“Oh, I know all about that, and I know it’s not your fault, so get that out of your head right now.”
“I know it’s not my fault, but I get why it’s hard for Caine to separate me from it,” I admitted. “He’s been through so much because of my father and what he did to destroy Caine’s family. I guess it would make me feel better if I could see Caine happy. He deserves to be happy, even when he is being a grumpy, relentless, unbending pain in the ass.” I took a sip of tea. “Did you meet Phoebe?”
Mrs. Flanagan seemed amused by the question. “Oh no. I’ve never met any of Caine’s lady friends. But Caine told me about her.”
“She was perfect for him. He just dumped her,” I huffed. “I do not understand that man.”
“Well, from what I heard she was all wrong for him.”
Shocked, intrigued, I leaned forward. “What did you hear?”
She laughed at my curiosity. “Phoebe was intimidated by him. She downplayed her intelligence around him. Drove him nuts.” She leaned forward, her eyes boring into mine with a fierceness I didn’t quite understand. “What Caine needs is a woman who is not easily intimidated, persistent, and pretty much okay with bulldozing her way into his life. That’s how I struck up my friendship with him. I wouldn’t let him take no for an answer, and now that boy is the closest thing I have to a grandson and I’m the closest thing he has to a grandmother.”
Uneasiness moved through me. “Maybe he wouldn’t want us talking, then. Especially about private stuff.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” She gave me a knowing look. “You’re digging for some reason. Otherwise you wouldn’t be spending your Saturday afternoon with your boss’s kooky neighbor lady.”
I gave her a sad smile. “Maybe I have nowhere else to be.”
Mrs. F looked concerned. “Okay, if that’s true, why haven’t you got anywhere else to be?”
“My social circle grew smaller when I lost my former job. My friends from college all have kids now and …” I shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“Alexa, you’re a gorgeous, funny young woman. You should either be able to strike up friendships with other charming women or have a man on your arm showing you a good time at the weekend.”
A man on my arm. Right. “I haven’t had one of those in eighteen months and haven’t even been interested in looking since my mom passed.”
She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “I’m sorry about your loss, sweetheart. Caine told me about it after he looked into you.”
What the hell? “Caine looked into me?”
“Yeah. After the photo shoot. Found out your mom had just passed. Boating accident, was it? How are you coping with all that? You okay? It must be tough trying to deal with her loss now that you’re having to deal with Caine.”
To my surprise everything rushed up within me at Mrs. F’s genuine sympathy. It was like she really wanted to know, and I guess I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I needed someone to care. “You know I haven’t been able to talk about it because no one knows the truth about what my father did. The only one who does is Grandpa, and he rarely talks about it. He doesn’t want to.”
She squeezed my hand. “Well, I know the truth. You can tell me.”
I smiled gratefully and put my other hand over hers. “Thanks, Mrs. F.”
She smiled encouragingly.
“I guess …” I exhaled. “It’s been rough because of all the resentment I carried toward Mom.” I went on to tell Mrs. F all about how much I hero-worshipped my absentee father as a kid, and how I clung to that for as long as I could and when I couldn’t anymore I just pretended. “But he shot that to hell when he told us the entire truth. It was Thanksgiving. I was home from college. He sat us down, and he cried as he told us about Caine’s mom. And all his secrets came out because of that. I found out I had been illegitimate, that he’d had a wife and son that I knew nothing about, that my mom was just his piece on the side until he had nowhere else to go after his father turned him away. I was disgusted, betrayed, ashamed. Mom was just quiet. Of course she’d known all about the other family, but she knew nothing of Caine’s mother or how he’d let her die, or even how that was the real reason he’d come back to her. I asked Mom what she was going to do, if she would leave him over it, and she told me she didn’t know. She was shaken up and I had hoped that maybe it would be enough to make her see him for who he really was. My mom spent my entire life giving that man everything he wanted, and he never once tried to give back. I couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true anymore.
“So after a while, after I realized that he felt guilty but not repentant, I told him I didn’t forgive him. I returned to college … and unfortunately Mom went back to him.” I looked up from our hands, tears stinging my eyes as that familiar hurt clawed at my gut. “She put him before me from that moment on. It was always my fault that there was a rift. Never his. I saw her only a couple of times over the last few years, and there was this wall between us we couldn’t breach.” I swiped at the tears sliding down my cheeks. “And then one day she went out on her friend’s boat and a storm hit and that was it. She went overboard and by the time they found her body she was gone. She’s gone and I never made it right. But neither did she.” And it hurts.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. F sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
“I … I keep remembering when I was a kid and it was just the two of us. She was my whole world, you know. I’ve never loved anyone the way that I loved her back then. And now I’m just so goddamn mad at her. And I guess when I walked onto that photo shoot weeks ago and saw Caine, it was an opportunity to focus on something, anything, but the fact that my mom is dead and the most powerful feeling I have toward her is anger. I’m just scared that forgiveness and acceptance might never come.”
Without another word, Mrs. F got up from her seat and came around to me to pull me into her arms, and for the first time since Mom died, I really and truly let it all out.