What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(59)

Silent tears were running down Laurel’s cheeks.

She wiped her face with her hand. “I—I loved him so much.”

He went to her immediately. What a jerk he was, getting her to let him in the study just so he could indulge himself with a trip down memory lane. Putting an arm around her waist, he walked her out of the room and closed the door behind them, as if he could shut away the sorrow.

“It’s exactly how he left it,” she said in between sniffles. “His reading glasses are still there on the desk, ready for when he needs them. Mama and I didn’t have the heart to go through his drawers, so Mr. Bridges did it for us before we locked up the room.”

Jase looked back at the closed door in silent tribute. “He was my hero.”

*



Laurel strolled out into the backyard to be alone for a while, finally taking a seat in the rose arbor, the one she’d posed in so many years ago. The roses still climbed riotously all over the arched wooden trellis, just like they had ever since she could remember.

Of course, Daddy was Jase’s hero. He was everybody’s hero—the Reverend Edward Harlow didn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he did advocate equal rights for all, feed the poor, promote education, and participate in whatever other good cause came along. No wonder Jase admired Daddy so much that he even drove the same kind of car.

She rested back against the slatted swing.

She’d thought she had come to peace with her father’s death, but being in his study brought all the old pain back to her. That little room, which had always been the private retreat of the man of the house, was the only room that had been totally and entirely Daddy’s. She wasn’t sure what Erasmus had used it for, but Grampa had stored his liquor in it to escape Gramma’s Baptist eagle eye. After his father-in-law’s death, Daddy had claimed the room and fitted it out to his own specifications. In hindsight, Laurel wished all he had been doing in there was swilling Jack Daniel’s.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of the rich red blossoms twining around the white-painted slats surrounding her.

She’d never been able to reconcile the two sides of her father’s personality—the patient, caring man of God and the man with the dark appetites he kept hidden from everyone. How could he have done it? Daddy was so sensitive to people’s feelings—hers, her mother’s, everyone’s—how could he have taken advantage of those boys who came to him for guidance, who trusted him to help them?

He did help most of them, she knew. That was the only thing that saved him from being hauled off to jail. Of all the youths her father had had access to through the years, he’d abused only six of them. But that was six too many.

None of the boys had told on him. Apparently, Daddy himself had decided enough was enough, and, one fine summer day, he’d crossed the street and confessed all to his best friend, the district attorney. Arrangements for the various settlements were already under way when Daddy called Laurel and her mother into his study to explain what was happening.

She remembered how he sat them down on the two chairs while he remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back. They’d just come back from church where, at the end of the service, he’d shocked everyone by announcing that he was leaving the pulpit. Sitting with her mother and Dave in the front pew, she’d been gripped by an ice-cold fear that her father had terminal cancer.

But it was worse.

Once Mama and she were seated, Daddy had cleared his throat several times before beginning. He was nervous, Laurel realized, which made her nervous too.

“Dovie, Laurel,” he’d begun, as if taking roll of those present—Dave had a one o’clock tee time and couldn’t make it. “I have committed grievous wrongs, and you, unfortunately, will be the ones to suffer for them.” He swallowed, cleared his throat yet again, and, in the same carefully articulated accents in which he’d delivered a sermon on God’s unfailing love that morning, her wonderful daddy began confessing his sins of the flesh.

“I have long had an attraction to young men, which I never indulged. Marriage to my wonderful Dovie fulfilled me completely.” He dipped his head toward his wife. “However, in the past several years, this unwanted—uh—desire has grown stronger, sometimes so overwhelming that I acted on it. My victims were six young men whom I was counseling in my study.”

Her mother’s face went white. “No, no! Those nasty boys…”

“It wasn’t the boys, Dovie.” Daddy compressed his lips as if he was in pain and lowered his head.

Laurel’s ears rang with disbelief, and her brain was running riot. My father sexually involved with boys? She shook her head in denial. “Daddy, perhaps you don’t understand what—”

His eyes squeezed shut, he swallowed hard, and his mouth turned into a grim, down-turned line. “I knew what I was doing and I knew it was wrong. I am so sorry. I cannot apologize enough to you, your mother, the boys, and their families.”

Mama started sobbing quietly into the antique lace-edged handkerchief she carried just for show.

Daddy wiped his eyes and regained the same dry, crisp, matter-of-fact tone he used when discussing the comparative merits of altar flowers.

“Charles Bridges is making financial arrangements that will protect the boys from having to testify in open court and preclude my incarceration, but, in the meantime, I have resigned not only from the pastorate, but also from all my clubs and committees. My public life is over.”