Back Where She Belongs - By Dawn Atkins Page 0,100

Faye was born months after you were married....” Her words trailed off, the answer obvious. Her mother had been pregnant when they married. Another jolt.

“We told everyone she was premature,” her mother said. “We had to say that. Your father’s family...their status...we had no choice.”

“So you and Dad broke up...then you dated Sean?” The words sounded strange to Tara’s ears, felt like hard marbles on her tongue.

“I thought it was over with your father. I was devastated and Sean was kind.”

“Kind?” The word held Sean’s usual bitterness. “I was in love with you, Rachel. And you loved me, too. When Abbott called, you ran to him. You chose money over love.”

“That’s not fair,” she said sharply, head up, her shame diminished for a moment. “You wanted me because he wanted me. You always envied him.”

“That’s not true.” Sean jutted his jaw.

“I chose a life I could count on. You were restless and moody. Abbott knew what he wanted for himself and in a wife. I needed that. I needed a safe place. I grew up in chaos. I wanted security.”

“You didn’t give me a chance,” he said gruffly.

“It was too late, Sean.”

Everything about this moment was surreal to Tara. Revealing this terrible secret, her mother’s voice was more natural and her demeanor more open than Tara had ever seen or heard. But she still didn’t know what had caused that night’s events.

“So Faye told Dad?” Tara guessed.

“No. I made her swear she wouldn’t. Abbott accidentally found the results. The envelope from the genetics company got stuck between two folders Faye gave him at work.”

With a jolt, Tara pictured the address on the envelope in her father’s bloody shirt pocket. CGC Gen was all she’d been able to see. She’d assumed it was some technology firm—Gen part of Generator. Instead it had been Genetics. She remembered the books on his desk on the subject, too.

“Abbott was furious,” Tara’s mother said, her eyes going distant. “On principle. Abbott and his principles. Forget people when there were rules to be followed, a high moral ground to march on. He wanted a divorce. He wanted to destroy everything we’d built, all we’d achieved. Faye tried to calm him down, reassure him that he was still her father, that knowing didn’t change anything.”

Tara remembered the text on her father’s phone.

Nothing changes. Let it go.

“What happened that night, Mom? Before the accident?” Tara asked, dreading what she would hear. Her heart thudded so hard she could hardly hear her mother over the beat.

As if he’d read her mind, Dylan moved beside her and put a warm hand to her back, grounding her. He’d been with her through every trauma in her life, she realized. Even the one he’d caused.

“Abbott wouldn’t let it go. He decided you had to know.” She looked at Sean, who stood still as stone, as if he expected a firing squad to take aim any second. “What was the point? Why cause you pain, too?”

Sean didn’t move or speak, but Tara could feel his anger, his hurt. Her mother must have, too, because her voice went high and desperate. “It was one night forty years ago, Sean. You never asked. We hardly spoke in all those years. You didn’t want to know. Abbott was Faye’s father in all the ways that mattered.”

She turned her gaze back to Tara. “Faye wanted me to go with Abbott to talk to Sean, to make sure they didn’t lose their tempers, destroy the peace they’d come to.” Her mother stopped and took harsh breaths, clearly fighting her emotions.

“I should have gone. I know that now. But I was angry at Faye, hurt that she’d turned against me, that she’d torn us apart at the seams, put my marriage at risk. I told her that she had caused this mess, she would have to live with the consequences.”

Her mother’s eyes flicked from person to person, as if seeking asylum in some face, begging someone to take her side. No one spoke.

“Faye exploded at me. I’d never seen her so angry. She called me selfish and cruel. She said I lied to myself and everyone else, and the lies had ruined my marriage, ruined our family. Such terrible things.” Her mother shook her head. “Then she said she was going with her father to talk to Sean. I told her if she did that, she was no longer my daughter. She’d hurt me so deeply. Don’t you see? She’d betrayed me. She chose her father over me, Sean