Page 75 of All's Fair in Love and Blood - A Romantic Comedy Novel

I was grateful when we came to a stop and could get out of the cart. As much as I needed the pep talk and reveled in the fact my father was treating me like his daughter, I needed to get out and move. Auggie had given me a lot to think about.

Auggie walked around to the back of the cart and I followed.

“Can you carry your clubs, or should I call for a caddy?”

“I’m sure I can manage it.”

“I don’t enjoy caddies.”

That didn’t surprise me. I was sure it would annoy him to have someone follow him around and hand him his clubs. He wasn’t only the leader of the pack but a lone wolf, too.

Auggie heaved both sets out of the cart. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” No. I honestly had no interest in golfing or making deals on the course, but I had to save the world.

Auggie smiled and easily hoisted his set over his shoulder. He seemed in good health. Huh. I really needed Naomi to find out what was going on with him.

I grabbed my set and followed him onto the green. I think that was the right lingo. I was going to get a book—Golf for Dummies. The clubs were heavier than I’d assumed but not unmanageable. The heat and humidity were more oppressive than anything. “So, who have you taught to play golf?” It was the only question I could think to ask. Other than what medications are you taking? But it didn’t seem like the time or place for that question.

Auggie paused and thought for a moment. “Naomi and your mother,” he mumbled.

Naomi had never said anything. I didn’t even know she knew how to golf. “Were they any good?”

He smiled to himself. “Naomi was a natural, and your mother was a disaster.”

“Really? What happened?”

“Stitches.” He began walking again.

“She hurt herself?” I could so see that happening to me today.

“No. Me. She did a thorough job too. Ten stitches in the back of my head. She had quite the swing—unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to keep ahold of the club.”

I laughed. “I bet she felt awful.”

“She apologized for weeks.”

“Did she ever get the hang of it?”

He shook his head. “She would never come out with me again.” Regret laced his words.

“That’s too bad.”

Auggie said nothing in return.

“You don’t like talking about her,” I finally stated after all these years.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted.

I reached for my father’s hand. I had never held it before, at least not that I remembered. Maybe when I was a small child I had. Auggie stared down at our hands as if he were stunned, but his fingers curled around mine gripping them tightly.

A sense of security swept through me to the point that my eyes began to water. “What if I need to talk about her?”

He tilted his head and studied me, almost as if he had never seen me before this moment. A softness washed over his face. “What do you want to know?”

Only . . . “Everything.”

Peace Offering

I should have been researching and working on my business plan, but all I could do was absorb the photo album Auggie had given me many years ago. It took on so much more meaning now that I was beginning to know the woman and the man in the pictures.

My fingers lightly brushed over the pages as I sat on my floor and tried to memorize everything my father had told me today. He and Momma met when she was a sophomore in high school and he was a senior. When he went off to college back East, they wrote to each other. I wish I had those letters. I knew he had given her the promise ring I still wore when she was sixteen, though the way he spoke about it today, I believed he regretted it. She was too young, he’d said. I had heard that before. But I got the sense that he’d loved her deeply. It was in the way he talked about how she would pack him a lunch every day and put notes on the napkins, or how she had a Christmas tree in every room during the holidays. What touched me the most, though, was hearing how much she had wanted a baby. They’d tried for seven years before I was born.

She had also been instrumental in helping Auggie start Armstrong Labs. She’d worked tirelessly helping him research and then acted in an administrative role for the entire company until she got pregnant with me. Auggie said she’d spent months decorating the nursery and going to all the birthing classes. He hadn’t made it to any of them, which he sounded remorseful about. It made me sad for my mother. I didn’t know how, but I knew she would have wanted him there.

I admired her golden-blonde hair and thought of how she could play the piano and sing. How all she’d ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother. I ached for her and wanted to know what had brought her to the point of taking her own life, but that wasn’t something Auggie would discuss with me. In fact, he’d gotten agitated when I had asked about it. So agitated that when he’d swung his club, he’d missed his ball and sworn all the four-letter words. That was the end of the conversation about my momma.

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