told me. They don’t know if another girl was involved or if it was the city or the lifestyle that he got caught up in. Either way, he didn’t want this life, and he didn’t want Tammy.”
Leo snorts. “Your dad’s the guy in that song, that ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’...”
My brow dips. “I guess I never picked up on that.”
Leo’s eyes harden as he watches me, and I can hear the hesitation in his voice when he asks, “So… what happened then?”
“So then… Tammy was heartbroken, but she was—is—beautiful, inside and out, and she had so many guys waiting on the sidelines just for a chance at dating her, but she’d always been my dad’s. By the time he came back toward the end of summer, she was already dating Big H.”
“Big H?”
I nod. “Holden Senior. He’s known as Big H around here, because… well, he’s big. Anyway, she was seventeen, and he was older, twenty-five, and already running the family business. He was safe for her, and he offered her the kind of security that my dad had just stripped from her.”
Leo nods, taking all this in.
“My mom,” I tell him, “was just passing through. She knocked on the door one day, and Papa offered her a job as a seasonal.” I point to the barn behind me. “She stayed in there.”
Leo peers over at the barn. I don’t know if he knows what’s in there, or has seen inside, but he doesn’t ask anything more about it, and I’m grateful. “So, your mom and dad met, and then...”
“Papa says that as soon as that Devil Woman set eyes on my dad, he could tell something was off. She was twenty-seven, ten years older than him, but she… she wanted him, or something from him, and my dad...” I take a breath. “Papa says he was pathetically heartbroken about Tammy, especially since she seemed so happy with Holden’s dad. But Dad was also stupidly proud and never told her how he felt. Soon, Papa would hear him sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, and he knew what was happening. He could sense it.”
“Jesus,” Leo murmurs, pushing out a breath.
“It gets worse,” I say.
“I’m scared,” Leo replies, his freckled nose wrinkling.
“A month into the school year, Tammy announced her engagement.”
His face falls. He knows where this is going.
“A week later, they were married, a month after that, Tammy was already beginning to show.”
“Holden?” he asks, and I nod.
“Tammy never went back to normal school, and my mom—she didn’t leave at the end of summer. Mom and Dad stopped hiding their relationship from Papa, and it wasn’t long until…” I point to myself.
Leo looks like he’s been sucker-punched right in the gut. And I get it. I wasn’t created out of love, and he realizes this now.
“Holden and I were born three months apart. But I was nothing more than a revenge plot from my dad and a sinister one from my mom. She had her claws in him, thinking that he’d stay for her, that he’d inherit the farm and all the money that came with it once Papa died... at least that’s how Papa sees it.”
After removing his cap, Leo runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends. “And they were both still in high school—Tammy and your dad?”
I nod. “Scandalous, right?”
Leo’s eyes are everywhere, all at once, as if searching for missing pieces of a puzzle.
“Papa forced Dad to do the right thing and marry my mom.”
“No way,” he breathes out.
Nodding, I say, “Technically, as far as I know, they’re still married.”
Leo’s chewing his lip, still trying to process everything, and while he’s doing that, I continue. “Holden and I were born, but in the meantime, Mom moved into the main house, and Dad got a full-ride scholarship to MIT.”
“The MIT?”
Another nod. “The very one.”
“And?” Leo urges, his eyes wide, waiting.
“And when it was time, he left with the promise that he’d get a job, send as much money as he could and that he’d come back as often as possible. He convinced Papa that it was the best thing he could do for my future. Only he never planned on coming back, and my mom—she must’ve sensed it—because a week after he left, so did she. With me. And she didn’t tell anyone. Not even Papa.”
Leo’s eyes drift shut, his hands balled on his lap.
“Three years later, she came back. The way Papa tells it—he opened the door, and every