Page 55 of If The Fates Allow
“Times are different,” Bonnie replied calmly. “The world is changing.”
“The world will never change enough to where a man who is set to inherit can marry the woman he wants.”
Bitterness clung to every word, his own destiny serving as a reminder of how thingsshouldbe done.
“What’s happening here?” Cal stumbled into the room red-faced and chest pumping. He looked as if he’d run a mile to get there. “Willa?”
“She’s having an attack, Cal.” Margaret moved around the bed to keep her son back, pushing his chest lightly. “Go downstairs.”
Cal refused to budge, staring menacingly at their father. “What have you done to her?”
“None of your business, boy,” their father spat out. “But if I hear that you knew anything about Paul Anderson and that kitchen maid, it’ll be you next.”
Something behind Cal’s eyes snapped, and their mother was shoved aside. “And how exactly will you deal with me?”
Willa felt her gut clench in dreaded anticipation. Her brother rarely allowed his temper free anymore. Not like he did when he was younger.Not since he’d become a grown man who grasped the importance of tucking away that Fairweather darkness in favor of being charming.
Their mother was in front of Cal again. Hands on his shoulders, she desperately whispered for him to remain calm. Willa couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but whatever it was did the trick. Cal listened and met their mother’s gaze with a curt nod, the storm of his anger passing before it ever had a chance to descend upon them.
“Cal and I are going to hurry them along with Willa’s tea, but if it doesn’t work, we’re sending for the doctor, no matter what you say,” Margaret said over her shoulder as she led Cal to the door. “We don’t need yet another dead daughter in this family.”
With her mother gone, Bonnie helped Willa onto the bed. “Paul’s woman is pregnant, Stephen. You cannot change that fact.”
“There are ways,” he came over to sneer at Willa as if he were watching a half dead dog dying in the streets. “We both know there are ways, and that damn doctor over there can help.”
Willa stiffened at the mention of Noah, which was a mistake. The strain on her muscles caused a coughing fit to take hold, and with her insides on fire, she clawed at the bedspread, trying to brace herself as the attack mounted its strength.
“Don’t you remember how excited we were?” Bonnie rubbed circles on Willa’s back, massaging gently until the fit eased. “Remember how big our dreams had been at that age?”
“We were fools, Bon. So blindly happy we didn’t see how it would fail us in the end.” Her father scrubbed a hand down his face. “Destiny smiled down upon us for a single day and then stole it away before we could love her.”
“Oh, now I don’t believe that,” Bonnie replied, soft and kind. “We loved her, and she knew we loved her. How could she not? I’ve never in my life seen you as happy as you were when you held her for the first time.”
“Ah, Bon. You shouldn’t hold on so tightto her memory.”
“Why not? It’s all I have.” Bonnie’s mouth screwed tight. “And you think I blame you when I don’t. No one is to blame, just as no one is to blame for Willa having the same breathing affliction as our baby girl. I’m sorry you were the one holding her when it happened, Stephen. I’m sorry I fell asleep, and you were the only one with her when she passed.”
“Don’t do it to yourself, Bon,” her father said gruffly. “There’s no point in living in the past.”
“You think about her as much as I do,” Bonnie insisted. “Deny it all you want, but I see the flowers you leave on her little grave.”
Rolling to her side, Willa’s hazy mind tried to follow what they were saying, but it didn’t make sense. Who were they talking about, and what little grave?
“She deserves to be remembered as much as Gracie,” her father murmured. “Our girl would have outshined every one of them if she had lived.”
If she had lived.
It came to Willa all at once. In the rear corner of the graveyard, a small, unmarked stone lay half-buried in the dirt. A child’s grave, which she assumed was some long-lost relative from the past. She only knew it was there because whenever she worked up the courage to visit Grace, there would be little sprigs of flowers on the marker from time to time.
Her father had left the flowers.
Her father and Bonnie had once had a child together.
“But it was for the best that she didn’t.”
Bonnie stilled at his cruel words, holding her breath as she listened.
“There was no place for her in this world, Bon,” her father continued. “No place for her as a Fairweather.”
