Rachel Lee (14 page)

"I'm sorry." Joni couldn't bring herself to look at her mother.

"What I'm trying to say is, his extreme rage may have been part of the heart attack. Often, in the early stages, people get very angry."

Joni nodded but didn't feel any better. "Still, he wouldn't have had anything to get angry about except for me." "He might have found something else. Regardless, I don't want you to take anything he said too much to heart. A lot of that may have been his illness, not you."

"Maybe." She lifted her head. "I'm still going away, Mom. I can't hang around and cause him another heart attack. I need to get out of this town. I need to get away from all this. I'm never going to escape Karen's death if I don't. Anyway, no matter what you say, Witt disowned me. He said he never wanted to see me again."

Hannah compressed her lips, as if holding in some overwhelming emotion.

"You have to do what's best for you, Joni. I've always said that, haven't I? But before you decide to cut Witt out of your life permanently there's something..." Her voice trailed off, and she drew a deep breath.

It was so unlike Hannah to be hesitant that Joni looked up, forgetting her preoccupation with her own feelings. "Mom?" Her concern grew to fear as she saw tears well in Hannah's dark eyes. Her mother never cried. Never.

"Mom?"

Hannah drew a quick breath, compressing her lips again as she sought control. When she spoke, her words were strained and her lips trembled. "I had a lot of time to think last night, honey. A lot of time. I thought about you as much as Witt. I thought about what he'd said and how it made you feel. And I thought about some of the things I've done that ... perhaps weren't so right."

"Mom, you've never"

Hannah interrupted her. "You don't know everything about me, Joni. No one does. And as I was sitting there last night, waiting to hear about Witt, I realized that, well, I may have done a very bad thing to you.

And to Witt. That maybe he wouldn't be so bitter if I'd told him the truth. Only now I can't, because it would upset him so much. It might kill him. And you ... maybe I've cheated you out of something irreplaceable. Maybe the last twelve years would have been easier on everyone if you both had just known..."

Hannah's voice trailed off again as she fought to hold back tears.

Joni jumped up from the table and went to get the box of tissues from the end table in the living room.

When she came back with it, Hannah thanked her and snatched one to blow her nose.

"I'm sorry," she said, dabbing at her eyes. "I feel like such a sham.

I'm so full of shame."

"About what?" Joni found it absolutely impossible to believe her mother had ever done a thing to be ashamed of. It just didn't fit Hannah's character at all.

Hannah expelled a long breath and took a sip of coffee, as if she needed something to reinforce her. "You can't tell Witt this right now. Promise me."

"I promise. I don't expect to be speaking to him any time in the near future, anyway."

"You may change your mind. The thing is ... you need to know this before you make any decisions. Maybe you should have known it all along. Joni, Witt is ... Witt is your father."

1 he room still looked the same. The humming of the refrigerator hadn't changed, nor had the scent of Hannah's rose potpourri, or the smell of hot cast iron from the woodstove. Everything was the same, familiar.

But it had all changed. It was never, ever going to look the same again, Joni realized. It was as if the surprise of Hannah's statement had driven her mind out of her body and placed it on some high, icy pinnacle. She was still using her own eyes, ears, nose and mouth, but she was removed. She was thousands of mental miles away.

Speaking felt almost as if she were trying to manipulate a ventriloquist's dummy. "You're lying." The words came out flat.

Thick. Strange. The voice belonged to someone else.

"No," Hannah said, her voice catching. "It was ... it was a mistake.

Neither of us meant to..."

"You cheated on my father." Which gave her an interesting perspective, Joniontheicy-mountain thought with incredible clarity. She had always wondered why her mother had tolerated her father's cheating.

"Once," Hannah said. "Only once."

Once was enough. Once might have been a million times. What did any of it matter? All she had was her mother's word. the word of a woman who had lied to her for twenty-six years.

