A Family for Christmas by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“WHEN I WAS fifteen my mom was diagnosed with kidney disease.”

Simon didn’t move as Cara’s words filled the night air.

He’d taken a gamble, coming out to sit with her. For such a strong woman, she was fragile when it came to accepting help.

She named the disease, pronouncing the medical term perfectly. He wasn’t all that familiar with it, but knew that it had to do with a body’s rejection of its own kidneys. Killing healthy kidneys. And eventually taking its toll on other organs.

There was no cure, no known cause. It wasn’t genetic, was a slow killer. And, from what he knew, had the potential to be incredibly painful.

“We knew she was going to die.”

Cara’s voice had changed. Almost like she was a girl of fifteen again.

“You were close?”

He’d told himself before he’d come out that he’d ask absolutely no questions. He’d be there if she needed him, but he wasn’t to engage otherwise.

“Yes.”

He was pretty sure she’d nodded. He wasn’t looking.

“I was an only child,” she said then. “Mom and I... We did everything together. She’d do laundry on Mondays and Fridays, and when I came home from school, I’d put it all away. Thursday was grocery shopping. She’d be waiting for me when I got home and off we’d go...”

The lightness in her tone made it hard for him to swallow.

“She wanted me to join Girl Scouts, to dance, or do gymnastics, to join a club at school, but I didn’t want to. I really just wanted to be with her. She played games with me. She’d been reading to me since I was born and I loved to sit while she was sewing, or doing Dad’s books on the computer, and just read...”

Dad’s books. Confirmation that there’d been a father in the picture.

Cara’s voice drifted off, leaving him there with her, as a little girl, sitting in her mother’s study as she read.

“She taught me to cook.” A full minute had passed. He wondered where she’d been. “But she didn’t just have me watch her, she showed me how and let me try. By the time I was ten I had dinner jobs—salad and dessert. I got to pick the dessert.”

It sounded like she was smiling. Simon was thankful for the night air cooling his hot skin. For the hard branch beneath his thighs, keeping him from sliding closer.

“I now know why I always wanted to be home with her...”

He almost asked...

“It was Karma’s way of giving me every minute I could get.”

The pain in those few words had him squeezing the log with his fingers. He could feel how badly she hurt. Couldn’t imagine how she’d survived such a loss at a time in her life when a young woman needed her mother most.

His idea of a karma that would let her get so close to her mother only to strip her away was not nearly as kind as Cara’s.

And to go from that to a man who beat her...

Yet...she’d done as her mother had done.

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