The Road Leads Back, page 5
“You had a family with Laura.”
“Laura’s kids resented me from the day I married her until the day she left. I wanted my own kids, and you knew I had one. You had a grandson. How could you… Never mind. Just give me the letters. I want them.”
She stared at him for several breaths.
“Now!” Harry demanded.
She darted from the room.
Running a hand over his hair, he tried to wrap his head around what was happening. The last few days had been so surreal. Standing here, demanding letters from thirty years ago, was surreal.
Elaine reappeared several minutes later. The box shook in her hands.
Harry scoffed. He had seen the old fabric-covered container in her closet more than once but had never given it a second thought. He had no idea it held such a dark secret.
He snatched the box from her. It seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He flipped the top back and realized Kara hadn’t been exaggerating. There likely were a hundred letters in there. And all of the envelopes were torn.
He glared at Elaine. “You opened them?”
“I just—I wanted to make sure they were okay.”
He shook his head, pulled one of the letters out, and then dropped the box onto the table. He tugged the yellowed paper free and unfolded it. A photograph fell onto the placemat, and he picked it up. His heart broke at the little face grinning back at him.
“‘Dear Harry,’” he read aloud. “‘I hope school is going okay. Phil is going to be six months old next week and is growing so fast. He will be crawling soon. He babbles all the time. I’m not sure where he gets that from. I don’t think either of us ever talked that much. I sold my first painting yesterday. Well, not sold exactly. I traded it for some new cloth diapers.’”
Harry lowered the letter and glared at Elaine. “She was bartering for diapers, and you thought she was doing okay? How could you do this? To her? To me? To your grandson?”
“She was okay. I sent money.”
He focused on the paper again, scoffing when he got to the end. “‘I’ve been saving the money you sent. I have enough to get a bus ticket home as soon as you tell me you’re ready for us.’” His anger deepened. “She wanted to come home? And you left her there?”
“She was okay,” she whispered.
Harry shook his head as he put the letter back inside the box, which he tucked under his arm. “Don’t call me. Don’t come to me. I’ll come to you when I can talk to you about this without wanting to choke you.”
The sound of her calling his name followed him through the house, but he was unmoved. Slamming his car door, he set the box in the passenger seat and sighed heavily. He hadn’t planned on walking out. He had a million questions, a thousand things to say, but nothing he said now would solve anything. Screaming and yelling and blaming his mother would do nothing. Instead, he backed out, trying to determine what he needed to do next.
Kara knew the guilt trip was coming, so she wasn’t surprised when Phil walked into her makeshift studio—which was really the back corner of her mudroom—with a steaming coffee mug. He looked so much like Harrison it made her heart ache.
Before he left, Harry had looked terrified to face his mother. Phil seemed to have that same fear in his eyes.
He held the mug out to her. “I made you some tea.”
Kara frowned as she looked at the blank canvas that had been staring at her all afternoon. She exhaled and accepted the cup. “You want to go to Iowa.”
He sat on the stool that Jess usually occupied and clasped his hands between his knees. “It makes sense, Mom. And not just for the job. I want to know my father. I know we can call and e-mail and all that, but it’s not the same.”
“I know.”
“I want you to come with us.”
Her heart started pounding just at the mention of going home. “I can’t do that, Phil.”
“I know your parents hurt you,” he said softly, “but Harry cares about you. He wants to make things better. For all of us.”
She looked at him and scoffed. “Are they so bad now, Phil? Really? Jess is happy. She’s settled. We have a nice little life, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “For now. But reality will crash in on us sometime. When I was a kid, all I needed was food and shelter. Jess needs medicines and special care that you can’t get in exchange for a mural, Mom. I have to put her first, and if that means taking a job where I’ll have insurance and job security, then I need to do that. Besides all that, I spent my entire life fantasizing about my father. I have the real thing now, and he seems like a good guy.”
She focused on putting her brush down. “He is a good guy. He always was.”
“He was just a kid, but I think he would have done what he said and given up school to be there for us. Don’t you?”
“Yes. I think he would have. And I think he would have grown to resent me for holding him back. I think he would have tried to squeeze me into a mold, and I would have started to hate him. I think we would have had a miserable marriage, an ugly divorce, and you still would have grown up blaming me for not having the life you wanted.”
Phil sighed. “I don’t… Okay, I do blame you, but I also know you did the best you could given the circumstances. But the circumstances have changed now, and Harry deserves the opportunity that was taken from him. He wants to help us out. I think we should let him. Now is the perfect time. Jess is on summer break. She’ll have time to adjust before school starts. We’ll all have time to adjust.” Leaning forward, he put a kiss on her head and handed her an envelope. “He asked me to give this to you.”
He left her sitting in her little room, holding a coffee mug and staring at her name scrawled in black ink. Setting her mug down, she gently tore the envelope open and pulled out several folded sheets of notepad-sized paper with a hotel logo at the top.
Dear Kara,
I cannot begin to express how sorry I am for not responding to your letters sooner. Though I can’t make up for the years you spent waiting, I hope you will accept this delayed reply as the answer you were hoping for.
