Logan sighed, raised her hands to his mouth and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. “Thank you.” His voice was quiet, almost reverential.
“I know he caused a lot of pain…” She stopped there. Enough. They didn’t need to talk about Frank. And though in her heart she had hoped that she and Logan could go together, she wanted him to know that she was willing to wait.
“I don’t think you should avoid him completely,” Logan said. He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “But I can’t come with you.”
She shook her head. “I won’t go see him. Not until you’re ready to come with me.”
Though it seemed they were caught in the same tensions when they dated the first time, she knew they had actually come to a different place. It would simply take time.
She cut off the thread of despair that started to wind itself around her heart. Time. She had to give him the time he needed.
And how long would that be?
“Could you take me home, please?” she asked.
They drove in silence and, when he stopped in front of the house, he turned to her. “Sarah, I’m sorry.”
She paused, just a moment, wishing she had the right words to bridge this shadowy gap between them. “I am, too. But I am serious, Logan. You come first in my life.”
He kissed her again, but, even as he drew away, she sensed the specter of her father still hovered between them.
Chapter Fifteen
Logan sat back in his office chair, staring sightlessly out the window, rehashing what he and Sarah had talked about, going over and over in his head what he should have said, what he should have done, but each time he came back to this same point: he should be rejoicing. She had chosen him over her father.
When she had spoken the words that, he was sure, came at a cost to her, he had felt a surge of happiness that had overwhelmed his practical self.
When he had come back down, the reality of what she had done struck him. She had sacrificed, or at least put on hold, a relationship with her father.
A light knock on the door pulled him out of his thoughts. His mother poked her head inside.
“You ready to go?”
Logan shook his head and sat forward, looking down at the checkbook he’d had open for the past hour but done nothing with.
“I don’t think I’ll come to church with you this morning. I’ve got some bookkeeping to catch up on.”
“And that’s your excuse?” Donna asked, stepping a little farther into the office.
He just nodded.
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with why you came roaring into the yard last night and slammed the door hard enough that you shook the house?”
“Sorry. The wind must have caught it.”
“A whole pile of hot air must have caught it. Did you and Sarah have a fight?”
He shrugged her question aside. They hadn’t exactly had a fight, but it hadn’t been the romantic moment he had anticipated it would be.
“I’m not dumb,” she continued, accurately reading his stunned expression. “You leave to get Sarah, all smiley and happy. Billy says you leave the gym after the game all smiley and happy. With Sarah. You come home all grumpy. Don’t have to be brilliant to figure out that something went wrong.”
Logan ran his hands through his hair and clutched the back of his neck in frustration. “She asked me to come with her to visit Frank.”
“Well, that would be difficult. But not impossible.”
Logan thought of another conversation he’d had with his mother in this same room when she told him the reason for Frank’s ongoing animosity. How she was tired of being angry herself.
“Can you forgive Frank for what happened?”
Donna leaned back against the door. “It’s hard. But what I have been struggling to do is separate the man from the actions. Frank did not kill your father. Frank made a wrong judgment call that had long-lasting repercussions. On top of that he was a lonely man struggling with some misdirected anger. But I don’t think his life has been easy, either. He buried a wife. And, like I told you, burying a child has got to be one of the most heartrending things a father has to handle. And then to have his other daughter move across the country…I feel sorry for him. And though pity is maybe not the best reason to forgive someone, I think it’s a good place to start. For my sake as well as his.”
“So you can say you forgive him?”
Donna looked off into the distance, then smiled. “Yes. I think I can. And knowing that makes me really free.” She directed her attention to Logan. “By forgiving him I feel like I’ve stopped letting him have control over me and over my emotions. Holding a grudge, being angry at what he did gives him power over me. I was tired of that as well.”
“He told Sarah, when Marilee died, that the wrong daughter died. How can a father say that? How could he possibly even think that?”
“A grieving man might conceivably say the wrong thing…”
“If it was just that.” He rocked in his chair, his agitation growing. “He wanted her to come back so he could tell her that he forgave her. For what happened to Marilee. As if it was her fault. What kind of father is he?”
Donna said nothing.
“What kind of father does that, Mom?”
Donna held his gaze, an enigmatic smile teasing her mouth. “You’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to imagine restitution for what Frank did to your father, haven’t you?”
Logan nodded at his mother’s comment, wondering where she was going.
“Lately, I’m surprised how quickly that anger has been superseded by what you see as injustice for Sarah.”
“She wants to go to forgive him. But he doesn’t deserve her.”
“Do you feel she’s going back to the person she was?”
“No. She told me that she felt she had spent too much time trying to please the wrong father.”
“So she’s found her way through this mess of history and brokenness then.”
Logan nodded his head. “When she asked me to come with her to see him and I said no, she told me that she chose me over him. That until I was ready to see him, she wasn’t going to see him.” His smile held an edge of melancholy.
“You love her, don’t you?”
Logan sank back in his chair, a long, slow sigh drifting out of him. “Yes, Mom. I do.”
“Does she know?”
“How am I supposed to tell her with her father still hovering between us?”
“Then maybe you better do something about that, Logan. She asked you to come with her and you chose not to. She chose you over her father. Now I’m going to say that if you really care about her, you’ll put her needs first.”
“I am. I have, but I don’t trust her dad. I don’t trust him to care for her and love her the way she should be loved. I don’t trust him to not break her heart repeatedly.” He felt he had a strong foundation on which to build that lack of trust.
Donna smiled. “You are a good man, Logan Carleton. And if that’s how you feel, then maybe it’s even more important to let this man into your life. So you can keep an eye on him.”
Logan let her words settle over his agitation, seeing the practical sense in it.