Moment of Weakness (Embracing Moments Book 1) (16 page)

“You know, Dad . . . today actually took its toll on me. Would you hate me if I said I changed my mind and just wanted to stay home?”

Concern crossed his face, and he pulled me against his chest. “How could you even say something like that? I’d never hate you, Julia.”

“I know, I just feel bad.” And I did feel bad. I had called him at the last minute to buy a ticket, and now I was changing my mind again.

“Don’t feel bad, it’s your summer, you spend it the way you want. Are you sure though? Theo is also coming with, and I gave the rest of the staff off for the week. You’d be home alone except for Roman.”

I nodded my head. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. It will be like a mini vacation with everyone gone.” I gave a forced smile.

“Okay.” He turned to leave. “Julia, meet me out back in about an hour. I want to take a walk with you before I leave.”

“Okay,” I said, before he stepped out of my room.

The sun was starting to fade as I made my way down through the kitchen and stepped out on the patio. My father stood at the bottom of the steps waiting for me. A weird feeling ran through me as the light breeze blew across my face. This evening felt so much like the one thirteen years ago. I really hoped he wasn’t taking me where I thought he was. As he wrapped his arm around my shoulder, we started down the tiled pathway. My heart clenched. He was totally taking me there.

The meadow.

We walked for ten minutes, and I could see the clearing in the trees up ahead. My breath died in my throat, and the suffocating feeling I got when I thought about her came back with a vengeance. Every muscle in my body tightened.

“Come on, Julia. You can do this. I know you can.”

My father’s voice cajoled me along. He was right, I could probably do this, but everything inside me told me I didn’t want to. My feet carried me the rest of the way down the path and through the trees. It was just how I remembered it. Hundreds of flowers scattered the secluded meadow, patches of dead dandelions laying among them.

“I love you, Julia. I love you so much.”

My mother’s voice echoed in my head, and my lungs felt like concrete in my chest. This was too much. I needed to get out of here. My eyes darted to the clearing.

“Julia, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t, please.”

“I can’t do this, Dad. I can’t,” I said shaking my head, holding back tears.

“This was your mother’s favorite place. She shared it with you because she knew you’d love it too.”

“Well, you know what—I don’t. Okay!” My lips trembled and my voice cracked. “I
hate
it.”

He winced. “Julia, please.”

“I hate it, Dad! Do you want to know why?” I walked over to the spot where my mother and I had sat. If I closed my eyes, it was like watching a movie. The image of us sitting in the grass played over and over in my head. I wanted so badly to burn her image into my mind that night, but it was that same image that now haunted me.

“You see this spot here?” I pointed to the ground. “She sat here, Dad . . . she sat here in this very spot and told me she loved me. How could she bring me here and tell me that, and then do what she did?” I choked out, my whole chin quivering now. The pain of just talking about her pulled me to my knees. I bit my lip, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall. “How am I supposed to forgive her for that?”

“Sweetie, we don’t know that she did it,” he said, shaking his head, his hands resting on his hips.

His words angered me because more than anything I needed to just move on and accept what she did. And he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let it go. I closed my eyes, and it was like the dam had broken; hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and my heart beat rapidly in my chest.

My father spoke again. “We don’t know—”

“JUST STOP! STOP IT, DAD!” I sobbed. “The police found nothing! The private investigators found nothing!” My lungs felt like they were going to collapse, but I needed to get this out. He needed to hear it. “Do you know why they found nothing, Dad? They found nothing because it was an open and closed case. There was nothing that suggested otherwise. The sooner you
accept
that, the better off we’ll all be.”

Silence soaked the meadow. I watched my father pace back and forth before me, and then his knees crashed to the ground beneath him. His hands gripped the back of his neck, and tears streamed down his cheeks. His own voice trembled now. “
Nothing
is not good enough for me, Julia.”

God, seeing him fall apart was awful. Choking out another sob, I crawled over to him and threw my arms around his neck, burying my face into his chest. “I know you loved her, but it doesn’t matter how it happened, Dad. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back.”

