Page 21 of Hero for the Holidays

Seamus McCloud, the patriarch of McCloud’s Landing, had been a big fan of using his fists against people.

Their dad wasn’t quite so gauche. He preferred emotional torture.

And he was very, very good at it.

“I’m good, kid. Just got some work to do.”

He felt bad about lying to her. But parenting, in his limited experience, was a lot of pretending everything was fine and you knew what you were doing so that your kid felt secure in a world that was anything but.

His dad had never done that. His dad was the thing that made the world scary.

In that way, he supposed he was doing better.

Maybe.

“See you around.”

And when he did, everything would be different again.

He just prayed he would handle that right.

Because right now, he felt like he was making a mess of things.

Right now, he felt like he’d had his own dark inclinations served up to him on a platter.

He was still angry at Fia. And he could never discount how many decisions he’d made out of anger.

And so he would have to question just what his motive had been here.

Was it reallyfor Lila’s benefit? Or had some part of him wanted this?

Well. That was what tonight was for. They had to let the poison out of the wound. Once and for all.

THECABINWASSMALLand dusty. She could remember the last time she’d been here. And she didn’t especially want to think about it.

There had been no reason to come anymore. Not after.

She wondered if he’d come up in the years since. If he had ever brought his other girlfriends to the spot. That was the thing. A man could move on from the kind of trauma that had come from their relationship. At least, the consequences that sex had.

She hadn’t been able to. It was too hard. She was too afraid.

She looked around the room, surprised by how much smaller it seemed. Back then it seemed like their own world. Something glorious and theirs alone.

She heard him before she saw him. Or maybe she felt him. She turned, and he was standing in the doorway. Wearing that same, heartbreaking outfit from earlier. It still made her stomach go tense. Even now.

She had spent the day in a sort of numb shock. She had spent the day unsure of what she had to say. But knowing she had to be ready to open up a vein and let blood.

She had considered calling her sisters. She had considered asking them to come talk with her. Confessing everything. But something had stopped her. Maybe it was the fact that this wasn’t resolved. Maybe it was that she was in shock. That she still couldn’t quite accept this version of reality where that baby girl she had given up all those years ago was here now. And worst of all, that the life she had wanted to give her daughter had been so badly destroyed.

Her parents had died.

She must be...grieving. She must be traumatized. And all Fia had ever wanted to do was spare that child trauma. She had wanted to give her the best of everything. She was devastated, and she didn’t know what to do with the feelings, because she felt like there was no time to sit in them. Her child was here. Living in Landry’s house.

How could she marinate in her own sadness when that was the reality? She didn’t have time. It was like the experience of pregnancy and deciding that adoption was the only option in the first place. There had been pain. So much of it. And she’d known that she had to defer it. That she had to put it aside and deal with it later. And she had.

Her parents were too self-involved to notice her depression. Her dad was off having his affair while her mom pretended she didn’t know. When Fia was frozen in the most intense postpartum depression. Because it felt like she should be a mother. And there was no baby.

Because she’d felt that child grow inside of her, and she had...

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