“Why did you leave like you did?” Grace asked. “I’ve always wondered. You were so crazy about her. I couldn’t understand it.”
Roan looked down at the countertop, running a finger down the moist beer bottle. “I had my reasons.”
“Because of your mom?” Walter asked.
“Partly,” Roan said.
Roan and Jason’s mother, Walter’s sister, had died just after they’d graduated high school from an undiagnosed heart condition. No one had seen it coming. She’d been a perfectly healthy forty-year-old woman. Here one minute. Gone the next.Roan and his brother had been devastated. Utterly heartbroken and lost. “We were both pretty messed up after Mom died. Unlike Jason, I didn’t have a college scholarship ahead of me. I wanted to be wherever Reese was. I’d planned on following her to New York City. Her father made sure that didn’t happen.”
“What do you mean?” Grace asked sharply.
Roan tugged at a corner of the beer bottle label. “Mr. Monroe thought I was going to ruin Reese’s life. Keep her from achieving her ballet dreams. He said I was an unnecessary distraction. A drain on her resources.”
“Did he tell you that?” Walter asked.
“Sure did.” Roan winced at the memory. “He showed up at my house before prom. Told me I should break up with Reese. He suggested I bail on her for the dance. That way she’d never want anything to do with me again. He told me what a loser I was and that, if I really loved Reese, I’d let her go. Threatened me with—” Roan stopped himself before he told Grace and Walter what had truly happened.
“With what?” Grace said, cheeks pink. His aunt might seem like a gentle soul, which she was, but she was also fiercely protective of her family.
Walter gazed at him with narrowed eyes. “What did he threaten you with?”
He wanted to lie, to keep his secret, but somehow it tumbled out anyway. “He was the president of the bank back then, remember?”
“Sure. Everyone feared the man. He made the rules when it came to who got bank loans and who didn’t,” Walter said. “Used to think he ran this town. I hated groveling to him, but it was necessary back then. I had a lot of debt on the farm.”
“Yeah, well, he mentioned how much debt you were carrying and then a bunch of stuff about how banks didn’t like the instability of farms—that it was only because of his generositythat you had a loan with the bank in the first place. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew he had a lot of power. I didn’t want anything to happen to you guys.”
Walter and Grace went very still
“Did he threaten to call in my loan?” Walter’s voice sounded dangerously low and way too steady.
“Not in so many words, but I could read between the lines.” Roan’s voice tightened at the memory. “It was pretty clear what he meant.”
“I can’t believe it,” Grace said. “But it makes more sense why you left.”
“Reese was their only child,” Walter said. “They pushed her really hard. I remember that.”
“Yeah, especially her dad,” Roan said. “He rode her hard about grades and how much discipline it would take to be a professional dancer. After recitals, he’d critique her performance. She used to cry about it sometimes.”
“He must have thought he was doing the right thing,” Walter said. “As misguided as it was.”
“But Roan was a good boy,” Grace said to Walter, before turning to Roan. “Why didn’t he like you?”
“I wasn’t the type of guy he wanted for her,” Roan said. “Too rough. Not academic enough. He said my obsession about her wasn’t healthy for either of us.”
“What an awful man,” Grace said. “No wonder you left.”
“I was young and dumb,” Roan said. “Grieving. Confused. I loved Reese, and only wanted what was best for her. At the time I truly believed he was right. Everyone would be better off without me here.”
“He most certainly wasnotright,” Grace said. “I hope you know that now.”
“I do. Sure I do. Now.”
But did he? Would he fall back into his false beliefs about himself now that he was home? Was it true what they said? People could never go back home?
“Come on, finish your beer,” Walter said. “Let’s go see your house. Get you unpacked.”
Roan nodded. “Thanks again for everything you’ve done to help me get home.”
