A Daughter's Story Read Online Free Page A

them.
    Rose couldn’t make things right for her daughters.
    Claire was gone.
    And Emma just felt dead.

CHAPTER FOUR
    T HE NUMBER OF TIMES Chris had felt grief were so few and far
between he could remember all of them. He relived each and every one as he sat
at Citadel’s that Friday night and nursed a second glass of not-cheap whiskey. A
single shot this time.
    Every hurt, every disappointment, every little insecurity he’d
ever felt, came back to him as he sat there alone, trying to hold on to
faculties he refused to do without.
    There was the time his father had called home and asked him to
bring his mother to the phone, and Chris, running into her room to get her, had
found her beneath a naked man he’d never met in the bed that his parents
shared.
    He touched briefly on the night Sara had given him back the
diamond engagement ring she’d accepted several months before, but didn’t allow
himself to linger. The void that Sara’s leaving him had created was soon filled
again—by Sara. She was another man’s wife now, but she was Chris’s best
friend.
    He thought about calling her, telling her about Ainge, and took
another sip of Scotch instead. Part of the reason she’d left him was because she
couldn’t live with the constant possibility of his death on the ocean. He didn’t
need to bring the possibility any closer to home.
    Which left Chris with his morose trip down memory lane.
    There was the morning he’d received the call that his parents
had been killed in a pileup on the freeway just fifteen minutes from home. That
was also when he found out they’d been on their way home from a court hearing
because his mother, who’d already broken his father’s heart, had filed for
divorce.
    The last time had come a couple of days ago, when word had
spread that Wayne Ainge had gone overboard, when they’d all waited as rescue
crews attempted to get the young man up from the bottom of the ocean in time to
save his life, and then heard the news that they’d failed, that the boy was
dead.
    Oh, and there was Christmas Day. He always had invitations for
the day, places he was wanted and welcome. But for some reason that day got to
him. Which was why he was usually the lone boat out on the ocean on December
25.
    Still, only a handful of sad memories in forty years… He was a
lucky guy.
    “You playing tonight?” Cody was back, tipping the bottle over
the top of Chris’s glass. He might have stopped him. Probably should have.
Instead, he allowed the younger man to fill his glass and then raised it to his
waiting lips.
    The piano up on the dais was the reason he was there.
    “Yeah,” he answered after he sipped.
    Nodding, Cody headed down the bar. Chris was pretty sure he
heard him say “Good,” but he could have just imagined it. No matter. He didn’t
play for Cody. Or for anyone.
    He played because music was good for the soul.
    And because he could.
    He played because doing so helped ease the tension that came
with lobstering every day of your life.
    * * *
    S HE ’ D GIVEN R OB twenty-four hours to get out of the house. She’d told him she was going
to stay with her mother. She’d known she could. Truthfully, she hadn’t planned
anything. Contrary to her normal way, she’d spoken without first analyzing the
various ramifications of her decision.
    She didn’t have a house to go home to. She’d left her mother’s
and she wasn’t going back that night.
    Her attachment to her mother was probably part of the reason
Rob had cheated on her. A woman with her mother attached to her hip couldn’t be
much of a turn-on.
    A woman who couldn’t climax probably wasn’t much of a turn-on,
either. Lord knew she tried, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of letting
go.
    And even if her relationship with Rose had nothing to do with
any of her problems, Emma needed to be away from her mother long enough to be
able to breathe on her own.
    First, she needed a place to spend the night.
    She’d walked out without