“I’ll wait for you and Susa at the car. Could you make our excuses to Ava for leaving early?” He dressed quickly, gathered the blanket and other things he’d brought and left.
Tam dressed more slowly and was descending the hayloft ladder when Ava, Mike, and Susa led their horses into the stable.
Mike showed Susa how to care for her pony, distracting the six-year-old.
Tam had a short conversation with Ava.
“I’m sorry you have to go,” said her friend. “And even sorrier things didn’t work out with you and Con.”
“Me too. I’ll bring Susa back in a few weeks. I may have to get that puppy.”
“He should be ready to leave his mother just about July Fourth. We have fireworks down by the pond. Why not spend the day?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Mommy, can I go visit with Terry?”
“Just for a minute. Con needs to get back home, so we have to leave soon.”
“We aren’t staying for supper?” Susa’s lower lip trembled.
“Not this time, but we’ll come back for the Fourth of July.”
A smile chased the quivers away from Susa’s lip. “Will there be fireworks?”
“Absolutely,” assured Ava.
“Goody.” Susa bounced. “I love fireworks. I’m gonna go tell Terry all about them. I bet he’s never seen fireworks.”
“Thanks.”
“Any time.”
The hour plus ride home felt like an eternity. Tam’s life stretched before her long and lonely. Susa would be with her for a few more years, even if she did have to share her daughter with Con. Seeing him whenever custody changed hands would be hard. With time and luck she might get used to loving him and not having him love her back.
Chapter Nineteen
After they broke the news to Susa the next morning, she alternated between manic elation because she finally had a daddy and deep doldrums because that daddy was leaving before she even got to know him. She spent time with her friends in the neighborhood but kept coming back to talk to Con and show him some found treasure, a flower, a leaf, a brass screw. What didn’t seem to matter; she just needed an excuse to disturb him while he packed.
Tam too couldn’t recover her spirits. The thought of Con leaving saddened her as much as his failure to tell her he loved her.
How could he not know that she needed the words? They’d lived together a full year. She knew he was emotionally reticent. At the time it hadn’t mattered. It still didn’t, not really. If she believed that reticence was the only problem, she’d have found a way to deal with it.
No, her greatest fear was that Con didn’t really love her. That his determination to achieve a goal would blind him to other more important needs.
Con stayed in the room he’d been using. Aimless, he gathered his belongings and gradually packed his suitcase. He wished Tam would change her mind, walk through the bedroom door, order him to unpack, sit down and set a date for their wedding. He waited through lunch, claiming he wasn’t hungry when Susa came to tell him the meal was ready. A good two hours before he needed to leave he keyed open his phone and called his office to put them on notice that he would try to depart Phoenix early. He couldn’t turn around here and not have his heart crushed by the thought of leaving. He’d just as soon get it done.
He ended the call and heard a quiet sniffle behind him. He turned to see Susa standing in the doorway, the antique doll he’d given her held tight to her side. Tears brimmed in her eyes. How much had she heard?
“You’re leaving early. Don’t you want me and Mommy? I thought you loved us.” The tears spilled over, and Susa fled.
Cut to the heart, Con dropped onto the bed. His throat tightened with the effort to restrain his own tears. He failed. Fat drops leaked from his eyes.
Then he heard the soul deep sobs of his little girl. How could he and Tam do this to Susa? He had to try once more to get Tam to see that he loved her and Susa, that they belonged together.
****
Tam sat staring out the window, not seeing a thing, when Susa barreled into the living room wailing. She was so upset she dropped Florie in the middle of the floor. Tam leapt from her chair, closing her arms around Susa and hugging her tight. “Are you all right? Tell me where you’re hurt.”
Setting a little space between them, Tam grabbed a tissue and began to mop tears. She ran a hand over Susa’s face, pushing back straggles of hair, then checked Susa’s limbs for injury.
Their daughter continued to weep.
“I can’t find anything. You have to help me. Tell Mommy where it hurts, so I can fix it.”
“Here.” Susa pointed to her chest.
“Your heart!”
Can a six-year-old have a heart attack
?
Why isn’t she lying crumpled in pain
? “How long has it hurt?”
