Jenna watched him curiously for a moment, then she sat down again and thought for a moment.
‘You… you don’t really want this, do you?’ she asked him quietly.
Joel rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘Of course I do.’
‘No, you don’t. Why can’t you just be honest with me for once? There’s no point in lying to me any more, Joel. We’ve gone way past that. You see, I’ve finally realised the truth. It was bad enough when I figured out you didn’t really love me.’
‘I do love you, Jenna,’ he protested. ‘I really do. It’s not that…’
‘No. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have done the things that you’ve done to hurt me,’ she said. ‘That’s not love. I do believe,’ she added hesitantly, ‘that you have feelings for me of a sort, but it doesn’t really matter any more. The fact is, you don’t love the twins, do you? Not in the way they deserve to be loved. Not in the way they should be loved by their own father.’
Joel turned to gaze out of the window for a moment, and Jenna sat quite still, holding her breath, waiting for him to finally tell her the truth. The truth she’d at last acknowledged, after all those years of deluding herself. Years when she’d refused to see what was patently obvious when you put all the pieces of the jigsaw together. Joel didn’t love his children. He didn’t want to be a father. He never had.
‘I wish I felt differently,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve tried. I really have. I just can’tfeelit.’ He turned to face her, and she saw genuine shame in his eyes. ‘You must think I’m a monster. I think you’re probably right. I never wanted children, Jenna. You know that. We’d agreed?—’
‘We had,’ she said, ‘but accidents happen and once we decided to keep the baby I thought you’d changed your mind.’
‘I thought I had, too,’ he said. ‘When it came to making the choice and you said you didn’t feel you could go through with it –nothaving it, I mean – I thought I would feel differently when it arrived. But then we found out it was twins and I just went into panic mode.’
‘And had an affair,’ she said bitterly. ‘And left me.’
‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to escape, and someone offered me a route out of it all, so I took it. But it didn’t work out and I knew I had to at leasttryto be a father. I hoped it would be different when the babies were actually here. I thought I’d feel differently then.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I like the twins, don’t get me wrong. They’re good children and I’m fond of them.’
‘Fondof them?’ Jenna shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. ‘They deserve so much more than that.’
‘I can’t give them more than that,’ he said simply. ‘I tried. It’s just not in me. I don’t want to be a father, Jenna.’
‘But youarea father!’ she cried. ‘It’s too late to change your mind now. You can’t just decide they’re not a good fit and send them back for a refund.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ His eyes were shining with tears and he sounded desperate. ‘Look, I’ve come back. I’ll try again. I’ll do my best to make it up to you all. What else can I say?’
Jenna realised at that moment that there was nothing else hecouldsay. He’d already told her all she needed to know. She thought about Sam buying the girls riding lessons, how he knew that Ada was mad about Heatherstone, that Hallie was always the more confident twin. He’d figured that out in a matter of weeks. She’d bet anything that Joel knew barely anything about his daughters.
She’d taken Joel back the last time he’d left because she’d loved him more than anything and anyone. But that wasn’t true any more. He wasn’t the most important person in her life any longer.
Hallie and Ada. They were the most important people. She’d had no idea that such love was even possible, but when she thought about her daughters her heart lifted with joy, and she wanted nothing more than to make them happy, to let them know how much they were loved and wanted. She was even missing them now.
She’d thought, for a long time, that it was important for them to have their father in their lives, and she’d struggled to deal with Joel’s obvious lack of interest. Now she realised there was no need to struggle any more. Joel wasn’t capable of giving them the love they deserved, and if he really didn’t want to be in their lives, they were better off without him.
‘You don’t want to be with us, do you?’ she asked calmly. ‘Not deep down. You’ve only come back here because you don’t know where else to go.’
Joel sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘I just go from one catastrophe to the other,’ he admitted at last. ‘I always think it will be better next time, but it never is. I do care about you, Jenna. I care about the twins. But I don’t want… this.’ He waved a hand around the kitchen. ‘Married life, children, it’s just not for me. I feel trapped and miserable. Why do you think I spend so much time at work? I’d rather be there than playing happy families with you here. It bores me. Do you understand that?’
‘I think,’ she said coldly, ‘that I’m finally beginning to.’
‘If there was anything I could do to change the way I am…’
‘But there isn’t. You should have been honest with me from the start. Have you any idea how unhappy I’ve been all these years? Trying so hard to please you. Trying to be the woman I thought you wanted me to be. Keeping this house immaculate because you hated anything out of place. Trying to ensure the twins didn’t get on your nerves. Farming them out to my mum as much as I could so I could spend time on the career you wanted me to have – and withyou!’ Her voice rose and she practically spat the last word at him.
‘I missed out on so much time with them because I was stupid enough to love you. I wanted to make you happy. I was so scared you’d leave again if everything wasn’t perfect. And all the time I was wasting my life away and wasting precious time with the most beautiful girls in the world. I should have been with them! Not trying to climb the career ladder because you’d decided that was what really mattered. Not trying to please you at all! You took that from me.’
‘I didn’t ask you to do anything,’ he protested.
‘You didn’t have to. You just made it so bloody obvious.’ She ran her hands through her hair, remembering all those years of fear, tiptoeing around him to make sure he didn’t leave them. Trying to convince him, without fully realising what she was doing, that the twins hadn’t changed anything – that life could go on as it always had, as he’d wanted it to. Going against her every instinct to keep him happy. For what?
