Lane watched as Hannah took a bite of muffin and washed it down. She was struggling to eat with her right hand, dropping crumbs and sloshing tea, but she was looking decidedly better, in spite of her bruises, which were beginning to turn a sickly shade of yellow-green.
The consultation with Ashton had gone well. He was both pleased and surprised at the pace of Hannah’s recovery, and had every reason to believe she would be released by Christmas. The sling would come off, her bruises would heal, the scar on her forehead would fade with time. But Lane was worried about other scars, the kind that didn’t show, and might never heal if she was wrong about Hannah’s capacity to handle what she was about to learn.
She had confided in Ashton, about the letter and Michael’s plans to show it to Hannah. As expected, he had urged caution. While vindication might ultimately prove beneficial to Hannah’s recovery, he was concerned about the timing. In his opinion, there were only two likely outcomes: either Hannah would see the news as vindication, or she would let it push her over the brink. One way or the other, they were about to find out.
She hadn’t told Hannah why Michael was coming, only that he was. Now, as he appeared in the doorway, she wondered if she should have at least tried to prepare her. But how? Was it even possible to pave the way for such news? If there was, she couldn’t imagine what it might be. At least they’d be a call button away from help if it went badly. And according to Ashton, it might.
She caught Michael’s eye as he stepped into the room, but it was impossible to label what she saw in his expression, though determination might come close. She shot him a look, an unspoken plea to tread lightly, but he was already pulling the letter from his pocket. Apparently he intended to launch right in. Stomach heaving, she stood and moved beside him. She couldn’t let him do this badly.
“Hannah,” she ventured, before he could begin. “There’s something Michael needs to tell you, something I’m afraid it won’t be easy to hear.”
“Something bad?”
“Yes,” Michael said flatly. “It’s something very bad.”
Lane narrowed her eyes at him, but to no avail.
“It’s about my father.”
“About . . . Sam?” Hannah’s face had gone a shade paler, her bruises suddenly standing out grotesquely. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Michael unfolded the letter, carefully smoothing the pages. “Do you remember Ronald Callahan? Uncle R.B.?”
“Ronnie?”
“Yes. Ronnie. I saw him yesterday and he told me . . . he gave me this.” Without further preamble, he pressed the letter into Hannah’s free hand. “Father wrote it—last year.”
Hannah stared at the pages a moment, examining the slanted, spidery hand. “Last . . . year?”
Michael nodded. “Yes.”
Her hand trembled as she lowered her head and began to read, her swollen lips moving silently as she devoured every line, then went back to savor them again more slowly. Finally, she looked up, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“Not dead,” she rasped tearfully. “My Sam. Not dead.”
Lane met Michael’s uneasy gaze. They were both thinking the same thing.
“Hannah?” Lane said gently. “You understand that Sam isn’t still alive now, don’t you? That this letter was written over a year ago?”
Hannah nodded, sending a pair of hot tears sliding down her cheeks and onto the pillow. Her eyes fluttered closed as she clutched the letter to her breast. “They were wrong. All of them . . . wrong.”
“Yes, Hannah, they were.”
They were quiet for a time while Hannah cried herself out. After thirty years she had a right to her tears. Finally, Michael stepped to the bed, brushing the lingering traces of dampness from his mother’s cheek.
“All that time,” he said hoarsely. “All that time you knew he was alive, and none of us believed you. We should have listened. I should have listened.”
She reached for his hand, curled bloodlessly around the bedrail now, and gave it a pat. “You couldn’t have known.”
“You knew.”
“Of course I knew. We were man and wife. We shared a bed, a life. That counts for something.” Her face softened then with a tremulous smile. “He was a good man, your father, in spite of his faults.”
Michael jerked his hand back, looking mildly stunned. “How can you say that? After everything he did—the cheating, the lying—how can you lie there and say he was a good man?”
“Because it’s true. And because good men sometimes do bad things. Your father loved me once, though I’m not sure he ever knew it. He must have to have stayed as long as he did.”
