“We’ve learned to live with our choice,” she told him, still not backing down.
“And that means you have no regrets?” he asked bitterly.
“Of course we have regrets. We’ve had regrets every day of our lives since we left Boston, but we can’t go back in time and undo what we did.”
“You can’t undo it, but you can make it bearable for the rest of us.”
She reached out to touch him, hesitated, then drew back. “Talking about it might make things worse. Have you considered that?”
“How? How can the truth possibly be any worse than the explanations that each of us has been forced to consider? Were Ryan, Sean and Michael so unlovable? Or did you just draw straws and choose me and Patrick? Were we cuter than the others? Or less trouble? Maybe you meant to leave us behind, too, but we clung too tightly.”
Tears were spilling down her cheeks as he spewed out all the questions that had tormented him, questions he knew that his brothers must have asked themselves a million and one times, as well. How could boys of nine, seven and five have been expected to cope with being abandoned? It would have been natural for them to have blamed themselves, to have grown up thinking they didn’t deserve to be loved. It was a miracle they’d opened their hearts to anyone.
“Oh, Daniel, don’t do this,” she whispered. “Not to yourself. Not to us.”
“Why not, Mom? You and Dad did it to us.” He pushed away from the table. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Daniel, don’t leave. Not like this.”
“I can’t stay.”
“At least say hello to your father before you go,” she pleaded.
“I can’t. If I do, I’ll say something I’ll regret.”
He left through the kitchen door and went for a walk, too angry and upset to get behind the wheel of a car. Why couldn’t they see that their secrets were destroying their family? What could have driven them to make such a devastating decision all those years ago?
As badly as he wanted answers, he knew that his brothers wanted them even more. They deserved them. He’d tried to warn his mother about that. One of these days, there was going to be a confrontation, and it was going to get ugly. And as much as he loved his parents, as much as he felt he owed them, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to bring himself to mediate, to be the cool voice of reason in such a volatile situation. At that moment, if he had to choose sides, he was going to be on his brothers’. His parents were dead set on not giving him even the tiniest excuse to be on theirs.
* * *
Molly was bone weary by the time she climbed the stairs to her apartment. She’d meant to get away sooner, but the bar had been busy and Retta had been on her feet too long as it was. Molly hadn’t been able to ask her to fill in waiting on tables.
When she opened the door to the apartment, the TV was on, but Kendra was sound asleep on the sofa, her dark lashes like smudges of soot on her pale cheeks. If Molly wasn’t mistaken, there were dried traces of tears there, as well.
“Oh, Kendra, what’s going on with you?” she whispered as she pulled a blanket over the girl. “I can’t hide you forever, not with Daniel breathing down my neck.”
Not that Molly minded the prospect of going a few rounds with Daniel. In fact, if there was some way she could turn his life into a living hell, she was all for it. It would be downright exhilarating.
And maybe a little too much like the old days, she admitted honestly. That could be dangerous. She wasn’t over Daniel, not by a long shot. If she hadn’t already known that, the sparks flying between them this afternoon would have been a wake-up call. Anyone with any sense knew that hate was the flip side of love, that so much passion could turn on a dime into the opposite emotion. Hating Daniel was a habit, but so was loving him. It was easy enough to hate him deeply and thoroughly from a distance, but proximity had a way of confusing things. Hormones kicked in, and common sense flew straight out the window.
So, she needed to get him back out of her life for her own protection. And the only way to do that was to resolve the situation with Kendra. Easier said than done.
In just a couple of days the girl had stolen a piece of Molly’s heart. She was smart and full of life. She was eager to help, desperate for praise. She was all the things Molly had been when she’d come to live with her grandfather. Jess had been there for her, steady as a rock. Now it was her turn to do the same for another scared child.
Resolved to stand by Kendra, no matter what, she went into her room and tried to see it as Daniel must have seen it earlier. Had he remembered the times they’d spent together in her bed? Had he noticed that his picture was no longer on her dresser?
She reached into a nightstand drawer and found the photo, taken on a rocky cliff overlooking the Atlantic. His hair, normally so neatly trimmed to keep the natural curl tamed, had been caught by the wind and mussed. A navy sweater made his blue eyes seem even darker. And his smile...she sighed just looking at it. It was a heartbreaker of a smile, complete with devastating dimples and a flash of pure mischief in his eyes. This was the Daniel she’d fallen in love with, the one with his guard down and nary a rule book in sight.
The Daniel who’d barged back into her life today was the hard professional without so much as a glint of humor in his eyes. When he was like that, it was easy enough to pretend that she’d never felt a thing for him. Of course, the pretense was just that, a lie to keep her safe.
Her hand instinctively went to her belly, covering the empty womb where her child—hers and Daniel’s—should have been safe, should have grown until ready to face the world. She struggled against a flood of tears.
“I am not shedding one more tear over that man,” she said staunchly. And she’d shed all she could over her lost child.
But despite her intentions, the tears fell anyway. She sank onto the edge of the bed, still clutching the picture, mentally cursing herself for not having thrown it away years ago.
A whisper of sound had her wiping her eyes before she faced Kendra, who was standing uncertainly in the bedroom doorway.
“Are you okay?” the teen asked worriedly.
“I’m just fine,” Molly reassured her, then patted the edge of the bed. “Come sit here for a minute.”
Kendra sat next to her, keeping a careful distance between them. “I tried to wait up for you. I guess I fell asleep.”
“That’s okay.”
“We can talk now, if you want.”
“Sweetie, I need to know why you ran away from home. That’s the only way I can help you.”
“I can’t say,” Kendra said, her expression apologetic. “I’m sorry. You’re being real nice to me, but I can’t. It will ruin everything.”
What an odd thing to say. Puzzled, Molly studied her. “What will it ruin?”
“Can’t I just stay here a little longer, please? I’m helping Retta. She said I was doing good. She taught me to make chowder today, and the customers liked it. I heard them say so.”
“You are good, and if it were just about a job, you could stay,” Molly told her. “But you have a home, Kendra. You have parents who are worried sick about you. I have to think about them, too.”
“Is this just because you don’t want to keep fighting with that man who came today?”
“No, it’s because I feel guilty standing between you and your parents when I don’t know what’s going on.” She tucked a finger under Kendra’s chin and forced the girl to meet her gaze. “What did they do that was so awful?”
“It’s not what they