Return to Virgin River (Virgin River #19) - Robyn Carr Page 0,68
cost, if you need me to.”
“It’s not necessary. I have what I need. And the house is mine now.”
“Then if you find the memories aren’t letting you move forward, you can always sell it.”
“I know. I do love the house, I just loved it better when my mom was in it.”
“I feel the same,” he said. “Sometimes I drive by to look at it because I miss her.”
“Just out of curiosity, when did you realize you missed her so much?”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t an amused chuckle. “It didn’t take me too long to realize I’d made a mistake in leaving my marriage to your mother. It took a long time beyond that for her to decide she didn’t hate me for it. My second marriage was difficult and my third was a freak show. The kids seem to be good and well-adjusted in spite of that. Those marriages were supposed to make everything better, but they only served one purpose—to make me realize what a fool I’d been. Why do men who have everything blow it off and lose it all? When you can answer that one, you should write it up and charge a million dollars for it.”
“Weak ego?” she suggested.
“Half a brain?” he said. And they both laughed.
They spent another hour talking about Meredith, what a comfort she was to each of them. Over the years, Howard continued to talk to her about his business problems or work frustrations. But never his family problems. “She flatly refused to listen to any of that. She said I had made my bed and I should lie in it.” And she never mentioned any romantic problems of her own because, as she told him, that was not his concern. “But at least we were friends.”
Kaylee talked about how encouraging her mother had always been, how supportive when she wanted to change careers from something as stable as teaching to something as unreliable as writing fiction. “But she always encouraged me to take a chance. That’s what she had done with her business.”
It was growing late in the day when he said, “Is there any hope we can have a closer relationship?”
“I don’t know, Howie. Like I said, it’s been a long time since I fantasized about having a daddy.”
“Where would we have to start?” he asked. “Because I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
“I don’t think we can recapture that father-daughter thing now. You just don’t know what it’s like.”
“Tell me, Kaylee.”
“I’m not sure you really mean that,” she said with a rueful laugh.
“I do mean it. Tell me where I failed you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think you can possibly understand. Try to picture your six-year-old daughter whose daddy is coming to pick her up. She’s in her favorite outfit and even has a purse, and of course that stuffed rabbit that went everywhere with her.” Kaylee paused for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing. “I sat on the chair in the foyer for what seemed like hours. You didn’t come.” She shook her head sadly.
“You took me to your new house when I was about ten and there were so many people there, I sat on the sofa until it was time to go. Your wife wanted me to call her Mom; your mother-in-law wanted me to call her Mimi. I’d never met them before and they had a big fight in the kitchen before we left. Then there was the father-daughter dance when I was in junior high. You weren’t available for that. I spent most of my childhood either waiting for you or being stood up by you.”
He frowned. “I remember going to your house to see you on a regular basis,” he said. “I walked you down the aisle at your wedding.”
“Most of the time if you came over I would go watch a movie in my room and you and my mom would talk in the kitchen. As for the wedding, thank you for that. And thank you for not bringing your third wife.”
“You must feel you never really had a father...”
“No, what I felt was that I had a father and my father left us. I’m sorry if you were unhappy, but I learned at an early age that I couldn’t make you happy. And Howie, I’m having a little trouble being happy right now myself. So if you’re counting on me to make you happy now...?” She shook her head. “My mother asked me to be kind to