Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(63)

A weary sigh trickled out of him. “I knew this would come up some day.” His expression told her he’d much rather have the birds and the bees talk with her over this one.

She continued to gaze at him until he put down his fork and started talking. “When mom left, it was tough on all of us, but I think it was hardest on you in a lot of ways.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, growing up, you weren’t ever really close to mom. You were always more like dad. And right about the time when you should’ve gotten to bond more with her, she left. At the time when a girl really needs her mom, you know? Dad and I did all we could, but neither of us could replace that motherly insight into love and relationships you missed out on.”

She nodded faintly. “So that’s a yes to my being irrevocably messed up?”

“No. Let me finish. You need to hear the whole thing.” He gripped her hand. “Do you...do you remember that mom met someone else while she was still with dad?”

Shock paled Dani’s face.

“Yeah, I thought you’d made yourself forget that part. You were young, but I know you understood when you and I heard her talking on the phone with that other man one day in the kitchen. I saw the realization in your eyes when you heard mom sounding so happy—it had been awhile. Hearing her so much in love...I don’t think I ever heard her talk like that with dad.” Pain darkened his eyes at the memory. “I remember looking over at you and seeing you so lost and upset that I just grabbed your arm and ran us both out of the house.”

“So that’s why she left?” she whispered. “She was cheating on dad?”

He shook his head firmly. “No, she didn’t cheat. Not really, anyway. But her heart was starting to drift, slowly but surely. And dad knew it too.

Now she was shaking her head. “No, he couldn’t have. Mom left out of the blue.”

“Dad did know, sweetie. Trust me on this. He fought for her too, damn hard. Don’t you remember? Toward the end, every night, he came home to try and sweep her off her feet.”

Suddenly the memories came bombarding back to Dani and she saw pain fill Derek’s eyes as he watched it strike blow after blow.

“Dani, you have to know they tried. But as much as mom still loved dad, she just didn’t feel about him the way he felt about her. Not by the end.”

“Don’t you try and make me feel sorry for her, Derek. There’s no excuse for a mother to abandon her family. She didn’t just break dad’s heart; she broke ours too.”

He took her shaking hands in his. “I’m not trying to make you feel anything about this. All I’m doing is trying to help you remember. You need to see the whole picture. When mom left, she’d only meant to leave dad, not us. She actually wanted to keep us as a part of her life. The only reason we weren’t is because you wouldn’t allow it.”

“That’s because she only wanted us on holidays. She left dad and then had the nerve to ask him to raise us and then spend holidays alone without family?! A bitch is what that made her,” spat out Dani in disgust. The floodgates were open now and she just couldn’t stop. “Of course I didn’t want anything to do with her.”

“And you never let her forget it,” said Derek sadly. “For years, you sent back every letter she sent you with a ‘return to sender, not interested’ note slashed across the envelope.”

“I had every right to.”

“I know. You didn’t forgive her. In a lot of ways, I didn’t either. But, in some ways I did.” He eyed her wearily before expelling a loaded, long-held breath. “Dani, I went to go see mom six years ago.”

Dani swung a betrayed glare his way.

Derek was unapologetic. “You were just starting to take over the brewpub then so you were busy enough that you didn’t even know I was gone. There was no real reasoning for it but something in me just wanted a chance to talk to her. So I flew up to go see her in Chicago.”

Jaw locked, Dani looked down and fiddled with the table settings. Conflicting emotions muddled her mind. It took her a long time to ask tightly, “So what did she have to say?”

“A lot of apologies mostly. Until I stopped her.” Derek looked like he was trying to find the words to explain it to her. “After seeing her, I knew that, though I would never forgive her completely, I would be able to move on. And that made us more like strangers meeting for the first time that day. I told her I just wanted to spend the time getting to know her.” He smiled softly. “She turned into a different woman from when she was our mom, Dani. She became a lawyer. A great one, in fact. Well known for defending the little guy. She got married to the man we heard her on the phone with—” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “I didn’t want to meet him. But, I did send him a card when mom died in the car accident a year later.”

The tears that sprung into her eyes revealed that her heart hadn’t totally cut off her mother.

Derek looked solemnly relieved at that. “She was an amazing woman, Dani. I think you would’ve been real proud of her had you gotten to know her too. The life she had with her new husband...we’d never have been able to give her that. He loved her the way she’d loved him. The way dad had loved her until his dying day. That kind of love was something she couldn’t turn her back on, even if it meant walking away from us.”