Chapter Fifteen #2
Not surprisingly, his father was there before him, sitting at the table with a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. Max waited until Wilder had poured himself a mug and taken a long swallow before he spoke.
“We need to talk.”
“Can it wait?” Wilder asked. “I promised to ride out with Logan today. He thinks there’ve been coyotes prowling around the northern boundary.”
“No, it can’t wait,” his father said. “It’s already waited too long.”
Wilder’s brows rose in response to the cryptic comment. “Okay...so what is it that you think we need to talk about?”
“I’m worried about you,” Max said. “That you’ve closed yourself off from the possibility of finding love.”
“Seriously? That’s what you want to talk about right now? Didn’t we discuss enough touchy-feely stuff the other day?”
“This is important,” his father insisted.
“I know my brothers all falling in love has created some kind of wedding fever, but just because I’m not in a hurry to follow in their footsteps doesn’t mean I’ve closed myself off,” he said.
“This has nothing to do with your brothers,” Max told him. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m overjoyed with the recent and future additions to our family, but right now I’m focused on you.”
“Well, you don’t need to focus on me,” he said. “I’m fine. I’m happy. Life is good.”
“So why did you let Beth take Cody away just when you were finally starting to connect with him?”
Wilder frowned. “I let Beth take Cody because she was going home to bury her sister—Cody’s mother—and that little boy is the only family she has left.”
“That little boy is your family, too.”
“Did the DNA results come when I wasn’t here?”
“I don’t need a piece of paper to know Cody’s your son,” his father insisted.
“Well, I promised Beth that no decisions would be made about Cody’s future until we had the results. So if we’re done here, I’m going to—”
“We’re not done.” Max scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed wearily. “Not even close.”
Wilder refilled his mug, because something in his dad’s demeanor warned him that he was going to need it.
“I know Cody’s situation struck a nerve with you because you think he was abandoned the same way you were abandoned.”
“The coincidence is hard to ignore,” he acknowledged.
“Except that your mother didn’t abandon you.”
Wilder wished the caffeine would kick-start his tired body and sluggish brain so that he could keep up with his father’s thought processes. “One day she was there and the next day she was gone—what would you call it?”
“She didn’t leave you and your brothers...she left me.”
“She left all of us.”
Max shook his head. “She planned to find a place of her own and then she was going to move out and take you kids with her.”
Wilder swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “And yet that never happened.”
“No,” his father agreed. “I asked her not to go. I didn’t understand why she was so unhappy in our marriage, but I offered to go to marriage counseling. I promised to change.
“But she knew me better than I knew myself,” Max acknowledged. “She called my bluff. We had one session with a couples’ therapist and it was a complete waste of time.”
“I can only imagine,” Wilder said dryly.
“I was the same man she claimed to have fallen in love with, so I didn’t understand what had changed, why she’d fallen out of love with me.
“I blamed her. She’d grown up out East, living a life of wealth and privilege.
And while we were well enough off, she didn’t know how hard I needed to work to ensure the ranch remained successful.
” His father stared into the bottom of his empty coffee mug.
“But it was my fault. I wasn’t a very good husband.
I was so busy working the ranch, I didn’t think about the fact that she was alone in the house taking care of six kids.
I only cared that she was there for me when I came in at the end of the day.
“When your four oldest brothers went off to school, she started taking you and Knox into town for a story time program at the library. She said it would help you both develop social skills and make friends, but it was Sheila who met someone.
“Every week, after story time, she’d stop by the little café next door. That’s where she met him. He was the owner of the café, and they became friends—at least that’s what she told me. But over time, their friendship grew into love.”
Wilder didn’t know how to respond to any of this. He could only imagine how distraught Max had been to discover that his wife was in love with another man.
“And she told me that she couldn’t stay married to me when she was in love with someone else.”
In his father’s words, Wilder heard not just bitterness and anger but the heartache that remained after so many years. Because while no one would ever deny that Maximilian Crawford could be a real son of a bitch, there was also no doubting that he’d deeply and sincerely loved his wife.
“So I told her she was free to go,” his dad confided now. “But no way in hell was she taking my sons.”
“And she chose her lover over her family,” Wilder concluded.
But Max shook his head. “She said that she loved him, but she would never love anyone more than her children.”
“But she left,” he said again.
“She left,” his father confirmed. “Because I told her to get out. I sent her away.”
“Why?”
Max pushed away from the table to refill his mug of coffee. “Because I loved her and she didn’t love me back. Because I was selfish and angry and hurt. Because I wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt me.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell us this before?” he asked, when his father was seated at the table again.
“Because I was afraid, if you boys knew the truth...”
“If we knew the truth what?” Wilder pressed.
“I was afraid you’d blame me,” Max acknowledged. “And you should—because it was my fault. Even when I sent her away, I knew I was acting out of anger and spite and that I’d probably regret the things I said and did. But I always thought there’d be a chance to make things right.”
“Then she died,” Wilder said. Not that he remembered anything from that time, but he’d been told about her sudden passing soon after the divorce papers were signed.
His father nodded. “Then she died—and it was too late to undo what I’d done. And what was the point in telling you the truth then?”
“What was the point?” he asked incredulously. “Maybe the point was that we’d know the truth rather than thinking she didn’t want us.”
“You’re right,” his dad agreed. “But it was hard enough, living with my own guilt. I couldn’t bear having to live with my sons’ anger and hate.”
“You should have told us,” Wilder said.
Max nodded again. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about the choices I made,” he confided.
“To regret the things I said and did. It was my fault she left. My fault you grew up without a mom.” He looked up then, pinning Wilder with his gaze.
“My fault you haven’t let yourself open your heart because you don’t trust a woman to stick around. ”
“I know you like to think you can control everything, Dad,” Wilder said dryly, “but not even you can make me fall in love or not fall in love.”
Max’s expression wasn’t unsympathetic as he shook his head. “And you’re so determined to keep your heart closed off, you can’t even see that you’ve already fallen.”