"Aha your mother would like it if you'd stay for dinner." Finally he
looked up, and the eyes that met hers weren't cool, weren't distant. In
them was both plea and apology. "I'd like it, too."
"So would I." Then she simply walked over, climbed into his lap and
buried her face in his shoulder. "Oh, Daddy. I missed you."
"I missed you, Grade." He began to rock and to weep. "I missed you,
too."
ethan sat on the top step of Grace's front porch and put her purse down
beside him. He had to admit he'd been tempted several times to open it
and poke inside to see just what a woman carted around with her that was
so damned heavy and so indispensable.
But so far he'd managed to resist.
Now he wondered where she could be. He'd driven by her house nearly two
hours earlier before going to the boatyard. Since her car wasn't in the
drive, he didn't stop. Odds were, her door was unlocked and he could
have set her purse inside the living room. But that wouldn't have
accomplished anything.
He'd done some hard thinking while he worked. Some of that thinking
centered on how long it was going to take her to cool off from snarling
mad to mildly irritated.
He figured he could deal with mildly irritated.
He decided it was probably best that she wasn't home quite yet. It gave
them both more time to settle down.
"Got it all figured out yet?"
Ethan sighed. He'd smelled his father before he heard him, before he saw
him sitting comfortably on the steps, feet crossed at the ankles. It was
the salted peanuts in the bag Ray had in his lap. He had always had a
fondness for salted peanuts.
"Not exactly. I can't seem to think it through so it gets clear."
"Sometimes you have to go with the gut instead of the head. You've got
good instincts, Ethan."
"Following instinct's what got me into this. If I hadn't touched her in
the first placea"
"If you hadn't touched her in the first place, you'd have denied both of
you something a lot of people look for all their lives and never find."
Ray rattled into the bag and pulled out a handful of nuts. "Why regret
something that rare and that precious?"
"I hurt her. I knew I would."
"That's where you went wrong. Not in taking love when it was offered but
in not trusting it for the long haul. You disappoint me, Ethan."
It was a slap. The kind that both knew would sting the most. Because it
did, Ethan stared hard at the thirsty little pansies going leggy beside
the steps. "I tried to do what I thought was right."
"For whom? For a woman who wanted to share your life, wherever that
would take you? For the children you may or may not have. You're on
dangerous ground when you second-guess God."
Annoyed, Ethan slanted a narrow look at his father's face. "Is there?"
"Is there what?"
"Is there a God? I figure you ought to know, seeing as you've been dead
the last few months."