Sanctuary

here. I told myself I wanted—needed—time to try to understand it. I justified keeping it to myself because you had all accepted a lie, and the truth was worse. Then I kept it to myself because I wanted you. It got easier to rationalize it. You’d been hurt, you were wounded. It could wait until you trusted me. It could wait until you were in love with me.”
    His fingers flexed and released on the railing as she stood silent behind him. “Rationalizations are usually self-serving. Mine were. After Susan Peters, I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore, or your right to know it. There’s nothing I can do to change it, to atone for what he did. Nothing I can say can heal the damage he did to you and your family.”
    “No, there’s nothing you can do, nothing you can say. He took my mother, and left us all to think she had abandoned us. That single selfish act damaged all of our lives, left a rift in our family we’ve never been able to heal. He must have hurt her.” Jo’s voice quavered so she bit down hard on her lip until she could steady it. “She must have been so frightened, so confused. She’d done nothing to deserve it, nothing but be who she was.”
    She drew a long breath, tasted the sea, and released it. “I wanted to blame you for it, Nathan, because you’re here. Because you had your mother all your life. Because you touched me and made me feel what I’d never felt before. I needed to blame you for it. So I did.”
    “I expected you to.”
    “You never had to tell me. You could have buried it, forgotten it. I never would have known.”
    “I’d have known, and every day I’d have had with you would have been a betrayal.” He turned to her. “I wish I could have lived with that, spared you this and saved myself. But I couldn’t.”
    “And what now?” Lifting her face to the sky, she searched her heart. “Am I to make you pay what can’t be paid, punish you for something that was done to both of us when we were children?”
    “Why shouldn’t you?” Bitterness clogged his throat as he looked out into the trees, where the river flowed in secret silence. “How could you look at me and not see him, and what he did? And hate me for it.”
    It was exactly what she had done, Jo thought. She had looked at him, seen his father, and hated. He had taken it, the verbal and physical blows, without a word in his own defense.
    Courageous, Kirby had called him. And she’d been right.
    How badly he’d been damaged, she realized. She wondered why it had taken her even this long to realize that however much harm had been done to her, an equal share had been done to him. “You don’t give me much credit for intelligence or compassion. Obviously you have a very low opinion of me.”
    He hadn’t known he had the strength left to be surprised. He stared at her in disbelief. “I don’t understand you.”
    “No, you certainly don’t if you think that after I’d had time to accept it, to grieve, I would blame you, or hold you accountable.”
    “He was my father.”
    “And if he was alive, I’d kill him myself for what he did to her, to all of us. To you. I’ll hate him for the rest of my life. There will never be forgiveness in me for him. Can you make room to live with that, Nathan, or are you just going to walk away? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” She rushed on before he could speak, her words fast and hot. “I’m not going to let myself be cheated. I’m not going to let the chance of real happiness be stolen from me. But if you walk away, I’ll learn to hate you. I can do it if I have to. And no one will ever hate you more than I will.”
    She stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
    He stood where he was for a moment, struggling to absorb the shock, the gratitude. But it wasn’t possible. He stepped back into the house and spoke quietly. “Jo Ellen, do you want me to stay?”
    “Isn’t that what I just said?” She dragged out another cigarette, then furious, hurled it away. “Why should I have to lose again? Why should I have to be alone again? How could you come here and make me fall in love with you, then cut yourself out of my life because you think it’s best for me? Because you think it’s the honorable thing to do. Well, the hell with your honor, Nathan, the hell with it if it cheats me out of having what I need. I’ve been cheated before, lost what I needed desperately before, and was helpless to stop it. I’m not helpless