I walked over, channeling my mother. With a smile, I said, “Come sit with me and my mom.”
“Are you sure?” she asked with caution, looking at my mother, who gave her a genuine smile.
“Absolutely. Today is not the day, and none of them should have put you in this position.”
“I deserve it. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“Nonsense.”
I led Darcy and Hemlock to the table and sat her down next to my mother. I looked over and glared first at my father, then at my brother. Neither looked apologetic. I was disappointed in them both and would have words with them later.
Dinner went off without a hitch. Once I had eaten my fill, I made my way around the room, stopping at each table to talk.When I got to my father’s table, I glared at both him and Aunt Caity.
“I’m disappointed in both of you.”
“Morgan,” my father warned.
“Don’t you dare. Have you even talked to her? Asked her what her life has been like?”
I didn’t miss the irony of me defending a woman for pretending to be dead and then coming back into her son’s life. But the situations were apples and oranges.
Okay, so both my husband and my brother’s momdiedto protect the people they loved, and they bothcame back to lifefor the same reasons, but... but... dammit, I had a valid argument until I started really thinking about it.
“Where’s the grace? Where’s the compassion?”
“Morgan’s right,” Aunt Caity said. I looked over at Maureen and she winked at me.
“Talk to her, Dad.”
I stood up and walked to my brother’s table. When I sat down in the empty chair across from him, I stared at him and waited.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I shrugged.
“Morgan.”
“King.”
Grace smiled beside him and said, “She’s right.”
Blade chuckled, and King asked, “Right about what? She didn’t fucking say anything!”
“We haven’t given her a chance.”
“She said she’d do it again. If given the chance, she’d fucking do it again,” King growled.
“Jude told me the same thing.”
My brother’s eyes snapped to mine. “What?”
“Jude told me the same thing. He said that if given the chance, he would make the same decision. He would still leave, to keep me safe.”
“And have you forgiven him?” my brother asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throat because I hadn’t forgiven him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Because forgiving him meant letting him back into my life and I wasn’t sure I could trust him.
“Look, I don’t know the whole story about why she did what she did. But I do know how afraid Dad was that our grandfather would find out about me. Dad was almost thirty years old when I was born, and he was afraid of what his father would do if he knew about me. How scared do you think a sixteen-year-old girl would be?”
