“They went out of business.” Murphy’s Law: Elizabeth left, and the service went out of business. “I got a handwritten note on an index card in the mail last week.”
Patti shook her head. “Mama’s gonna have a fit if she comes home to find it like this.” She crossed to the refrigerator. “Is there anything to eat?”
“Ah . . .”
She opened the French doors to find the shelves packed with casseroles and other care packages in take-along containers, most of them bearing the donor’s name and phone number. “What in the world?”
“Your mother’s friends are trying to keep me from starving while she’s gone,” he said.
Patti opened one and recoiled from the moldy food inside. “Eeyew. Gross.” She dropped it into the garbage. Two more similar specimens followed. “Daddy, you should have frozen what you couldn’t eat. Everything in here is rotten.”
Hence, the baked beans. “I did freeze stuff, but I ran out of room.”
Patti opened the two freezer drawers and found them crammed full. “Good grief. Do they think you’re destitute, or what?”
“Beats me.”
She stilled, then turned, her expression wary. “When is Mama coming home, anyway?” Her blue eyes begged him to tell her everything was okay, and her mother would be home soon.
If only he could. “I don’t know, honey. That’s up to your mother.”
Patti sank to the stool. “Daddy, she didn’t
leave
us, did she?”
Howe took the stool beside her. “No. I asked her to go. I wanted her to have time to think things over.” He looked down at the floor. “Patti, I’m not proud of the man I was before my stroke. I did some terrible things to your mother, but she endured it because she loved me, and you and Charles. She never complained, just made the best home she could for all of us.”
“I know that Gamma doesn’t like her,” Patti confessed, steering the conversation away from those terrible things he’d mentioned. “And I know why. Charles told me, about her family and all.” Patti touched his arm. “I should have been nicer to Mama.”
“We all should have.”
“Charles was,” Patti said. “He’s always been sweet to Mama.” Her voice thickened with tears. “All my friends love Mama. Why couldn’t I?” She answered her own question. “I just always felt like she wanted me to be perfect, and I can’t be. I’m not like her.”
Howe put his arm around her. “Patti, this is not your fault. It’s mine. I should have helped your mother with discipline, but you were the only person in the world who adored me, and I was selfish. I didn’t want to mess that up, so I left all the hard parts to your mother. That was wrong of me.”
He summoned his courage for the rest. It hadn’t been an easy decision, but after long prayer and thinking, he’d realized he needed to own up to what he’d been and ask his children’s forgiveness. He’d already talked to Charles, who had suspected the truth all along. But this was his baby, who idolized him. He took a deep breath, then got it out. “Patti, I was unfaithful to your mother for many years.”
Patti pulled back. “That’s not true. You’re lying.”
“I wish it wasn’t true, but it is,” he said, meeting her stricken gaze with anguish. “Not only that, but I shut her out of my heart and my life.”
Patti slid off the stool, putting distance between them. “Why?” she demanded. “What did she do? She must have driven you away. She’s so demanding.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, emphatic. “She just loved me, warts and all, and I betrayed her. The guiltier I felt, the more I shut her out.”
“I don’t believe this,” Patti told him, turning her eyes to the ceiling. “You’re just saying this because of the stroke. That’s it.”
“I’m saying this because you have a right to know the truth about your father,” Howe said sternly. “You’ve misjudged your mother, Patti. She’s the most loving, caring person I’ve ever met, and she deserves better, from both of us. She’s been terribly, terribly lonely, trying to keep this a secret.”
Hurt warred with revulsion and denial in Patti’s face.
Unable to face it, Howe braced his elbows on the granite island and leaned forward, threading his fingers through his hair. “Elizabeth deserves so much more than I’ve given her. I’ve changed, and I want a chance to make it up to her. The last thing I want to do is let her go, but I asked her to take some time by herself because I wanted her to have her freedom, Patti, even if that means I’ll have to live the rest of my life without her.”
“Daddy.” Tears streamed down Patti’s face, and suddenly she wasn’t a wild woman, but a small, vulnerable child. “She’ll come back. I know she will. You said she loves us. She’ll come back.”
