LITMIR.BIZ

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daughters and sure as hell not God.

      I’m sorry, but it’s better for everyone involved if it ends here and now. I didn’t write Maryellen and Kelly. I couldn’t. I was never the husband you deserved and I wasn’t any kind of father. I love you. I always have.

       Dan

      Grace read the letter a second time, letting her eyes rest on each word, one by one, as she tried to assimilate what he was saying. By the time she’d finished, the knot in her throat made it impossible to speak and tears slid down her face.

      “It’s Dan,” she told Olivia who knelt in front of her. Then, her cries surging from deep inside her, she started to wail. Huge sobs racked her shoulders, sobs that shook the very core of her being.

      She’d wanted answers, sought resolution, but not this. Never this. Dan’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound wasn’t even close to what she’d expected. He’d been alone, trapped in a private hell. He’d been caught in a time warp, tangled in guilt and shame created by a war he’d never wanted to fight.

      The tears flowed until there were none left inside her. “The girls…”

      “Troy’s gone to get them for you,” Olivia told her. “They’ll be here any minute.”

      “I thought he was with another woman.”

      “I know.” Olivia stroked her hair as Grace leaned into her friend’s comforting arms.

      “All this time he’s been dead.”

      “Yes.”

      “Almost from the first.”

      “So it seems.”

      “He left that one night and then he came back, remember?”

      “Apparently he changed his mind.”

      Grace sobbed. “He came back because he couldn’t make himself do it.” She recalled how angry he’d been, how Dan had lashed out at her and claimed he’d been in hell for the last thirty-five years. She’d assumed he was talking about their marriage when all along it had been the war.

      So many things began to fall into place.

      “Troy found his wallet and his wedding ring in the trailer.”

      Grace lifted her head. “He left his wedding band at home.” She’d found it the night she’d thrown all his clothes out of the house. Finding the ring was what had triggered her tantrum. She’d believed at the time that he’d wanted her to discover it. She’d believed Dan had wanted to flaunt his new love. How wrong she’d been.

      “That was the ring he charged on the VISA card,” Grace whispered.

      When Dan disappeared a second time, Grace had returned home and found the bedroom a shambles. He was gone and he hadn’t taken anything with him, but he’d emptied the drawers, torn the room apart. What she didn’t understand then was that he’d been on a search. What he sought, she realized now, had been his wedding band. When he couldn’t find it, he’d gone into Berghoff’s and purchased another. For some confused reason—loyalty? guilt? both?—he’d wanted his wedding ring on his finger when he blew out his brains.

      “Mom!” Kelly rushed into the room with Paul and the baby. Her daughter’s sobs tore at her heart, and Grace held out her arms. Maryellen was only a few moments behind. Together they formed a circle, arms around one another, weeping, sobbing, hugging. Then Grace kissed each one in turn and whispered, “We need to make burial arrangements. It’s time we laid your father to rest.”

      Eighteen

      Daniel Sherman was buried three days later in a private service with only family and a few friends in attendance. Bob Beldon, a childhood friend of Dan’s, gave the eulogy. The two men had been on the high-school football team together and then following graduation they’d enlisted in the Army on the buddy program. Maryellen hadn’t realized how close Dan and Bob had once been. After Vietnam her father had let that friendship and all the others slide as he became immersed in his own hell.

      Maryellen returned from the memorial, physically and emotionally exhausted. Needing time to think through the events of the past year, she parked near the gallery, then walked down to the waterfront.

      The gazebo area, where the Concerts on the Cove were held each Thursday night during summer, was deserted. Sitting halfway up in the stands, Maryellen stared straight ahead as she considered the complex relationship she’d had with her father. He’d loved her, she knew now, as much as he was capable of loving anyone. Kelly, too—perhaps more. And he’d loved their mother.

      Grace had taken his death hard. Maryellen attributed her mother’s intense grief to the fact that she hadn’t been prepared for the shock of it. For her, it’d been easier to believe that Dan was with another woman—easier to accept, in some ways, than the knowledge that he’d taken his own life.

      As to her own feelings, Maryellen was confused. This was her father, and she loved him, but she’d learned early in life to avoid Dan whenever the darkness came over him. As a five-year-old, she’d come up with that term. “The darkness.” It all made sense now. Her father had been haunted by guilt since the war, guilt he couldn’t drive off and couldn’t share.

      Maryellen understood that, since she, too, lived with regret and pain. She, too, struggled with the past. All this time, she’d believed she had nothing in common with her father and without knowing it, they’d been more alike than she could possibly have guessed.

      A tear fell onto her cheek, and then another, catching her unawares. Maryellen wasn’t emotional; she refused to be. Couldn’t afford to be. She’d locked away her emotions when she walked away from her marriage. Emotions were too costly.

      The sound of someone approaching made her straighten and wipe the tears from her face. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to see that the intruder was Jon.

      “I read about your father. I’m sorry.” He stood some distance from her, down by the gazebo, and looked out over the water. The sky was an azure cloudless blue, and the wind was still.

      “Thank you.” The foot ferry that traveled between Bremerton and Cedar Cove lumbered toward the pier. Maryellen concentrated on that instead of Jon. He didn’t leave and she wanted to be alone. If she didn’t pick up the conversation, maybe he’d get the hint and go away.

      “I’m sorry to talk to you about this now—”

      “Then don’t,” she pleaded.

      “You’ve taken that choice away from me.” To his credit, he did sound apologetic. “If you’d told me about the baby we could’ve—”

      “We could’ve what?” she shouted. “Gotten rid of it?”

      Her anger appeared to shock him. He stiffened and then dashed up the aisle so that he stood directly in front of her. “No, Maryellen, we could’ve talked this out like civilized human beings. Instead, you deceived me. You let me think everything was perfectly fine and it wasn’t.”

      She lowered her head and stared at her feet. “You’re wrong. Everything is fine. I’m going to have my baby.”

      “That’s where you’re wrong. This isn’t your baby, it’s our baby.”

      “No.” A chill ran down her spine, a niggling fear.

      “A father has rights, too.”

      Maryellen went cold inside. “How much is this going to cost me?”

      “What?” He frowned, obviously confused.

      “How much money will it take for you to leave me and my—me and the baby alone?” she demanded.

      He stared at her for a long, heart-stopping moment. “You want to pay me to stay out of my child’s life? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

      She nodded.

      “No

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