If I Didn't Know Better (The Callaways #9)(58)

"Hi guys," she said, pausing as they came over to her. "Everything okay now?"

"Everything is great," Jeremy said with a look of intense happiness in his eyes. "Ashlyn and I had a long talk."

"I'm so glad. At least something good came out of all this."

"We've come to help you clean."

"Oh, you don't have to do that."

"We want to."

"Then I won't say no. I would love to get a few more trash bags filled before pickup tomorrow."

"That's a good idea," he said, as they made their way back into the yard. "What do you want Ashlyn and me to do?"

She walked into the studio and looked around for a good job for Ashlyn. "I would love it if you could find all the loose paint brushes and put them into this box," she said, handing her a cardboard box. "There are a bunch over there." She pointed to the far corner of the room.

"Okay," Ashlyn said, happy to have an assignment.

"Jeremy, if you could help me move the sewing machine to the patio, that would be great. It's pretty heavy."

"People sewed in here, too?"

"Apparently there was a textile artist in the cottage at some point. I found quilting squares and lots of scraps of material. Maybe I'll have Ashlyn collect those next."

"I think she's game." Jeremy tipped his head to Ashlyn, who was happily collecting brushes.

"Despite the swollen red eyes and red nose, she looks a lot better than when I last saw her," Mia said quietly.

"She definitely is." He picked up the sewing machine. "Where do you want this?"

"I'll show you." She led the way to the section of the patio where she was putting the usable items. "Right there is good."

He set the machine down on the bricks. "What's next?"

"Before we go back inside, can you tell me what you and Ashlyn talked about? Or is it too personal?"

"No, I want you to know. Ash told me about the night of the robbery. She had told her mother she wanted milk, so they walked to the local store to get it. Ash went to get candy in another part of the store when the man came in and started shooting. By the time she got to her mother, Justine was bleeding and not waking up."

Mia put a hand to her mouth at that image. "That's awful."

"She wanted to stay with her mom, but the police officer took her away in his car."

She nodded with understanding. "I was afraid the car had triggered some memory in her head."

"She was terrified she was going to be taken away from me."

"She loves you, Jeremy. She called you Daddy."

His jaw tightened as his gaze filled with emotion. "Best word I ever heard. She cried her heart out for almost a half hour. I wasn't sure she was ever going to stop. I just held her. I didn't know what else to do."

"That's all she wanted you to do."

"Hearing her sob just about ripped my heart in two. I wish I could have spared her all that pain and guilt, too. She's been carrying the burden of asking for that milk all these weeks. That's why she's always refused to drink it."

"Hopefully, she can let the guilt go now that she's told you what happened. She decided to give you her problems to carry."

"Which is all I want to do."

She smiled, feeling a wave of affection for this wonderfully strong and yet tender man who was both a warrior and a father. "You're going to be a great dad."

"I hope so. I feel better now that she's talking to me." He paused. "I told her that I was a soldier in the Army and that her mom probably couldn't find me, that's why she never told her about me."

"That was a nice lie."

"I don't want Ashlyn to think her mom tried to keep us apart. I'll never know why Justine did what she did, but she gave me a beautiful little girl, and she died too young, so I'm not going to tarnish her memory. Plus, it's possible that Justine did try to find me. I was deployed around the world, and I wasn't always the easiest man to find."

She thought Jeremy was being very generous, because she just couldn't understand why Justine would have deprived her daughter of her father, why she wouldn't have tried to find out if Jeremy was a good man, if he was someone she wanted to be in her daughter's life. But as he'd said, they couldn't change what had happened, so what was the point of going around and around on possibilities they'd never be able to prove?

"Well, I'm glad you and Ashlyn have come together," she said.

"So what happened with Kent?"

"He didn't seem too confident they could find out who did this. He mentioned that some classrooms at the high school had recently been vandalized. It could be the same people or person."

"Possibly," Jeremy said, not sounding too convinced. "What do you think, Mia?"

"It doesn't feel like kids to me. And the slashed paintings bother me the most. It feels like someone got really angry and didn't just want to take things—they wanted to break them."

"That's pretty much what vandalism is."

"I guess that's true."

"I think you should stay at my house tonight."