Chapter 29
twenty-nine
“Fire and gunpowder do not sleep together.” - Proverb
An unseen force had kept her from driving up that lane before—a mix of fear and resentment. It was the anger that gave her the courage now as her car wove its way up, passing under gnarled old oaks stationed like sentries along the gravel.
It was anger, too, that kept her from admitting part of what Cole had said was true.
She wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet, let alone look in the mirror and see where she might’ve been wrong.
She’d spent her life painting this town as her enemy, but how much of that had been fodder fed to her by a bitter old woman and a mama who hadn’t always made the best choices?
And what of this blooming relationship with her sister? And… Cole? Thinking of them made it harder to hang onto the fire and the steel it had forged in her spine.
So she shook those thoughts from her mind as she pulled into the circle drive, stopping in front of the house.
The massive facade seemed to watch her—columns stretching two stories, aged but well-kept brick shaded by double-decker wraparound porches.
What a place to grow up. She could picture ladies from a century and a half ago in wide hoop skirts, fanning themselves through the blazing summer heat.
When she rang the bell, a deep gong reverberated through the stately house. While she waited, she traced the length and width of the porch. The sheer size seemed like overkill, but its age reminded her it needed to be wide enough for those skirts to pass two by two.
The creak of ancient hinges drew her attention back as the ornately carved wooden door swung inward. She was surprised to find it was her biological grandfather who peered out at her.
Errol Abbott released a breath like it’d been sitting in his lungs too long.
“I wondered when you might show up.” His words were elongated in the drawl that was familiar for this region, though it was different than Cole’s.
It was more stretched and rounded, whether from age or from his perceived station, she couldn’t tell.
Despite her still-simmering rage, her southern roots had never fully left her. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
He swung the door wider as answer. “Come on in.” There was no grandfatherly warmth, but he was polite enough. Maybe even resigned.
Inside, her shoes made no sound on the thick rug that covered the shiny wood floors. A massive staircase loomed to her left, tall doorways lining the high-ceilinged hall. A chandelier glittered above. She could imagine the rooms beyond—family room, a library, a dining room, the kitchen.
Errol led her through the first doorway on the left into something like a parlor.
The windows stretched floor to ceiling, the swath of light diffused by gauzy curtains framed by heavy, embroidered drapes.
Gilded portraits stared down from the walls, the solemn faces belonging to ancestors she was possibly tied to by blood.
“Have a seat.” Errol gestured to an antique-style sofa of carved mahogany and cream upholstery.
She lingered in the wide doorway, watching him lower himself into a wingback chair with an old man’s weary grunt.
“You are welcome to make yourself comfortable, but if you’d rather stand, be my guest.”
She studied the room, pausing on the dour-faced man whose likeness hung in an ornate frame above the fireplace behind Errol.
“That is your five-times great-grandfather,” he said, steepling his fingers. He gave her an academic appraisal she tried to ignore. “Lewis Abbott. He built this house.”
Her eyes slid back to his, dulled gray with time.
“You’re surprised. These are modern times. I have no reason nor desire to deny who you are to me, child.”
Something twisted in her stomach. If he had no reason to deny it, why pretend she didn’t exist all these years?
He sighed. “Now, my dear wife—God rest her—had old-fashioned ideas about things.”
On the surface, he seemed so benign. But there was still something in his tension, the way he sat so tightly, she suspected there was something underneath.
“And since she’s no longer alive, she’s a convenient scapegoat,” Jocelyn said, testing him.
A flash lit in his gaze like the glint of light along a blade. “You are quick to think the worst of people.”
“Can you blame me? The way my mama and I were treated for all those years—”
“Your mama,” he interrupted, “had a chip on her shoulder, and pride a mile wide.” The kind of authority he was used to wielding edged his words. He leaned forward, ready to say more.
“Dad.”
The voice came from behind her, sending a bolt of electricity up her spine. She turned.
Seeing Daniel Abbott struck her even more than a few days prior, when she hadn’t been ready for it.
He had the leanly muscular build of a high school jock.
With his clean-shaven face, the lines from smiles and frowns were more evident, but it only served to make him appealingly distinguished.
No doubt it gave him an edge in the real estate industry.
A handsome face, clean-cut lines, well-cared for body, and charm that was second nature went a long way.
