Stella heard her mother’s sobs, but she couldn’t look away from the authoritative man who’d remained silent for so many years. “So then how am I here?”
“I asked him to do it.”
Stella slid her gaze over to her mother. “To do what?” she asked slowly.
“Your mother asked me to go get Grace and bring her here where she’d be safe. To move her in with us and try to…get her pregnant the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh my God.”
“Grace was willing. She had a… crush I guess you could call it on your father. He said no, at first,” her mother cut in. “He was adamant that he would not do that with another woman. But I didn’t see it as cheating or betrayal. I saw it as a means to an end.”
Bile rose in her throat. A means to an end? Jesus.
“I can’t explain it. Or what I was thinking and feeling. But the night he finally gave in and went to get her, I’d realized how crazy and reprehensible it was to ask such a thing of him. Of anyone.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Stella dropped her head in her hands, choosing to hear the rest without looking at either of them.
Her father cleared his throat. “She was beat to hell and back by the time I got there. The boyfriend had found out we’d been giving her money and she hadn’t been sharing it. I…I…”
Stella clenched her hair in her hands, pulling just enough until she could only focus on the pain. It anchored her, kept her from losing all sense of her sanity completely.
“I did it for your mother, mostly. But maybe I did it for me too. Maybe I did it for Grace. Even after all these years…I still don’t know. It just happened. Maybe I couldn’t stand seeing her like that and I wanted to be a damned hero. I don’t… But I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
Stella looked up to see her father on his knees before her mother. It was familiar. That worshipful gaze, the wonder in his eyes as he stared up at her. The love that passed so fiercely between them.
Her skin tingled. This was majorly fucked up. Her parents had brought her into the world under some seriously bizarre circumstances. But that was in the past. She wanted to move forward, toward the future. The future with a man she loved. Who she was pretty sure loved her too. But she did want to know what had become of her biological mother. Her story as tragic, like Van’s sister’s. She wondered if it had a happier ending.
“Whatever happened to Grace?” she asked quietly, hating to interrupt the private moment they were sharing.
Her mother looked over her father’s head with surprise in her eyes, almost as if she’d forgotten Stella was still in the room with them.
“She stayed with us for a while. Until you were born. But then she left. She left us a note saying she was happy that you would have a much more beautiful life than she had.”
Her father cleared his throat and rose up onto the couch. “We checked up on her from time to time. She held down a few jobs in the area. But just after your second birthday, she reconciled with the old boyfriend. He hadn’t changed much, unfortunately. They were involved in an accident. He was drinking and driving. Neither of them survived.”
An odd sensation of grief and loss for a woman she never knew settled into Stella’s stomach.
“Stella? Honey?” Her mother stood and moved toward her. “I know this is a lot. But you were right. It was always tense here. The secrets. The lies. The fear that you’d find out the truth somehow and hate us. It made this a hard place to be sometimes.”
She just nodded. It was so much to process. Too much.
“I won’t apologize for wanting you,” her mother said evenly. “I hope you don’t hate us, and I may never forgive myself for putting your father in a position where he did something he wasn’t proud of. But I’m not sorry it happened. Any of it. Because I have you. And I love you. And I want to be as much a part of your life as you’ll let me.”
“I don’t hate you. Either of you,” she managed to get out.
“There’s more,” her father broke in.
“Dear God.” Stella sent up a silent prayer for strength. If they piled anything else onto her, her bones would likely break. Any more painful truths would crush her to dust.
Her mother gave her a sympathetic smile. “We’re selling the ranch, Stella. We know you don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to shove it off on you like it was onto me. We’re moving to Florida, retiring from this demanding lifestyle.”
Relief, Stella thought. I should feel relief.
She did a quick evaluation of her emotions. All she felt was lost. Confusion. Maybe some betrayal mixed in there somewhere.
“Will you visit?” Candace’s hands clasped Stella’s. “We can talk more about Grace one day when you’re ready. Or we can just lie on the beach and talk about boys. Whatever you want. Whenever you want.”
“Right now I just need to go, Mama. But yes, I’ll visit. I think the beach sounds nice.”
Her mother’s tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. “Have a safe trip, baby.”
Stella made her way to the door on unsteady legs. The truths were shoving at her, propelling her as far from this place as she could get. There would be no more pushing her about riding or about taking over the ranch. She didn’t know why that didn’t feel as good as she’d expected it to. Maybe having her someone expect so much from her was better than having them expect nothing at all.
“I’ll see you out,” her father said.
Shock numbed her, emotional morphine she supposed. Now that she understood why he hated looking at her, hated the living, breathing reminder of a mistake he’d made, she expected even less from him.
A million possible outcomes raced through her mind as they walked to her car. Would he tell her never to come back? Not to show her face again? That she could only visit them in Florida over his dead body?
She swallowed the pain, a familiar habit where he was involved, and turned to him. “If you don’t want me to visit, I won’t. I just said that to make her happy.”
He blinked, something akin to pain flashing in his eyes. “You look like her. Like Grace. But you are so very much like me, Stella Jo.”
Her brows rose practically to her hairline. “I am?”
“Strong. Prone to putting the needs of others before your own. I can’t say it’s an easy life to lead.”
“I’m sorry that I…” she trailed off. Was she sorry she’d been born? Maybe before Van. Before knowing what it felt like to be truly alive. But having experienced that level of pain and pleasure and need, she couldn’t force herself to regret it.
“Don’t.” Her father shook his head as he opened her car door. “I failed you. Don’t be sorry for one second. For anything.”
She breathed him in, the man who smelled of work and worry and regret. “I’m not sorry I’m alive. And I’m not sorry that you’re my daddy. You might have ignored me most of my life, but you love her.” She nodded towards where her mother stood in the doorway. Reaching up on her tiptoes, she kissed him gingerly on the cheek. The first contact with him she could remember. “Thank you.”
“For what?” His flabbergasted expression would’ve made her laugh in any other situation.
“For giving me life. And for showing me what real love looks like.”
Leaving him staggered in the driveway, Stella Jo got into her vehicle and pointed it towards Dallas. Towards her future.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was the middle of the night, but pulling up at the Second Chance Ranch felt a lot more like going home than actually going home had.
Stella’s feelings had run the gamut on her drive home. Angry, betrayed, hurt, pissed, sad, shocked. Her music preferences had provided the soundtrack to her emotional journey. Heavy metal, alternative rock, country. She wasn’t a genre-specific girl. She liked all kinds of music, the movement of it, the various beat and the passion behind it, but it was always the words that got to her. The lyrics. If a song had even one line that touched her in a place she’d thought was hidden, a place she’d once believed only she possessed, it stayed on.