Free Teresa Hill by Luke’s Wish

that for sure. She barely knew this man, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to take every word he said as gospel. She couldn’t give any man’s word that much credibility, not ever again.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”
    “It’s all right. And it’s not all her fault. I married her. I had children with her, without ever seeing what she was truly like. It’s my fault, too.”
    “You’re not the one who ran out on your kids,” she pointed out.
    “No,” he said. “I could never do that.”
    “And she could?” Samantha found that difficult to believe.
    He shrugged, the gesture holding a world of hurt. “Elena was indulged her whole life. Her parents have a lot of money. They made things easy for her. She always got whatever she wanted, and at some point, she decided she wanted me. I think I was part of the shock-your-parents phase, because at the time I didn’t have much more than I could fit in the back of the camper I was hauling behind my truck, and most all I ever did was follow the rodeo from one town to another.”
    “You?” she said.
    Joe nodded. “Elena went through a phase in the middle of her college education where she wanted to be a photographer. She came to take pictures of the rodeo one night, and one thing kind of led to another. Next thing I knew, she was in the truck with me and off we went. One rodeo after another. Her parents hated it.”
    “I can imagine,” Samantha said.
    “She was a lot of fun back then. We had a lot of good times together, and for a while that was enough for me. But we all have to grow up sometime. For me, it was when we got married and she got pregnant with Luke. The rodeo just didn’t cut it anymore. Texas wasn’t that appealing to her, either. We came to Virginia to tell her parents, and somehow we ended up staying here. I think she thought her daddy would step in and make everything all better then.”
    “Better?”
    “Money,” Joe said as if it was a dirty word. “We needed a house, one she approved of. And furniture and all kinds of baby things. I think Elena believed her father would cough up enough for all that. But he didn’t, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have taken it. He did offer me a job in his electronics firm, which I wasn’t at all qualified for and also refused to take.”
    “Which didn’t sit well with Luke’s mother?”
    “No,” he said. “She might have forgiven her father and me for the house. Or the lack of a house she approved of. But she got pretty steamed over the job offer I refused and all the money that came with it. We settled in here…” He glanced around the little house. “She grew up in a mansion. Or what I think of as a mansion. And this place…well, it’s in great shape now, compared to what it was when we first bought it. I’d done some construction work before, and I took a job with a local builder, worked on this place on the side. Luke came along. Things were a little rocky, and then Dani came along. And that’s when it got really tough.”
    “Two kids are a lot of work,” Samantha sympathized.
    Joe didn’t look a bit forgiving. “I know.”
    “So what happened?”
    “I think it was just too hard for Elena. Too much work for her. I mean, the money was part of it. She always resented the fact that we didn’t have as much as she thought we should, or that I wouldn’t work for her father, or that her parents wouldn’t give her more. But mostly I think she had no idea what she was getting into by having kids. You said it, it’s a lot of work.”
    Samantha nodded. “It’s unrelenting.”
    “Yeah. And Elena still wanted to have fun, to spend money, to see her friends. There wasn’t a lot of time for that with two kids. She was miserable, and I shouldn’t be so bitter about the fact that she left. She never would have been happy here, and the kids would have known that in time. She would have made them miserable, too. It never would have worked.