Holly was Harold’s firstborn daughter. If she had needed help and asked for it, he would have given it to her gladly, regardless of the heartaches and disagreements that might have gone before.
But Holly’s reappearance had come in the form of a legal attack, mounted by some big-time California attorney who expected Harold to just lie down and play dead. And the attack had been aimed, with pinpoint accuracy, at the one place in Harold’s life where he was most vulnerable. And guilty.
Of course, he had denied Holly’s allegations.
And when the People magazine reporter had shown up at the Rocking P and told him she was doing an article on “forgotten memories,” Harold had tried to throw her off track without having to tell his side of the story. But the woman was one of those sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued little city women. He couldn’t remember now exactly how it was she had phrased the critical question.
He may have mentally misplaced the exact text, but he recalled the reporter’s meaning well enough. He had wondered if that particular line of questioning had come directly from Holly or from that so-called hypnotherapist of hers, Amy Baxter. The assumption behind the question was the idea that since one daughter had been forced to run away from home in order to avoid sexual abuse, what about the daughter who didn’t leave?
Was Ivy-the stay-at-home, old-maid daughter-a willing participant?
The reporter had made a big deal about the fact that Harold and Ivy lived alone together on the Rocking P, as though that in itself was enough to raise suspicions. Harold had exercised incredible restraint in not throwing the woman bodily out of his house. It was no surprise that the resulting article had made Harold sound like some kind of sex-crazed monster whose incestuous relations with his daughters had no doubt ruined both their lives.
The usually even-tempered Ivy had been livid when the article came out, and she had blamed Holly for it. Ivy had wanted Harold to sue, wanted him to have Burton Kimball go after the magazine for defamation of character. Harold had his own good reasons for refusing, but when he did, there had been a huge blowup between him and Ivy.
For weeks now, they had barely spoken, doing their chores together around the ranch, but with none of their customary camaraderie. By attempting not to fight with one daughter, Harold had inevitably quarreled with the other.
Determined to solve the problem with the least amount of damage to everyone concerned, Harold had put all his hopes in what would happen once Holly came home for the trial. He had thought that somehow he would be able to get his two daughters together in the same room where he would finally, once and for all, put the past to rest.
But that hadn’t happened.
For the entire week since Holly had been back home in Bisbee, she had insisted that all contact be conducted on a lawyer-to-lawyer basis. Harold hadn’t been allowed access to her by telephone, and no one would tell him where she was staying.
Well, that was changing today. He had figured out a way to make it happen, a way to bring her around.
Harold was coming to town with what, on the surface, would appear to be an enticing carrot. He was prepared to offer Holly the ultimate prize, total capitulation. Everything she wanted. For someone like Holly, that should prove irresistible, but there was a stick as well. And when it came to those two things, both carrot and stick, what he had to say would not be discussed on a lawyer to-lawyer basis.
Those were private matters to be discussed with his daughters alone. No one else.
Once and for all time, he would finally tell both of them the truth.
Surely, once they both knew the truth, he might be able to find some common ground, some avenue for reconciliation. Once he came up with the plan, he had allowed himself to hope it would work. Perhaps if Holly knew all of it, she’d call off the trial and her hired attack dogs. Harold Patterson could imagine nothing worse than having to endure the humiliation of a public trial. He could imagine how it would feel to sit in one of those overheated Cochise County courtrooms. The place would be packed with friends and neighbors, people who had known him all his life. He would have to sit there and be stripped bare; would be forced to listen while his daughter recounted the exact nature of his alleged crimes and the horrible things he had supposedly done to her.
The possibility that Holly might really remembered her caused Harold to squirm on the Scout’s sway backed front seat. Just thinking about it set off a severe ache that started in Harold’s breastbone, spread across both shoulders, and arched down his tense forearms.
What if she really did remember? What then?
Harold remembered hearing someone say that the truth would set you free. Could it do that for him? Harold doubted it. In this case, truth seemed like some kind of evil genie. Harold worried that once he rubbed the bottled past and set the genie loose in the world, things would never be the same. Telling the truth meant that long-made promises would have to be broken, that the lives of innocent people would be forever changed. But then, innocent people were always being hurt.
That was the way the world worked.
WEARING ONLY her bathrobe and with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, Joanna Brady stood in the kitchen doorway observing her daughter, Jenny. The nine-year-old was halfheartedly trailing a spoon through the cold, partially eaten contents of her cereal bowl.
“I thought you said you wanted oatmeal,” Joanna snapped irritably.
“If you don’t, fine. Give it to the dogs, but stop playing with it.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before Joanna wished she could take them back. Jennifer was eating next to nothing these days, giving her mother yet another cause for worry, something else to add to Joanna’s own considerable pain.
“I’m sorry,” Joanna apologized quickly, trying to make light of it. “I sound just like Grandma Lathrop, don’t I?”
And it was true. Those were exactly the kinds of things Eleanor Lathrop would have said-had said, in fact, especially when she herself was hurting.
Criticism had always been Eleanor’s trump card, but why did Joanna have to replay those old tapes now, with her own daughter, when all she really wanted to do was take Jenny in her arms, hold her, and comfort her? Instead of harping, Joanna needed to share her own hurt with Jenny.
After all, Joanna Lathrop Brady understood all too well how it felt for a daughter to lose a father.
The very same thing had happened to her.
But the pain of being a newly made widow somehow got in the way of consoling her daughter, the newly made orphan.
Joanna had always prided herself on the special relationship she shared with Jenny, but in the six short weeks since a drug-cartel hit man had gunned down Joanna’s husband, Cochise County sheriff’s deputy Andrew Brady, an unfamiliar wall of silence and misunderstanding seemed to have grown up in the Brady household. The once open give-and-take between mother and daughter was now full of uneasy silences punctuated by angry words and occasional bouts of tears.
Without glancing at Joanna, Jenny took her bowl and slipped wordlessly out of the breakfast nook, heading for the back porch. Always interested in a handout, both dogs, the recently adopted Tigger, a comical-looking golden retriever/pit bull mix, and Sadie, a rangy bluetick hound sprang from their usual resting places near the door and rushed to follow.
Joanna removed the towel and shook her red hair loose. She was pouring herself a cup of coffee when Jenny returned to the kitchen sink to rinse her bowl. The child’s troubled blue eyes were downcast; she seemed near tears. Long after all trace of food was gone, Jenny continued to rinse her dish. Joanna resisted the urge to tell her to turn off the faucet and not waste water. Once again she attempted to put things right.