Man of Honor (Battle Scars #3) - Diana Gardin Page 0,85

pipe permanently after that week. So he was gone for two weeks at a time. During those two weeks, Miranda would spend every second she could with Richard.”

I look up, startled. “Richard?”

She nods. “Richard. That was his name. And…as you can probably expect, Miranda got pregnant with Richard’s baby.”

I suck in a sharp breath. Me. She got pregnant with me. Richard is my father. Where did it all go wrong? Why didn’t he try to help her? Why didn’t he stay with her?

Staring at the picture of my mother, I can only imagine what her life would have been like if she had left Timothy and stayed with Richard.

“Well, naturally, she couldn’t hide a pregnancy. She had to come clean to Richard about Timothy and her life here in Blythe. He felt lied to, cheated. And I guess in a way that was true. But Miranda’s heart belonged to him. He just couldn’t see it at the time.”

Rage fills me, and I suck in a deep breath so it doesn’t explode all over Sandy Sheridan’s living room. “He ditched her?”

She shakes her head, her expression forlorn. “He couldn’t. He loved her. He tried to talk her into leaving Tim, moving to Athens with him. He was going to finish school and make a life for them.”

I lean back against the couch. Suddenly, I’m weary. This story is making me feel tired, and sick, and just strung out. I was only a blip on the radar at that point, but I’d never known any of this as a kid growing up. And I was so miserable with my own circumstances, I never stopped to think how miserable she was. About how she got to the place she was in.

“What happened?” I whisper.

Sandy places a hand on my knee. She seems to realize that I’m falling apart on the inside, and one reassuring squeeze from her hand is enough to give me a little fortitude. She continues.

“She told Timmy that she was leaving him, and that the baby wasn’t his. He threatened to beat that baby right out of her if she tried to leave him. I would have thought that he’d let her go, once he knew that the baby she had growing inside of her was another man’s, but he wouldn’t. He just held on tighter, wrapping a noose around her neck so tight that she could barely breathe. He told her that if she left him, he’d hunt her down. He’d kill her, the baby growing inside her, and the man who put that baby there. It was enough to terrify her. It was enough to make her stay.”

Sandy brushes a stray tear that had left her eye and had begun to coast down her cheek. She sniffs. “She broke it off with Richard. She feared for his safety, she feared for yours. She knew Timmy well enough to know he’d never let her go. So she sent me to Athens to tell him that she’d lost the baby, and she didn’t want to be with him anymore.”

And there it is. That’s the reason he never came looking for me. That’s the reason he never stepped up and became a father. That’s why he never lifted a finger to help my mother.

He didn’t know.

It’s like a drumbeat pounding inside my head. I have a father out there, and he thought I died when I was still inside my mother’s stomach. Nausea rolls inside me, and I take deep breaths to try and keep it down. I take another sip of water. Cough.

Sputter.

Swallow.

Repeat.

“What about…what about after I was born? Tim left her, right?” I don’t recognize my own voice. It’s full of rage. Of hatred. Of despair. All the emotions I’m feeling are rolling around inside me like an unsettled sea, threatening to pull me down into the deep, dark depths.

Sandy can’t stop the flow of tears now. “He was such a bastard. He made sure she severed all ties with the people who loved her. He made sure she couldn’t depend on anyone but him. He watched her suffer. He watched her die inside because she couldn’t be with the person she truly loved. And then, a year after you were born, he left and never looked back. He was picked up a few months after that for armed robbery, and I hear through the grapevine that he’s been in and out of prison ever since.”

“Shit.” It’s just a breath of a word. “Why didn’t she go back to