“I know. And… I understand. I just…”
“What?” Something was bothering her, which bothered him.
Looking over his shoulder, as though his brother would be standing there outside the car, Mason knew he had to get a grip.
It wasn’t every day a guy found out he was a father. He wasn’t handling it well.
“She asked to see me this afternoon. I just left her.”
Sitting upright, Mason tuned in, recognizing himself for the first time all day. “What did she tell you?”
If there was any way they could avoid the somewhat manipulative meeting the next morning, he’d welcome it.
“That Bruce told her I’d seduced you. She doesn’t blame you, but it’s why she turned on me. He told her that when he was telling her why I left.”
“To make it look like you’d done something worse than he had.” Bruce was Bruce.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not all that eager to see him at the moment.”
He didn’t blame her. He’d had a lifetime of living with Bruce’s insecure shadow side, and an incident like that still turned his stomach. That was partially why he’d been so ready to see his brother as the bad guy at the beginning of the week.
“I’m sure he figured it wouldn’t make any difference to you,” he told Harper now. “You were already gone.”
“I know. I just…”
Again she didn’t finish. Filled with a frustration that had been building all week—caused, in part, by his inability to have a completely open conversation with her—Mason knew he had to let it go. At least for the moment. For the day. Or the week.
“You think you can convince her to come with you in the morning?”
“To see the two of you? I’m fairly certain I can. But… I didn’t say anything about it and don’t intend to mention it to her until morning.”
He agreed with her decision. Told her so.
He wanted to tell her much more. To ask how she was doing. How she felt. If she’d spent the day, as he had, thinking about the newfound connection between them. He wanted to know if she’d been with Brianna since they’d seen her together earlier.
He wanted to hear every single word the little girl said. To know every minute that he’d missed of her life.
To ask about her delivery. What kind of labor Harper had. If she’d been alone.
And how old Brianna had been when she’d said her first word.
What it was.
He wanted to know his daughter’s favorite color. What foods she hated.
He wanted to know everything about both of them.
He told Harper good-night instead.
* * *
HARPER HAD THOUGHT she’d already lived through the worst times of her life. Put the mistakes behind her and was on the right course, living a decent life. Sunday morning proved her wrong. Delivering up an abused older woman to grandsons Harper knew were going to pressure her hadn’t been a grand or decent moment.
She knew the decision was the right one—better that Miriam be coerced by those who loved her and were trying to protect her, than abused and perhaps eventually killed by the man who’d broken her arm more than once. But she felt like crap.
Other than mentioning, more than once, that she should’ve brought her stuff so she could just go on home, Miriam hadn’t spoken to Harper during that hour-long drive—not even to ask about Brianna, who was at the Stand. Harper had been due on staff that day and she’d had to call in another officer for the time she’d be gone—hopefully no more than three hours.
All of that had been…unpleasant, but standing there by a tree, while the three of them sat at a secluded picnic table yards from where they’d parked their vehicles, Harper had never felt so trapped. She’d wronged Bruce in so many ways. And Mason, by coming on to him as she had that one night. She’d wronged Miriam by wronging her grandsons. And yet she couldn’t get away from the situation. For the rest of her life.
One of those men was the father of her child. The other thought he was. Miriam was grandmother to both of them. Great-grandmother to Harper’s daughter.
It was like every bad moment in the past—from the first time Bruce had told her he’d been unfaithful to her to that final time when she’d told him she was divorcing him, when she’d taken Brianna and left. They were all right there, larger than ever, happening all over again.