Free Breakwater Bay by Shelley Noble

and kind even though he was twelve years her senior. Then he married that awful women. Therese thought she must have squeezed all the love right out of him. But he was loyal. And he loved his children. And the Calders. And especially Meri.
    She swallowed. “I wanted to ask you if you would drive me to Newport to give it to her.”
    His eyebrows dipped. “Mind if I ask what’s in it?”
    Therese shook her head, took a breath. “Just some things Laura wanted Meri to have. Mementos. Letters from her father . . . that is, from Huey to Laura. A few papers.” She paused. “A diary.”
    She hadn’t realized that she was no longer looking at Alden until she heard his intake of breath. Then she forced herself to look him in the eye—those dark gray eyes under black lashes that had made him such a beautiful boy. When had those eyes become so unfathomable?
    But she knew the answer: the night they had placed a grown man’s burden on his young shoulders, the night he’d sworn to keep their secret.
    A sound escaped from somewhere deep inside her. Alden was on his feet and coming to her. “Gran,” he said, just like he was still a boy.
    She held up her hand warding him off; she didn’t deserve his sympathy, his concern. He’d lost his innocence of the world that night, and it was partially her fault.
    He ignored her, dragging a chair over and sitting down; he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. “It’s all right. It will be all right.”
    “So you will take me?”
    “No.”
    She pulled away. “Then I’ll take the bus.”
    “Gran, listen to me. Wait. Don’t make her assimilate this all by herself away from us.”
    “Alden, I know you want to protect her, you always have. But it might be easier if she doesn’t have us looking over her shoulder, pressuring her. I may be selfish, but now that it’s started, I want it done. Not for myself. I would rather have taken this to the grave with me. But I didn’t, and now that she knows, it has to finish, if any of us, especially Meri”— Or you —“are going to get on with our lives. Whether she accepts us or rejects us, we can’t keep her bound by this secret any longer.”
    “It might be easier on her, but what if she—” He stopped abruptly, but she knew what he would have said.
    “If she doesn’t want us?”
    He looked bleak. Alden, maybe more than either Laura or her, was tied firmly to Meri, whether he realized it or not. Once this was done, he would be free, too.
    Alden straightened in his chair as if resolved. “I have to go to the city tomorrow to turn in some pages and talk to my editor. I’ll stop by her work on my way. I was going to anyway.”
    “You’re a good boy.”
    He lifted an eyebrow and she realized her mistake. For a minute she’d been somewhere else, sometime long ago. “A good man.”
    “I was coming over to tell you. Nora is coming for spring break. She’ll be here on Saturday. I was going to ask Meri if she had some time to maybe show her around, or do something with her. I have a lot of work to do next week, and she gets bored quickly.
    “I’ll ask Meri if she can come this weekend. That way she can read everything here, and if she has questions, you’ll be here to answer them.”
    Therese shook her head. “I thought about this all night. It’s better for everyone if it isn’t dragged out. She has a right to know it all. Am I being selfish to want this finished?”
    “No. Of course not; you’ve never been selfish, ever since I’ve known you. Am I?”
    “You? Why would you say such a thing?”
    He bit his lip, then asked quietly, “Am I in the diary?”
    Therese patted his hand, understanding dawning. “Perhaps.”
    He pulled his hand away, braced his elbows on the table, and lowered his head to his hands.
    “What is it? You only did good things.”
    “I didn’t tell her. All these years I never told her. I never told anyone.”
    Therese rubbed his back, just like she had the night Meri was born as they