A Question Of Love

Shaking his head, he stood. “Listen, we’re not going to accomplish anything with a war of accusations about things that can’t be changed.” He motioned to the sofa. “Sit down and tell me what happened.”

For a long moment, Honey glared mutinously at him. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to continue. His remarks had been far from civil, and if he’d been in her shoes, he’d have walked out. To her credit, she hadn’t, telling him without putting it into words that she wanted to get the air cleared as much as he did. “Please.”

She backed away from him and sat, acutely aware that he hadn’t apologized for his words. Let him believe what he would. Matt Logan’s opinion of her didn’t matter at all, she told herself, but her anger simmered beneath her surface calm.

Folding her hands in her lap, she looked at him. “I never tricked Stan into anything. He knew up front that Danny wasn’t his, but it never made a difference to him. He loved him just as much as if he had fathered him naturally.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you try to find me? I had a right to know I had a son.”

The edge in his voice acted on her conscience like a finely honed rapier. Honey smoothed the material on the arm of the sofa, trying to find the words to tell him that she had tried, that she’d asked everyone in town if they knew where he’d gone. But just the thought brought memories pouring back—painful, agonizing memories of drowning in the desperation of being absolutely alone, of having no one to turn to, nowhere to go. Maybe that was why she’d welcomed Stan’s friendship, and later, with her father goading her on, his proposal. Then again, maybe after Matt left, she just hadn’t cared enough about anything to fight either of them.

In the end, she settled for the simplest explanation. “I did try. But no one knew where you’d gone.”

He stood and loomed over her. “Not good enough. My father knew where to contact me, Honey. Why didn’t you just ask him?”

She felt the tiny fissure in her heart—the last evidence of her long healing process—split wide-open. If only Mr. Logan had answered the door. If only…

How could she explain? How did she tell Matt that his father had become a sick, sullen old man, a virtual hermit who’d shut himself away from her and the rest of the world? “I tried to speak to your father, but I didn’t think—”

“Didn’t think? You didn’t think what? That I’d want my own kid?” Matt strode across the room to the window and shoved back the lace curtain. His face in profile concealed the grim line of his mouth and the rage flashing in his eyes, but the stiffness in his broad shoulders broadcasted his feelings.

Matt saw nothing beyond the window. Instead his sight had turned inward, to the memory of a small boy standing outside the door waiting for his father’s notice. He saw a teenager proudly presenting a handmade tie rack to his father, and the man simply glancing at it and nodding. He saw a young adult offering his love to a lonely old man, hoping to fill the void left by the loss of a young wife and a son, and having that love brushed aside. He heard the words You’ll never be what your brother was echoing through his mind.

But Honey knew nothing of that, and Matt wasn’t about to tell her, not even to prove he wouldn’t have walked out on his son. He would have loved Danny with every fiber of his being—because he knew too well what it was like to be deprived of that love. Those very memories were the ghost he’d come home to exorcize, and talking about them would only grant them life. And granting them life would put him through the rigors of hell again, and he would never go back there, not even for Honey. Not even for Danny.

Slowly and methodically, as he’d trained himself to do for so long, he tucked the memories back into the far reaches of his mind, safely hidden from him and everyone else.

“So, where do we go from here? Do we tell Danny I’m his father?”

Honey sprang from the sofa. “No. No, we can’t tell him, at least not yet. Danny’s stutter is a manifestation of his grief over losing his…over losing Stan. Dr. Thomas says that any more emotional upheaval could make it a permanent condition. As long as we don’t push, he can overcome this.”

Although Matt understood what Danny was up against much better than she thought he did, he had hoped that he could claim his son. Considering Danny’s problem, Matt had no choice but to wait until the boy could emotionally withstand the news that he was his father.

“Dr. Thomas? Isn’t he the old GP who had an office on Main Street?”

She nodded.

“What does he know about this kind of problem?” Matt glanced at Honey.

“Enough that I have the utmost faith in his diagnosis.”

