Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(34)

“She said when she met you, she just lost it. Totally fell for you, but you had some orders pending and said you could only date if it was understood…”

Jack shook his head sadly. “That sure sounds like Jack Sheridan….” He looked at the photos. Both of them were studio portraits taken with a much younger Denny. She was an attractive brunette with a sweet smile and a handsome little son. He wanted to bang his head on the bar. She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t remember her. He wanted to remember her so much he ached inside.

“She told me about your parents—your dad was some kind of stock broker or something. And your four sisters—two older, two younger and the little one still in grade school. But the part that embarrassed her and kept her from being honest with me—she started dating Bob right away after you left because she was so lonely and so heartbroken with you gone. And she realized she was pregnant and Bob couldn’t be the father by a month.” He shook his head. “She said there was no one else, Jack. And I know she was my mom, but I believe her anyway.”

“Denny, when I was twenty, I was at Pendleton for a few months. I remember dating a girl named Ginger for a while, but I was all caught up in the Corps. Ginger broke it off with me because I wouldn’t think serious.” He shrugged. “There might’ve been a couple of girls here and there, but I don’t remember any who could’ve been in love….”

“I know what being twenty in the Marines is like, Jack.”

Jack didn’t read the rest of the letter. He slid it across the bar toward Denny. “You’ve been up here for months,” Jack said.

“Yeah. It took me a while to get to know you, then I had to be sure the truth wouldn’t make your life harder, then… Then there was the time it took to get up the courage. Because once I let it out, I couldn’t take it back. You know?”

Jack lifted his shot and threw it back. With shot glass in hand, he pointed at Denny’s drink. “You’d better drink that, son.”

Denny lifted the drink, but paused. “Look, I get it if you say this isn’t the happiest day of your life.”

Jack scowled. “Drink,” he said. When Denny put down the glass Jack said, “Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Any man, me included. I’m just having a real hard time with the facts, with knowing what kind of man I was, that I’d scare a woman off telling me she’s pregnant because I can’t be bothered with the responsibility. And I’m having a real goddamn hard time thinking I had the kind of relationship that would bring me a son and… And I can’t remember her.”

Jack leaned on the bar. “Accidents happen all the time, Denny, but I gotta be honest with you—I was careful. Not stupid careful—I was always armed with protection. When you talked to your mother, did she say anything like that we knew there was a problem? Like a blowout or something?”

“I couldn’t get into that with her, Jack. She was my mother. And she was sick.”

Jack felt his chest go tight. Here he was thinking about himself when this kid had discovered one man was not his father and another was—all when his mother was dying! And he was thinking about whether his condom had a hole in it? “What kind of cancer, Denny?”

“Breast, then it spread. She was so young, she didn’t get checked, didn’t get good medical care. It was an aggressive cancer. We spent five years beating it back then it would pop up somewhere else, then more chemo, then a few good months that looked promising, then— Thing is, she couldn’t beat it. And she wanted me to have the truth before she died.” Denny swallowed. “We don’t have to tell anyone, Jack.”

Jack just shook his head. “That’s not the important thing, Denny. It’s not about keeping it a secret….” He shook his head. “There are some truths about me, son—one of ’em is that until I met Mel, I hadn’t met a woman I was tempted to settle down with, to start a family with, but I never thought of myself as cruel. Maybe I’ve just been lying to myself about that. There must have been a reason your mom wasn’t brave enough to look for me, to tell me about you….”

“Lots of reasons,” Denny said. “She never blamed you. She was with a guy who thought I was his and he wasn’t a nice guy. He never even married her. I can’t think of a thing my mom ever did that was bad or wrong, but he slapped her around anyway. She was too scared of him to tell the truth, to break free and try to find you. By the time he was out of the picture, too many years had passed.”

“It never once occurred to me to tell a woman that even if I didn’t feel like being married, I could be responsible…” Jack’s voice faded out.

“Soldiers, Marines, they do things like that,” Denny said. “I did that. I was with a girl right before Afghanistan and I told her I didn’t want to be worrying about attachments while I was—”

Jack put a hand over his forearm. “Denny, even if I couldn’t have been a husband, I could have been a father. I should have been supporting you, knowing you, teaching you. Not easy for a Marine, a single Marine at that, but I would have liked to have tried. At the least, I could have been there for you when you were losing your mother. I could have been waiting for you to come home from war.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry I didn’t know. But I know now.”