“He left you for another woman!”
“No,” Hannah countered with a shake of her pale head. “He did not. He left because he didn’t know what to do with me. There’s no sin in that—weakness perhaps, but no sin. The woman was just a lie he told himself—an excuse—because it was more acceptable to run into the arms of another woman than to abandon a sick wife.”
“How is that more acceptable?” Michael demanded with barely controlled fury.
Hannah sighed, sagging deeper into her pillows. There were shadows beneath her eyes now. “My poor prince. You’ve carried so much anger, and for so long. First at me, and now at your father. But it’s time to give it up.”
Michael’s jaw clenched mutinously. “No.”
“It’s no good holding on to old hurts, my boy. Your father did what he had to. It wasn’t his fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?”
Hannah shrugged. “Mine, maybe, or God’s. It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”
Michael shook his head slowly. “Maybe that’s the problem. For me, it isn’t done. I’ve had less than forty-eight hours to digest all this and people are already telling me it’s time to forgive. Well, I can’t. The man did a hideous thing. I can’t just let him off the hook.”
Hannah pursed her lips, her expression stern and surprisingly maternal. “You can. And you must. This grudge of yours will poison you if you let it. You won’t shake it on your own, though. You’ll need help, someone to anchor you when the anger rears its head. You know what I mean, don’t you—what I’m saying to you?”
Her gaze slid pointedly to Lane, and then back again. “It took me a long time to learn that it isn’t fate that makes off with our wishes, my boy. It’s us. Life gives us exactly what we need, even what we want, but we’re afraid to grab it and hold on with both hands. We let go when the holding gets hard. We blame when we should forgive.” She paused for the tiniest beat, locking eyes with her son. “And we run when we should stand our ground. Because we don’t understand that we don’t just get the life we wish for. We get the life we fight for.”
The life we fight for.
The words reverberated in Lane’s head, weighty, and eerily familiar. Her mother had said much the same thing. She had taken those words with a grain of salt then, but now she saw them for what they were—sound truths from two women who had lived, and loved, and lost. And who even now found a way to keep fighting.
Hannah’s eyes were nearly closed now, her face shadowed with the strain of the morning’s revelations, but strangely calm, too, now that it was over. It seemed, at long last, Hannah Rourke had found her truth, and perhaps a little peace.
On the other side of the bed, Michael stood with his head lowered and his hands thrust into his pockets. Had he been listening at all? Lane hoped so, because the things his mother had said, her willingness to forgive, her incredible generosity toward the man who had wronged her, had been nothing short of astonishing.
In a moment that might have sent her careening off the mental cliff, she had faced the truth with wisdom and strength, excusing her husband’s cowardice and betrayal, even claiming a portion of the blame. But something told Lane Hannah’s generosities hadn’t been aimed at Samuel Rourke. They had been aimed at Michael. She had softened the edges of the selfish husband, painted over the faults of the flawed and careless father, in order to leave the door of forgiveness open for her son. It was an unfathomably kind gesture. And it was like her.
Michael cleared his throat. Lane glanced around in time to see him grab his coat from the chair and jerk his head toward the door.
Tiptoeing past Hannah’s bed, she followed him out into the hall. “I know this was hard for you,” she said, trying to get a handle on his mood. “But at least it’s over now, and—”
“I’m going to take off,” he said, before she could finish. He avoided her eyes as he dragged on his jacket. “It’s a five-hour drive to Raleigh.”
“You didn’t tell me you were leaving today.”
“Yeah, I guess this morning got a little messy. I’m sorry about that. It’s just that a lot’s happened, and I have a headful of questions that aren’t going away until I get some answers. Besides, I think a little distance might be a good thing for me right now.”
“Distance?”
“From Hannah. And from Starry Point.”
“And me?”
Michael’s eyes slid away. “Maybe. Yes.”
Lane stiffened but managed a nod. “Drive safely.”
“Lane—”
“No, you go,” she said, holding up a hand. “You’ve said all you need to. We both have.”