A Merciful Secret by Kendra Elliot

Author:Kendra Elliot [Elliot, Kendra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542047869
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2018-01-15T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

I never met my father.

When I was old enough to notice that the children in my books had a mother and a father, I became curious. For a few years I accepted my mother’s answer that I’d never had one. When I was thirteen I realized that was physically impossible and confronted her again.

We were outside, walking the forest path to her favorite spot, where she prayed in the sunny clearing between the tall pines. She was often gone for several hours. “Harmonizing with nature,” she called it. She had taught me to look for the miracles in the outdoors. Every leaf, each bird, and even the dirt under my feet. I studied the amazing network of veins in the leaves and wondered at their colorful transformations and eventual deaths. I watched the birds fly and ached to join them, to be weightless, to soar. What had God drawn inspiration from to create the fragile creatures that flitted from tree to tree? When I magnified a handful of dirt, new galaxies were revealed, a cosmos of different grains, minerals, and pebbles.

There was much to learn if you took the time.

We reached her spot. Several old stumps stood in the center of the small grassy area. She set a thick candle on the biggest one and gestured for me to sit on one of the smaller. She lit the candle and closed her eyes, taking deep, even breaths, inhaling the scents of the forest’s life. After a moment she took a seat beside me and met my gaze.

“Your father is in prison.”

I don’t know what I had expected, but that was not it. “Why?”

She was silent. “It is a long story.”

“Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

She looked to her candle. “It is.”

I waited, knowing I couldn’t rush her. She would explain when she was ready, but my blood rushed hot through my veins. My father was a criminal. Embarrassment flooded me as if a huge audience had heard the dirty secret. But no one had heard her words except the trees and dirt.

Or did other people know? Was my father one of the reasons my mother was avoided as she walked the aisles in stores? Why no one except her customers came to our home?

“I was young once, you know. I was beautiful, and male eyes followed me.”

“They still do.” I never thought of my mother as old, although I knew she’d been nearly thirty when I was born.

She scoffed. “They don’t see me in the same way.”

I waited.

“I met your father in a dance club—”

“What?” I couldn’t imagine my cloistered mother in such a social environment.

“Hush and listen. I will only tell you this story one time.”

I pressed my lips together; I believed her. I’d never seen her current expression before. Sad, pensive, and pondering. She didn’t sit as straight as usual, and the lines across her forehead had deepened. I smelled an earthy beige aura around her; usually it was a calm, ocean-scented blue. I listened.

“He was handsome and charming.

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