“During the week after your father threw me out of his house, I wrote you six letters begging you to come west with me. And I know you received them. I gave those letters to Mrs. Dom, your mother’s cleaning lady, and she promised that she delivered them to you. You wrote back once. You said your father would never permit you to leave Chicago. You made your choice, Angie. So, no. I didn’t think you’d care what I did out here. Why would you? You’d made it clear as glass that you didn’t care about me or us.”
His anger surprised him. It reached beyond not doing right by Laura, reached back into the realm of first love and first betrayal and the first pain of the heart. Grinding his teeth, he turned his back to her and fetched two coffee cups from the shelf above the stove. After filling and placing them on the table, he took a seat across from her.
She was so different from Laura. Where Laura had been pale and delicate, Angie was vivid and strong featured. Laura had been a tiny wisp of a thing. Angie was tall and threw a punch like a man, as he had cause to know, he thought, feeling his jaw.
“I never believed I would ever hate anyone,” Angie said in a whisper. “But I think I hate you.” She shook her head and gazed at a point in space. “All those years . . . I was as chaste and unwanted as a spinster, and all the while you were—”
“What do you want me to say? That I was wrong? All right, I was wrong about everything. I should have walked away when your father refused me permission to court you. I should have talked you out of seeing me on the sly. I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me. I shouldn’t have suggested we elope that Sunday afternoon. I should have dragged you out of your father’s house. Is that what you want to hear?”
Accusation glittered in her eyes. “You lived with someone as man and wife and had children.”
“I won’t apologize for that. The one thing in this whole mess that I don’t regret is Laura. I do regret that I couldn’t marry her. I do regret that I couldn’t give her more. But Laura brought sunshine to this house and to me. She gave me Lucy and Daisy and they’re the best things that ever happened in my life. If I had it to do again, Angie, I’d do it the same way. I’d take the good years with Laura.”
In the ensuing silence he fought the anger clenching his jaw and watched Angie slowly withdraw her hat pins, then remove her hat. She placed the hat and pins in a row on the table.
“I suppose you already know how selfish and wrong you are, so there’s no need for me to point it out,” she said, pointing it out. “More important, a thought occurred while you were trying to justify your unforgivable behavior.”
Sam stared at her.
“Are you expecting me to care for your daughters while I have to be here?”
Until this minute he hadn’t thought ahead to consider their everyday arrangements. “That seems reasonable,” he said finally. “It doesn’t make sense to continue paying Molly Johnson to watch the girls, do the laundry, and cook an occasional meal while you’re living here. God knows I can use the money I’d save by not having to pay Molly.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said unhappily. “Well, there’s something you need to know. Unlike you, I haven’t had children and I don’t know anything about them. It’s a good thing our situation is only temporary because I’m sure to make mistakes.”
“If you have questions, Molly Johnson is right next door.”
Angie lifted an eyebrow. “Does the woman who watches after your children know about me? What kind of person is she? Does she care that you and Laura lived together without benefit of marriage?”
“Molly Johnson is the salt of the earth.” His eyes narrowed, but he managed to keep his voice level. “I’ll explain who you are to Molly.”
Every other word set a torch to his anger. Laura’s parents knew why Sam hadn’t been free to marry their daughter, and that’s why they hated him. He supposed everyone else had assumed that he and Laura were married. For Laura’s sake, that’s what he had hoped. Now Mrs. Finn knew that he and Laura had lived in sin. He’d have to admit the same to Molly. Soon everyone who had known Laura would decide she wasn’t the respectable woman they had believed she was. Laura didn’t deserve that. Her only crime had been loving him.
And as much as he disliked Laura’s parents, they, too, didn’t deserve the shame they would experience when Angie’s identity became known and it was publicly obvious that their daughter had involved herself in an adulterous liaison. Fortunately, once the initial gossip died down, most of Willow Creek wouldn’t give a damn. The basic philosophy in mining towns was live and let live. But the Govenors cared about such things. They already believed he had corrupted their daughter; now they would blame him for shaming Laura and them and for heaping disgrace on their family name. They would use Angie against him.