Daisy's Back in Town Read Online Free Page B

more radical surgeries to try, he'd wanted to make things right with the people he'd felt he'd wronged in his life. One of those people was Jack. At first he'd thought to send the letter, but the more the two of them talked about it, the more they'd concluded that it should be delivered in person. By her. Because ultimately, she was the one who had to deal with Jack Parrish, and she was the one who'd wronged him most.
    They'd never really meant to keep Nathan a secret from him. Her mother knew. So did her sister. Nathan knew too. He'd always known that he had a biological father named Jackson who lived in Lovett, Texas. They'd told him as soon as he'd been capable of understanding, but he'd never expressed any interest in meeting Jack.
    Steven had always been enough father for him.
    It was time. Perhaps past time that she told Jack he had a son. A moan escaped her lips and she took a sip of coffee. A fifteen-year-old son with a pickle green Mohawk, a pierced lip, and so many dog chains hanging off him he looked liked he'd broken into the animal shelter.
    Nathan had had such a hard time these past two and a half years. When Steven was diagnosed, he'd been given five months to live. He'd lasted almost two years, but it hadn't been an easy two years. Watching Steven fight to live had been hard on her, but it had been hell oil Nathan. And she hated to admit it, but there had been times when she hadn't been at all attentive to her son. Some nights, she hadn't even known he was gone until he'd returned. He'd walk in the door and she'd scold him for not telling her where he'd gone. He'd look at her through those clear blue eyes of his and say, "I told you I was going to Pete's. You said I could." And she'd have to admit to herself that it was entirely possible that he'd told her, hut she'd been focused on Steven's medication or his next surgery - or perhaps that had been the day when Steven lost his ability to use a calculator, drive a car, or tie his shoes. Watching her husband struggle to maintain his dignity while trying to recall a simple task he'd been performing since he was four or five had been heartbreaking. There were times when she'd simply forgotten whole blocks of conversations with Nathan.
    The day Nathan had walked in the house with that Mohawk had been a real wake-up call for her. Suddenly, he was no longer the little boy who played soccer, loved football, and watched "Nickelodeon" curled up on the couch with his special blanket. It hadn't been the color of his hair that had alarmed her most. It had been the lost look in his eyes. His empty, lost gaze had shocked her out of the depression and grief she hadn't even known she'd fallen into for almost seven months following Steven's passing.
    Steven was gone. She and Nathan would always feel his loss, like a missing part of their souls. He'd been her best friend and a good man. He'd been a buffer, a comfort, someone who made her life better. Easier. He'd been a loving husband and father.
    She and Nathan would never forget him, but she could not continue to live in the past. She had to live in the present and begin to look toward the future. For Nathan, and for herself. But in order for her to move forward, she had to take care of her past. She had to quit hiding from it.
    Fingers of morning sun crept into the backyard and sparkled in the dew-covered lawn. The early sun cast long patterns in the wet grass, crept up the windmill, and shot sparks off the up of Annie Oakley's silver rifle. Daisy wished she had her Nikon and wide-angle lens on her. It was up in her room, and she knew if she ran up to get it, she'd miss the shot and the rising sun. Within seconds, dawn broke over Daisy's feet, legs and face; she closed her eyes and soaked it all in.
    Living in the Northwest, Daisy had lost most of her accent, but she'd never lost her love of wide-open spaces and the huge blue sky stretching across the horizon in unbroken lines. She opened her eyes and wished Steven were here