as Liv walked in the door after work. “And left a healthy check.”
“Let me see that,” Liv said, striding across the room. She coughed when she saw the amount—about five times what she’d paid for Beckett. “Great. Just great,” she muttered, dropping the mail on the end table next to her father so he could go through it. Now she’d have to hammer this out with Matt.
“I don’t understand one thing about this,” Tim said. “You broke up with the guy. Why does he get the horse?”
“Because he should have always had him,” Liv said wearily. Her father did not look as if he were buying her statement, but went back to reading his paper, his expression morose.
Liv was having an increasingly hard time being around her father while he was in this funk, induced no doubt by both his illness and Margo.
Figuring he couldn’t feel any worse than he did now, and desperately needing to distract herself from Matt and this check, Liv fired out the question that she’d been holding back for so long.
“What happened with you and Margo?”
“There was a time you didn’t ask questions like that,” Tim said irritably.
“I’ve changed.” Which was why Matt was out of the picture. So that she could maintain her changes without being tempted to fall back into her old patterns.
“What’s to tell?” he said with a shrug.
“Were you involved when my mom was in the picture?”
“Who said we were involved at all?”
“Give me a break, Dad. It’s obvious that something happened between you.” He sent her a baleful look, which she ignored, feeling very much like she was dealing with one of her patients. She had to help them learn to deal with pain in order to get better. Maybe it was time for Tim to do the same.
“Before.”
“So...thirty years ago?”
“Thirty-two. She helped me build this house.”
Liv looked around the room. “This house.” She pointed at the floor with her index finger.
“The same. She drew up the plans.”
“Wow.” Liv sat in the chair opposite her father. “What happened?”
Tim made a helpless gesture. “I did, I guess. Margo never kowtowed to me. We saw eye-to-eye on most everything, except for one thing. Money. She had it. I didn’t.”
“And...”
“And I wouldn’t let her bankroll me,” he said as if it were obvious.
“First she wanted to pay for the place herself, but I said no. Then she wanted to go fifty-fifty.”
“Fifty-fifty seems fair.”
Tim’s jaw clenched tight, making the cords in his neck stand out for a moment before he spoke. “My dad never did shit around the place when I was growing up.” Liv blinked. “My ma did everything, paid for everything. I decided clear back when I was a kid that I was never going to be that kind of man. Having other people do things for me. I was going to be the doer. The provider.”
“You’ve done that,” Liv murmured. Tim gave a jerky nod and Liv began to wonder if maybe she shouldn’t have opened this particular can of worms. She’d never met her grandfather—he’d passed before she was born and Tim rarely spoke of him. Now she knew why. Tim had no respect for him.
“That’s why you broke up?”
“There were other reasons, but that was one of them. She told me I was stubborn and if I couldn’t learn to bend a little, then she wouldn’t want to bend, either. So she left.”
“Damn, Dad.”
“I screwed up, although, looking back, I don’t think I could have done it any differently at that age. I was still so damned mad at my dad for working my ma to death.” His head fell back against the headrest. “So Margo married Bill Carlton and moved to Wyoming.”
“And you?”
“I married your mom.”
“Why?” The question she’d wondered about for at least two decades slipped right out of her mouth.
“Your mom was...is...beautiful and bubbly and she was the picture of cooperation. She agreed to whatever I said.” Tim’s mouth tightened slightly. “And I liked that, at first.”
“Not so much later?”
“I don’t like talking about this.”
“That’s okay. I don’t blame either of you. I could just never figure out why you got married.”
“Now you know.” He sounded bitter, but Liv was relieved to finally know the score. Her dad had screwed up. So had Margo, in a way. Neither had been willing to bend.
“So...no chance of you and Margo ever becoming friends again?”
Tim snorted. “Let me put it this way...can you think of anything that would piss me off more than paying my hospital bill?”