Susannah's Garden (Blossom Street #3)(96)

“I’m glad you’re here,” Chrissie said, looping her arms around her father’s middle the way she had as a little girl.

“I am, too.”

“How are you feeling?” Susannah asked, wishing there’d been some way to protect Chrissie from this pain.

“I’ll be okay…. I just want to go home.”

“You can leave in the morning.”

“Good.” Chrissie returned to her room, shutting the door.

Joe took Susannah’s hand and led her into the bedroom. He made a disgruntled sound when he saw that she slept in a twin bed.

“We’ll cuddle close together,” she told him, nuzzling his neck.

“Really close,” he said with a laugh. Then he abruptly went still.

Susannah lifted her head. “What is it?”

Joe released her and walked over to the dresser. “Someone’s been here and left you a message.”

Whirling around, Susannah noticed the single sheet of paper taped to her dresser mirror. It read:

MEET ME AT 10 A.M. IN THE CEMETERY.

CHAPTER 43

“You’re going?” Joe asked the next morning as they held each other in bed. They’d slept that way for most of the night, as though they couldn’t bear to be apart for even a moment. Their love was fresh and new and they’d rediscovered their appreciation for each other. Joe was her salvation, her constant, and she was horrified at what a dangerous thing she’d done.

“Yes. I have to.”

“How the hell did someone get in here?” Joe had been brooding about this since the night before. “If it was that Jake guy…”

“Jake isn’t important to me.” All the desire she’d had to connect with him, to apologize for what her father had done, was gone. Whether he was Troy’s father or not didn’t matter to her. Jake belonged to the past, a past that couldn’t be altered or relived. She’d idealized him in her mind, canonized him, but he was no saint, then or now.

“I can’t,” she whispered, hugging Joe, clinging to the husband who’d loved her and stood by her throughout her temporary insanity.

Slipping his hand beneath her chin, Joe raised her face so that her eyes met his. “If you don’t, you’ll always regret it, always wonder. Get this completely out of your system.”

“Will you go with me?”

Joe’s chest rose as he considered her request. Finally he nodded.

That changed everything. Susannah could face Jake with her husband at her side. With Joe, she could look her former boyfriend in the eye and tell him that her father’s arrangement was the best thing George Leary had ever done for her. Only now did she understand that because of Jake, her father had lost both his children. Doug to whatever drug deal the two of them had been involved in and Susannah to anger.

By eight, Chrissie was up and packing. Susannah sat on her bed and they talked. “I really thought I loved him, Mom.”

“I know, sweetheart.” She bit her tongue to keep from reminding her daughter how unworthy Troy was of her love.

“I guess I thought my love would change him.”

Susannah had believed that about Jake, too. “What you loved was the man you knew he could be,” she said, drawing up her knees and clasping her arms around them.

Joe brought them each a cup of coffee and seeing that they were talking, promptly left.

“I was so angry with you because you couldn’t see Troy the way I did, and now I realize I should’ve been looking at him through your eyes.”

This was a giant step toward maturity for Chrissie, and Susannah had faith that it wouldn’t take her daughter nearly as long to recognize the truth as it had her.

“Everything I did was out of love,” she told Chrissie.

Her eyes filled with tears as her daughter walked over to the bed and hugged her. “I know that now,” Chrissie said.

At nine-thirty, Joe carried her suitcase to the car, and after a quick stop to see her grandmother, Chrissie would leave for Seattle. Once she’d spoken to her mother regarding the situation, even Vivian agreed that Chrissie’s living in Colville wasn’t a good idea. Susannah and Joe, arms around each other, stood on the sidewalk and watched their daughter drive off.

“She’ll be fine,” Joe said. “This has been a tough lesson for her.”

“Yes…” Susannah murmured. Growth was a painful process—as she well knew.

“Are you ready?” Joe asked. “We should probably leave for the cemetery.”

She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready for this confrontation. “Promise me that no matter what happens, you won’t leave my side.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Joe assured her. “If this clown thinks he’s going to walk away with my wife, he’s got another think coming.”

Susannah pressed her head to Joe’s shoulder and smiled, amused that he could even consider it a possibility. The man who held her was everything she would ever want or need in a husband.

They took the road out of town, neither of them in the mood to talk. The cast-iron gate leading into the cemetery was open when they pulled off the highway. As before, the note hadn’t mentioned where they were to meet. Joe parked near her father’s grave, which was close to the mausoleum, and they waited in front of the car, holding hands. It was still early; they had five minutes to spare.