Page 105 of Fall Into Temptation
“Phoebe, my dear,” Franklin said, reaching for his wife’s arm as she paced behind his chair. “Why don’t you make it clear who you’re angry at before Eva gets the wrong idea.”
“Your mother.” Phoebe spat out the words. “If I could just get five minutes alone with her and a pitchfork, I’d feel much better about all of this. But you’re not off the hook either, Eva. You have a responsibility to your family. So I’m mad at Agnes and disappointed in you.”
Ouch. That stung just a bit.
“And the rest of you? Thinking you could hide this from your father? I’m very disappointed. He is a wonderful, understanding man. But he also has quite the spine in case you didn’t notice when he was raising the three of you! Conspiring to hide something from him that affects the entire family is not just disappointing, it’s disrespectful.”
Emma and Gia hung their heads.
Franklin kissed Phoebe’s hand. “Thank you, my beautiful wife. Now how about you take these two into the kitchen and open a few bottles of wine?”
Phoebe nodded curtly. “Let’s go, ladies. You can start practicing your apologies.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they murmured, rising from the table.
“I could go for some wine,” Eva said hopefully.
“You have other business to attend to first,” her father said, patting her hand. “Come on.”
He led her into his study, a cozy room at the front of the house with all the trappings of both an office and a man cave. It was a chaotic sketch of disorganization with piles of papers, books, and knickknacks jostling for space on every flat surface. Franklin closed the glass doors behind him and gestured for her to take a seat in a chair in front of his desk.
He scooted his desk chair out of the way and fiddled with the combination on the floor safe behind it. He got the combination right on the second try, mumbling the entire time, and triumphantly pulled four envelopes, creased with age from the depths.
Franklin sat down behind the desk, envelopes in hand. “Now, I promised myself that I would never show you what was in these envelopes. And I’m not saying that I regret that decision. But today seems to have made the promise void.”
“What’s in them? Love letters? Is Agnes not our mom? Do you have other kids somewhere?” The questions spilled out of her mouth, each faster than the last.
Franklin laughed, a big, booming chuckle. “You always did have an excellent imagination. I’m very proud that you’re doing something wonderful with it.”
“Thank you, Dad. You haven’t read any of them, have you?” She wasn’t sure she was mentally prepared to hear about her father reading her sex scenes.
“Four so far. I’m waiting for Phoebe to finish the fifth.” He grinned.
“Dad you don’t have to—”
He raised his hands. “I read the first one to be supportive. I read the next three because you’re damn good at what you do, Eva.”
“I’m flattered… and a little disturbed.”
He chuckled and then sighed. “Enough small talk. I owe you an apology. Possibly more than one.”
“Dad, I’m the one who kept this—”
He held up his hands. “I met your mother in the early eighties. She was somewhat of a free spirit. She’d made a few, let’s say questionable, life choices, including what I thought were recreational drugs.” Eva leaned forward.
“So, she was—”
“Dabbling well before you or I were in the picture.”
Eva sat back in her chair to absorb the information. “I had no idea.”
“At first, I felt like it was her choice, that she’d grow out of it eventually. But as I got more involved in the restaurant industry, started saving for my own place, she seemed to be clinging to the party lifestyle. So I asked her to make a decision. And she chose me.”
Franklin pushed an empty coffee mug around the calendar on his desk that still claimed it was May.
“Things were good for a while. She was clean, working. I was manager at a place in New Haven. And along came Emmaline, and Gianna, and you.
“I was working sixty-hour weeks trying to get my restaurant off the ground. Your mother was left with the rest of our life to manage. Even then I knew that wasn’t fair to her. But we had decided together. I didn’t see it. I didn’t notice the signs.”
