Finding Their Son by Debra Salonen Read Free Book Online Page B

not the kind of guy who went around screwing innocent little girls.”
    She dropped her chin in a challenging way. “Really? That number below your name in the yearbook—twenty-three, wasn’t it?—didn’t match the number on your basketball jersey. I always heard it stood for the number of girls you—”
    “No.” He put his hand to his face and groaned. “That was a joke. Robert started that rumor. It wasn’t true. Not even close. I wasn’t a saint, but still…”
    “You were passed out drunk when your cousin dropped you off at my aunt’s back door. He basically carried you to the gurney. She was on duty at the hospital. I was going to let you sleep it off, but you woke up. We talked.”
    He tried to picture the scene. If he could recall what she looked like back then, maybe he could figure out what was true. But even studying her face didn’t bring back anything. “What did we talk about?”
    “Your situation. The fact that Bobbi was pregnant and that was why you were marrying her.”
    “I wouldn’t have—”
    She interrupted. “Everyone knew it. You weren’t spilling some big secret. My friends believed she got pregnant on purpose to trap you into marrying her. I told them you were too smart for that.”
    “Dumb, you mean. Blind, smug and dumb. That was my dad’s opinion. But the point is I was loyal. I wouldn’t have done what you wrote. Not on the night before my wedding.”
    She took a step back. “Really? You’re sure about that? You can’t remember anything. You don’t remember me. But you’re sure.”
    He hated having to swallow the lump that suddenly developed in his throat before he could answer. “Yes.”
    “Then how do you explain what I wrote in my journal dated that night?”
    “F-fantasy?”
    “Why? Why would I make something like that up? On the off chance that you became president someday? Maybe I was a fifteen-year-old blackmailer? Maybe I’m crazy and this is a plot to screw with your head?”
    He kicked the heel of his boot against the floorboard with such force the entire car shook. “How the hell should I know? You tell me.”
    She gave the notebook a shake. “I did. You read it yourself. Firsthand observation trumps vague recollection every time.”
    She had a point. If he weren’t so messed up and his head wasn’t pounding like he’d been on a three-day binge, he might have conceded round one to her, but he couldn’t.That would lead to a can of worms he didn’t have the energy to think about, much less let loose.
    He grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and yanked it upward. Sinking in the seat, he did his best to disappear. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he muttered. “Talk about going from bad to worse. If I ever get my hands on that dumb-ass uncle of mine, he’s going to wish he’d never been born. ‘A part of you is missing, nephew,’” he said in a singsong voice. “‘The answer you seek is in Paha Sapa .’”
    His disdain for the Black Hills couldn’t have been missed.
    “Was that supposed to be your impression of Joseph or Yoda?” she asked sardonically.
    Her tone was less angry than it had been, but he heard a tremor of bruised feelings. He’d done something—whether intentional or not—that affected her back in high school. She’d been a kid.
    So was I.
    But that argument didn’t hold water because he’d never really been a kid. His parents’ loud and turbulent love-hate relationship, their divorce, his mother’s remarriage and subsequent death from ovarian cancer when Eli was thirteen contributed to his very truncated childhood. He’d grown up too fast. People had depended on him from a very young age. His mother. His younger half siblings. His alcoholic father. Then Bobbi, who was by far a better mother than she was wife.
    What did the county shrink call him? An enabler. He’d enabled the people he loved to take advantage of his need to be needed. A character flaw that probably contributed to his decision to go into law