But it wasn’t a dream.
The next month was a whirlwind of negotiations. Daddy was allowed to resign without public censure, but without any retirement pay, and he had to make the church the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. Kinkaid money paid for immediate settlements with the boys and their families, but the counseling costs were an ongoing expense. Erasmus’s fortune, which had shrunk considerably in recent years, was almost entirely depleted.
Of course, Dave had bailed as soon as he realized being married to Laurel Harlow was no longer an asset.
It was still hard for her to think about that day in Daddy’s office. She leaned against the arbor, careful not to crush the roses. She’d always been so proud of her father, proud to be identified as his daughter, secretly glad she looked so much like him—tall, gray-eyed, and dark-haired.
From then on, everything changed.
They were all under a strain, and within a year, Daddy had been rushed to the hospital for his first heart attack. The second one apparently gave no warning—he’d just walked into the backyard, sat down in one of the lawn chairs, and fallen asleep. Laurel couldn’t help but wonder if he’d recognized the symptoms and decided he didn’t want to be resuscitated this time. Then her mother had taken the pills—Laurel wasn’t quite sure which ones did the job, because Mama had emptied every one of Daddy’s leftovers that were still in the medicine cabinet and added all of her own to the mix.
Strangely, Laurel realized, her parents’ deaths didn’t affect her as much as they would have before Daddy’s revelation. She grieved for Mama and Daddy, but from a weird sort of emotional distance, as if she were a distant observer rather than their only child, like she was floating on a cloud and looking down, seeing, but not participating.
She’d had to move on, to forge her own identity. Not as Dave Carson’s wife or Pastor Harlow’s daughter or Dovie Kinkaid Harlow’s heir, but as herself—independent, resourceful, and self-sufficient.
That fateful day in Daddy’s study had been the worst day of her life, but she had the feeling there was an even darker reckoning to come.
Chapter Fourteen
Jase took himself off to the den after lunch to make a long, involved conference call about a San Antonio parcel he wanted to buy, then received and returned several faxes from his Dallas office, followed by a strategic communication with a particularly garrulous state representative he’d been courting.
After resting his ear for a few moments, he decided to make his daily call home to check up on Lolly. She’d been unreachable yesterday, which bothered him. Was she avoiding him on purpose?
Maybe he should talk to Maxie first.
“I doubt if Lolly even looked at her cell yesterday,” she reassured him. “There was some sort of cheerleader camp, and she came home exhausted. I sent her to bed right after supper.”
“Cheerleader camp? What about tennis?”
“That’s where she is today, out playing tennis with Chloe Ginsberg. The cheerleader camp was just one day long. She’s thinking of trying out next year.”
“I’ll call again this evening, then. Take care.”
Jase drew a long, deep breath after he placed the phone back in its cradle. He never knew what Girl Child would be into next, and it was all-or-nothing with her—once she’d decided on something, there was no changing her mind. She’d always been headstrong, even as a toddler. Maybe she got her persistence from his own mother who, according to Maxie, was as stubborn as a mule.
He leaned back in the recliner and tented his fingers. Lolly…Every time he talked to her now, she hammered at him about marrying Laurel. For years he’d done his best to instill in her the idea that love meant more than sex, and now she was tossing it right back at him.
And she had a good point.
He’d planned to give Laurel more time, but, on the other hand, time was a commodity he didn’t have much of—he’d already overstayed the two days he’d allotted for his visit to Bosque Bend. Trying to run his business long-distance was a bummer. He needed to get back to Dallas.