The hardest part was yet to come. He walked over and hugged his daughter, as if his arms could protect her from what he had to say next. He leaned his cheek against her hair. “We’re not the only ones who love her, sweetie.”
Patti went stiff. “What do you mean?”
“There’s somebody else who loves her.”
“Oh, God,” Pattie lashed out. “She cheated on
you
.”
“No.” His arms tightened to keep her from running away before he could explain. “She’d never do that. It isn’t in her. But she was lonely, and he paid attention to her. Sought her out. Listened to her problems. Made her feel important. Everything I should have been doing, but didn’t.”
“How do you know she didn’t sleep with him?” Patti asked, her voice harsh. “You lied to her all those years. Maybe she’s lying to you, now.” She wrested free of him, her fingers braced on her temples as she paced in circles. “This is a nightmare, a freakin’ nightmare. I come home, and find out my Norman Rockwell family is really some cheap, filthy reality show.”
“No it’s not,” Howe said. “Our family is what we make of it. So far, my past sins have been private, and your mother wants to keep it that way. I’m the one who told her I didn’t want to be married unless she could love me the way I am now.”
Every nerve and flaw exposed, he turned to Patti. “I love your mother more than my life, but it would kill me to know she only came back out of duty or some misguided effort to keep up appearances. I’ve hurt her enough already.”
“So you’re just going to hand her over to that other guy?” Patti said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “If you love her, why don’t you fight for her?” She grabbed his arm, shaking him. “Daddy, you need to fight for her. Tell her you’re sorry, that you’ll make it up to her. Let her know how much you love her.”
He laid a staying hand on hers. “I did.”
She cried harder. “I’ll make Gamma be nice to her. I don’t know how, but I will.”
Howe embraced her, hating the pain he’d caused. “Honey,
this has to be your mother’s decision. Whatever she chooses, she deserves your love.”
Patti collapsed against his chest and sobbed. “Don’t let her go, Daddy. Don’t let her.”
If only it was that simple.
The damned doorbell rang, and Patti pushed him away. “Answer it,” she choked out. “It’s probably some so-called friend of Mama’s trying to hook up with you.” Seeing his shock, she swiped at her nose. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I saw their phone numbers on all their casseroles.”
Howe moved toward her. “Never mind the door. They’ll go away. I don’t want to leave you like this.”
Patti raised her palms to ward him off. “Go. I need to be by myself.” She headed for the back stairs. “I’m going to my room.”
Reluctantly, Howe watched her leave, then headed for the front door.
The silhouette in the leaded glass was definitely
not
a woman’s. It was male, and large, too tall and broad shouldered to be Mitch or any of the other “Dear Abby” husbands.
He opened the door to find P.J. Atkinson on the doorstep, and the man was spitting nails. “Where is she?” P.J. demanded, pushing past him. “Elizabeth would never have broken off with me unless you forced her to! Now she’s disappeared. None of her friends knows where she is. What have you done with her?”
“I haven’t done anything to her,” Howe said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It is my business,” P.J. shot back. “She’s mine, not yours. And if you don’t tell me where she is, I’m filing a missing persons report.”
“Be my guest,” Howe said. “She’ll just call the police and tell them she’s fine. And she doesn’t want to see you. Or me.”
P.J. went livid. “You may have ruined me by foreclosing on my developments in ninety-one, but it’s payback time. I stole your wife. She’s mine, body and soul, and I do mean body.”
“She never did that, and you know it,” Howe growled out. “I always knew you were sleazy, so it doesn’t surprise me that you took advantage of a lonely, vulnerable woman. But Elizabeth told me all about it, and I know there was no affair.”
“Oh, right,” P.J. scoffed. “Just like you never used every hooker in Atlanta for the past twenty years.”
A gasp from the stairway turned both their attentions to Patti, who stood, stunned, on the landing. “Hookers?” She searched Howe’s face. “You went to hookers?”
