Michael
Michael shrugged deeper into his jacket, turned his eyes toward the lighthouse, and picked up his pace. The sun glinted sharply off the cold gray sea, the wind biting hard as it skimmed in off the frothy Atlantic. He’d forgotten how cold the wind could be at this time of year, that there was a reason places like the Cloister shut down for the season.
He’d left Lane sleeping in his bed, the safest course, all things considered. She had looked so lovely with the morning light slanting across her face, setting all that auburn hair on fire. He wasn’t sure he could trust his resolve a second time. She wouldn’t understand when she woke up and found him gone, but eventually she’d thank him. Besides, he had a bit of business to take care of.
In his pocket, he found Samuel Rourke’s letter, the words of a dead man and a liar. At some point, during what had been a very long night, he had come to a decision. He would destroy the letter and leave Hannah to her blissful ignorance. Would that Callahan had done the same for him. Lane wouldn’t be happy, but it was his decision to make—alone. The sooner he was rid of the damn thing, the sooner he could start putting the whole hideous business behind him.
The jetty was slick as he scrambled out onto the rocks. Gradually he found his footing, determined to make it out to the end, to stand where the wreckage of the Windseeker had once washed up and deceived an entire town.
Overhead, Lane’s gulls circled greedily, scolding him for bringing no breakfast. They floated above him as he made his way toward the jetty’s end, a noisy cloud of gray and white, as he dropped down onto the driest rock he could find. He swore softly as the wet seeped through his pants, summoning Sister Mary Constantine’s grim warnings about piles.
Dragging the letter from his pocket, he carefully unfolded the pages, fighting to keep the wind from snatching them. When he finally threw his father’s words into the sea, he didn’t want it to be an accident. He imagined how it would feel to tear the letter in half, and then in half again and again, how the bits would flutter in the wind like so much confetti, until they finally fell into the purling gray water—gone for good.
But in spite of his resolve, he held fast to the pages. It was hard to say why. He didn’t need to read them. Every word was already burned into his brain. Perhaps his father hadn’t asked for forgiveness outright, but he had certainly pleaded his case, trying to explain away the terrible thing he’d done, to justify the unjustifiable. The final act of a selfish bastard.
And yet he couldn’t shake the bone-deep sense of loss. Not for the man his father had been, but for the man he had once believed him to be, for the memories he could no longer cherish, for the role model who died not as a hero but as a coward.
Samuel Rourke had chosen to walk away from his life, a wife who needed him, children who loved him—for another woman. It was that choice, a single moment of blind selfishness, that had led to his mother’s undoing, and ultimately to Peter’s death. For thirty years he’d been blaming the wrong parent.
Lane had asked him to stand in his father’s shoes, to see that he’d taken the only avenue open to him, and that his mother had done the same. They had turned their backs on intolerable lives and invented new ones. Hadn’t he done the same? Michael Forrester hadn’t been his invention, but it hadn’t taken him long to step into that new boy’s skin, to leave Evan Rourke and his scars behind. Except those scars had never healed. That he was back in Starry Point was proof of that.
So, what was it all for? All the running and blaming and pretending. All the lies. For what? Despite their best efforts and years of denial, the truth had won out. What good, then, was likely to come from more deception? It hadn’t worked for any of them, and for his mother least of all.
The pages in his fist had grown limp in the damp salt air. He stared at them now, wondering if Lane was right. Was Hannah strong enough to hear the truth, to read the words her long-lost husband had penned just days before his death? And if not, could he live with the very real possibility of another breakdown? He honestly didn’t know. But if there was a chance, even a small one, that that truth could bring his mother some measure of peace, wasn’t it worth the risk? He could leave Starry Point with a clear conscience, though when that leaving might take place he had absolutely no idea.
He had yet to delve into the paperwork Callahan had handed him yesterday, but he suspected there’d be plenty of loose ends to tie up: trusts to be overseen, assets to be transferred, the house to be disposed of. And of course, Landon would have to be dealt with, and the Hope House issue resolved. Lane would expect that of him before he left town, and it was the least he could do. The very least, in fact.
Only the weakest kind of man turns his back on a woman who needs him.
His father’s words hissed hotly in his ear, grinding against his conscience like fingernails on a blackboard. The hindsight of a guilty man, or perhaps a plea to the son now beyond his reach, to be a better man than he himself had been. Whatever the intent, they were making him think, and he wasn’t sure he liked the direction of his thoughts. A few days ago, putting Starry Point behind him was all he wanted. Now, quite suddenly, the idea left him hollow.
Maybe it was the thought of following in his father’s footsteps, of slinking off like a coward. Or the realization that his urgency to be gone wasn’t about running toward something, only about running away. His life had been empty for longer than he cared to admit, a professional and personal sham that filled his time, but little else. But it didn’t have to stay that way. Now there was Lane, and a promise of happiness—if he chose to take it.
The wind picked up, sending a gust of sea spray into his face. He licked the salt off his lips, tasting his boyhood. Could he stay? In this place where everything seemed to pulse with memories, where every sight and sound reminded him of his first life—his real life? It was hard to imagine. Impossible, actually.
Lane had said it, and she was right. There would never be room in his heart for anyone until he learned to forgive. And there was just too much to forgive. For starters, there was no way to make things right with a dead man, to erase the facts contained in the letter now crumpled in his fist. The nearest he could get was to destroy it, for his sake as well as Hannah’s.
But once again something stopped him, some nebulous scrap of thought that kept flitting through his head, like a moth or dust mote that refused to land. And then, finally, he had it: an image of Dirty Mary—of Hannah—perched on the dunes, waiting for the truth. Was it possible that he was, even now, holding that truth in his hands? That what his mother had really been waiting for all these years was vindication? It sounded crazy, but the longer he stared at his father’s unsteady scrawl, the more convinced he became that he was right.