Eight years ago, after breaking up with him over the phone just before Marilee’s accident, she had scurried off to Nova Scotia without another word.
Now she was showing him her back again.
He shouldn’t care. Was angry that he did. Angry that the momentary peace he had felt from the church service was effectively wiped away with that one simple action by Sarah.
He had started coming to church in the past six months, trying to find answers to the myriad of questions he’d had since his father died. Questions that had only increased when he overheard a puzzling conversation between Ted and Frank Westerveld.
For weeks after that, Logan wished he had walked away when he’d heard his parents’ names mentioned, because that information had only reignited the anger that had burned white-hot against Frank Westerveld since Frank had cut off his father’s livelihood. Anger that had only increased when Frank pushed Sarah to break up with him a couple years later.
Logan had hoped that the church, which had once given his father such comfort, could help him deal with some of that anger, old and new.
Logan gave himself a mental shake and laid his hand on his mother’s shoulder in a tacit gesture of comfort.
But his mother had her stern gaze fixed firmly on Sarah, and Logan could see that she stared like a mother bear protecting her cub.
He chanced another look across the empty pews at Sarah. She wore her blond hair longer and she was thinner. Her soft blue eyes held a haunted sadness that he understood a little too well.
But she was as beautiful as the first time he had seen her running across the gym playing basketball, that blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes bright, her lips parted in a smile that showed anyone watching how much she loved the game.
He’d fallen half in love with her then and there. Even when he found out she was Frank Westerveld’s daughter, the man who owned half of Millars Crossing, the man his father spoke of with a mixture of fear and contempt, he wasn’t fazed.
And when she stopped, turned and looked back at him, still holding on to the basketball like a trophy, he fell the rest of the way in love.
Logan willed his wayward thoughts to the back of his mind. That infatuation and those rampant emotions were a thing of the past. Too much had come between them now.
Sarah was just back to visit her father, that much he had understood from the bits and pieces of gossip he’d picked up since the ambulance took the man away. She wasn’t back to take a stroll with him down memory lane.
He and his mother came to the open foyer and people spread out, moving faster now.
From the corner of his eye, Logan could see that in spite of her quick escape Sarah was going to meet up with him after all.
If he slowed his steps just a fraction…
“I’ve got to give something to Angie Flikkema,” his mother said, stopping and pulling an envelope out of her purse. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
And when she left, Sarah’s aunts were heading toward them, Sarah in their wake. Dot had her head turned toward Tilly, who was digging through her purse. As they swept past, neither of them saw him.
Sarah, however, lagging a few steps behind, had him with a vigilant eye.
Her wariness gave him a curious reluctance to confront her, but by the time his second thoughts had caught up with the situation, she was directly in front of him.
“Hello again. How is your father doing?” He fell into step with her.
She didn’t reply, winding her scarf around her neck with jerky movements, but he waited, letting the bubble of silence between them grow.
“I’m surprised you want to know,” she said, coming to a stop and glaring up at him. “Especially when…”
He frowned at her anger, as unexpected as it was uncharacteristic. “What do you mean?”
Sarah pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
But it did. “You were going to say something else.”
She sucked in a quick breath. “He didn’t want you there. You were making him upset.” Her words popped out of her mouth like single-syllable darts.
Her animosity resurrected the niggling sense of remorse that his conversation with Frank might have had something to do with the man’s collapse. Except that it had been Frank who had initiated the conversation. “And what was I supposed to have done? Left you alone with a man who was stumbling on the street?”
“He wanted you gone,” Sarah said in a choked voice. “He wouldn’t even look at me.”
Was that hurt in her voice?
Then Sarah looked up at him, her eyes snapping with anger and he realized he had read her wrong again. Their last words before her departure had been ones of anger as well. They had argued about her father then, too.
Eight years, and nothing had changed. Nothing at all.
As for her father? Well, Frank Westerveld had other actions to answer for.
As Sarah watched Logan leave, the bitterness that had held her in its hungry grip loosened its jaws. And once again, she felt as if everything she had said had come out all wrong, twisted in the space between thinking and saying. Sarah pressed her fingers to her temples, massaging away a low-level headache that threatened to take over.
She had driven across the country on the strength of a rare request by her father, to see what he had to say. Yet, when she finally connected with him, the last intelligible words he had uttered were directed toward Logan. And she had been sidelined once again.
She thought she had grown up and away from her life here.
Obviously not.
Thank goodness she had other reasons to come to Millars Crossing. Thank goodness she had her cousins and aunts and uncles.
She counted to fifteen, took a calming breath, then walked toward the door. She needed to get out, get into her car and drive her frustration away.
“Sarah. Hey, Sarah,” Uncle Morris, her father’s brother, called out. She waited a beat, then turned to face her uncle, drawn away from her tottering emotions by the obligation of family.
“Are you going to the hospital? Do you need a ride?” Her uncle wiped his hand over his balding head, shiny with perspiration from his exertion.
“No. I’ve got my own car, I’ll drive myself.”
“Good…good.” He tugged on his crooked tie and straightened his suit coat. Sarah sensed a lecture coming. “I noticed you were talking to Logan Carleton.”
“He was talking to me,” Sarah corrected, preparing to defend her actions.
“Well, it’s good to see him and Donna here.” Uncle Morris’s words surprised her. Then he slipped his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, just as he used to when, as the principal of her high school, he would meet her in the hallway. “Ted tells me you are going to be sticking around for a while. To help take care of your father.”
“Well, as much care as I can give him.”
“That wouldn’t take up all of your time, I’m sure.”
“Probably not. Though I’ve got a number of outstanding invitations to come for lunch, coffee and etcetera,” she said with a teasing smile. “Some of them coming from Aunt Dot as well. And I need to see Francine’s baby and all kinds of other stuff.”
“That’ll make you busy, but not that busy.”
“Busy enough.”