Elizabeth Sinclair - A Question Of Love

His father’s funeral was a different matter. He’d stayed away intentionally. What good would it have done to be there? The old man wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. Matt’s existence had never been of any great importance to Kevin Logan during his life. Why would it be any different at his death?

Matt stirred restlessly, then stretched his right leg over the seat. The long ride straight through from Texas had cramped the muscle in his injured limb. As he gingerly massaged the cramped calf muscle, he recalled the doctor warning him that this would happen for a while. The ache finally eased.

A full moon, hanging like a large ripe lemon in the sky, turned the treetops behind Osgood’s Market to silver. Funny, but that moon never quite looked the same from anywhere else.

Suddenly anxious to once more become a part of the slow-paced, sleepy hamlet, Matt pulled back onto the road and steered his truck toward The Diner. He knew it would be the one place in town open at this hour, the one place that served the best cup of coffee and the biggest burgers in four counties. Once he’d filled his rumbling stomach, he’d head to Aunt Amanda’s and then, in the morning, he’d go to the town hall and pay up the overdue taxes on his father’s house.

No. Pushing the past out and moving in new memories, happy memories, meant starting to think of it as his house.

Jim, a fellow rodeo rider, had warned Matt that he would need to settle up with the past before he could start a future. Matt didn’t believe that. If he just concentrated on redecorating and stopped thinking about the unhappiness he’d known in that house, the memories would soon fade away. Besides, how do you settle up with a man who’s dead and buried?

“SO, WHAT DO YOU PLAN on doing?”

Honey avoided Emily’s gaze and her question. The silence in the kitchen grew louder. She occupied her hands by stirring her cold coffee. Her shield of anger had dissolved as quickly as it had materialized. Uncertainty had returned with a vengeance.

“Honey?”

She gave an abrupt shake of her head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I hate to be the one to point this out, but you don’t have a whole lot of time to decide.” Emily stopped Honey’s nervous movements by placing a hand on her arm. “He’ll be here in the morning.”

“I know that,” Honey snapped. Immediately contrite about her sharp tone, she flashed a weak smile at her sister. “I know,” she repeated more softly. The role of the one needing advice did not sit well with her.

She stood, walked to the sink, then poured out the cold coffee. Turning, she grabbed the coffeepot and refilled her cup. “What right does he have to come back here and intrude in my life?”

“The same right my husband had to come back. Like Kat, this was Matt’s home, the town where he grew up.”

Knowing her statement had been totally unreasonable, Honey refrained from replying. Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the dark liquid in her cup to her sister’s worried face. “Do you think he’ll notice—about Danny, I mean?”

“Unless he’s gone blind in the last seven years, I’d say the odds are very good that he’ll catch on. You better prepare for it.”

Honey nodded, unable to speak past the knot that Emily’s warning brought to her throat.

Emily glanced at Honey, then at her cup, then back to Honey. She played absently with the end of her long, brown braid. “There’s something that always bothered me, but you never wanted to talk about Matt, so I never asked. Why didn’t you tell him?”

Honey sighed, then took her seat across from Emily. She stole thinking time by carefully arranging the base of Danny’s superhero mug to fit inside a group of green gingham squares on the place mat. She smiled sadly. Even Danny had heroes, but in all her life, she could not ever recall having one herself. Shaking away the unusual wave of self-pity, she directed her thoughts to Emily’s question.

“Dad told me not to tell anyone. Said it would just make matters worse.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that they could have gotten much worse. I tried to tell Matt, anyway.” She plucked nervously at a loose thread in the place mat. “Problem was, no one in town knew where to find him. He’d just vanished.” She held her palms up and hunched her shoulders. “After a few years went by, I just felt it would be better not to disrupt anyone’s life. What was the sense?” She almost added, Would it have brought Matt home?, but thought better of it.

“What about Matt’s dad? Did you tell him?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Logan never took much of an interest in Matt.” She stared off into a mental world devoid of any memories of Matt and his dad interacting. “I never saw any sign of affection between them. Sometimes I got the feeling that Matt didn’t exist for his father. After Matt left, Mr. Logan became more unapproachable than ever. I went there a couple of times, but he wouldn’t answer the door, so I gave up. I sent him a letter, but since he never acknowledged it, I don’t even know if he read it.”

“What about Matt’s mother?” Emily shifted to a more comfortable position in her chair, then crossed her denim clad legs. “I was too young to remember her. Did she leave them or what?”

“She died suddenly when Matt was ten.” Honey sipped her coffee and made a face. Cold again. She set the cup down and pushed it away, then looked at her sister. “All this reminiscing is not solving my immediate problem, Em. How did you handle Kat showing up? I know you were so angry at him you wanted to beat him to within an inch of his life, then you ended up marrying him and having his twin daughters, but what did you—”

“Whoops. Wait a minute.” Emily held up her hand. “The circumstances were a bit different.”

“Sure, you wanted him to father your child so you could fulfill the conditions of a crazy old man’s will and keep your home.” Honey smiled for the first time that evening, then shook her head. “You never did anything simply. Leave it to you to go overboard and have twins. Dad would be very happy.”

At the mention of her twin daughters, a beautiful smile transformed Emily’s face. “Best bargain I ever made. I got a man I adore and two delightful children. And don’t forget Rose. My best friend turned out to be my mother-in-law. Not bad for a girl who was ready to hit the panic button when she found out about the codicil to Dad’s will.”

“Ready to hit it? To my recollection, you slammed your fist into it.”

Both women laughed. The laughter died slowly, but when it did, Honey still had not found a solution to her dilemma. How did she contend with Matt coming back into her life?

“So, what’s my answer?” she said, looking at Emily.

Emily checked her watch, then stood, slipped her purse strap over her shoulder and smiled weakly at Honey. “I don’t know that there is an answer, at least not one you can turn into a concrete plan. I’d say play it by ear. Go with your gut.” She started to turn toward the door, then paused. “Better yet, go with your heart.”

Honey frowned.

MATT STOOD ON THE FRONT porch of his aunt’s house. He glanced at his watch: 1:00 a.m. He should have left The Diner sooner, but he’d enjoyed talking with friends he hadn’t seen in years, remembering old times, rehashing the trouble he and his cousin Stan had gotten into as kids. He’d missed that while wandering from place to place. That friendliness, that familiarity was what he’d come home to recapture. Certainly that would chase the unhappy ghost from the corners of his house and his life.

He glanced at Amanda’s front door and reached for the knocker, then hesitated. He knew a dynamite blast wouldn’t wake Tess, but his aunt had always been a very light sleeper. He hated to wake her just to let him in. However, the one other place he could hope to find a soft bed for the night happened to be located in a motel thirty miles away. After driving for hours, he didn’t want to even think of getting on the road again. They’d find him in the morning wrapped around a pole somewhere, his injured leg swollen to the size of a small tree trunk.