The guy needed his pound of flesh. He deserved it. “Yes.”
Straight-faced, Frank nodded. “I hoped so. Because I’m certain he’s in love with you.”
“Not anymore.”
“Now more than ever.”
“He hasn’t called. Or come by. Or…”
“Forgive me for saying so, but Caleb is a bit of a putz when it comes to the opposite sex.”
“Frank, really, I’m sure he wouldn’t want you doing this.”
“I’m certain you’re right, but my son’s a putz in large part because of me. He’s sacrificed twenty-five years of his life already, surely you don’t want to see him waste any more time?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, then, you can understand that neither do I. After all that Cal has done for me, I have to do this for him. And if he hates me for it—” Frank threw up his hands “—so be it. I can live with that. I can’t live with the knowledge that he’s so unhappy.”
“Cal’s unhappy?”
“He might not know it, he might think he wants to move to Louisiana, but he doesn’t. He wants to move in with you.”
Tingles ran through her body, and then came to an abrupt halt. Frank couldn’t possibly know whether or not Cal wanted to live with her. That just wasn’t something he’d discuss with his father—or anyone.
“Cal’s mother died when he was too young to remember her. I never introduced him to another woman until I asked Rose Sanderson to marry me. She adored Cal. And he adored her, too. She was the only woman he’d ever known and she treated my son as though he was as much her biological child as Claire and Emma were.”
“Emma? Oh, yes. Claire’s sister.”
“Yes. She was two years older than Claire. Four, the last time we saw her. Twenty-nine now. Cal tells me that he heard from Ramsey Miller that Emma is still living in Comfort Cove. Rose is, too. But I’m getting off topic here. After Claire disappeared and Cal said he’d seen her in my car and then they found her teddy bear there, Rose went a little crazy. She said some pretty bad things. And she threw us out. Cal could have forgiven her, I think, for turning on me. But he never understood how she could reject him so completely. I didn’t help him to understand. At the time, I was too busy trying to figure out how to stay out of jail and make enough money to raise him. I was scared and heartbroken and grieving for Claire, and Cal somehow learned not only how to handle rejection, but to expect it. First his biological mother left him. And then Rose rejected him.”
“But once he got older, started dating…I don’t know a woman alive that would reject Cal now,” Morgan said, and felt her cheeks get warm.
Frank’s chuckle intrigued her. “You’re wrong about that one. He’s had at least a dozen relationships that I’m aware of over the past fifteen years. He knows how to charm them, but he gives nothing of himself. No heart.”
Cal had told her almost the same thing that last night he’d been at her house. The night they’d decided they were a couple. One that would start seeing each other after the semester ended.
And the custody battle was over.
“My son has never given a woman anything to hold on to. And every single one of the women he’s dated, being human, eventually breaks off with him.”
“He never breaks it off?”
“Never. Except maybe that woman he was seeing about the same time you started coming around.”
Kelsey.
“And he never, to my knowledge, has tried to make things better, either. He expects rejection. He gets it. And he moves on.”
He’d said Cal was moving to Louisiana.
That last day in his office replayed itself in her mind. The file she’d thrown at his feet. Her refusal to look at him. Or listen to him.
She’d just come from her father and…
“When Cal and I were at the police station, being questioned, he let it be known that he’d done research for that book he wrote in part to find out if there were any other unsolved abductions to which I could possibly be connected.”
She turned sharply, staring at him. “He told you he doubted you?”