The Man From Her Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

answers. She’d told her father to stay away. She couldn’t explain why. “Mrs. Bonney isn’t sick.”
    “Is my grampa a nice man?”
    A simple yes stuck in her throat. He’d blamed her for the rape. And he hadn’t loved her since.
    Van, too. Van, who’d been so much her other half that excising him had left gaps in her soul. Maybe he was worse than her father, because he’d vowed to be her husband. Better or worse had broken him.
    “I’m talking to you, Mommy.”
    “I told you all this last night, sweetie, but you might not get to see him, since he’s in the hospital.”
    “I thought we were gonna get him out of there.”
    “It’s not a bad place.” Another hint she should look at her current work situation. So many of the women at the shelter went to the hospital, and their husbands were kept from seeing them. From phone calls Hope had overheard, and frankness about work that Cassie and her partners should have forgone, she might have gotten the wrong idea.
    “I don’t want to go.”
    “You don’t have to.” Cassie’s stomach dropped. Who’d look after Hope while she was with her father? How many people in Honesty would have to see Hope? “We’re not staying here long,” Cassie said.
    “But how long?”
    “A few days.”
    She could hear her old friends.
    When did she have that kid?
    Why didn’t she tell Van?
    Whose kid is that?
    Van would wonder why she’d hidden Hope’s existence.
    “You don’t have to explain.” Her counselor in Tecumseh had repeated that over and over in the months after Hope was born. “She’s your responsibility. You have to make a good life for her and you. And frankly, to hell with anyone else.”
    Cassie’s father, practically a Biblical patriarch in her mind when she was growing up, hadn’t wanted her after she was tainted. He certainly wouldn’t want Hope. When Cassie had needed him most, he’d blamed her for the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
    She’d find help for him. She closed her burning eyes tight for a second. She’d provide medical care if he needed it. She owed him nothing more.
    “Where’s my gramma, Mommy?”
    That question hadn’t come up last night. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have one,” Cassie said, fighting, as always, the soft memory of her mother’s hands on her face, her whispered reassurance that the dark was safe. “My mom died when I was a teenager.”
    Hope, who’d been traveling since early morning and missed her nap, looked as if she might cry. “You won’t ever die, will you, Mommy?”
    “Not for a long time, Hope.” According to the policeman who’d taken her statement at the shelter, she had every chance of dying pretty soon if she wasn’t more careful about taking on thugs. She’d tried to explain about the advantage of surprise. He hadn’t been impressed, and he was right. He just hadn’t come up with an alternative response, other than everyone hiding—and who could do that all the time?
    “Good.” Hope smiled through a soft veil of tears in her eyes. Blessed with a sensitive heart, she’d always cried easily. “But you don’t have a mommy.”
    “I’m used to that.” Who ever got used to that?
    “It’s a good thing you have me.”
    Cassie laughed. “Having you is the best. I love you this much.” She took her hands off the wheel long enough to spread them as far as she could. “And then some.”
    “Good.” Hope tucked her baby onto her shoulder. “I’m not sleepy, Mommy.”
    “I see that.”
    “But I could use some mac and cheese.”
    “Just let me know when. We’ll be home before you know it.” Home. She’d said it without thinking, after five years of dreading the sight of Honesty.
    “We can make eggs for my grampa.”
    The hospital concept proved tricky for her to grasp. Cassie glanced in the rearview, at Hope’s drooping eyelids.
    With any luck, she could keep this trip an adventure for her daughter and then escape. No one who’d known Cassie before would see