Since you told me about our son, I have been trying to imagine what your life must have been like. I wish I had been there to help ease the pain of your parents’ rejection. Even more than that, I wish had been there to stop my parents’ deception. I know you must have felt incredibly alone raising a child on your own. While I was at college thinking my life was difficult because I had tests to study for and papers to write, you were providing all of life’s necessities to Phil, nurturing him and teaching him things he should have learned from me.
The last twenty-seven years of my life seem incredibly selfish and shallow in comparison to yours. I spent my time growing a business, catering to strangers, while you created an amazing man and became a grandmother to a wonderful little girl.
I wish I could have been there to see Phil grow and to help carry your burden. The fact that my mother sent you money every month eases my guilt somewhat, but I know nothing can ever make up for how abandoned you had to have felt by everyone involved in this situation.
I can’t change the past, Kara, but I hope, more than anything I have ever hoped for in my life, that we can move forward. We had twenty-seven years taken away from us without our consent. I don’t want to lose another moment.
~Harry
Kara read the letter a second and a third time, letting his words sink in. Finally, she pushed herself up and walked through the house until she found Phil on the couch with Jess. The girl was bouncing up and down as he showed her something on his laptop.
“Look how big the backyard is, Punky,” he said. “I bet Harry will let us put up a swing set.”
Jess noticed Kara in the door and waved her over. “Grandma, look. Look at the pictures Harry sent.”
Easing onto the sofa, Kara laughed quietly. The house couldn’t look any more conventional if Harry had built it himself. White siding, black shutters, two stories, and a white-picket fence to round it all out. It was so traditional, so perfect, so…so Harrison Canton.
“This is where we are going to stay when we go to Harry’s,” Jess said.
Kara nodded. “It’s lovely.”
Jess took her hand. “You’re going, too, right, Grandma? Harry says there are only three bedrooms but that we can make it work. You can sleep in my room if you want. Maybe we can put rainbows and unicorns on the walls.”
“Maybe we can.” Kara hugged Jess closer and looked at Phil. She sighed and nodded.
Yes. Fine. She would go. She would give Phil the house, the yard, the fence…the life he’d always wanted. She would forgive Harry’s unintentional neglect, put the resentment and anger behind her, and yes, damn it, they would move on.
Somehow.
Chapter Five
Kara’s heart pounded so fiercely she feared she may not survive. Harry hadn’t been lying. Des Moines had grown and changed so much since she’d been gone, she barely recognized the area she grew up in. She did, however, start to remember older houses and buildings as Phil drove them deeper into the suburb where she and Harry had been raised. She turned in her seat as they passed an old malt shop where kids—not Kara and Harry but the more popular ones—would hang out on the weekends. Kara glanced at the GPS and sighed. One more turn and they would be at his house. Their new house.
What the hell was she getting herself into?
“Wow! Look at that,” Jess said from the back seat when Phil pulled into the driveway.
He laughed. “I see, Punky.”
The house—a perfect representation of her suburban childhood and all that had betrayed her—made Kara cringe. Harry opened the front door just as Jess climbed from the car. She bounded up the driveway, through the bright green grass, and hurled herself at Harry as if she’d known him her entire life.
Kara turned her gaze away as Harry hugged Jess back. Something about seeing grandfather and granddaughter together made her stomach tighten. She wasn’t prone to jealousy, but she’d been the only grandparent Jessica had ever known. She wasn’t sure how she felt about sharing that coveted position.
Jessica was talking so fast her words were running together, but Harry seemed to keep up for the most part. Finally, he convinced her to go inside the house and find her room—the one with the walls painted the exact shade of sunset pink she had requested. It was ready for Grandma to add unicorns and rainbows.
Once Jess skipped her way inside, Phil hugged Harry. Kara watched, her sense of dread growing, as they warmly greeted each other. Another pang of jealousy struck her. She couldn’t recall the last time Phil had been that happy to see her. Had he ever?
“Take your stuff upstairs. First door on the right,” Harry said.
He disappeared through the same door Jess had, and Harry turned his dark eyes to Kara. She leaned against the car, crossed her ankles casually, and stared up at his home with a smirk.
“Wow, Harry. Did you get this house from a How to Fit In with Society kit?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and grinned at her. “I bought this place when I got married. When she left, she said I could keep the house and all that was in it. So I did.”
Kara looked at him through her dark-tinted John Lennon sunglasses. “Why did she leave such suburban paradise? Isn’t this what Stepford wives live for?”
He tilted his head and grinned at her teasing. “She said I wasn’t exciting enough for her. Maybe she should have stuck around. Having you here will certainly shake things up.”
Kara chuckled and stood upright. “I’m not sure any wife, even a bored one, would appreciate you inviting the irresponsible mother of your only known child to live with you.”
“Who says you’re irresponsible?”
“Your son.” She opened the back door, but before she could start unpacking, Harrison stepped in her way and reached for the tattered duffel bag that had sat in her closet for the last seven years. He pulled it out, and she took it from him.