Matt disagreed, but kept his opinions to himself. They had other fish to fry. “How long will this take?”

She shifted her gaze away from his and began fussing with some flowers in a vase on a nearby table. “We don’t know. Maybe months, maybe years.”

“And in the meantime?”

She turned fully toward him. “In the meantime, we wait and try to keep him on an emotionally even keel.”

“Which means not telling him about me.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Matt stared at her for a long time. Something in her eyes caught his attention, something like pity. No, not pity. Compassion.

“Matt, I know this isn’t easy for you.”

Before he could respond, she turned away and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she stopped. “I wish…”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. “What?”

She looked at him for another moment, shook her head, then left the room.

HONEY STOOD IN THE LARGE front hall, her back against the living room door. What had she wished? That those seven years had never happened, that she’d never met Matt Logan, that he could have been around for all those wonderful years of Danny growing up, that a bitter old man had reached out and opened the door for her? That Matt had loved her as much as she’d loved him?

She shook her thoughts away. She had no more power to alter the past than she’d had to make Matt stay all those years ago. The past had to remain as it was—unchanged. Right now, she had more important things to worry about. How would she tell Amanda that her beloved grandson was not really her grandson? Amanda had centered her world around Danny after Stan died. How would she take the news?

Honey had been right to dread Matt’s homecoming. Life had been so simple before his reappearance. He’d been here for less than a day and nothing was the same anymore.

She sighed, pushed herself away from the door, then started for the kitchen. The soft whirr of Amanda’s chair-lift stopped her. Waiting until the elderly woman reached the bottom of the stairs, Honey hurried to pull the wheelchair from its nook, then position it for her mother-in-law.

“Amanda, you should have called me to help you dress.”

“Why? So you could avoid the unavoidable?” Amanda levered herself out of the chair-lift and into the wheelchair. As she adjusted the throw over her legs, she studied Honey with a knowing look. “Come into the dining room and have a cup of coffee while I eat breakfast.”

Amanda’s wheelchair moved smoothly over the polished, wide pine boards. With a skill born of spending the last five years in the chair, Amanda maneuvered it through the double dining room doors to the spot left vacant at the table. Silently, Honey went about filling a plate for her mother-in-law from the chafing dishes on the sideboard. When she returned to Amanda’s side with her usual breakfast of fruit and toast, the older woman’s fingers closed around Honey’s free hand.

“Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“About Danny.”

Honey sighed. “I told him Danny’s stutter—”

“No, not that. Did you tell him Danny is his son?”

Only with concentrated effort did Honey manage to set the plate on the table and not drop it on the floor. Shock waves ebbed through her. She sat heavily in the chair that was, thank goodness, right behind her, and stared at Amanda. “How…”

Amanda chuckled, released Honey’s hand, then spread a napkin over her lap. “My dear, I’ve suspected for some time. The older the child got, the more he looked like Matt as a boy. I knew you’d been seeing Matt before he left town, and the rest was just a simple matter of deduction as to why my son had gone from best friend to groom in a very short period of time.”

Honey couldn’t believe her ears. She’d spent the last six years walking on eggs to make sure no one, especially Amanda, knew that Matt was Danny’s father. She’d been holding on to a secret that hadn’t been a secret at all.

“How many other people know?”

Amanda spread orange marmalade on her toast. “I’m sure no one but me and maybe Tess, although she hasn’t said anything one way or the other. As for anyone else, you can bet if they’d guessed, it would be all over town by now, and it isn’t. So it’s safe to say none of them picked up on the resemblance as being anything more than family genes. After all, I used to have black hair myself when I was younger.”

Honey was relieved that she hadn’t become the talk of the town and that the likelihood of anyone pointing out Danny’s heritage to him was slim. But it didn’t assuage the guilt she harbored because she hadn’t told Amanda. Not that she hadn’t wanted to tell her from the start. Stan had insisted that they keep it a secret from his mother. It had taken a few years for Honey to realize that his request had little do with concern for his mother’s feelings and a lot to do with his male ego.