The Christmas Clock and A Song For My Mother - Kat Martin Page 0,16
and down. For a moment, he looked away. On a shaky breath, he turned back to her. “All those years ... all those years I hated you. Now I look at you and I feel... dammit, Syl, I don't know what I feel.”
“I never meant to hurt you the way I did.”
“What about you, Syl? Did you hurt, too, or was it just me?”
“I thought I was dying. When I lost you, I did die a little. I died inside, Joe. It took me years to make a life for myself.”
“But you did and now you've come back. I wish you'd stayed in Chicago.”
Fresh tears welled. “At least you know the truth. Maybe that's one of the reasons I came home. I owed you the truth. I have since the day I left.”
His eyes narrowed. “It doesn't really change anything. You lied to me. You betrayed my trust.”
“I know. At least now, maybe you can start to forgive me.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw.
Syl stood up on wobbly legs and started for the door. She heard Joe's deep voice behind her.
“Imagine where we'd be now, Syl, if you'd told me the truth back then.”
She turned to face him. “It was a hard time, Joe. Who knows where we would be?”
“I know,” he said firmly. “I think you do, too.”
Syl said nothing more. Her lies had destroyed whatever there had once been between them.
There was only mistrust and sadness now. She held back a sob as she hurried out the door.
Joe watched Syl step out onto the porch and then closed the door behind her.
All those years, all the rage he had felt, the betrayal. He'd gotten into a fistfight because some guy down at the bar had said how hot Syl was and asked if Joe had gotten into her pants.
Just the mention of her name had infuriated him and yet he had found himself defending her, throwing a roundhouse punch that had wound up killing a man. Three years in prison had cooled his temper but not the rage he felt inside. Not his fury.
All because the woman he loved hadn't loved him enough to trust him. Instead of accepting his help and support, she had suffered through cancer on her own. She had lied to protect him. Or so she believed. Instead, she had nearly destroyed him. He felt sick to his stomach.
Walking into the kitchen, he turned on the tap, poured himself a glass of water, and then downed it a single, long gulp. His hands were shaking. He wiped the perspiration off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
She had come back to Dreyerville to tell him the truth.
As he had said, he wished she hadn't come.
It was easier to hang on to his hatred, easier to believe she was nothing at all like the woman he had meant to make his wife. Now, his stomach churned to think of what she had suffered, of all they had lost. And there was this thing going on inside him, feelings for her he couldn't quite make go away. For an instant, when he had seen her on the porch, it wasn't rage he'd felt but a deep, long-buried yearning.
It didn't matter.
Perhaps another man could set the past aside and consider they might still have a future. After the damage she had done and the years he had lost, Joe just wasn't that man.
Sylvia stood at her desk in Dr. Davis's office. She had always wanted to be a nurse and she was a good one. Which was why, for the last six months, she had been thinking of taking the classes necessary to become a physician's assistant. It would take two long years but she had plenty of spare time and she looked forward to the challenge. Two weeks ago, she had registered for night classes at Dreyerville Community College and had started school last night.
With her job and the night classes and seeing old friends, her life should have been full and yet, as each day passed, Syl felt as if something were missing. Maybe it was seeing Joe again, remembering the life they had planned to share, thinking of all she had lost when she had left him.
Maybe it was the way she still felt whenever she thought of him.
Whatever it was, in time, it would pass. She had survived the terrible ordeal of cancer. She could survive a few bittersweet memories.
She looked down at the appointment book lying on top of the desk.