Chapter 32
Beckett
After Ali left, the cabin was silent. June looked shaken, her features pale and her mouth pinched.
He wanted to pull her into his arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sitting down next to her at the table that was covered with her father’s journals.
She gave a short laugh. “No. In fact, I’m about as far from okay as possible. And that’s coming from someone who recently
had a cardiac arrest. How would you feel if you just found out everything you thought you knew about yourself and about your
life might be wrong?”
“It doesn’t change who you are. You are still Juniper Connelly, a woman of strength and courage who has worked damn hard to
create her own success. You are still a loving daughter who has cherished memories of your mother. You are still a survivor.”
“I loved my father. I never knew him so I didn’t love him , per se. I have no memories of him at all. But I loved the idea of him. My mother always talked about what a good, honorable man he was and how much he had loved being my father.”
She suddenly pressed a fist to her stomach, a single tear dripping out to slide down the side of her nose. He felt helpless,
not knowing how to comfort her in the face of this kind of upheaval.
“How could she have done it?”
He frowned. “Alison?”
“My mother! How could she have passed me off as Jimmy Connelly’s child?”
“She might not have known otherwise, June.”
“If Alison is right, my mother had an affair. She was married to my father and she slept with Carson Wells.”
“People do all kinds of things for reasons we can’t know.” He wished he had a better answer for her, but it was all he could
come up with.
“You don’t understand. This is Elizabeth Connolly we’re talking about. She was always going on about character and integrity.
How your actions defined your character. You are what you do, she always said.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Once, she found a hundred dollar bill in the pocket of a coat she bought at a charity shop and
she returned it to the store! I asked her why, when we never had any spare change and could have used a windfall like that
ourselves—and when the store probably wouldn’t be able to find the owner, anyway. She said that while it was true we could
have found a use for the money, she would rather have it go for a good cause than to keep it and spend it, knowing it didn’t
belong to us.”
Ah. That must be where June had inherited her sense of honor, of decency, that seemed an integral part of her. He admired
it, even as he understood those traits would also make it even harder to accept that her mother might have made some difficult
choices.
“She sounds remarkable.”
“She was. Or at least I always thought so. How could that same woman cheat on her husband?”
He reached for her hand and folded his own around her cold, trembling fingers, trying to give her some of his warmth. “I wish
I had answers for you. Your mom is gone so we can’t ask her side of it. We will probably never know the details about what
happened between her and Carson.”
June looked down at their joined hands, then her gaze shifted beyond them to the stacks of journals on the table.
“But we do have Carson’s journals from that time. He talked about everything.”
She pulled her hands away and picked one up, flipping it open. “Maybe my mother was his lost love. His ‘E.’ I think she is the woman he wrote The Forgotten Road about! We have to find that manuscript!”
He was relieved that the stricken look in her eyes had given way, if only temporarily, to excitement. At the same time, he
didn’t want her to have to process more disappointment with everything else.
“We don’t know that there is a manuscript,” he reminded her gently.
“There is. There has to be. Maybe it has all the answers. About my mother, about their relationship. About me.”
“He couldn’t have known about you, June. We might not know what happened between Carson and your mother, but again, I have
not a single shred of doubt about that.”
She released a breath, clutching the journal tightly, this tangible link to the father she hadn’t known in life.
“You knew all this time about the DNA connection between me and Alison, didn’t you? From the time you picked us up at the
airport. You knew that’s why she brought me here to Wyoming.”
He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. His silence was answer enough.
“You should have told me.”
“I wanted to. I wrestled with myself about it.”
“If it was such a dilemma for you, why not tell me?”
“It wasn’t my secret. And what would I have said? You wouldn’t have believed me, anyway, would you?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “I still don’t like that you kept it from me.”
“When you first arrived here, you weren’t in a good place for that kind of shock. You were still healing and trying to adjust
mentally to a major health diagnosis.”
“I’m still trying to adjust.”
He again wanted to hug her. So many changes in her life, one on top of the other.
“I know,” he said softly. “I expect you will be for some time. For what it’s worth, I’ve been urging Ali to tell you since you started feeling better. She wanted to, but I think she was afraid to push you away.”
She was silent, sipping at her water. He was happy to see her hands had stopped trembling, though he suspected she would be
processing the news for a long time.
“Is that why you’ve been so nice to me?” she finally asked. “Because you believe I’m your friend’s daughter?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know that I have been particularly nice to you.”
“You let me watch you work. You gave me a job to do, looking through the journals. You took me for a hike.”
You kissed me.
She didn’t say the words, but they hovered between them and he felt them, with a curious ache in his chest.
“At first,” he went on, “I might have been polite to you because of your connection to Carson and Ali. But throughout the
time you’ve been in Bridger Peak, I’ve also come to like you in your own right.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
“Why wouldn’t I like you, June? You are a smart, driven, passionate woman, traits I find incredibly appealing.”
She gazed at him, eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. The urge to kiss her burned through him, but he couldn’t do it.
He didn’t need to complicate her life even more, after everything that had happened that day, or do something they would both
regret.
She glanced away briefly. When she met his gaze again, he saw she had donned her calm composure.
“I’m still not happy about you lying to me,” she said. “Okay, maybe you didn’t lie overtly, but you certainly withheld important
truths from me. You should have told me.”
“I should have. You’re right. I’m sorry. Next time I find out you’re the secret love child of my neighbor and friend, I’ll
tell you straightaway.”
She made a face, though he could tell his facile response had eased the subtle tension between them.
“I’m also sorry we didn’t get very far with your manuscript quest. I can come back again tomorrow, if you want.”
“I would appreciate that. I’m more determined than ever to find the manuscript.”
“I’ll be in touch tomorrow about a time that works.”
“Sounds good.”
He studied her as he rose. “Don’t be too hard on Ali for not telling you right away. She adored her father and I think she
was conflicted for a long time about even reaching out to you. In the end, she decided it was the right thing to do. I’m glad
she did. I hope in time, you will be, as well.”
“I would like to see the verifying DNA results first. Then we’ll see.”
“Understandable. Good night, June. Thanks for dinner.”
“I forgot we even had dinner,” she said with a raw-sounding laugh as she rose, as well. “It feels like a lifetime ago.”
Now he couldn’t resist following through on the impulse he had been fighting since Ali left. He pulled her into his arms.
She sagged against him, her arms around him. She didn’t cry; she simply held on as if they were caught in a flash flood and
he was the one solid thing keeping her from being swept under.
They stood that way for a long time, until he felt the slight tremors of her body ease, then he stepped away.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, then he kissed her forehead and walked out of the cabin.