LITMIR.BIZ

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she first died, I thought about finding you and killing you myself with my bare hands. Tearing your body from limb to limb and scattering the remains from here to Nome.” She’d gone over that scenario at great length in her head as she lay awake at night. In the beginning, it was what kept her sane.

      Ursula looked up into the face of the man who’d cast such a irreversible spell over her only daughter. The hatred, she discovered, had long since left her heart. A heart given to hate withers and dies and she’d had grandchildren to care for.

      “But the truth is, you weren’t responsible for Rose’s death. She was. I lost three men. All good.” She looked at him pointedly. “Better than you, no doubt.” She didn’t wait for his grunted response. “The trick to life is that you just keep on living it.” She picked up the mail again and continued sorting. “Keep on looking for the good in it. Rose had good in her life.” Stopping, she peered over her shoulder at her grandchildren’s father. “She had three kids who loved and needed her. But she chose to look only at the negative. So, in the end, it wasn’t you who did her in—it was her.”

      She picked up another batch and began to slowly sort through them by route. Since none of her grandchildren had called to tell her that Wayne Yearling was in the area, she assumed that she was his first stop. “This making amends thing, does it include your kids?”

      “Yes.”

      “Good.” She nodded, approving. “You should try to connect with them. They’re still young. They can come around in time, although I wouldn’t be holding my breath about any parties being held in your honor real soon.” This was, she knew, going to take a great deal of time.

      The pause behind her was so long she thought he’d left the building. “I’m dying, Ursula. The doctor gave me maybe six months. Maybe a little more.”

      Her hands were stilled for a moment as she took in this latest curve ball that life was throwing her way. And then she went on sorting briskly.

      “We’re all dying, Wayne. You just happen to know more or less when. My way of thinking, you’ve got a jump on the rest of us.” She shoved a letter into a space that was already crammed. Gilhooly hadn’t come by for his mail in a long time. She wondered if she should be forwarding it somewhere. Tabling the thought for now, she turned around to look at the man who’d managed to drop two bombshells in as many minutes. “To make those amends you mentioned before you have to stand in front of the postmaster general in the sky.”

      For the first time since he’d entered, there was a trace of a smile on his lips. “Ursula, I don’t know what to say to you to—”

      “Then don’t try,” she cut him off. She didn’t need or want his apologies. She wanted her son-in-law to move on to the next level. “I’ve made my peace with all this, Wayne. With you, so to speak. Spend your energy on the others.”

      The mention of others had his smile fading. “I saw June at the cemetery.”

      Her mouth curved slightly. June. The fierce one. “I’m surprised you’re still standing. She took your leaving and her mother’s death just as hard as the others, even though she was just a bit of a thing.” Maybe even more so, because she’d been in need of all the nurturing that had to come from different quarters. From her and April and Max.

      He seemed to read her thoughts. Despair had Wayne sinking into a chair, his tanned, long fingers knotting before him, like a schoolboy at a loss how to make things right again. “How do I make them understand that I’m sorry?”

      That, she knew, wouldn’t be easy. “By staying. By not giving up when they turn their backs on you.” And they will, at first, she thought. He couldn’t expect anything less. His expression was so disheartened, she was compelled to say something encouraging to him. “But you’re their father. They’re so angry because they loved you. Anger’s easier to break down than indifference.”

      Talking wasn’t going to change anything right now. Not even his mood. He needed something to keep him busy. She looked down at the mail sack on the floor. “How are you at the alphabet?”

      There was a note of hope in his voice, as if her making the suggestion meant that she wanted him to remain. “I know it.”

      “Good.” She pushed the sack in his direction with her foot. The bag toppled. Mail spilled out. “Then come here and make yourself useful.”

      Eager to make amends, he was quick to comply.

      He’d been lying here in bed for the past twenty minutes, holding her to him and feeling her heart beat. He didn’t want to let the moment end. But it had to. They couldn’t remain like this indefinitely.

      He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. They’d made love again and he was absolutely drained. “Still want me to talk to your father for you?”

      She wriggled out of bed, reaching for her clothes. “No, I can fight my own battles.”

      He sat up and scanned the room, looking for his own clothes. “This isn’t a battle.” He quickly got into his underwear and jeans. He meant to give her privacy as she got dressed, but it was hard averting his eyes. Hard not wanting her again. “From what you’ve told me, he wants a reconciliation.”

      She jammed her arms into her shirt as if she were firing a weapon at an unseen target. “What he wants doesn’t concern me.”

      Pushing her hands away, he buttoned her shirt for her, his eyes intent on hers. “June, he’s your father.”

      It was a term that meant nothing in this case. “He’s a man who just happened to be there at the moment of conception, that’s all. To be a father is something else altogether. It means someone who’s there, someone who cares.”

      He hated to see that kind of hurt in her eyes. Hated knowing what it had to be doing to her inside. “Just because a man’s a father doesn’t mean he’s automatically strong.”

      She dragged her fingers through her hair, untangling it. “What does strength have to do with it?” she challenged.

      Strength had everything to do with it. When she got older, she’d understand. “It takes a great deal of strength to stay, to make a life for not just yourself but your family.”

      It wasn’t as if her father had accidentally made her mother pregnant and moved on. He’d married her, had three children with her. He knew what he was up against, what he was doing. And she hated him for it. For not loving any of them enough to stay.

      “Well, if you can’t do it,” she snapped, “you shouldn’t have a family.”

      She was about to storm out of the room. He placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her around to face him. “Hindsight, June.”

      Where was he going with this? “What do you want me to do, just forgive him?”

      “Yes.”

      Her mouth dropped open. Though she’d thrown the words at him, she hadn’t expected him to actually agree. It took the wind out of her sails. “You really want me to forgive him?”

      “Yes.”

      Anger filled her. Kevin was supposed to be on her side, not her father’s. He didn’t even know her father. “He doesn’t deserve forgiving.”

      That was beside the point. “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but you deserve not to have to live with this anger consuming you this way.”

      Where the hell did he get off making judgments like that? Shrugging him away, she squared her shoulders. “You don’t even know me—beyond the obvious.”

      “Yes, I do,” he contradicted quietly. “Because what you feel, I’ve felt. My father didn’t have to withdraw the way he did, didn’t have to leave me with the responsibility of doing what he couldn’t do. We needed him, my brother, my sisters and me, and he just copped out.” She opened her mouth and he knew what she was going to say, that it wasn’t the same thing. But it

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