Deadly Donuts by Jessica Beck Read Free Book Online Page A

we decided not to discuss what we’d done during our separation.   In all the years afterwards, he never offered me a single clue about his time without me, and I never asked for any details.   We were together, and that was ultimately all that mattered.”
    I tried to imagine letting Max off the hook for taking off on me for almost a year, but I couldn’t fathom the circumstances where I’d even begin to consider it.   Evidently my mother had a much more forgiving heart than I had.  
    Either that, or she had loved her husband a great deal more than I’d loved mine.
    “Suzanne, I hope you don’t think less of me because of this,” Momma said as she stared down at her coffee mug.   “I know that it wasn’t the strongest thing I could have done given the circumstances, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
    I leaned forward as I hugged her.   “You’re kidding, right?   To be honest with you, I think that it’s the strongest thing I’ve ever heard of anyone doing.”
    “I don’t see how,” she said, clearly a little confused by my response.
    “Momma, if you could swallow your pride and let Daddy back into your life after he abandoned you like that, it just shows me how strong you were.   I can tell you one thing; it’s more than I’d ever be able to do.”
    “I worried that it would look like weakness in your eyes.”
    “I don’t see it that way.   You weighed what you’d lose if you turned him away, and then you made a deal that you could live with.   Let me ask you something.   If he’d left again, how would you have reacted?”
    “I’d have had his things removed from the cottage before he hit the end of the street,” she answered without hesitation.
    “And were you two happy after he came back?”
    “Gloriously,” she admitted.   “It doesn’t hurt to mention that ten months after he came home, you were born.   We grew more and more in love with each passing year until the moment he passed away.”
    “Then it was the right decision,” I said.   “Now, enough about the past.   Let’s talk about the present.   Tell me all about what happened yesterday.”
    “Well, as you know, I had a date with Phillip, but when Mr. Briar called me, I canceled our plans.   Suzanne, when I wrote you that note, I wasn’t lying.   I planned on being out on a date, but that telephone call changed everything.”
    “Was that his name?   I never heard it myself.”
    “I told him that I wouldn’t talk to an anonymous stranger, so he supplied that as his name, whether it was true or not.”
    “Did he ask you to meet him at the clock, too?” I asked.
    “No, we found a discreet spot in the park under the bonsai plum tree.”   There was a particular tree that we both loved in the park that had suffered some severe storm damage during an ice storm a few years before.   Instead of cutting it down, as any sensible arborist probably should have done, ours tried to save it, trimming the limbs and shaping the remainder of the tree into the world’s largest bonsai sample.   The nearby bench offered a nice screen from most places in the park, and more than a few teenagers had found it a good place to get a little better acquainted since.
    “Did he tell you what this blackmail attempt was all about?”
    She nodded as she took another sip of her coffee.   “It appears that while Thomas was living in Union Square, Mr. Briar’s brother, Blake, was struck and killed while crossing the street.”
    “What does that have to do with Dad?”
    “Evidently, Thomas’s car was stolen the day before, and though there was enough evidence at the time for the police to exonerate him, Morgan Briar was never convinced of your father’s innocence.”
    “It’s not all that uncommon for folks in hit-and-runs to report their cars stolen, is it?” I asked, my heart sinking a little.
    “Suzanne, your father would never do something so cowardly,” she said sternly.
    “He ran out on you , didn’t he?” I