Page 27 of Lovers at Seaside
“Before I die,” Abe said flatly, his unseeing eyes pointing away from her.
“Yes,” she admitted sadly. Grayson pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Parker looked for signs of emotions in Abe, but he hadn’t flinched or sighed, huffed or fisted his hands. When he finally turned his gray-blue eyes toward them, he looked markedly older than he had only moments earlier. His sunken cheeks hung loosely from his angular cheekbones and jaw. The hollow crescents beneath his eyes seemed darker, more pronounced, and his colorless lips were unmoving. Had he looked this way all along, or was this new?
He finally inhaled a labored breath. “That was a mouthful.”
“Yes. Sorry,” she said softly.
“Honest.” His eyes widened. “Andmeanfor America’s sweetheart.”
“Sorry.”Shoot.
“It’s okay,” Grayson whispered to her.
“Is it?” Abe asked in a stronger voice.
“Yes,” Grayson said confidently. “She needed to say it, and you probably needed to hear it. Only you can decide that, but she definitely needed to say it.”
Abe nodded, new lines mapping his deeply etched forehead. “The Bert you knew, was he focused? Driven? Smart?”
“Yes. All of those things.” Parker’s heart was racing. Her inability to read him was more unsettling than his anger.
“He wasn’t, you know,” Abe said. “When we were growing up, when I was going to college, then working night and day in the chain of convenience stores our father owned in order to learn the business from the ground up, he was playing the part of a starving artist. Sleeping who knows where,painting.” He cringed, as if the word tasted acidic. “He couldn’t have run the family business. He didn’t have the wherewithal to manage a chain of thirty stores, to work fourteen-hour days, to manage the financials and legal divisions. We would have lost it all. He was too soft, like ourfather.” Another word he didn’t seem to care for.
Something inside Parker snapped at the demeaning things he’d said about Bert. “I don’t want to argue about if Bert could or couldn’t have run the business, and I don’t really care what you thought of his lifestyle as he was finding his way to being the incredible photographer he was. I just want to…”What? What do I really want? Why am I here?She stumbled over the thought. She’d wanted to fix their past, but she realized she couldn’t, and it wasn’t her place to try. Still, she felt a need to soothe Abe’s bitter heart, even if he didn’t know it needed soothing.
“I just want you to know that Bert loved you,” she finally said. “And I know he would have liked to reconcile. He was hurt when you returned his letters, but I know he would have forgiven you if he’d been given the chance.”
“I read his first letter,” Abe snapped, anger returned to his narrowed eyes. “He wanted to fight it out, to defend himself.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Grayson threw back at him. “If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you have wanted to defend yourself? To fight it out until you could see clearly again? Until you and your brother, your own flesh and blood, were on solid ground?”
She looked at him, but Grayson’s eyes were trained on Abe. His jaw was tight, his tone firm, but his eyes were full of compassion.
Abe stared straight ahead, giving Grayson his profile. “Didn’t take much to convince our father not to trust him.Tsk.So easy. So pathetic, the two of them.”
Grayson’s hand left her waist and fisted by his side. Compassiongone. “Youpushedyour brother out of the business?”
Tension rose in the room like a fever spike, threatening the powder keg standing beside Parker and the one in the bed. She held her hands up. “Enough. I don’t want to do this. I made a mistake.” She choked back tears. “I can’t. It’s too upsetting.”
Abe turned toward her. “You came here to tell me my brother loved me, because you grew up in a crappy system with some fairy tale in your head about what life should be. I listened to you. Now you listen to me.” He wagged a shaky finger at them.
Parker pressed her lips together to ward off the anger and hurt vying for release. Grayson gripped her hand so tightly she knew he was barely holding it together, too.
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t know? Something that’ll change who I am?” Abe scoffed. “Nice is for the weak. I’m not aniceman. That’s my cross to bear, not yours. My daughter ran off to join a rock band, or some such nonsense, and never looked back. Good riddance. My wife left me for another man.” He smacked his hand to his chest. “Nothing breaks me. Pride kept me going. Strength and pride. That’s what makes a man.”
Grayson released Parker’s hand, the muscles in his arms twitching, the veins in his neck plumped up like thick snakes beneath his skin. “Pride is earned when you’ve done something well.” His tone was as icy as his stare. “Strength is the power to move through anything. And where family is concerned, strength takes stepping back, making room for those you love, putting yourself second or fifth or last, even when you deserve to be first.”
Parker couldn’t take her eyes off of the man who was claiming pieces of her heart by the minute. Conflicting emotions warred inside her. She hadn’t come here to fight or make Abe feel bad. But every word Grayson spoke was powerful and true, and she didn’t want him to stop.
“I’m afraid you’ve fooled yourself, Mr. Stein.” Grayson rolled his shoulders back, and his tone softened. “You cheated your brother and father, disgraced your family, and you moved past that disgrace by hiding behind a bitter, condescending demeanor. You’ve driven away people who loved you because you didn’t like the man looking back at you in the mirror. That’s not pride. I’d call that a coward.”
GRAYSON PULLED PARKER toward the door, fed up with Abe’s nasty, bitter attitude. The comment he made about Parker’s notion of a fairy tale was bull, and he wasn’t about to let her listen to any more of the old man’s hatred.
“Walk out that door, andyou’rethe coward,” Abe challenged.
Grayson spun around. Parker’s eyes pleaded for him to let it go, but he was well past letting it go. He pulled free from her grip and stalked back to the bed. “You got something to say, old man?” he seethed. “Because I’m about a second away from losing it.”
