Santa's Sweetheart (The Christmas Tree Ranch #4)(64)

“I know. Thanks for the heads-up.”

The snow was up to her boot tops and still coming down as he forged a path to the SUV and helped her climb inside. After he’d cleared the windows, they headed for the nearby hospital. Minutes later they arrived at a complex of buildings set amid tall trees in what appeared to be a mostly residential neighborhood.

Cooper let her off at the covered main entrance, where she waited while he parked in the visitors’ lot and slogged back through the storm to join her. As they crossed the lobby to the elevators, they passed a brightly lit Christmas tree in one corner. On a night like this, in a place like this, it was all too easy to forget that Christmas was almost here.

Waiting for the elevator to take them to the second floor, Grace sensed the tightening of a cold, hard knot in the pit of her stomach. How would she feel when she saw the man who’d broken her heart, destroyed her childhood, and shattered her trust? What would she say to him? Maybe this whole trip was a mistake. Maybe she should just turn around, walk back to the lobby, and wait for Cooper to end his visit.

Cooper had said he couldn’t tell her what to do. But Grace knew what he wanted and why he’d asked her to be here. He wanted to give their father peace in his final hours. How could she do that? How could she give peace to the man who’d taken so much from her?

“Come on.” Cooper nudged her through the sliding door and pushed the button for the second floor. As the elevator hummed upward, Grace gazed down at her wet boots, too conflicted to speak.

On the second floor, they left the elevator and walked down the hall to the nurses’ station. “Your timing’s fortunate,” the nurse on duty told Cooper. “He’s awake and lucid, but it may not be for long. His vital signs are getting weaker.”

Grace felt the urgency as Cooper strode down the hall. Heart pounding, she raced after him. They walked into the room together.

The man in the bed was in his late sixties, but he looked much older. His eyes, now closed, were sunk into hollows. His scalp showed pink through the thin gray hair that had once been thick and dark. His cheeks were frosted with stubble. A mask that covered his nose and mouth fed hissing oxygen into his lungs. An IV drip sent fluids through a needle in his arm. Tubes and sensors connected his failing body to a softly beeping monitor above the bed.

Was this man really her father? If she hadn’t known who he was, she would never have recognized him.

Then he opened his eyes—the beautiful, blue eyes that were exactly as she remembered. Grace felt her heart contract.

“Hi, Dad.” Cooper touched his shoulder. “There’s somebody here to see you.”

“Hello, Dad.” She leaned over him so he could see her without having to turn his head. “I’m your daughter. I’m Grace.”

He moved the mask to one side. “Grace? But you’ve grown up. You’re a beautiful woman now.” His voice was a feeble rasp, laboring over every word. “Thank you for coming to see this old wreck.”

What should she say now? There seemed to be no point in telling him how he’d hurt her. He knew what he’d done.

His hand, the one that was free of needles and monitors, reached up to her. Grace forced herself to take it. His fingers were cold against her skin, the bones like fragile, knotted twigs.

“I’m sorry for what I did, Princess,” he said, using the old name. “I’ve been sorry every day since. Leaving you the way I did was the worst mistake of my life. If you hate me for it, I can’t blame you.”

“I never hated you, Dad.” As she spoke the words, Grace realized they were true. “I was hurt. I was angry. But I didn’t hate you. I loved you.”

“I wrote. I tried to call.” He coughed slightly; the monitor beeps accelerated, then slowed again. “But I didn’t expect to hear back. I knew how much I’d hurt you.”

“You did hurt me. You left me to grow up without the father I loved. My school activities, my prom, my graduation, all the times I needed hugging or scolding—you weren’t there for any of them. I missed you so much.”

“I know. I missed you, too, Princess. More than you can imagine. When I left, I ruined lives—yours, your mother’s, and my own. But I can’t go back and do it over. All I can do is hope that one day you’ll forgive me.”

Grace felt the arthritic fingers clutching her hand. She tried to imagine what it would take to walk away from a child who was begging you not to go. She tried to imagine Sam walking away from Maggie. She couldn’t fathom it. Sam would never do that.

But what if, in a moment of terrible judgment, he were to do that very thing? Would Maggie ever forgive him?

Grace searched the depths of her wounded heart for the answer to that question. Then like the glow of a half-hidden light, buried beneath the bitterness of years, she found it—in the innocent, unconditional love of a little girl for her father. She sensed what Maggie would do. It was what she needed to do.

She pressed his hand to her cheek as the words welled out of her—words that had been there all along. “I forgive you now, Dad,” she whispered, her tears spilling over. “I forgive you and I love you.”

*

Sam had gone to Maggie’s school Christmas program on Wednesday morning. Sitting for more than an hour on a hard metal chair, watching while the different classes, and then the entire school, performed songs and choral readings, had been torture on his injured body. But the fatherly thrill of seeing Maggie in the back row of her class, wearing a silly paper star hat, and singing her heart out, had been worth the pain.