Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(32)
Author: Brenda Novak

“What about heartbroken? Did that figure into the equation at all?”

How could she explain? Hardhearted though it sounded, Madeline understood the confusion and disappointment her father had experienced. “My father admired strength and saw her as terribly flawed.”

“Flawed?”

She tried again. “He was angry. He wanted his family to set the perfect example for his flock. Instead, my mother committed what he considered the unpardonable sin.”

“Disgust and anger. Maybe your father was putting too much pressure on your mother. Maybe she couldn’t be everything he wanted her to be and that was the only out she could find.”

“I could never abandon my child,” she said resolutely.

“Neither could I. And yet here I am,” he muttered.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He paused at a picture taken when Madeline was eight. Leaning against the porch railing at the farmhouse, she was missing her two front teeth and smiling with abandon. Madeline was fairly certain that was the last time she’d felt so carefree. Soon afterward she’d become aware of her mother’s malady and begun to worry—about everything.

“Did she leave a suicide note?”

“Yes, but it was just more of the same ‘life is hopeless’ kind of stuff.”

“Where is it now?”

“My father burned it.”

“You didn’t mind?”

“What could I do? He was upset. And it seemed fitting somehow.”

Hunter didn’t comment on that. “How were things financially?” he asked, turning another page.

“Tight. It was that way for most people in town. But we had a roof over our heads and plenty to eat. I remember my father pointing that out to my mother again and again, telling her she should be grateful.”

“Do you think she wanted more children?”

“I don’t know. She had difficulty carrying me. Bonnie Ray, the neighbor across the street, told me my mother tripped and fell when she was seven months pregnant and nearly miscarried. The accident threw her into an early labor. They nearly lost me on the delivery table.”

“You were two months premature?”

She nodded. “After that my parents were hesitant to try again. Which is why…” It felt almost sacrilegious to reveal what she was about to say next, but she’d avoided the subject of her mother for so long, she suddenly wanted to talk, to make sense of all the contradictions. The fact that Hunter was from out of town actually helped. He had no previous knowledge of Eliza, no prejudicial opinion one way or another.

“What?” he prompted.

“They slept in separate bedrooms.”

“Every night?”

“I can’t say. I only had my mother for the first ten years of my life. At the time, there didn’t seem anything wrong with their not sharing a room. My mother said he snored, and that made it difficult to sleep, so they slept apart.”

“And your father didn’t mind?”

There was an undercurrent to this question that led Madeline to believe he had strong feelings on the matter. “Not really,” she said. “What made him angry was that she let me sleep with her. He thought she was coddling me too much.”

“Or maybe he wanted to visit her room occasionally, and knew he wouldn’t be able to if you were there.”

“She took care of him before we went to bed.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Took care of him? God, you make it sound like she was doing chores.”

“I’m just saying it wasn’t like they never had sex, okay?”

“How do you know?” He leaned back on his hands.

“I know,” she said, unwilling to expound on it.

“It looks to me like she preferred you to him. That might’ve rankled.”

Madeline didn’t argue. Like most children, she’d been so egocentric, she’d never questioned her mother’s devotion. It was just there, like the sun and the wind and the rain. But, in retrospect, she had to agree with Hunter. She’d definitely held the number one spot in her mother’s heart. I love you more than anything, Eliza would whisper as she pulled Madeline into the cradle of her body every night.

It’d been a long time since Madeline had thought of those words. Probably because, after her mother’s suicide, they’d felt like such a lie.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her mother’s loss hurt almost as badly today as it had then…

He turned to yet another page. Her mother was holding her birthday cake, with nine candles on top. “I see a lot of pictures of you, a few of her, but not many of your father,” Hunter commented.

“I told you, Dad worked too much. He was really dedicated to the church.”

“He wasn’t present at your birthday party?” Except for the one that included her mother with the cake, the pictures on the page depicted Madeline and a few playmates.

“To be honest, I don’t remember. I know a friend’s mother took that picture, so probably not.”

“You didn’t miss him?”

“No. I loved him, but…it was after my mother died that we grew close. She sort of—” Madeline struggled to put fragments of memory into words “—acted as a go-between, I guess.”

“It doesn’t sound as if your parents were all that happy together,” he said.

Sophie sauntered in from the kitchen to investigate. Madeline stroked her soft fur as she answered. “Every marriage is unique. There was some tension at times, but that’s normal, isn’t it?”

“Do you think they’d be married today if your mother was still alive and whatever happened to your father hadn’t happened?”

“Of course. Dad didn’t believe in divorce.”

“Under any circumstances?”

Sophie jumped into her lap and began to purr. “He thought it was a sin.”

“Like most everything else.”

“I’ve told you before, he was a very religious man. He felt that Mom’s depression was his cross to bear, too. He even spoke of it in his sermons, many of which are in this box right here.” She gently pushed the cat aside, then rummaged through the scrapbooks and photo albums until she’d located the files.

Hunter accepted the folders she handed him, but he seemed more interested in something he’d spotted in the other box. As he drew it out, Madeline realized it was one of her mother’s journals—one that still had at least half the entries in it.