Eyes never leaving hers, Blake did the math. And fought a swirl of emotion that threatened to consume him. His arms ached with it. His stomach knotted against it. Pain stabbed at his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.
“She’s mine.”
Juliet slowly nodded.
And tears pricked at the back of his eyes. All those years lost.
Blake glanced back up at the cottage door through which his daughter had passed.
His daughter.
He had a child.
A girl.
Family of his very own.
And this woman who he’d thought was connected to him in some elemental way was a woman he didn’t know at all.
He’d believed that she brought him peace. Instead, she’d robbed him of the first eight years of his little girl’s life. Never mind that he hadn’t been at all prepared for fatherhood back then. That seemed irrelevant now.
Blake rocked back, trying to stay on his feet as another onslaught of raw pain hit his chest. Mary Jane. He hadn’t even had a chance to give her a name.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I HAVE TO GO to her.” Juliet’s voice was the barest thread of sound.
He couldn’t allow it. Too many opportunities had already been lost to him. “I’ll do it.”
“Blake, no.” He was surprised when she stepped forward.
“I have a lot of time to make up for.” Another stab of pain. “And possibly few chances to do so.” For the first time, insidious bitterness entered his heart. He’d managed to hold it at bay, but now…
He felt a nudge against his hand. Cold. Wet. Reassuring. Freedom. He’d actually forgotten the dog was there.
Thank God for Freedom.
“I’m not leaving,” Blake said. He meant the words and would act on them, though the authorities would probably just haul him away for trespassing and zap more charges at him. Threaten more time locked away in a cell, waiting while life passed, taking with it all the opportunities he’d been born to find.
He was not going to die incomplete.
“I will see her.”
“Okay.”
Her compliance shocked him. With hair falling out of her ponytail, no makeup on her colorless face and droplets of sweat running down between her breasts, Juliet didn’t look any better than he felt.
“Just let me go to her first,” she said. And when he moved to argue, she held up her hand. “You can stay right here. I won’t ask you to leave. But she’s only a child, Blake. You have to think of her. She’s going to need a minute to hurl hatred at me, if nothing else. And then, hopefully, she’ll be able to listen. We have to make this as easy on her as we can.”
That note of authoritative love he’d heard in Juliet’s voice earlier came crashing back. It had been the voice of a parent.
He was a parent.
And as such, his daughter’s needs came before his own.
“I’ll wait,” he said. And without another look in her direction, he turned, dropped down to the beach and stared out at one of his oldest and dearest friends—the ocean.
He might not understand it, but he could count on it to always be there. Steadfast. Unchanging. Living by its routine day in and day out, tide in and tide out, whether he was there or not.
Even after years away, the ocean had welcomed him home, same as always. Her shorelines might change. The boats upon her waters might change. But she did not. Ever.
And neither would he. For as long as it took, he was going to sit there.
“Freedom, come.”
The dog came. Lay beside his master. Put his head down. And waited.
“JULES?” Marcie came running through the kitchen just as Juliet came in the sliding glass door from the beach.
“She’s gone!”
“What?” Juliet, dreading the minutes ahead, deathly afraid that life would never be good again, stared at her twin.
“Mary Jane’s gone!”
“Gone?” As fear tore into her, Juliet ran through the cottage. “She can’t be gone. She just came in with you.”
There was no sign of the girl in the living room.
“Mary Jane McNeil, you come out here right now!” Juliet screamed so loudly her throat stung. “I mean it, young lady. Come out here, now!”
Before this morning she’d never spoken to her daughter like that. Now it was twice in one day.
“She went to her room,” Marcie was saying, running behind Juliet. “She shut the door and said she wanted to be alone.”
That wasn’t unheard of. Mary Jane didn’t usually pout in public.
“I had to go to the bathroom and when I came out, her door was open and she was gone!”
Juliet burst into Mary Jane’s room. “Mary Jane? If you’re hiding under that bed, you’d better give it up. Now!”
The space under the bed was empty. And the room looked surprisingly normal. As though this was any other ordinary Saturday and they’d be leaving for the grocery store any minute now.
Until she noticed a bend in the blinds over the window.
And once she lifted them, the open window was obvious. So was a truth Juliet didn’t think she was strong enough to withstand.
Mary Jane had run away.
HEARING FOOTSTEPS running in the sand behind him, Blake jumped up. He could hardly breathe as he turned around, ready to take his little girl into his arms for the first time.
He was thinking about how furious she’d been when he’d introduced himself, almost as though she’d recognized the name and had known who he was. It didn’t make sense. But he was sure there’d be a logical explanation.
In the meantime…
He turned. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Juliet running toward him, alone, with a face so pinched it was almost unrecognizable.
By the time she reached him, the blood was pumping painfully through his veins.
“She’s run away!” Juliet’s terror was a horrible thing to see. And contagious.
A
