Erin's Way Read Online Free Page B

each other honesty when they’d healed their rift. “Yes.”
    “Where is she, Stoner? Is she hurt?” There was a pause. Disillusionment colored her voice when she spoke again. “Was she drunk…or stoned?”
    “She’s at Sam’s sleeping it off. She was stoned, Catherine. She hit her head, but nothing serious.”
    There was a long silence before Catherine touched his arm. “Stoner… Something’s wrong. She only came back last fall because of Tabby, then immediately took off again. Now she turns up out of the blue?” She shook her head. “Honey, do you think she’s in some kind of trouble? It’s not like her to come back home willingly.”
    The truth of that statement cut him to the core. Stoner knew how much it pained Catherine to acknowledge the depth of the rift between them and their daughter, but it was true. There had always been something about Erin that Catherine had never been able to touch, even when she was a little girl. Stoner might have been able to once, when Erin was small, but as the years passed his relationship with his daughter had gotten even worse than the one between mother and daughter.
    Stoner laughed, but it wasn’t with any true amusement. “When has Erin ever not been in trouble, Katie?” He raked a big hand through his gray hair. “God! She makes it so hard to love her. It’s like from the moment she was born, she took one look at me, and thought ‘what can I do to piss him off?’ I don’t want to feel that way about her, damn it. She’s my daughter.”
    “I know, honey.” Catherine took his hand and stroked the back of it. “Just a year ago, I would have chalked up your worry to concern about how Erin’s behavior would reflect badly on our family, but in the last six months you’ve changed.”
    He took her hand. “How do I get through to her?”
    She shook her head. “I wish I knew the answer. The two of you may be too much alike in some ways to ever have an easy relationship. You’re both hot-tempered.”
    Stoner snorted. “Yes, but where I hang on to a mood for a long time, Erin is a flash fire.”
    Catherine nodded. “There’s a lot to that. She could never understand how you could still be mad at her hours later when she had long since moved beyond whatever it was that triggered your argument.”
    “And I thought she was trying to deliberately provoke me with an attitude that seemed uncaring and unrepentant.”
    Catherine leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “God forgive me, Stoner. I don’t want to turn her away if she needs our help, but I can’t go back and relive what it was like all through her teenage years. It made our marriage nearly impossible to endure, and we weren’t on a great footing to start. We’ve come such a long way recently.”
    She paused and took a deep breath. “There’s a part of me that wishes she would stay away.” When she didn’t say anything more, he looked at her. Her expression pleaded for understanding, guilt and sorrow mixing in equal measure. “Whatever happens, for whatever reason she’s come back, please don’t let it come between us. I need you, honey. I need what we’ve found again. These last six months…”
    “…have been the best we’ve ever had,” he finished with a gentle smile as he leaned forward to kiss her lingeringly. “We could put her in the guesthouse.”
    “Stoner!” She drew back in horror.
    “Think about it. She’d have her privacy. We would have ours. She’s nearly twenty-seven, Katie. I’m sure there are areas of her life I don’t want or need to know about. And quite frankly, I think we’re due for a little privacy.” He grinned at her. “Maybe a lot of privacy.”

Chapter 2
     
    Sam woke up and lay still for a moment, instantly alert, darkness thick around him. The time he’d spent in the military had left a lasting effect. He assessed his surroundings, listening for what had awakened him. He heard it again. Crying. Who? Erin.
    She never cried. Even as a kid. It was