RECLAIM MY HEART(52)

She reached over and turned down the setting of the air conditioner’s fan. Lucas gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She’d tried to warn him that the past was unpleasant.
“I’m sure she tried,” Tyne said. “But…?I didn’t…?things just…” She exhaled and closed her eyes, searching for the right words that would make him understand. “I was so mixed up. I hated them for how they treated me. But I wanted their love. Was desperate for their approval.” She raked her fingernails over her scalp. “It sounds so twisted, doesn’t it?”
Tipping up her chin, she looked up. The leather lining the roof was smooth and taut and unblemished.
“Aunt Wanda came to me one day,” she continued, directing her gaze forward out the windshield. “She was smiling. Happy. She said my mother had called, that she was nearly there. My dad would agree to let me and the baby come home any day now.” Her throat swelled and tears stung her eyes. “I was breastfeeding Zach out on the sun porch. I looked into his big eyes, smoothed my fingers over his chubby cheek, and I remembered how my father had treated you. The terrible names he’d called you. And that’s when I realized the awful truth. My father would never accept my son. Never.”
She moistened her lips. “And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going home.”
The headlights of the car glared against the Wikweko sign. Talking had worn her out.
The car bumped up onto the driveway and came to a halt. Lucas shut off the engine but didn’t pull the key from the ignition.
He shifted in his seat, turning toward her, and she saw the single tear trailing down the hollow of his cheek for only an instant before he dashed it away. He swallowed and frowned.
“I’m sorry.” His words where thick and rusty sounding.
The silence stretched out like a yawn.
“It would have been easier for you to give him up, I think.”
this where th
Every ounce of tension left her when she heard no anger in his voice, saw no judgment in his eyes. Relief flooded through her, the impact of it making her feel almost woozy-headed.
“I couldn’t do that, Lucas,” she whispered. “He was all I had left of you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The empty darkness was a perfect cloak for someone hiding a shameful secret. The clock’s orange numbers glowed 2:47 on the stove. Guilt, like a jolt of caffeine, kept him wide awake.
Lucas stared out the kitchen’s wide bay window. Dim light cast by the thin crescent moon shrouded the yard in shadows. Tonight would have been the perfect opportunity to unload his oppressive burden. She’d opened herself up completely, exposed all she had gone through when she’d been eighteen and pregnant. He could so easily have followed suit.
But after she had divulged her experiences, when he’d learned of the agony her parents had put her through, he simply hadn’t been able to confess the truth.
He’d spent a lot of years harboring anger and bitterness about how Tyne had handled things back then…?or rather, how he’d thought she’d handled things. For a long time, he’d done his best to remember her as a spoiled brat.
Their first arguments as teens had been when he’d voiced that very opinion. She’d wanted a new dress for some event or other, and she’d been spitting nails over the fact that her mother had refused.
“If I’m bringing you as my date,” Tyne had wailed, “she said I couldn’t have a new outfit. Can you believe that?”
The concept had been an easy one for Lucas to understand. Her parents were doing what they could to deter their daughter’s relationship with an Indian. Tyne had ranted on, ad nauseam, about the sorry state of her life until Lucas couldn’t take another minute of her whining. He’d asked her what was wrong with the clothes she was wearing, and then he’d called her a snot-nosed baby. Somehow, he’d fit in the spoiled brat moniker, as well.
He grinned in the darkness, remembering her fury. She’d slugged him in the arm with a loosely closed fist and had jammed her finger in the process.
Later on, he’d learned that she’d run away from Oak Mills—from him—and planned to give up their baby for adoption, his first thought had been of the fleeing girl. Taking the easy way out was just what he’d expect of an overindulged princess.
The powerful resentment he’d clutched so tightly had allowed him a certain amount of haughty self-righteousness. Enough, at least, so that he could live with what he’d done, how he had gone about attaining success.
But after these weeks of living with her, of hearing all she’d endured, what she’d sacrificed and suffered in order to raise their son on her own, all he felt was awed. Her strength amazed him, her determination stunned him. Single parenthood would have bested him.
It hadn’t defeated his father. Lucas rubbed a hand over his jaw. His dad would also have been in his late teens when Ruth Yoder had handed over their newborn son and walked away. Lucas had great memories of his dad. As a kid, Lucas had felt loved and wanted and worthwhile. He’d like to think he’d have risen to the task too, if he’d been presented with the opportunity. But he had serious doubts.
Richard Whitlock’s smug face swam in his head, a bad memory that made him scowl. But it was Lucas’s own behavior that absolutely sickened him. He’d been unconscionably quick to snatch the money and run.
He’d meant it when he’d told Tyne that her life would have been easier had she simply gone along with her parents’ plan. However, because of her unyieldinthis leastg resolve he was now enjoying the blessing of being a father, he was getting the chance to play a real role in his son’s life. He owed her a hell of a lot. He imagined telling her the whole truth, pictured the pain and disillusionment that would surely distort her beautiful face and shatter her heart into a thousand pieces.