“Since I heard Daddy say he was leaving early. He doesn’t love us, Mommy, or he’d want to stay as long as he could.”
“Oh, Susa.” Tam clutched her daughter. “That’s not true. I’m sure Con loves you very much.”
“No he doesn’t. He wants to go away.”
“Sometimes we have to leave people we love, but we come back. I do that when I go to work. I leave you, but I always come back. You leave me too.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Every day you go to school, you leave me, but you always come home.” Susa’s tears slowed, and she scrunched her face while she thought that over.
“I guess, but we come home. Daddy’s home isn’t here it’s in that ‘cago place. It’s far away, and he has to take an airplane to get there. How can he come back?”
“He’ll take another airplane.”
“When?”
Tam sat back and pulled Susa into her lap. “I don’t know, fairy girl. He’s your daddy, and he loves you, so he’ll come back.”
“I don’t want him to go.”
“Me neither.”
“Go tell him he can’t leave us.”
How to explain the difficulties of separated parents? She had to say something. “Con has promises he’s made that he has to keep in Chicago.”
“Didn’t he make a promise to you when you had me? Don’t you love him anymore?”
If only life could be as simple. “I love Con as much as I love you, but we never made promises. Even if we had, I couldn’t make him stay.”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why not?” Con spoke as he walked from the far end of the living room to stand before Tam and Susa.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
He sat on an ottoman, taking one of Tam’s hands. With the other he rubbed Susa’s back. “I don’t see why
this
has to be hard, or even why I should leave.”
Susa perked up. “You aren’t gonna leave?”
Con dropped a kiss atop her head. “Be patient a little bit longer, and we’ll see.”
“We talked this over yesterday, and I thought we agreed…”
“I thought we agreed too, but I think we made a mistake. You love me, right?”
Tam pressed her lips together. What to say? She wouldn’t lie in front of Susa. “What if I do?”
“Well I love you, so explain to me how it is that two people who love each other agreed that they were better off living apart.”
Hope peeked around the stone that barricaded Tam’s heart. “You never said you loved me.”
“What do you mean? Of course, I love you. Haven’t I shown you how much I want you and Susa in my life? Do you think that pendant I offered you means nothing? You remember that moment in the hallway outside Mike’s office as clearly as I do. Why remember things like that if you don’t love them and the people involved?”
“You gave me the pendant and asked me to marry you. You talked about making a family for Susa. You never said you love me. You didn’t say it seven years ago either.”
He released her hand and thumped his forehead with the heel of his palm. “I’m an idiot.”
Then he slid from the ottoman, getting down on one knee, taking the pendant box from inside his jacket. “Tam, Susa, I love you more than life itself. Would you do me the honor of becoming my family?”
Tam blinked back tears. “I think you aren’t the only idiot here.”
Susa scrunched her face as she always did when she didn’t understand. “Do you want to marry me too, Daddy? ‘Cause I’m not sure that daddies can marry daughters.”
“You’re absolutely right, sugarplum. I do want to make you officially my daughter.”
“I’d like that. I accept. Mommy?”
“What is it, fairy girl?” Tam’s smile stretched wide over her face, feeling like it might spill down her chin and drip straight into her heart.
“You haven’t told Daddy you’ll marry him.”
“Oh, I will, with all my heart.”
Above their daughter’s head, Con leaned over and kissed Tam with as much passion as he could muster on one knee.
Susa squirmed free. Con pulled Tam to him, plundering her mouth.
Unnoticed, Susannah stared at her parents. Then she nodded. “Good, now I can have a dog and a baby brother.”
With the wisdom of the innocent, she left the room picking her doll up from the floor as she went. “You should learn a lesson from my parents, Florie. Always say I love you.”
A word about the author...
Author of historical, contemporary, and erotic romances, I fell in love with happily ever after the day I heard my first story. (Yes, I was a precocious little brat who read at the age of two, but I could hear much earlier than that.) I studied literature for far too many years before discovering that writing stories was much more fun than analyzing them.
Insatiably curious, an avid reader and traveler, I love to hear from readers about your favorite books and real life adventures. Crazy Cat stories are especially welcome.
You can contact me through my website:
Thank you for purchasing
this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.