Abiding Love by Kate Welsh Read Free Book Online Page A

way for Mark to tell me he felt foolish for his show of rebellion. While you’re casting blame, ask yourself why the kid can’t express his feelings better than this. And remember, I’m the one who wasn’t allowed to be a parent all these years. Maybe Mallory and Jerry weren’t the paragons of parenthood everyone has made of them.”
    He didn’t wait for her to do more than raise her perfectly arched eyebrows in that way doctors and commanding officers have of saying Now, where did all that come from?
    “Good day, Ms. Lexington,” he said as he stood and left abruptly, refusing to answer the unspoken question her expression asked. Because the truth was, all that about Mallory and Jerry came from a place of deep-seated hurt and disillusionment caused by Mallory’s affair with, and subsequent marriage to, Jerry Beecham. And it was a place he wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready to explore.

Chapter Five
    X andra stood in the exercise ring at Laurel Glen Horse Farm, where her friend Elizabeth lived with her new husband, Jack Alton. Seated atop her gray Irish draught horse, Elizabeth’s blond hair shone in the sunshine. She looked radiantly happy after a two-week honeymoon and her first week back at home of what must be marital bliss. She was happier and more relaxed than Xandra had ever seen her.
    “Elizabeth, are you sure your mother-in-law won’t mind me riding her horse?” Xandra asked, hesitant to mount the magnificent reddish-brown quarter horse that Jack had trained and given to his mother, Meg Taggert.
    “Meg’s the most generous woman I’ve ever met. She’d lend him to you even if she were here to ride him, which she isn’t. You’re doing her and everyone here a favor. Fly Boy needs to be exercised while Meg’s on her cruise. And what is it going to take toget you to call me Beth? I thought we’d become friends.”
    “We have, Beth . I just forget, that’s all. You’ve been ‘that Elizabeth Boyer’ for most of my life,” Xandra said, smiling to take the sting out of the unfortunate truth.
    Beth smiled back. “And now I’m Beth Alton, Jack Alton’s wife. I think the Elizabeth part of me died when I became a new person in Christ.”
    Xandra nodded, knowing just how Beth felt. Almost lighter than air most of the time. She took a deep cleansing breath. “I love the way that sounds,” she told Beth. “‘A new person in Christ.’ Thanks to you, so am I.”
    “No. Thanks to God’s grace and His Son’s sacrifice. All I did was allow myself to be His messenger, the way Jack and Meg were for me.”
    “I know all that, but I could just as easily have shot the messenger—so to speak.”
    “The way I hear my brother did with you?”
    Xandra pulled a face and mounted. She squirmed a bit, partly because she wasn’t used to the western tack on Fly Boy and partly because she knew she’d blown it with Adam Boyer.
    “So, have you seen much of your brother since he and Mark arrived?”
    “Besides at the wedding, you mean? Sure. The day we got back from Ireland, Amelia and Ross Taggert threw us a little family welcome-home dinner. Adam and Mark came. And we saw them again last night,”Beth said over her shoulder as she turned toward the gate one of the handlers held open for them.
    Xandra moved up along next to her and through the gate. She couldn’t help wondering how father and son were getting along. “What do you think of the dynamics between them?”
    “I’m afraid Adam has his hands full with Mark. It’s hard to watch. And sad. My brother isn’t happy and my nephew is miserable. It was obvious that first night we got back, so we decided to take dinner over last night, hoping maybe we could help. Knowing Adam rode as a boy, Jack invited them over for a ride, thinking they might find common ground.” Beth grimaced.
    “They aren’t coming?”
    Beth bent down and opened a gate to a long wide pasture. After they’d both passed through, she locked it again and brought Glory up next to