Free The Lancaster Men by Janet Dailey

Shari and Rory to the hospital to see her as soon as they’ve freshened up and changed,” Whit stated.
    “I’ll never understand how a woman as selfless as Elizabeth could have two such thoughtless children,” their grandfather declared in open disgust. “All you care about is yourselves.”
    “That isn’t true,” Shari angrily denied the charge.
    “What do you think started this all off?” he challenged. “Rory goes tearing off to join the circus. He didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a note to explain why he was leaving—or the guts to tell us he was going.”
    “This wasn’t Rory’s fault,” Shari insisted as her younger brother paled under the accusation of blame.
    “You’re damn right it wasn’t!” the patriarch of the Lancaster family agreed with an emphatic nod, and pointed an arthritically crooked finger at Shari. “It was yours! He was only doing what he knew you didat his age! I should never have listened to Whit. I should have hauled you back here and locked you in your room.”
    “You couldn’t have kept me here! Not you! Not anybody!” She was shouting. She hadn’t been inside the house a minute before she was locked in another one of their duels of will.
    “After all your mother did for you, I’ll never understand how you could treat her the way you have,” he said coldly. “You don’t even come to see her during the college breaks unless you have nothing better to do.”
    “And just why do you think I stay away from Gold Leaf?” Shari stormed. “It’s because of you! You think you can control everybody’s life. You want everybody to do what you want! That’s why I left—and that’s why Rory left! We just couldn’t stand it any more! If anyone’s to blame for what happened to Mother, it’s you!”
    “Shari, that’s enough!” Whit ordered.
    There were hot tears in her green eyes when she looked at him. “I don’t know why I let you bring me here! I knew this would happen!”
    “I brought you here because this is your home,” he stated.
    “No, it isn’t! It’s never been my home. I only lived here,” she retorted, speaking the truth she had always felt. “It belongs to Lancasters and I’m a Sutherland. I used to cry myself to sleep at night because I wasn’t a Lancaster. But when I look at you—” She turned to her step-grandfather, “—I’m glad I’m not! I’m glad!”
    Before she disgraced herself by breaking intotears, Shari bolted for the stairs, brushing past the embarrassed housekeeper who had been an unwilling witness to the bitter exchange. She ran directly to the room that had always been hers and threw herself onto the bed, sobbing openly.
    Someone touched her shoulder. She stirred, peering tearily through her lashes to see Whit standing by her bed.
    “Go away,” she complained.
    “Take a shower and run some cold water over your face,” he instructed. “You don’t want your mother to see that you’ve been crying when we go to the hospital.”
    It was true. She didn’t. She managed to restrain her sobs to hiccoughing sounds. “Why does he always have to do this to me?”
    “Believe it or not, he loves you, Shari,” Whit answered. “Now get a move on. We’re leaving for the hospital in twenty minutes. You don’t have much time to get ready.”

Chapter Five
    Cold water took a lot of the puffiness out of her face, but not all of it. Exactly twenty minutes from the time Whit had given her, Shari was descending the steps. She paused at the landing, rawly stiffening when she saw her grandfather waiting at the bottom, using the banister for support instead of his cane.
    Determined not to let him incite her to anger again, Shari started down the steps. Her emotions were too torn apart from the sequence of recent events to endure another battle royal with him.
    “Shari,” he called her name when she would have walked right past him. She would have done so anyway if she hadn’t heard a placating quality in his voice. So she