Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(33)

The door opened and Denny walked in, scrubbing that ball cap off his head. “Oh-oh,” Jack said. “Does this mean Mindy’s potential replacement didn’t answer the question right? The recent-boyfriend question?”

“Nah, that went fine. Her name is Crystal, by the way.” He shrugged. “Nice enough girl. No bells went off, though.”

“I was just about to pour that end-of-day shot,” Jack said. “Can I get you something?”

“Maybe I’ll join you,” Denny said. “I know you’re a Scotch man. Make mine Canadian, will you?”

Jack got the glasses ready. “You act like maybe the date didn’t go so well.” He reached for a bottle and because it was Denny, made it a good Canadian.

“Date was fine. I just had something on my mind so if it wasn’t perfect, I have no one to blame but myself.”

“What’s up?” Jack asked.

Denny took a breath. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Some of it I told you when I came up here last fall—about looking for my father. And—that my mom’s boyfriend’s name is on my birth certificate, but he took off when I was about seven or ten or something. He came and went a few times before he went for good and after that last time, I only talked to him if I made the contact. Me and my mom…we weren’t sorry to see him go. You know all that….”

“What’s wrong, son?”

Another deep breath. “My mom’s name was Susan Cutler. Ring any bells with you, Jack?”

“Did I know her?” he asked.

“For just a little while. You dated her for a couple of months back when you were at Fort Pendleton. I guess you were about twenty.”

“If I was twenty and at Fort Pendleton and dated your mother, I didn’t see much of her,” Jack said. “I imagine I’d have been in training there.”

“Sounds about right. You were just a couple of kids, younger than me.” He pulled an old and worn envelope out of the inside of his jacket pocket. “She had a hard time talking about when she was young. She always felt like she let me down. She never married, exposed me to a father figure who was a pure jackass, ended up raising me alone. She didn’t let me down—my mom was awesome. But, since she had trouble looking me in the eye and talking about it, she wrote me this letter. Then we talked about it. Would you read it?”

Jack lifted a brow. “You really want me to?”

“It’s not very long. Yeah, I’d like you to read it.” He put it on the bar and pushed it toward him.

Jack locked eyes with him as he pulled the envelope over. He wasn’t sure he liked where this was going. He opened it and read,

Denny, my dearest,

We both know this cancer is not going away, that it’s only a matter of time, and there’s something I have to tell you, but it’s so hard for me I’m putting the facts in a letter and then, if you want to, we can talk about it.

When I was twenty, I fell in love. Oh, I truly did, but I made the mistake of falling in love with a twenty-year-old Marine who was shipping out in a couple of months and didn’t want any commitments. He was good to me, a wonderful young man with a nice family, and we had a real good time together. We laughed so much! He was so kind and tender, but also strong and fearless. And as I was warned, he left. He told me from the first time he held my hand—there was an expiration date on our romance.

I was pretty brokenhearted, but I started dating Bob, also a Marine at the time, but not the best man in the world. I realized after a few weeks that I was pregnant and I knew Bob wasn’t the father. I’m sorry, Denny—I lied to you all these years because I was ashamed and sorry; also because I was afraid of what Bob would do to us if he knew I lied to him. The finest man I ever knew left, I never tried to find him because we had an agreement—no commitments. I let Bob and you think that Bob was your father. So… We know how Bob turned out—not only a bad example, but a poor excuse for a man—abusive, mean, unfaithful. The day he left for good was probably our best day. And now I feel like I’m failing you with this awful cancer. Denny, I’m not afraid to die, I’m just afraid to leave you with questions, and thinking you have a father with scary DNA you can’t be proud of! The truth is, Bob was not your father. Your father’s name is Jack Sheridan. I don’t know where he ended up or what became of him, but you can believe you did have a father you could be proud of.

There was more to the letter, but Jack let his hand drop to the bar while he stared, wide-eyed and openmouthed at Denny. He looked him straight on and said, in his Jack way, “Are you shitting me?”

Denny paled. “No, sir. You’re the guy I came to find.”

“Are we sure?” he asked.

“After the letter,” Denny said, “we talked about it. She was a young girl, but girls that age think they know everything—her words, not mine. She worked at Camp Pendleton. She got that job to meet guys, she said, but ended up working there for about ten years, a civilian employee. But she said she didn’t screw around. She liked to go out, go dancing, go to movies, parties, that kind of thing. I have some pictures,” he said, going back into that pocket. “She was so pretty.” He passed the pictures across the bar.

Jack frowned. She didn’t look twenty in the pictures, but older than that. He said nothing, just waited for Denny.