been laid out on a freaking doily-lined silver platter.
She’d stopped asking why by her eighth birthday. Convinced herself she didn’t care why by her tenth. But maybe Alex and her grandmother were right. Maybe that approach had partially driven her away from Chestertown.
If she was going to come back more, she needed to remove that block.
“Dad?”
“You need help with the coffee?”
“No.” In fact, Sydney was relieved at the opportunity to keep doing chores during this conversation. “Why did Mom leave?”
The cash register drawer slammed shut. After an elephant-sized pregnant pause—weren’t they the animal with a year and a half gestation—he clipped out a single word. “Dunno.”
Well. Not exactly on par with cracking the Rosetta Stone.
They were adults now. Couldn’t he reveal whatever he knew? Was Neil still trying to protect her?
Sydney bit her lip, and then let out the question that burbled up like decades-old reflux. “Why weren’t we enough for her?”
This time the silence was broken by the harsh drag in of his breath. And the slow hiss of him letting it out. Sydney felt like he could’ve inflated a hot air balloon with that hiss before he finally stopped and sat down on Gram’s stool.
“Sometimes the why doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. There has to be a why. You don’t walk away from your husband, your son, your daughters, unless there’s one hell of a good reason.”
“I’m sure she had one.”
Sydney’s subconscious had, apparently, spent decades working through possibilities. And now she let them fly. “This isn’t Manhattan. I doubt the mob was after her. If she’d gone into Witness Protection, she would’ve taken us with her. If it was another man—sorry, Dad—then she would’ve still fought to see me, Kim, and Cam. If she was a secret CIA agent, she’d be back by now and would’ve stuck to her cover. If it—”
“Sydney.” Her father’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder to cut her off. “Stop.”
She whirled around. She’d been wrong, before. This kind of confrontation couldn’t be hidden behind coffee urns. It had to be face-to-face.
Even though Neil was so tall she was more or less confronting the collar of his green button-down.
“I tried that, Dad. I tried not thinking about it, not wondering, for a really long time. I more or less ran away from here to get away from the constant, niggling memory shadow of her every single place I looked. But now I’m back. I need to know. I think I deserve to know.”
“Well, kiddo, I think you do, too. I think we all do.” He rubbed his hands up and down from her shoulders to her elbows. “But I don’t have an answer for you. Last I checked, neither did she. Believe me, I checked a hell of a lot of times. As we worked through the divorce and the custody agreement. As I kept trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and give her every possible chance to see you kids.”
Sydney gasped. “So it was us she was running away from?”
“Nope. Not at all. It also wasn’t me. Wasn’t your gram. Wasn’t Chestertown, wasn’t the Merc. Sheila spelled out, clear as mud, every single thing that it wasn’t. Over and over again.”
“But she wouldn’t say what it was?”
“Your mom wasn’t mean like that. If she could’ve put it into words, given me a bit of ease, she would’ve. Wanna know a secret?”
“Always.”
“I saw a counselor. Drove over the bridge to Annapolis to do it, so nobody would know.”
It made her heart hurt that he’d gone to those lengths. Especially since he’d insisted that his three kids talk to a counselor at the school district. “Dad. You don’t have to be ashamed for getting help.”
“Right. Now I can say that.” He crinkled up his nose, as if a skunk had just walked through the memory. “Back then, right after my wife did a runner? Not so much.”
“Did it help you?”
“As much as anything. Here’s what she told me about Sheila. What she thought happened.” He paused to scrub both hands up and down his face. “When you’re not happy, you try like mad to fix it. You can’t be responsible for everyone else. For anyone else. Just yourself. Because, ultimately, nobody else will be.”
Sydney pondered it a minute. While it wasn’t satisfying, it did make sense. “That’s why she thought Mom left?”
“Yes. As selfish as it sounds.”
She’d heard something in his tone, though. Seen a pointed look in his blue eyes. There was more her dad wanted her to take away