“Patti, go to your room,” Howe ordered. “Now.”
“Yes, Patti, go to your room,” P.J. mocked. “We wouldn‘t want you to find out the truth about your mother.” He went sly. “Never mind that your daddy’s a whoremonger, and your mother slept with me.”
“Your mother did no such thing, Patti,” Howe barked out, then pivoted on P.J. “You sorry, lowlife bastard. You’re just mad because Elizabeth saw through you and told you to get lost. Now I’m telling you the same thing. Get lost.”
“Make me,” P.J. taunted.
“You’re trespassing. Get off my property. And leave my family alone, or you’ll regret it,” Howe threatened.
P.J. laughed, a harsh, ironic sound. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Howe shoved him, hard, toward the open door. “Out, or I’ll call the cops.”
P.J. shoved him right back, reclaiming his place. “Oh, by all means, call them. But be sure to tell them why I’m here. If you don’t, I will. I think this town will be very interested to know that the high-and-mighty hypocrite Howe Whittington has been cuckolded by the likes of me.” He leered. “I think she told you about our affair, and you refused to let her go, then did something to her. At least, that’s what I plan to tell the media. Who cares where she really is, or why? The word will be out.”
Howe had never hit anybody in his life, but without even engaging his brain, he landed a bone-crushing haymaker to the lying sonofabitch’s face that sent P.J. onto his rear.
“Daddy!” Patti shrieked, clamoring down the stairs as Howe shook his throbbing hand.
The next thing Howe knew, P.J. was getting up, his lip split and bloody murder in his eye. “You pansy-assed chickenshit. I’ll mop the floor with you.” He charged, but Howe deftly stepped aside, which only made P.J. madder.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Patti ordered, but both men were beyond hearing her.
P.J. cocked a fist and barreled toward Howe, who evaded him again.
“How can you claim to love Elizabeth,” Howe shouted, “then say those things about her?”
An evil grin spread across P.J.’s face as he swiped the blood from his lip. “I never said I loved her. I just
used
her to get even with you, and it was sweet.”
Howe hit him again. This time, P.J. came back with a solid blow to Howe’s stomach, then a deadly right hook that rattled his brains, sending him sprawling against the foyer table, then onto the black-and-white tiles. By some miracle, his great-grandmother’s huge crystal vase didn’t fall off the table, but turned over, scattering silk flowers and the gallon of clear glass marbles that held them all over the floor.
Howe got up, then went right back down again as he slipped on the marbles.
P.J. dodged them on his way toward Howe, clearly intending to kick him when he was down.
“Stop it!” Patti grabbed the nearest implement—an umbrella—then launched herself halfway across the room with a single, adrenaline-powered leap onto P.J.’s back like a rabid cat, flailing away with every word. “You . . . leave . . . my . . . father . . . alone! And . . . shut . . . your . . . lying . . . mouth . . . about . . . my . . . mother!”
Howe managed to regain his feet as P.J. spun around, trying to shake her off, but Patti gripped his hair and gave his ear a vicious twist. “Damn!” P.J. roared. “Get this bitch-brat off me!”
By God, Patti was ferocious, but she was going to get hurt. “Patti,” Howe shouted through her blood-haze. “Let go! I can handle this.” He dodged the marbles and grabbed her, but she whacked his hand loose with the umbrella, which stung like hell.
Then she resumed whaling away on P.J. “I . . . am . . . not . . . done . . . with . . . you,” she roared at P.J., sounding like a Klingon warrior.
Whoa!
“What the hell is going on here?” a male voice said from behind them.
All three of them turned to see Charles standing in the open doorway with his startled employer.
“Judge Etheridge!” Howe said.
Everybody froze, then Patti slipped off P.J.’s back, giving him one last jab with the umbrella for good measure. In response, he side-armed Howe back into the marbles. As Howe fell, he took P.J. with him, and somehow all three of them ended up on their asses amid the silk flowers.
Patti grabbed a white gladiola and smacked P.J. across the face like a knight wielding his gauntlet. “Bastard.”