He closed his eyes a moment, shutting out those memories. The girl in front of him wasn’t that girl anymore. The girl in front of him hadn’t even had the guts to break up with him in person or to explain why.
Though they had only dated for a year, and in secret at that, she was the first girl he had ever truly cared for. The first girl he dared make plans about. Sure, he was young at the time, but he knew, deep in his heart, she was the one.
And then she had broken up with him. Then left Millars Crossing.
She looked him straight in the eye now, her own eyes snapping with a surprising anger. “I don’t think you’ll have much luck with Uncle Morris in getting rid of me, Carleton.”
Her use of his last name set off something in him. It was as if she was deliberately underlining the differences between them, bringing up her family connections to show him where he stood in the Millars Crossing hierarchy.
“Of course not.” He laughed, but it was without humor. “I forgot about how this family sticks together.” He pointed to a scar on his forehead. “I believe it was your cousin Ethan who did this to me when I told him that his uncle should have stuck by my dad and believed him when he was falsely accused.”
He held back the rest of his sentence, bitterness roiling in his gut.
“And that uncle would be my father,” she said quietly.
And he could tell from the cool tone of her voice that he had not only stepped over her sacred line, he had obliterated it. Sarah’s loyalty to her father was legendary. He should know. She had chosen her father over him.
But he didn’t take back anything he said. He meant it then and he meant it now. For seven years, Logan’s father, Jack, had supplied Westerveld Road Construction with the gravel they needed. When Logan’s father was accused of fraud, Frank canceled the contract. In the past few weeks Logan had discovered that Frank had his own secrets, and, possibly, his own misbegotten reasons for taking away the contract his father had depended on for his livelihood.
This was the man Sarah had always acquiesced to. Always defended.
Sarah held his gaze, her eyes slightly narrowed as if she was trying to see him differently than with the wide-eyed innocence she’d once had.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly. “I can coach this team as well as anyone else you might suggest. Better maybe.”
Her icy tone was something he would never have imagined from her before. That he had caused it created a flicker of regret.
Stay on task, he reminded himself.
“I guess we’ll see,” he said. Then, without another glance her way, he turned on his booted heel and left.
“I wish I knew what my father was trying to say,” Sarah said as her uncle Morris pushed the button for the hospital elevator. “It’s so hard to watch him struggling to talk.”
This was the first time Sarah had come to see her father with one of her uncles. Her previous visits had all been solo. She had hoped that what he wanted to say to her would manage to come out despite his unresponsive lips. But each visit he labored to get out even the most basic of sounds.
When Uncle Morris had found out that her car was at the mechanics and she couldn’t make the trip to the city, he had offered her a ride.
Morris stood back, his hands clasped in front of him as he watched the numbers above the elevator flash. “I can imagine, Sarah, but you have to believe that your visits are making a big difference for your father. The doctors and nurses all say he is much happier after you come.”
“Thanks, Uncle Morris. That makes me feel a bit better.”
She wished she could be sincere about what she said, but the reality was her visits always felt forced. Fake.
She and her father had never had a close relationship. They had never laughed or traded jokes and stories. Marilee was the one who could make him smile even in spite of her antics. Marilee could cuddle up to him when he was busy working and tease away his faint frown of displeasure at being distracted from whatever he was doing. She always thought it was because Marilee was the oldest. The first born. And, on top of that, her mother had died three weeks after Sarah was born. Her father had asked Aunt Tilly and Uncle Ted to take care of her until she was old enough. So they had missed those important bonding moments. She didn’t move back home until she was about two.
Visiting him now was a strain. She knew basketball bored him. Aunt Dot and Aunt Tilly kept him abreast of the happenings in and around the town. So most of her visits with him were spent reading out loud to him from old Reader’s Digests, or any book she found lying around.
“He missed you when you were gone, you know.”
Had Sarah imagined the faint reprimand in Morris’s comment?
“Funny, I didn’t pick up on that in the lack of letters he sent me,” Sarah said, glancing sidelong at her uncle.
Morris laid his hand on her shoulder. “I think he feels guilty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sarah, the whole family knows that Marilee was your father’s favorite. We know that so much of his struggles with you was the fact that you weren’t living with him. While we sure enjoyed having you, he missed out on a lot. And showing such obvious preference for Marilee? He should never have treated Marilee the way he did. He didn’t do that girl any favors.”
Sarah tried to shrug away the well-meant sentiment. Truth was, it was embarrassing to discover that Frank’s favoritism was so blatant that the entire family had seen it. Had the community as well? Wouldn’t that make her look like the loser of the decade.
The elevator doors opened and Sarah hoped this was the end of the discussion.
“Then, a few years ago, your father changed,” Morris continued as they exited the elevator. “I don’t know what happened, but he grew softer. He talked about what you were doing. We were all glad he was finally showing interest in you. He missed you.”
“He had a funny way of showing it. In all the time I was gone, he never sent me a personal note.”
“But he said he wrote you every month.” Morris frowned.
“He wrote a check every month, Uncle Morris. Nothing else was ever in the envelope. I only cashed the first year’s worth and after that I told him not to bother. But he still kept sending them.”
“You know your father is not a chatty man. He doesn’t know how to display affection. Maybe he thought by sending you money you would understand.”
“Please don’t stand up for him. You and Aunt Dot wrote me more often than he did.”
Morris gave her another one-armed hug. “We had a special bond, you know that.”
“I know, but he is my father. Would it have been so hard to even put one small note in the envelope in the beginning? Just once?” Sarah felt frustrated that the old pain returned so easily. “Sent a text once more often than once every six weeks?”
The first few months she got her checks, she had eagerly ripped open the envelopes, hoping for some personal note. Only at Christmas would he write a terse update on her aunts and uncles. Other than that, the only thing inside was the check. Her second year of school, she ripped up his monthly checks, determined to make her own way.
And now her uncle was saying that her father missed her? Was that what his succinct note was about?
The elevator doors opened and they walked to her father’s room.