A Southern Reunion

She didn’t want to advance toward the bed in the corner, toward the still, skeletal man lying in that bed. He didn’t look like the father she remembered.

Marcus Brennan had been larger than life—a rancher, a cowboy, a hunter and sportsman, a businessman and a gentleman with impeccable manners when around ladies and a brawling disregard when he went hunting or fishing with his cronies. He ruled this part of the state of Georgia and people either feared him or respected him.

At times, Cassie had felt both. Right now, she wasn’t sure what to feel, or what to say. So she just stood, her prayers centered on the next step. Then she heard her father’s voice for the first time in twelve years.

“Cassie?”

Cassie gulped back a silent sob. She wouldn’t cry now, not when she’d cried so many tears she’d probably be able to fill the Chattahoochee River. Not now, after she’d had to endure seeing Cal with her nemesis, Marsha, the woman who’d managed to break them apart even after Cassie’s powerful father had tried and failed.

Not now. Not now.

“Cassie, come over here and let me look at you.”

She advanced a step, then another, until she was at the foot of his bed. “Hello, Daddy.”

Marcus was propped up with pillows, his frail hand reaching toward her then falling away, back to the folds of the dark comforter covering his lower body.

“You came home.”

He said it in a way that ripped at her heart, his voice soft with yearning and awe. Had he expected her to ignore him?

“Yes, I’m here. How are you feeling?”

The cliché was the only thing that came to her mind, emerging through the unspoken, unasked questions that held her in a tight spasm of pain and fear.

His chuckle sounded like jagged rocks hitting against each other. “You see how I look. I feel about twice as bad as that. I guess I’m done for, girl.”

Cassie gripped the cold steel of the bed. “Teresa didn’t explain exactly what…what kind of illness you have. I’ve talked to several of your doctors since she called me regarding your health, but they didn’t want to discuss your medical condition with me.”

Another rumbling, hacking chuckle. “I’m dying. What does the rest matter?” He let out a rasping sigh. “I’ve drank too much, smoked too much, and seen and done too much. I have cancer and several other maladies with names longer than my seventy-nine vintage Cadillac.”

Cassie let that declaration take hold, willing herself to remain quiet and still. He appeared so fragile, so deathly, she was afraid to move, afraid her touch on his arm might shatter him. “I understand you have nurses?”

“Day and night. Draining me dry, too.”

Her father was a very rich man, so she doubted that. “Where is your nurse right now?”

“Told her to come later this afternoon. Wanted some time alone with you. They hover over me, drives me nuts.”

Cassie could only imagine that and pity the nurses who had to deal with Marcus Brennan. “Do you need anything?”

“I need to go back about fifteen years, is all.”

Don’t we all, Cassie thought, one single tear escaping down her face. Grabbing at courage, she moved around to the side of the bed. “Why am I here, Daddy? Why did you wait so long to call me home?”

“Why did you wait so long to come home?” he countered, his expression creased with frustration and too much time alone.

Cassie didn’t know how to answer that question. She’d called home time after time, especially during that first rough year of college. Teresa would take her messages but she’d never hear back from her father. After the first awkward, awful Thanksgiving and Christmas here when her father didn’t even bother to eat meals with her or exchange gifts, either, she’d swallowed back the pain of holidays spent alone or with friends, with long nights of worrying and praying for things she couldn’t have. After a few months, she’d given up, her heart breaking into brittle little pieces each time her messages were not returned.

“I’m here now,” she said, blinking back the stubborn tears. “I’m here, Daddy.”

Marcus gazed up at her, his shrewd brown eyes hollow and hard-edged, his mouth open in a rasping for each breath. “As pretty as ever.” He swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment. “You are the image of your mother.”

And that was why he’d hated her so much, Cassie realized.

CAL STOMPED INTO THE kitchen, searching, the scent of Cassie’s perfume lingering in the air like a low-hanging flower, teasing him while he searched for her.

“Where is she?”

The housekeeper who also served as his sometime-therapist and wise counselor said, “In with her daddy.”

“How is she?”

Teresa automatically filled a glass with ice and poured him some sweet tea. “Shaky. Confused. Wanting to know why you’re back here and why her daddy called her home.”

Cal lowered his head, his hand absorbing the condensation on the crystal glass. “Did you tell her anything?”

“Not yet. She went straight in. Poor girl. She looked so lost. It didn’t help one bit that Marsha decided to come calling today of all days. Did she know Cassie was coming home?”

“No. At least she didn’t hear it from me.” Cal took a long sip of his tea, the syrupy sweetness of it hitting the dry spot in his throat with a soothing rush. Then he put down the glass and stared at the melting ice. “This is hard for all of us.”

Teresa went back to wiping and putting things away. “Yep, I reckon it is. I should have warned her. I don’t like keeping things from her.”

“She wouldn’t have come if she’d known I was here.”

“And that’s why I didn’t tell her.”

That reality made Cal wince with a soul-deep pain but he fought it. He’d been fighting against it for so long now.

“Guess I’d better get back to work. I’ll check back in later.”

“You want to come for supper?”

He and Teresa had taken to eating their meals together, just in case Marcus took a turn for the worse. “No. I think it’d be better if I keep to myself for a while. Jack’s waiting for me in the east field. Soybeans need my attention today.”

Teresa didn’t say anything and her expression held no judgment. Maybe that was why Cal liked her and trusted her.

That and the fact that she was more like a mother to him than his own had ever been.

“Be careful out there,” Teresa said, as always. “Tell Jack to drink plenty of water.”

Teresa had a crush on the burly old field hand. As always, Cal saluted her. “It’s just tractors and dirt, Teresa. I think Jack and I can handle it.”

But they both knew managing a big plantation was about a lot more than tractors and dirt.

He turned toward the kitchen door that led out onto the back porch and came face-to-face with Cassie as she rounded the corner from the hallway. One look at her and his protective instincts picked right back up where they’d left off so long ago. “Are you all right?”

She reached toward the counter, her face pale and drawn, her eyes glazed into an icy blue. “No.”