Things We Never Said (Hart's Boardwalk 3)

“Dad—”

“No, it’s true. I’m your father, and it’s my job to protect you. Even if that meant protecting you from your own mother. The friction between you two was a sore spot in our marriage for years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Your mother is a piece of work.” He exhaled heavily. “She set out to make Dillon hers when she was born. She wanted that bond with Dillon that I had with you. She blames you for Dillon’s death, and that’s not because it is true, and God, dahlin’, you need to get that out of your head. Your little sister loved you. I know she was angry in the end but that little girl hero-worshipped you. If she’s watching over us, her fuckin’ heart is breaking knowing what this is doing to you. What your mother is doing to you.

“I love your mom. But she wouldn’t talk to someone about what happened to her as a kid, how it affected her as an adult, as a parent, and now everything is so twisted up inside her she can’t see straight. Losing Dillon broke something inside of her, and it was easier to blame you than to make peace with the fact that it was a tragic, senseless accident. This way she has somewhere to channel all her anger.

“And now she’s lost everything,” he whispered. “She lost me, and she’s losing her kids. All of them. The only girl she had left was Davina, and she didn’t turn out the way Dillon would have so she’s pushed her away too. I love your mom, but I love my kids more, and I won’t lose them because of her.

&n

bsp; “Our marriage has been on the rocks for years, and we drifted too far apart. But there was a kernel of something left, until she confessed to hitting you and saying the toxic shit she said to you all those years that led to you drinking. Amazingly, finding that out gave me peace, knowing that leaving her was the right thing—that she was no longer the woman I married all those years ago. Our divorce is not on you. It’s on her and me. You get that, right?”

Silent tears I didn’t know I had left in me fell down my cheeks as I nodded.

“You’ve got to let whatever poison she put in you, out, Bluebell. Because I can’t sit back and watch my baby girl live an empty life, punishing herself for something she did not do.”

I fell against him, crying quietly, because his words, this history lesson about my mother, had a profound effect on me. For years, I’d thought there had to be something fundamentally wrong with me that my own mother could hate me. However, knowing there was a reason for the way she was freed something inside me. Not all the guilt, but some of it. The blame that didn’t belong to me.

And just like that, I breathed a little easier.

Laughter filled Darragh’s house as we sat around his dining table a few weeks after that life-changing discussion with Dad. And it was life-changing. Between the knowledge he’d given me and the support and love I got from my family over the subsequent weeks, I was slowly shedding the guilt that had crippled me emotionally for years.

It was almost Thanksgiving and Bailey had to return to Hartwell—Vaughn was threatening to come to Boston to bring her home. I was returning with her, content that my family and I would be okay.

There was still the thorn in my side that was my relationship with my mother.

And the hole in my heart that Michael put there when he told me hated me.

However, I’d decided I could live with it.

I had to.

“I wish you would stay for Thanksgiving,” Krista said.

I smiled regretfully. “I have to go back. We have the annual Punkin’ Chunkin festival next weekend, and it’s one of the few weekends during the quiet season where I make a lot of money with the tourists.”

It was true. I couldn’t afford to lose out on that income.

“Well, maybe Bailey can stay, then.” Dermot winked at my friend.

One of the nicest things about the past few weeks was getting Dermot back. It had been tense at first (and there were still moments of awkwardness), but he was smiling and joking with me more and more.

And, unfortunately, flirting shamelessly with Bailey.

Bailey rolled her eyes. “Once more, I am engaged.”

My brother puffed up his chest. “Yeah, to some stuffy, New Yorker business guy who probably doesn’t know his way around a woman’s feelings, if you know what I mean.”

While Darragh cut him a warning look because the boys listened to everything their uncle Dermot said, I almost choked on a bite of roast chicken.

Bailey grinned at me, a smug twinkle in her eyes.

“What?” Dermot frowned.

I cleared my throat, wondering how to say it in a way the boys wouldn’t understand. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only does he, by Bailey’s account, excel at women’s feelings, Vaughn Tremaine is anything but stuffy and boring. Oh, and he looks like an underwear model to boot.”