Beyond the Spring Breeze novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Porch

My father came out the back door.

He crossed the yard and stopped on the grass in front of me.

I had not moved from beside the hydrangeas.

Behind him, in the lit doorway, Roz stood with her hand over her mouth.

Her mother's shadow stood behind her.

"Thea," my father said.

"Hello, Daddy."

"What are you doing here?"

"I followed you from the ferry."

He glanced back at the door.

Then he took me by the elbow, not hard, and walked me around the side of the house to the dark porch at the front, where the swing hung from two chains.

"Sit," he said.

"I'll stand."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

In the porch light he looked, for the first time I could remember, a tired man of forty-nine who had been lying for nineteen years.

"I never wanted you to know like this," he said.

"How did you want me to know?"

"I didn't."

It was an honest answer.

I almost respected it.

"Roz is your daughter," I said. "Her mother is your wife."

"Her mother is my wife," he said. "Your mother knew."

I went cold.

"What?"

"Your mother knew, Thea. Before you were born. She told me to go if I wanted to go. She was sick, and she said she wouldn't hold a man who didn't want to be held." His voice cracked. "I stayed. I stayed until she died. Then I married her at the courthouse."

"You married her after Mama died."

"Nine years after you were born. I never lied to your mother."

"You lied to me."

"You were a child."

"I'm not a child now."

"No." He looked at me, and I saw him take in the way I stood, with my feet apart and my arms folded. "No, I see that. Something's changed in you."

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