The Cowboy's Convenient Wife by Joanna Bell

Author:Joanna Bell [Bell, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24: Cillian

When I freaked out that day on the mountain, I told Astrid it was because I didn't want her to leave. Which I definitely did not. But that wasn't the reason I almost passed the fuck out beside the stream where we ate my crappy sandwiches. The reason for that was the look on her face when I got angry. It was the look I couldn't, for a few brief seconds, quite place.

Until I could. Until I remembered with sudden clarity where I'd seen that exact same expression before: my mother's face. And it was long enough since she died that had Astrid Walker not looked at me with that same confused woundedness in her eyes, I'm sure I would have gone the rest of my life without ever remembering that look specifically.

It wasn't just the expression, either. It was the circumstances. I remembered precisely why my mother's features would arrange themselves in the same pattern Astrid Walker's did that afternoon. It was when my dad was raging. When he was screaming at her, threatening, throwing shit around. He was worse when he was drunk but drunk or sober didn't really matter, Jack Devlin was always a menace. If he was around you knew it didn't matter how good of a mood he seemed to be in, you just knew that sooner or later it would all go to shit.

My mother died never understanding him. She died never knowing what it was that turned the man she loved into a monster so often, and with so little provocation. I hated my dad for that. I hated him. I hated him for hurting her, for scaring her, for driving her out into the storm that killed her.

You remember hate. You remember anger. These are huge emotions, and they bury themselves deep in your heart. Jack Devlin was the only parent we had left, and we were all so very young when we lost our mother. Of course we clamored for his approval, his respect, his fatherly pride – everything children clamor for from their parents.

But I never stopped hating him. I never forgave him for what he did to my mom. I kept it to myself, of course – you don't grow up on the Devlin Ranch without learning to keep your true feelings to yourself – but I never forgot the hate.

I forgot that expression, though. For almost 20 years, I forgot. My mother was a kind woman, so disinclined to cruelty that it confused her even in other people. That's what that look was. That's what it was on my mom's face, and that's what it was on Astrid Walker's face when I was yelling at her the same way my dad used to yell at his own wife. When I couldn't deal with a sudden onslaught of negative emotion – just like my dad. When I interpreted a woman's kindness as a rebuke – just like my dad.

I hated Jack Devlin for what he did to my mother.

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