Until You Loved Me (Silver Springs #3)(85)

He nodded again, acknowledging the absolute worst possibility Hudson could imagine. How could any man ever do such a thing to his own daughter? And how could that man live with himself afterward?

“I’m sorry,” Matisson muttered.

Hudson’s hands curled into fists, and it was all he could do not to use them. This man had nearly destroyed him—had destroyed certain parts of him. Thanks to his “father,” he viewed everyone with distrust and tried to wall himself off to avoid more of the same rejection he’d suffered as a child. “You sick bastard. Rape is bad enough. You deserve to be beaten within an inch of your life for that alone. But incest? Sleeping with your own daughter? Someone should castrate you for that—or worse.”

The old man started to shake and, once again, patted the cigarettes in his pocket. For reassurance? “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I never forced her. There was no violence involved.”

“I’m guessing that’s because she didn’t resist. She trusted you to take care of her, to be good to her.”

He hung his head. “Yes.”

“So why?” Hudson cried. “Why’d you do it?”

He lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture. “I don’t have an explanation that you or anyone else will ever understand. My wife died in a terrible car accident not long before, one in which I was driving. I couldn’t deal with that. I was lost, lonely and feeling like I’d never recover. And Julia was there, needing me and grieving, too.”

“That makes it even worse,” Hudson said with a grimace. “You took advantage of her when she’d just lost her mother!”

“I loved her more than anything or anyone. I didn’t mean for that love to turn sexual—”

“Creeping into a girl’s bed doesn’t happen by accident,” Hudson snarled. “Babies aren’t left out to die by accident, either.”

He finally looked up. “After I’d done what I’d done, I couldn’t let her keep you. I knew the truth would come out if I did.”

“So you made her have the baby at home and told her she’d given birth to a stillborn child, which you buried.”

Matisson didn’t answer, but Hudson didn’t need him to confirm that part of the story. Although the PI hadn’t named any names, he’d related the basic facts of the situation. How Samuel Jones had ever come across the newspaper article about this man being charged for molesting his own daughter, Hudson had no idea. Jones had said he’d been looking at every individual who’d had any reason to be in the area back then and found, through police interviews, that there was a gentleman who’d worked as a handyman for several of the families in the neighborhood. Although he was questioned at the time, he’d never been considered a suspect. It wasn’t until some years later, when that man’s daughter was in her thirties, that she went to the police with the allegations of abuse she’d suffered at her father’s hands. Jones was a genius for putting it all together.

Hudson wished he’d hired someone a little less thorough. Or, better yet, never hired anyone at all. What a fool. He’d once mentioned Pandora’s box to Bruiser. Well, here he was, staring right into it. “Isn’t that what happened?” Hudson pressed when Matisson neither confirmed nor denied what Hudson had said.

“Yes,” he replied, but he spoke with his head down. “That’s what I did. I was terrified the truth would get out—knew my parents, my brother, everyone I’d ever known would think I was a monster. So I put you in the car and drove over to Bel Air, where I’d been working. I guess I was hoping one of the rich people who lived in that area would find you and take care of you. They had so much, far more than I could ever give you.”

“How am I supposed to believe you cared at all when you didn’t put me somewhere I was likely to be found?” Hudson asked. “You wanted me to die. Then your secret would die with me. You just didn’t have the balls to kill me yourself. You were going to let hunger and cold do that.”

“No...”

“Then why didn’t you take me to a fire station or a hospital?”

“I couldn’t. I was afraid I’d be seen!”

“Bottom line, you cared more about yourself than an innocent newborn.”

No response.

Hudson cursed under his breath. The person he’d wondered about his whole life was standing in front of him. But it wasn’t the joyous reunion he’d secretly dreamed of. His last hope for a positive resolution to the pain and neglect he’d suffered as a child had been destroyed. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Hudson ignored the apology, could never accept it. “You knew I survived. You said so.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve followed my career.”

He nodded.

Hudson hoped that watching his son rise to the top of the NFL without being able to claim the connection had at least been some form of punishment. But that thought spurred another. Why was Cort Matisson risking a second prison term by revealing himself now? Was it because he was so old that getting put away didn’t matter to him anymore?

Hudson couldn’t believe his father’s conscience had finally gotten the better of him. A man like that didn’t have a conscience or he couldn’t have done what he did in the first place. He had to want something.