Unfinished Business

promise you showed the more bitter he became. Not toward you, never toward you. But toward the situation, and, of course, toward me. And I toward him. You were the one good thing we had ever done together, the one thing we could both love completely. But it wasn’t enough to make us love each other. Can you understand that?”
    “Why did you stay together?”
    “I’m not really sure. Habit. Fear. The small hope that somehow we would find out we really did love each other. There were too many fights. Oh, I know how they used to upset you. When you were older, a teenager, you used to run from the house just to get away from the arguing. We failed you, Van. Both of us. And, though I know he did things that were selfish, even unforgivable, I failed you more, because I closed my eyes to them. Instead of making things right, I looked for an escape. And I found it with another man.”
    She found the courage to face her daughter again. “There is no excuse. Your father and I were no longer intimate, were barely even civil, but there were other alternatives open to me. I had thought about divorce, but that takes courage, and I was a coward. Suddenly there was someone who was kind to me, someone who found me attractive and desirable. Because it was forbidden, because it was wrong, it was exciting.”

    Vanessa felt the tears burn the back of her eyes. She had to know, to understand. “You were lonely.”
    “Oh, God, yes.” Loretta’s voice was choked. She pressed her lips together. “It’s no excuse—”
    “I don’t want excuses. I want to know how you felt.”
    “Lost,” she whispered. “Empty. I felt as though my life were over. I wanted someone to need me again, to hold me. To say pretty things to me, even if they were lies.” She shook her head, and when she spoke again her voice was stronger. “It was wrong, Vanessa, as wrong as it was for your father and I to rush together without looking closely.” She came back to the bed, took Vanessa’s hand. “I want it to be different for you. It will be different. Holding back from something that’s right for you is just as foolish as rushing into something that’s wrong.”
    “And how do I know the difference?”
    “You will.” She smiled a little. “It’s taken me most of my life to understand that. With Ham, I knew.”
    “It wasn’t.” She was afraid to ask. “It wasn’t Ham that you… He wasn’t the one.”
    “All those years ago? Oh, no. He would never have betrayed Emily. He loved her. It was someone else. He wasn’t in town long, only a few months. I suppose that made it easier for me somehow. He was a stranger, someone who didn’t know me, didn’t care. When I broke it off, he moved on.”
    “You broke it off? Why?”
    Of all the things that had gone before, Loretta knew this would be the most difficult. “It was the night of your prom. I’d been upstairs with you. Remember, you were so upset?”
    “He had Brady arrested.”
    “I know.” She tightened her grip on Vanessa’s hand. “I swear to you, I didn’t know it then. I finally left you alone because, well, you needed to be alone. I was thinking about how I was going to give Brady Tucker a piece of my mind when I got ahold of him. I was still upset when your father came home. But he was livid, absolutely livid. That’s when it all came out. He was furious because the sheriff had let Brady go, because Ham had come in and raised holy hell.”
    She let Vanessa’s hands go to press her fingers to her eyes. “I was appalled. He’d never approved of Brady—I knew that. But he wouldn’t have approved of anyone who interfered with his plans for you. Yet this—this was so far beyond anything I could imagine. The Tuckers were our friends, and anyone with eyes could see that you and Brady were in love. I admit I had worried about whether you would make love, but we’d talked about it, and you’d seemed very sensible. In any case, your father was raging, and I was so angry, so incensed by his insensitivity, that I lost control. I told him what I had been trying to hide for several weeks. I was pregnant.”
    “Pregnant,” Vanessa repeated. “You— Oh, God.”
    Loretta sprang up to pace the room. “I thought he would go wild, but instead he was calm. Deadly calm.” There was no use telling her daughter what names he had called her in that soft, controlled voice. “He said that there was no question about our remaining together. He would file for divorce. And would take