didn’t help her out. He just sat there. Watching. Waiting.
She forged ahead again. “I know, I truly do, that there’s nothing I can say that will excuse my not telling you that you have a son. I was wrong, and I know it. I knew it all along. I…well, I did try, to get a hold of you. When Brody was a baby, I found out where you lived in Austin. I went down there. You were gone by then, though, and the guy who answered the door didn’t know where you went. I wrote letters. More than one. But you went off to Europe and I didn’t know where to send them. I tried the Austin address, hoping it might be forwarded. It came back. So I sent one here, to the Double T, thinking your grandfather would send it on to you. I guess he did. But that letter never reached you, either. It came back to me with French postal marks all over it, unopened, and I—”
His low growl of fury shut her up. He demanded, “What about just gutting it up and getting your butt out here, to the ranch? What about telling my granddaddy that you’d had my baby? Did you try that?”
“No. I—”
“‘No’ about says it all. You didn’t come here and talk to my grandfather—though we both know damn well what Ol’ Tuck was like. If he’d known he had a grandson, Granddaddy would have tracked me down. He’d have gone to the ends of the earth to get me back home and married to the mother of my child.”
Lori knew he was right. She had no excuses, yet somehow she couldn’t stop herself from trying to make him see how it had been for her. “Oh, Tucker, I was so young. And I felt so alone. I was scared of Ol’ Tuck. Everybody was. You know that. And really, I didn’t even know you. That night, the night of the prom, I—”
“Yeah. That night.” He sat so still, a frightening stillness, one that radiated cold rage. “Now you mention it, there was that, too, wasn’t there? That night you took your sister’s place. That night you let me call you Lena, over and over and over again. That night you smiled and sighed and went with me to that motel room. That night you let me take your clothes off you and touch your naked body and lay you down and call you Lena some more, while I was buried inside you. What about that night?”
She had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. “I was wrong. I know it. I should have—”
“Do you think I give a good damn about what you should have done? I’m not there yet. I’m still back with what you did. I’m back with calling you Lena while I was loving you, I’m back to that second time, when I’d used my one condom, when I was so gone on you, I had some crazy idea it didn’t matter, if we made a baby. It didn’t matter because I was staying right here, in town, because we’d be getting married anyway. Oh, yeah. I’m still back with what you did. Still back with the day after that night, when I came to your door and you let Lena answer it and send me away.”
“It was…I wasn’t thinking straight. I got home and I looked at Lena and I felt so low, so bad, like I’d done something so awful, behind her back.”
“Because you had.”
She pulled her shoulders back. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.”
“And the next night—that guy everyone thinks you met. What about him?”
She said, in a whisper, through her clutching throat, “There was no guy.”
He grunted again. A sound of purest disgust. “No guy.”
She coughed to make her throat open up. “That’s right. Only you. I…well, I always wanted you, when we were kids. I would see you in town and at school and I would hope and pray that you would notice me. But you didn’t. It was Lena you noticed, Lena who got to be your girl. I accepted that—or I thought I had. And then Lena broke up with you and she didn’t want to go to prom with you and—”
He waved a hand. “Back to that other guy. The one who didn’t exist.”
She made herself nod. “Okay. What about him?”
“You didn’t hesitate, did you, to let people think what was easiest for you? The whole damn town jumped to conclusions about how you ended up pregnant—and you let them. You let everyone think some stranger was Brody’s father.”
“Oh, Tucker, my dad was yelling all the time, making threats. He said he was going to find out who got me pregnant and—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I have more questions.”
Her mouth tasted of sawdust. The long gash at her temple felt like someone was sticking needles in it.
Too bad, she thought.
She knew it was only right, that she sit there. That she take whatever he felt he had to dish out. It wasn’t much, wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was the very least she could do.
And it was a first step. She had to believe that. For him to be so angry, he had to care. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be facing her down now. If he didn’t care, he would have just informed her of what he planned to do about Brody and left it at that.
“Your husband,” he said. “What lies did you tell him about my son?”
“I didn’t tell my husband lies. Henry knew the truth. I told him everything, before we were married.”
“And what? He told you not to worry, that it was just fine with him that Brody’s father had no idea he existed?”
She stopped him on that one. “No. Brody does know, that he had a…a natural father, that Henry was his stepdad.”
He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “And just what does Brody think happened to his natural father?”
“I told him it didn’t work out, between his father and me. That his father went away before he knew that he had made Brody. That someday, when the time was right, we’d find his dad somehow.”
“When did you tell him all this?”
“Years ago. He was three. It was right before I married Henry.”
“And since then?”
“He doesn’t ask. Oh, Tucker. You have to see. He’s had a…happy life. He loved Henry and he accepted him, as his dad. I always knew that someday he’d have questions, that someday he’d need to know you.”
“Someday…”
“You have to understand…”
“But I don’t, Lori. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it. You’re telling me that your husband knowingly stole my son from me.”
“He didn’t. He never could. It’s only…well, Henry was sterile. And he’d always wanted children. He said that you were long gone and he thought it was for the best if we just let things go along the way that they were. I’m ashamed to say it, but, by then, that was just what I wanted to hear. We got married. Henry treated Brody like a son. We were…happy, the three of us.”
“Happy.” He made it sound like a dirty word.
“Yes.”
“And you gave up all attempts to get a hold of me?”
“Yes.
