Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
You’ve been like a father to me, and—
Nope.
Done.
I tossed the card onto the pile without finishing the rest and stood up, suddenly full of the restless energy I’d spent the past hour getting rid of.
I never should have looked in that drawer, never should have started reading those cards. They weren’t addressed to me, after all. I just hadn’t been thinking, and certainly hadn’t expected to find that.
Like a father?
Seriously?
“At least he was like a father to one of us,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a minute and taking a deep breath to try and get myself together.
It just didn’t make sense. But there had to be some reason Joanne felt that way. The girl wasn’t crazy, or stupid. She was perfectly likable. Lovable, even. So, what in the hell had made Henry treat Joanne so differently than he’d treated me?
How could Dad have acted like a father to a stranger, but not known how to treat his own son?
My head and stomach hurt just thinking about it. For years, I’d given up on ever having a real relationship with my dad, and I’d assumed the feeling was mutual. And for all those years, Henry had been here in Castle Falls, leading some kind of double life, some kind of bizarre parallel reality where he was nice, and thoughtful, and… fatherly.
What. The. Fuck?
I needed to get out of the apartment, needed some time to think, to breathe.
Ever since I had returned to Castle Falls—through Joanne’s actions, the things she’d said, those cards—I had been discovering a side of my father that I couldn’t have imagined.
It was sort of nice to know that the old man had been like a father to someone—even if it couldn’t have been me—but it only left me with more unanswered questions.
Sure, Joanne was a nice woman, a special girl. I had been able to see that from the moment we’d met. Anyone could see it. But had I really been that bad? Had I been that difficult to love?
I walked out the door and locked it behind me, wanting nothing more than to drive right back to Joanne’s house and ask her for something—anything—that might give some insight, any little clue that might tell me more about why my dad had done the things he’d done.
But what would Joanne think? What would she say? How would I even bring it up?
Sorry about earlier. Oh, and by the way, could you please tell me about my dad? He seems to have loved you more than me.
Yeah, no.
Not only would that be the most awkward conversation I could even imagine, but there was also no way to even bring it up without sounding like an ass.
It wasn’t like Joanne and I were in the best place at the moment, and even though a part of me wanted to go to Joanne anyway, in spite of everything else that had happened between us, just for the remote chance to get one of those bright smiles, some of that sunshine back into my life, I knew deep down that it wouldn’t work out that way.
That was just a fantasy, all the things I had never realized I’d wanted until the moment I’d met Joanne. It wasn’t realistic, though.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Better to just put those feelings on lockdown, pretend like I’d never read those cards—or better yet, like they didn’t even exist—and go about my life.
It wouldn’t be fair to ask Joanne about Henry, about things she wouldn’t know and would have no way of guessing. She wasn’t any more responsible for Henry’s actions than I was, after all.
I would just put the whole thing out of my mind, or at least lock it up deep enough inside that I didn’t have to deal with it again anytime soon.
Just like I did with everything else when it came to my dad.
Chapter Sixteen - Joanne
From the moment I had walked through the door at the flower shop, my gaze had alternated between the clock and the door, just waiting on Brady to get there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Watching some more.
By noon, when Brady still hadn’t shown up, I wasn’t sure whether I felt relieved or even more anxious. Maybe even a little worried.
He was coming back, wasn’t he?
He had to, right?
But yeah. Of course, he would. He did own the place, after all.
I wondered if, in a hotel room down the street, Brady might be feeling just as anxious about talking to me as I felt at the thought of being face-to-face with him after the way I’d stormed out.
I frowned. Maybe Brady was feeling something similar, but he really didn’t seem to be the nervous, anxious type.
More likely, he was just busy doing… something. Something that didn’t include the flower shop or dealing with any of my feelings.
That was probably it.
Why would Brady worry about what I thought, anyway? He’d be done with everything soon enough when he sold the place. No need to worry or care about my feelings one way or the other.