Her thoughts were starting to get confused, starting to hurt. The icy mountain was no longer far enough away, and she felt herself coming back to the dining room that would never look the same, the mother who would never look the same and a heart that felt as if it was going shatter.

"You lied to me," she said to Hannah. Her tone was glacial. "You cheated and you lied. And Uncle Witt cheated on his brother. My God, the two of you have a whole lot to be proud of, don't you?"

"Joni..."

But Joni had had enough. Shoving her chair back from the table she ran upstairs to her room and bolted the door.

She was Witt's daughter. The thought hit her like a bowling ball, and she fell facedown on her bed. Witt was her father.

Funny how only twenty-four hours ago that thought might have made her happy. Funny how bad it felt now.

Then she gave in to the tears and cried until she could cry no more.

Hannah wept her way through two cups of coffee. She didn't weep often.

In fact, in her entire adult life, she had wept three times. The first was when she discovered Lewis was cheating on her. The second was when Joni was born. And the third was when Karen died. She hadn't wept for Lewis when he died. Whatever she had felt for him was long since dead by then, the marriage a convenient front for him and his career. A safe haven for Hannah, who somewhere deep inside didn't especially care for men and didn't want to be bothered by them.

Except for Witt. Witt had somehow always been different. Well, so had Lewis, until she had learned the truth about him. But Witt had never let her down the way other men had. Never. Until last night.

She had to mend that rift somehow. She had to find a way to keep Joni from running away until Witt was well enough that they could talk. And maybe there was a bit of selfishness in that, too. Hannah wasn't blind to her own faults. But with Witt so ill, she needed the comfort of Joni more than ever.

Except by choosing to tell the truth as a way to keep the family together, she might have successfully driven Joni away for good. She didn't know. And she was far too tired from the long night to know if her thoughts were making any sense.

She had just known that she couldn't let Witt die and Joni run off .

at least not until they knew the truth. Witt couldn't hear it right now, but Joni could.

Maybe, she thought, watching Witt so near death had made her acutely aware of the passage of time and of all the things she had put off for too long. Like telling the truth.

She had never told Lewis the truth. If he'd suspected, he'd never said a word. Too much had happened that particular New Year's Eve, and maybe Lewis had felt too guilty to look too closely at things. Or maybe he had never suspected. She'd certainly never been unfaithful to him again.

Not that she would have thought of it as being unfaithful, not when Lewis was busy having affairs. Hannah had been protecting herself by playing Caesar's wife, and she cherished no illusions of martyrdom.

But now. Oh, God, now. Maybe she had been wrong to spring this on top of the pain Joni was feeling from last night. But she had feared allowing any time to pass, time in which Joni might harden her heart to Witt.

And Witt . if he weren't so sick, she would shake him until his teeth rattled. How dare he treat Joni that way? What was the matter with him? Why was he nursing an anger so old it ought to have died by now?

Why couldn't he see reason on the subject? Why was he willing to risk driving Joni away--and her, too--by clinging to his hatred?

She loved Witt. She'd always loved Witt. And she'd always believed he was a better man than this. It hurt her to her core to think she might have been mistaken in him all these years.

Oh, she had known he didn't like Hardy Wingate, and why. But for a long time now she'd thought his dislike of Hardy was just a deeply ingrained habit. Until that day at the lawyer's office when he'd been so angry about Hardy's bid, she hadn't realized that the feeling was still very much alive in him. Alive and strong, strong enough to sweep Joni up in its wrath.

God, what was she going to do? If Witt wasn't ill, she would tell him the truth, tell him to come to his senses before he lost his other daughter. Maybe he would even listen. But she couldn't take the risk now. Maybe not for a long time.

Her stomach was burning from so much coffee, and she forced herself to get a glass of milk. She shouldn't have kept this secret for so long, she realized. She and Witt had been widowed only a few years apart, and as soon as they were both free of their marriages, she should have told him. She should have allowed him to be a real father to Joni, instead of just an uncle. And she should have allowed Joni to develop that relationship with him.

