Satisfied, she grinned and pulled open the door. “Bye.”
“Monster,” Faith declared and began to stack plates.
“She’s terrific.” Standing, Jason helped clear the clutter. “Little for her age, I guess. I didn’t realize she was almost ten. It’s hard to—” He stopped as Faith clattered dishes in the sink. “She’ll be ten in February.”
“Umm. I can’t believe it myself. Sometimes it seemslike yesterday, and then again…” She trailed off, abruptly breathless. With studied care, she began to fill the sink with soapy water. “I’ll just be a minute here if you’d like to take your wine into the living room.”
“In February.” Jason took her arm. When he turned her, he saw the blood drain from her face. His fingers tightened, bruising without either of them noticing. “Ten years in February. We made love that June. God, I don’t know how many times that night. I never touched you again, we never had the chance to be alone like that again before I left, just a few weeks later. You must have married Tom in September.”
Her throat was dry as bone. She couldn’t even swallow, but stared at him.
“She’s mine,” he whispered and it vibrated through the room. “Clara’s mine.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but there seemed to be nothing she could say. Lips trembling, eyes drenched, she nodded.
“God!” He had her by both arms, nearly lifting her off her feet before he backed her into the counter. The fury in his eyes would have made her cringe if she hadn’t been willing to accept it. “How could you? Damn you, she’s ours and you never told me. You married another man and had our baby. Did you lie to him, too? Did you make him think she was his so you could have your cozy house and lace curtains?”
“Jason, please—”
“I had a right.” He thrust her away before he could give into the violence that pushed him on. “I had a right to her. Ten years. You stole that from me.”
“No! No it wasn’t like that. Jason, please! You have to listen!”
“The hell with you.” He said it calmly, so calmly she stepped back as though she’d been slapped. The anger shecould argue with, even reason with. Quiet rage left her helpless.
“Please, let me try to explain.”
“There’s nothing you can say that could make up for it. Nothing.” He yanked his coat from the wall and stormed out.
“You’re a damn fool, Jason Law.” The Widow Marchant sat in her kitchen rocker and scowled.
“She lied to me. She’s been lying for years.”
“Hogwash.” She fiddled with the tinsel on the little tree on the stand by the window. Cheerful strains from the Nutcracker floated in from the living room. “She did what she had to do, nothing more, nothing less.”
He prowled around the room. He still wasn’t sure why he’d come there instead of heading for Clancy’s Bar. He’d walked in the snow for an hour, maybe more, then found himself standing on the widow’s doorstep. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew I was Clara’s father.”
“I had my ideas.” The rocker squeaked gently as she moved. “She had the look of you.”
That brought a peculiar thrill, one he didn’t know what to do with. “She’s the image of Faith.”
“True enough if you don’t look hard. The eyebrows are you, and the mouth. The sweet Lord knows the temperament is. Jason, if you’d known you were to be a father ten years back, what would you have done?”
“I’d have come back for her.” He turned, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’d have panicked,” he said more calmly. “But I’d have come back.”
“I always thought so. But it—well, it’s Faith’s story to tell. You’d best go on back and hear it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Can’t stand a martyr,” she muttered.
He started to snap, then sighed instead. “It hurts. It really hurts.”
“That’s life for you,” she said not unsympathetically. “Want to lose them both again?”
“No. God, no. But I don’t know how much I can forgive.”
The old woman raised both brows. “Fair enough. Give Faith the same courtesy.”
