son.
The bottom line was that, unless he wanted to get into the whole thing about his father, something he’d never told anyone, he had no choice but to allow her to think what she would about him. But that didn’t explain why she’d never told him about Danny.
“Did you even try to find me, or did you just figure that you’d trick the first guy with heavy pockets who came along into marrying you, and let him think the kid was his?” Even as the words left his mouth, Matt could have kicked himself for giving his frustration a voice. He knew Honey well enough to know that, if he pushed too hard, she’d close up tighter than a clam.
Bolting to her feet, Honey glared at him. Her hands twisted together, as if she was putting forth a superhuman effort not to slap him. Her furious words confirmed it. “How dare you imply that I tricked Stan or that I married him for money?”
To his utter annoyance, her marriage to Stan infuriated Matt. Dangerous territory, but he couldn’t resist asking the question that had burned itself into his mind all those years ago. “So why did you marry him?”
Honey turned away. “That’s none of your business. We’re discussing Danny, not my reasons for marrying Stan.”
Matt strongly disagreed with her reasoning. The two were so tightly entwined that he couldn’t have pried them apart with a crowbar. But he let that go—for now. Insulting Honey wouldn’t encourage her to tell him about his son and why Matt had been robbed of the first six years of the boy’s life. As hard as it might be, he had to hold back his anger and let Honey talk.
Shaking his head, he stood. “Listen, we’re not going to accomplish anything with a war of accusations about things that can’t be changed.” He motioned to the sofa. “Sit down and tell me what happened.”
For a long moment, Honey glared mutinously at him. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to continue. His remarks had been far from civil, and if he’d been in her shoes, he’d have walked out. To her credit, she hadn’t, telling him without putting it into words that she wanted to get the air cleared as much as he did. “Please.”
She backed away from him and sat, acutely aware that he hadn’t apologized for his words. Let him believe what he would. Matt Logan’s opinion of her didn’t matter at all, she told herself, but her anger simmered beneath her surface calm.
Folding her hands in her lap, she looked at him. “I never tricked Stan into anything. He knew up front that Danny wasn’t his, but it never made a difference to him. He loved him just as much as if he had fathered him naturally.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you try to find me? I had a right to know I had a son.”
The edge in his voice acted on her conscience like a finely honed rapier. Honey smoothed the material on the arm of the sofa, trying to find the words to tell him that she had tried, that she’d asked everyone in town if they knew where he’d gone. But just the thought brought memories pouring back—painful, agonizing memories of drowning in the desperation of being absolutely alone, of having no one to turn to, nowhere to go. Maybe that was why she’d welcomed Stan’s friendship, and later, with her father goading her on, his proposal. Then again, maybe after Matt left, she just hadn’t cared enough about anything to fight either of them.
In the end, she settled for the simplest explanation. “I did try. But no one knew where you’d gone.”
He stood and loomed over her. “Not good enough. My father knew where to contact me, Honey. Why didn’t you just ask him?”
She felt the tiny fissure in her heart—the last evidence of her long healing process—split wide-open. If only Mr. Logan had answered the door. If only…
How could she explain? How did she tell Matt that his father had become a sick, sullen old man, a virtual hermit who’d shut himself away from her and the rest of the world? “I tried to speak to your father, but I didn’t think—”
“Didn’t think? You didn’t think what? That I’d want my own kid?” Matt strode across the room to the window and shoved back the lace curtain. His face in profile concealed the grim line of his mouth and the rage flashing in his eyes, but the stiffness in his broad shoulders broadcasted his feelings.
Matt saw nothing beyond the window. Instead his sight had turned inward, to the memory of a small boy standing outside the door waiting for his father’s notice. He saw a teenager proudly presenting a handmade tie rack to his father, and the man simply glancing at it and nodding. He saw a young adult offering his love to a lonely old man, hoping to fill the void left by the loss of a young wife and a son, and having that love brushed aside. He heard the words You’ll never be what your brother was echoing through his mind.
But Honey knew nothing of that, and Matt wasn’t about to tell her, not even to prove he wouldn’t have walked out on his son. He would have loved Danny with every fiber of his being—because he knew too well what it was like to be deprived of that love. Those very memories were the ghost he’d come home to exorcize, and talking about them would only grant them life. And granting them life would put him through the rigors of hell again, and he would never go back there, not even for Honey. Not even for Danny.
Slowly and methodically, as he’d trained himself to do for so long, he tucked the memories back into the far reaches of his mind, safely hidden from him and everyone else.
“So, where do we go from here? Do we tell Danny I’m his father?”
Honey sprang from the sofa. “No. No, we can’t tell him, at least not yet. Danny’s stutter is a manifestation of his grief over losing his…over losing Stan. Dr. Thomas says that any more emotional upheaval could make it a permanent condition. As long as we don’t push, he can overcome this.”
Although Matt understood what Danny was up against much better than she thought he did, he had hoped that he could claim his son. Considering Danny’s problem, Matt had no choice but to wait until the boy could emotionally withstand the news that he was his father.
“Dr. Thomas? Isn’t he the old GP who had an office on Main Street?”
She nodded.
“What does he know about this kind of problem?” Matt glanced at Honey.
“Enough that I have the utmost faith in his diagnosis.”
Matt disagreed, but kept his opinions to himself. They had other fish to fry. “How long will this take?”
She shifted her gaze away from his and began fussing with some flowers in a vase on a nearby table. “We don’t know. Maybe months, maybe years.”
“And in the meantime?”
She turned fully toward him. “In the meantime, we wait and try to keep him on an emotionally even keel.”
“Which means not telling him about me.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Matt stared at her for a long time. Something in her eyes caught his attention, something like pity. No, not pity. Compassion.
“Matt, I know this isn’t easy for you.”
Before he could respond, she turned away and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she stopped. “I wish…”
He
