Page 67 of The Corner of Heartbreak and Forever
Frank’s gaze drifted to the picture on the nightstand. “Because you weren’t mine to keep,” he said evenly, as if he didn’t have the energy to raise his voice.
“What?” Reed snapped.
Frank lifted sad eyes to Reed. “You weren’t mine to keep. You aren’t my son.”
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but cut the bull. I saw pictures of you when you were young. We look alike.”
“No games, Reed. I don’t have time for them. When I lost my parents, I went off the deep end. Hit the bottle pretty hard. Your mother wanted no part of a drunk, and I didn’t blame her one bit for kicking me out. It was almost four months before I was clean and stable enough that she’d take me back. During our separation, she got together with a musician.”
Reed’s entire body flexed, disbelief coursing through him.
“She broke it off with him when we got back together. At least that’s what she told me. A few months later we found out she was pregnant. I thought you were mine. I had no reason to believe otherwise, and, Reed, I loved you then, and that love has never died.” He tapped his fist over his heart with damp eyes.
Reed bit back the urge to call bull on the love part.
“Then one day your mother gets a call. The guy she’d been with died. Overdosed. She collapsed right there by the phone into a sobbing mess on the floor.”
Tears welled in Frank’s eyes, drawing tears from Reed—for his mother, his father, Frank, or himself, he had no idea.
“That’s the day she went into labor. The day she told me the baby wasn’t mine. But she swore—swore on everything she’d ever known—that she loved us both, me and the other man.”
Reed sank down to the edge of the bed, dragging air into his lungs, trying to process this new, awful information.
“When she died,” Frank said, “part of me thought she’d just given up. That it was the other guy she loved and it was all too much. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but I was a wreck, and then I had this tiny baby,someone else’sbaby, to take care of when I couldn’t even take care of myself. I had lost the woman I loved and found out the life she’d nurtured belonged to another man. I could barely function. Itried, Reed. I tried to do the right thing, but every time I looked at you, I saw her and another man. After two days in our apartment, the apartment where…” He swallowed hard, wiped his eyes with his palm, and said, “Where I loved her. The apartment that held her lies, it was overwhelming, like riding a train that had careened off the tracks. I hit the bottle again, woke up with you screaming in your crib, and I knew I couldn’t do it.”
Reed clasped his hands behind his neck, staring down at the floor, and tried to remember how to breathe.
“I never told a soul about the other man. I never knew his name, where he lived, who called that day. Nothing,” Frank said. “I didn’t even tell Roy or Ella. I didn’t want them to think poorly of her.”
After all that, you protected my mother?
Reed’s eyes remained trained on the floor, which seemed to sway beneath him. “So…what? You left me and never looked back?”
“I left you with people who loved you and were capable of giving you the life I couldn’t. I knew if I was in your life, I’d only mess it up. I drove out of the state and kept going, stopping only long enough to get drunk, sleep it off, and start all over again. I came back to see you once. You were so little and happy. You had people who loved you, whose entireworldsrevolved around you. Lily would have wanted you to be with Ella and Roy. I thought maybe I could beat the alcohol again, but I was too broken, and seeing you only reminded me of everything I’d lost. I was too weak, and I’ll always be sorry for that. I knew you were better off without me, so I hit a bar. I took off the next day. I drank, lived in my car, on the streets, got by however I could. And then I got sick.”
Reed pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the sinking feeling inside him.
“Your mother came to me in a dream and told me to get to a doctor.” Frank’s voice was shaky. “My guardian angel, even after everything. I went to a clinic, had a bunch of tests. Been sober six months, and they say I have a year to live, give or take. Stage four liver cancer.”
Reed closed his eyes, a pained noise escaping before he could stop it. His world had spiraled out of control, and he didn’t know what to hold on to or how to make sense of it. His real father hadn’t abandoned him after all; he’d died. Was that any better? Did his real father know his mother had been pregnant with his child? Had his mother loved the other man more than Frank? Those were questions he couldn’t ask, answers he’d never know. And Frank, this man whowasn’this father, wasdying? It hurt to breathe, to think…
He looked at Frank, a broken man living on a timeline, putting himself through this nightmare for…? “Why did you come back? Why put yourself through this?”
Frank’s gaze sank to his hands worrying nervously in his lap. “I was madly in love with your mother. I thought we’d have a lifetime together, and then all in one day, she shattered my beliefs, I lost her, and I had you, but you weren’t really mine. Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you and wished I were a stronger man. That’s my fault. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m on my way out of this world, and I’ll carry that guilt to my grave. But once I sobered up, I knew I had to find you. I wanted to apologize. She’d want you to know the truth about your history, and for you to have her things. She adored you from the very moment she found out she was pregnant. Her love for me might have waxed and waned, but not for you. Never for you. She sensed that you were a strong boy even before you were born. She said a girl wouldn’t kick that hard.” He smiled, as if he were reliving the memory. “She named you Reed the month before you were born. Said reeds were strong and had long roots that spread far and wide. She wanted you to be strong, to have roots you could count on. Roy and Ella gave you that, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for doing what I couldn’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
GRACE SCRUBBED THE heck out of every surface in Reed’s house. She washed the linens, made the bed, and was busy polishing Reed’s boots when she heard his truck door close. She ran down the stairs and nearly bowled him over on the front porch.
She grabbed him, searching his expression. “You’re back. Are you okay? How was it?”
He touched his lips to hers, a small smile settling into place as he lifted her wrist, eyeing the gloves she wore.
“I was polishing your boots.”
“My boots? Grace, guys don’t polish their boots.” He took her hand, and they sat on the porch steps. He set his mother’s journal beside him.
“You were so distraught when you left. I wanted to do something for you, but I didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. So I cleaned the house top to bottom. I picked flowers down by the creek to try to make the rooms seem brighter to cheer you up. And I was going to attack the attic, but I didn’t want you to think I was snooping. So I polished your boots.”
