His voice cut off. “That’s what she said.”

“Okay. You have an aunt named Annie. And she’s still alive. Obviously.”

“Yeah,” he said, making no move to open the letter.

Lorelei laid her fingers over the envelope. “Do you want me to open it for you?”

He began to nod yes, but changed his mind. “I can do it.” With shaking fingers, he lifted the flap and withdrew a long yellow sheet of paper folded into thirds. Setting the envelope down as if it might break, he opened the letter and a small picture fell into his lap.

They both froze as if someone had pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it between them. Neither reached for the photo.

“That’s him,” Lorelei said, speaking the most obvious statement of her life. The picture had fallen image side up onto Spencer’s thigh, revealing a large man wearing a black cowboy hat, a Western shirt with a bolo tie, and a smile identical to Spencer’s.

With the look of a little boy getting his first baseball glove, Spencer picked up the picture, slowly lifting it to eye level. Brown eyes studied the man staring back at him as if he wanted to memorize everything about him. “He looks like me,” he said, his voice cracking again.

Leaning her head on his shoulder, Lorelei said, “I think
you
look like
him
.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “I think you’re right.”

Chapter 17

An hour later, Spencer sat on the porch swing staring at the letter he’d read four times already. He couldn’t make himself put it down. So many mysteries solved in this small collection of sentences. Questions answered. The pain of losing the man before he ever had the chance to meet him still lingered close to the surface, but with every pass of the letter, a dim light inside his chest grew brighter.

Ms. Boyd,

I believe you know my brother. His name was Doug Crawford, and he died three weeks ago.

When Doug was diagnosed with lung cancer, the disease had already taken over most of his body, and he knew he didn’t have long to live. Unfortunately, he had less time than we thought. Six weeks ago, Doug told me he had a son with you. A son he never met. My brother made a lot of bad choices during his lifetime, and
he made it clear that abandoning his son was at the top of that list. Doug asked me to arrange a meeting, so he could at least apologize to the young man before he passed away.

As I said, Doug didn’t have as much time as we’d hoped, and he was gone before I could find your address. I don’t know how you feel about my brother, but I hope you’ll pass this on to your son. Doug Crawford was a good man. Not the best by any means, but still a good man. This picture was taken less than a year ago. Doug would have wanted his son to have it.

Respectfully,

Annie Ramirez

The letter didn’t give an abundance of information, but it proved that the man
did
know about him. Which meant he could have contacted Spencer years ago. After the first reading, Lorelei had noticed the postmark on the envelope was nearly two weeks old. So the inestimable Paula Boyd had kept his father from him an extra two weeks. No doubt she’d debated telling him at all. When Spencer considered how close he’d come to never knowing, the anger grew red-hot again. He’d already ground his teeth enough to wear off a solid layer of enamel.

Annie said his father was a good man. Spencer clung to those words. His mother’s own family would never have something that positive to say about her. She was
not
a good person. So how had a good man ended up producing a child with Paula Boyd? And was that one of the bad choices to which his aunt referred?

“Hey there,” Lorelei said, joining him on the porch. She held a plate in her hand, and the scent of cinnamon wafted around her. “How’s it going?”

Spencer gave a half smile. “Better.” His eyes dropped to the lined yellow paper in his hand. “I can’t stop reading it.”

“I don’t blame you. It’s like one giant answer that comes with a million more questions.”

Her words expressed exactly what he was feeling. Spencer should have known that Lorelei would understand. One of their first long talks, over a couple of milkshakes at Tilly’s, they’d been two kids connecting over the shared experience of having mystery fathers. His wasn’t a complete mystery anymore, but there was an endless list of things he still wanted to know.