Now, in the midst of a crisis, she was using the truth as a lifeline.

That wasn't fair to Joni. Not fair at all.

But she hadn't known what else to do.

A couple of hours later, Joni left the house without speaking to her mother. She considered getting into her car and driving until she felt she had put enough distance between them. Instead she decided to walk.

The day was gray and the chilly air was damp, hinting at more snow, but it wasn't terribly cold. Striding up and down the hilly streets, she kept waiting for her mind to stop feeling numb. She passed by people without saying a word, people she knew. Some of them stopped her and asked what was wrong. When they did, she gave them a wan smile and said she just wasn't feeling well. They expressed sympathy about Witt, then let her go on her way.

She lost track of time, lost track of where she was or how far she had walked . not that she could get lost in a town this size. The day was passing around her, and she didn't even notice.

Part of her realized that something was wrong with her, that she had withdrawn inside herself until she was barely a pinprick in her own mind. It was as if she needed to go away inside herself until she could adjust to the revelations and shocks of the last twenty-four hours.

As if she couldn't afford to feel a thing right now for fear the emotions would shatter her into a million pieces.

A long time later there was suddenly a broad, parka-covered chest blocking her path. Reluctantly she looked up from the snowy gravel road she was walking along and saw Hardy Wingate.

"Joni, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit. Half the town is talking about the way you're walking up and down the streets like a zombie. Your mother called me--me--and asked me to catch up with you."

Joni blinked, still feeling as if she were a long way away and Hardy was talking to her from the other end of a tunnel. "Why?"

"Why? Because she's worried about you. Because she's had a dozen calls today about you. You think nobody's noticed? It's a small town, Joni. You can't walk these streets in a daze for hours without folks getting worried."

"I'm fine. I'm just thinking."

"Right. You're also freezing. Get in my truck."

She felt something then, the first thing she'd really felt since this morning's shock. "Who died and made you God?"

"Nobody. But apparently you don't have the sense to take care of yourself. Now get your butt in that truck before you freeze it off."

"Fntnot going home."

"I don't care. Come to my place. Go to a hotel. But get yourself in before you freeze. Christ, don't you even realize that you're staggering like a drunk person? You're hypothermic."

She couldn't even summon the energy to stay angry, much as she wanted to. Nor could she get into the truck under her own steam. Nothing wanted to coordinate right, so he had to pick her up and put her in it.

She hated him for that. She hated her mother for calling him. She hated the whole damn world.

The truck jolted over the rough, icy roads, then up the hill to Hardy's house. "You can stay with us," he said. "Until you figure things out or want to go home, you stay with us."

"Thanks." But she didn't care.

"Joni? What the hell is going on? This can't all just be because Witt pitched a fit. You knew he was going to have a fit. And surely you don't think that was the cause of his heart attack?"

"I don't care anymore." "Yeah? Well, you're sure doing a great imitation of someone who cares a whole hell of a lot about something.

People who really don't care don't try to commit slow suicide."

"I wasn't committing suicide."

"Then you're stupider than I could've thought."

He pulled into his driveway, then helped her out of the truck. Inside, he put her at the kitchen table. "I'm going to make some hot soup.

Just stay there."

She watched him move around the kitchen with the ease of someone who was used to it. Once that might have interested her. Now she just felt numb. Numbness was good. Numbness protected her.

When he put a huge bowl of chowder in front of her, she didn't even have the will to pick up the spoon. It was, she found herself thinking, a little difficult to accept that your entire life had been a lie.

"Joni? Eat."

Obediently, she picked up the spoon. The chowder was tasteless, but it was hot, and as it settled in her stomach she felt everything inside her beginning to thaw. Her emotions began to thaw, too, splintering like the ice on a spring river, shifting, cracking and thundering as they collided.

Suddenly she was crying again. She dropped the spoon into the soup and closed her eyes, letting the huge, silent tears roll down her cheeks.

They felt as hot as flames, searing her. "Do you want to talk now?"