“Do you ever tell Sandor that?”
“I tried, but while Papa lived, it would have been disrespectful to say his words were not all truth. By the time he died, his beliefs were settled so deeply inside Sandor, I could not sway them. And part of me…I blamed Jimmy for never coming back. There were things I did not know at the time. I now regret never speaking against my father’s words.”
Ellie reached out and touched Hera’s arm. “It must have been hard for you.”
“It was. I was raised to be a good girl…to hold my innocence for marriage, but the love I had with Sandor’s father…it was overwhelming. I have never known anything like it since. You will think me a fool, but he has always been the husband of my heart.”
“I don’t think it is foolish at all. I’ve heard of love like that.” And for the first time, she wondered if she really wanted feelings that deep with a man.
That kind of love had always been her idyll, but now, seeing Hera’s pain, the hurt in those beautiful brown eyes so fresh it could have happened yesterday, Ellie’s own heart twinged with both sympathy and fear. Compassion for the other woman filled her along with a terror that Ellie’s own feelings were already as at risk as Hera’s had been.
She was no naïve sixteen-year-old with her first lover, but she had a suspicion that the kind of love Hera was talking about transcended age and even experience.
Hera’s smile wiped the pain from her eyes as they glowed with a remembered feeling so powerful it could still bring her joy as well as hurt. “To feel it is beyond any other riches this world has to offer. To have it returned, a gift of unimaginable pleasure. We both felt it. He loved me as much as I loved him.”
“Yet he left.” Ellie didn’t say it because she doubted Hera, but because she could not understand walking away from something so special. Still, belatedly, she realized, she should not have said the words aloud. “I’m sorry. I should not have said that.”
“Why not? It is the truth. But only part of the truth. Papa caught us together and he beat my love until he could not get up.” Tears filled Hera’s eyes. “I tried to stop him, but Papa slapped me hard and Jimmy told me to leave. He could not stand for me to be hurt. I would not listen to my papa, but I listened to Jimmy. It wounded his pride for me to see him beaten like that also, I could tell. He would not raise his hand to my father, so he had no defense. Papa thought it was his right to do what he did, but he drove Jimmy off the island.”
“So, he didn’t leave you voluntarily?”
“No. He had no way of knowing I had become pregnant. He was only a teenager himself. A young boy on holiday with his friends. He tried to see me once after that.”
Ellie’s insides clenched. Did Sandor know that?
“I did not know he had done so until after Papa’s death. I found the letter in his bureau. At first, I did not tell Sandor because he was already grieving the loss of his grandfather, but later…I did not know what purpose it would serve. It had been so long and I had convinced myself Jimmy had married and had more children. Sandor already struggled with so much, to expose him to such a situation would have hurt him even more I thought. And he was bitter toward his father. I thought to wait would be best.”
“You were probably right.”
Hera’s eyes filled with doubt. “I wonder. I never married. I had opportunity, but I had no desire. Was it the same for my Jimmy? I had to choose between using the money I got from selling my family home and possessions for Sandor’s schooling or to search out his father. I made my choice, but I often wonder if it was the right one.”
“But now that you have the money, you could find him.”
“I broached the subject with Sandor once. I learned to regret it. Had I not asked, I could have done so without repercussion, but because I told him what I wanted to do, he asked me not to use money from his hard work to find a man who had abandoned us both. I could not change his mind.”
“Did you tell him that his father wrote?”
“It did not matter to him.”
“Sandor is very stubborn.”
“Yes.”
Said stubborn man returned soon thereafter, but Ellie could not get her discussion with Hera out of her mind.
When he took her home, he once again parked in the visitor parking garage and asked to come up. She knew what was coming, but she wanted to talk to him about what Hera had told her and if she was honest with herself (and she had a policy of being scrupulously so) she wanted what he wanted. Very much.