Though his hands hung loosely, the line of tension was obvious when he walked into the room. Stepping from the dim hallway into sunlight, he was like an ethereal being, and it made Jocelyn realize how easily her mama must’ve fallen for him all those years ago.
Daniel looked more like a whipped dog at the moment, though. Nothing like the imperious, if muted, older man who sat across the room from her.
“I’m sorry to hear about Joe’s place,” Daniel said, looking at Jocelyn.
The sentiment stirred her anger. “Are you?”
“Your mama passed on the gift of that chip, I see,” Errol cut in, and Daniel shot him a look. He curled his lip and stood. “I see I am no longer wanted here. In my own home,” he added dryly as he swept by his son.
Daniel moved to the far side of the room as soon as his father was gone, keeping distance between himself and his daughter.
His daughter. The one he’d pretended didn’t exist for decades.
She wasn’t ready for the heart-stuff yet. Fear of rejection steered her elsewhere. “I heard you’ve been trying to get locals to sell off their land to your developers.”
He went still, light catching in crystalline blue eyes—the same eyes she remembered wet with tears after his last argument with her mama.
“Is this your way of asking if I set the house on fire?” He twisted the shiny gold band on his left ring finger.
A coldness seeped into her stomach. “Did you?”
He didn’t react or seem offended. Just kept spinning that ring, his head bowed low. “No.”
That one-word answer landed hard, flat. Honest. And it sent a measure of relief through her.
“Do you think I started the fire that killed your mama?” His voice held resignation.
Emotion came back full-force, and she blinked several times, hating that this was a conversation she had to have with her own father. “Sometimes I wonder.”
He didn’t miss the present tense and lifted his head. “I wish I could say having her gone made things easier.”
The words seared the space between them, and she stepped forward, lip curling as vitriol coated her tongue. “Is that supposed to prove you didn’t?”
“No!” He took a breath to steady himself. “No. I have no proof to offer you.”
“But you did come to the house that day,” she pressed.
His jaw tightened. “Hours before it happened.”
“Why?”
He looked away, shame coloring his cheeks. “To this day, I can’t shake the hold your mama has over me. I will always love her.”
Her blood burned hotter. Good, she thought. You should be miserable without her. “That’s not an answer.”
He swung his face back to her. “Your mama and me—we argued.”
“About what?”
He was no longer twisting his ring, but he held it between his fingers like he had to keep reminding himself it was there. “We’d… had a… tryst.”
She fought the poison of his words, refused to believe it. No way her mama would wreck a home. “Bullshit.”
He grimaced. “Your mama regretted it almost immediately and kicked me out after, told me never to come back, to never speak to her again.”
Jocelyn spun away, trying to fit this in with the woman she knew, the one who’d always been so faultless in her mind.
The circumstances around her conception were a little less black and white but definitely not to this level.
Nan had said Daniel made her mama believe he was free, or would be shortly.
And then he’d come back to tell her that Lydia was pregnant, and that he was going to marry her.
Bonnie had fled town after that only to find herself pregnant, too. She’d tried to stay away, to start a life somewhere else. But for Nan, she came back.
Jocelyn was desperate for that story to be true because believing different would mean a whole shift she wasn’t ready for.
“We never stopped loving each other,” Daniel continued. “And it was a weak moment.”
She turned back to glare at him. He was staring out the window, only his profile visible, limned in bright light.
“I felt like I couldn’t live without her, so I begged her not to end things.”
Another wave of cold washed through Jocelyn. “Were you planning to leave Lydia for her, then?”
He stiffened but didn’t answer right away. The coward.
Her mama would’ve hated being the one who’d ended a marriage, but at least that might’ve been more honest.
“I couldn’t,” he said softly, his mind distant. “I had a daughter.”
Those words ignited within her, a new kind of burning that scorched, and that cold was suddenly gone. “I was your daughter, too. But I hope to hell you were a better father to her than you were to me.”
He spun and stepped toward her. “I didn’t know! She didn’t tell me!”
Incensed, Jocelyn moved forward, too, one finger stabbing in his direction. “Because you chose someone else! Why do you think she left? Why she didn’t tell you?”
He looked away, the muscle in his jaw jumping again.