“I emptied out my home office. I thought it’d make a great bedroom, art studio combination.” He pulled out several boxes marked as hers and hefted them up. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
She let out a low whistle as they walked inside. The foyer was open to the second story, creating an elegant entrance. Dark woodwork that matched the floor accented the doorframes. The walls were almond color and plain except for a few perfectly hung knickknacks. It looked like a model home from the late nineties. And that wasn’t a compliment.
Kara suspected his ex-wife had been in charge of décor and Harry hadn’t changed a thing since they’d moved in. “How long have you been divorced?”
“Um, about six years, I guess.”
“You haven’t so much as moved a vase, have you?”
He chuckled. “You want to redecorate?”
“Be careful,” Phil warned, coming down the wooden staircase. “You’ll have life-sized nudes on every wall before you know it.”
“I haven’t painted nudes since 2005,” Kara deadpanned.
Harry shrugged. “It’s just paint. I can go over anything I don’t like.”
Kara smiled at Phil. “I’ve been telling you that all your life, haven’t I? Now that the sperm donor has said it, maybe you’ll listen.”
Harry flinched. “Sperm donor sounds so callous.”
Kara hummed thoughtfully for a moment. “Now that the guy-who-knocked-me-up-and-left-without-so-much-as-a-word has said it, maybe you’ll listen.”
Harry canted his head. “Sperm donor it is.”
Phil rolled his eyes and disappeared through the front door as Kara laughed and put her hand to Harry’s back, urging him on. As soon as he pushed a paned-glass door open, her breath left her. The walls were the same almond color as the rest of the walls she’d seen, but it worked in this room because there were so many windows. Sunlight streamed in, brightening it more than any colors could. A full-size bed sat along one wall and a dresser along another, but for the most part the room was empty.
Her gaze fell on an easel in the corner. She turned her attention to Harry, questioning him with her eyes.
“Phil said you left yours behind because it wouldn’t fit in the car.”
“I could have replaced it on my own.”
He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “I wanted to get you one. Think of it as a thank you gift.”
“For what?”
“For coming.”
“Harry,” she called when he turned toward the door. “I don’t know what arrangements you’ve made with Phil—”
He furrowed his brow. “Arrangements?”
“You know, to pay you for letting us stay here.”
“There’s no payment necessary, Kara.”
“I just mean, usually when we crash with someone, I plant a garden or—”
“Teach their kids or paint their house. Yeah, Phil told me. You don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who owes you, so there was no arrangement made and none will be made. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”
Not pulling her weight didn’t sit well with her. “Well…I’ll cook and clean. Mostly because I saw what you ordered at the restaurant in Seattle, and I don’t want to eat like that.”
He grinned. “Fair enough.”
With that, he left her to settle into the space that was hers for the time being. It had been a long time since Kara had to unpack her bag, knowing her accommodations were temporary—she couldn’t live with Harry forever—but she easily fell into the routine.
As she put her clothes away, he delivered several boxes and deposited them inside without a word. She pulled the tape back and unloaded her art supplies, several pieces that weren’t yet finished, and a few that were ready to be sold or traded.
She unwrapped some sculptures and set them on the window ledge, desperately trying to make this space feel like home.
Harry slowed as he entered the kitchen. The counters were stacked high with containers of food. “What are you doing?”
Kara pulled a half-empty gallon of milk from his fridge. “You can’t keep eating like this, Harrison. You’ll have a heart attack or cancer by the time you retire.”
He lifted a can of soup off the counter and looked at it. “It’s reduced sodium.”
She took it from his hand and set it back in the pile. “It’s filled with chemicals. Help me pack this up, and then we’ll go to the store.” She paused. “You don’t happen to know any farmers, do you?”
He lifted his brows and smirked. “No. Not off the top of my head. What are you going to do with all this?”
“Find a place that takes food donations.”
“So it’s okay to give the needy heart attacks and cancer?” He did his best to wipe his grin away when she stopped what she was doing and cocked a brow at him. He failed miserably and let a small laugh escape. Phil often gave her that same look, and Harry had to wonder if she even realized she doled it out just as frequently. He doubted either Kara or Phil realized how alike they were. “I’ll go grab a box.”
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea to have me move in,” she said when he returned from the garage.
He started putting the cans from his pantry into the box. “This actually proves it was a terrific idea. I clearly need you to save me from myself.”
“You’ll regret it soon enough. Hurry up. We have to go find some decent food for dinner before Phil takes Jess out to some horrid fast food place and fills her up with deep-fried pink goo.”
“That’s a myth, you know,” he said. She gave him that look again, and he smiled. “I checked on them before coming downstairs. They are passed out in Jess’s room.”
Kara nodded slightly. “So I have to go find some decent food.”
“I’ll go with you,” he offered.
Her desire to argue was plainly written on her face.
“I obviously need to learn how to grocery shop correctly,” he justified.
She didn’t counter his logic.
After dropping off their donation at a church not far from Harry’s, she filled him in on the hazards of ingesting processed foods. He, in turn, promised to improve his eating habits. She chastised him for placating her, and he tried to hide his amused smile.
