Montana Mail-Order Bride by Janet Tronstad

Author:Janet Tronstad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-12-01T16:26:21+00:00

* * *

Matt saw Eleanor in the doorway and the words burst out. “How can you understand? Your mother didn’t leave you because you weren’t good enough for her.” Matt stopped himself. It wasn’t Eleanor’s fault. “I’m sorry. I’m just surprised Luke knew she was alive and didn’t tell me. I thought we parted on good terms, but maybe not. Besides, I always felt like we were agreed on our mother, if nothing else.”

“Maybe he was going to tell you,” Eleanor suggested mildly. “The furniture is new and the shooting happened fast. There might not have been time.”

Matt shook his head. It was all well and good for Eleanor to sugar up life, but he lived in reality. “He had to have known before the furniture and he kept it quiet. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll handle it.”

With that, he reached up and started bringing down the tins of yeast. He set them on the counter, one after another, just like they were small wooden blocks. He knew he should be gentle, but he wasn’t. He found himself banging them as he stacked them.

He heard a wisp of a sigh, and then Eleanor began to speak. “I understand how you feel because my father left our family almost like your mother did, although he used a different excuse.”

Matt looked down and saw that she was staring straight ahead at the edge of the cupboard. Her voice was flat.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

“I loved my father and he was good enough to us,” Eleanor continued. “That is, until Lily was born. Then he changed overnight. At first, I thought it was because I talked too much—chatting, really. I was fifteen and silly sometimes. He seemed tense and I couldn’t seem to be quiet. Anyway, he didn’t want to be home anymore and he’d take off and stay away for weeks with people he met somehow. Gamblers. Women. Sailors, sometimes. We never knew where he was, who he was with or if he’d come back. Eventually I understood it wasn’t me he hated. It was the baby. Lily had a misshapen foot. He said she was a disgrace to him—that in his family children were born perfect or they weren’t born at all. He must have said it many times before I heard it.”

Eleanor looked up at him then. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t been truthful with you about Lily. She can’t walk right.”

Matt could see the turmoil in her eyes. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter.”

He saw tears forming in her eyes.

“Yes, it does,” she whispered and continued. “My mother cried endlessly because my father blamed her for Lily’s foot being the way it was.” She looked up. “You haven’t seen it. It’s bad.”

“It’s okay,” Matt said. He felt helpless to comfort her. He wanted to step forward and hold her, but he could see she wanted to say her piece. She wasn’t even facing him now; she seemed to be looking back in time.

“She kept saying she was sorry, but my father never answered her.

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