“You don’t understand.” How could he think I didn’t understand? He wasn’t the only one who lost her that day.

“I understand, Dad. I lost her—”

“We were trying to have another baby,” he said, his voice calm. My stomach moved up to my throat.

“What?” I asked, shocked and sitting up straight. I looked at my father, waiting for him to explain.

“Your mother and I were trying to conceive. We were having trouble. It had been seven years since we had you. Your mother loved you so much, Julia. She always wanted a large family. So she started fertility treatments.”

“What does this have to do with anything, Dad?”

He shook his head back and forth. His brown eyes were glazed and bloodshot. “Do you remember why she couldn’t come with you to your dance practice that day?”

I tried to recall and then I remembered. “She had a doctor’s appointment.”

He nodded. “That’s right. But she never went to it. I found out that she called the office earlier that day. Right around the time she would have sent you off to practice with Theo.”

My mind tried to make sense of what he was telling me, but what did fertility treatments and missed appointments have to do with it.

“Maybe she just had enough, Dad. Maybe she was tired—”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and cut me off. “She didn’t go, Julia, because she was pregnant.” My whole body stiffened, my head shaking back and forth, refusing to believe what he was saying. “She told the receptionist she took a test, and it came back positive. They had rescheduled her appointment for the next day so she could have an ultrasound. They wanted to do it that day, but she told them I had meetings and she wanted me to be there.”

I sat there watching him, his expression taut and pained. His chest rose and fell with each deep breath he took. “I didn’t know, Julia. She was six weeks pregnant when they did the autopsy, and I didn’t know.” He brought his hands up to his head, palms resting on his temples, his fingers tangled in his graying-brown hair, a heavy sob leaving his throat. “How could I have not known?”

My bottom lip trembled, and I brushed away the tears that continued to fall down my cheeks. This whole time, he carried this with him and he never said anything. Guilt hit my chest like a ton of bricks. It all made sense now why he couldn’t let it go. He lost not only my mother that day, but a child as well.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I cried. “I’m so sorry.”

We sat there quietly allowing our tears to fall to our laps. I was hoping this walk would have ended in some type of closure, but it didn’t. It just created a thousand more questions. Questions that still had no answers. Once our tears stopped and our eyes dried, my father gave me a hug and dropped a kiss on my head. He looked down at his watch, an anniversary present my mother had given him one year, the leather brown straps looking like they would disintegrate if you touched them. “We should get back. I have to get ready to leave soon.”

I knew that he needed to go, but now that I was down here, I wasn’t ready to leave, not yet.

“Would you mind if I stayed down here for a while. I won’t go anywhere. I’m just not ready to go back to the house yet.”

“Just be careful. I have to get going. I’ll call you as soon as our plane lands, okay?”

“Okay. Oh, and Dad?”

“Yeah, sweetie?” he said, standing up.

“Thanks for telling me about Mom.”

The corners of his lips creased up into a sad smile as he nodded. A moment later, he turned and walked back through the bushes toward the tiled pathway.

I LAY BACK
in the thick uncut grass, my hands resting behind my head, my eyes glued to the few stars scattered throughout the sky. I wasn’t sure how long my father and I were out here, but now that the full moon replaced the sun, it had to be at least nine o’clock. As I stared up at the sky, my chest ached with guilt. Guilt for saying the things I said to my father. Guilt for all the times I had gotten angry with my mom. With everything my father had told me, I still didn’t know what to think. My mother being pregnant and canceling her appointment proved nothing; it did, however, create doubt. If she didn’t kill herself, then how did it happen? If it was accidental, then why did everything point to it being a suicide? The only other explanation was murder, but there were no signs of forced entry, no evidence that anyone else had been around. And if it was murder, then who would the suspects be? None of it made sense, and lying there thinking about it wasn’t doing anything except creating a nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Sitting up, I looked around the quiet meadow. It was no wonder why my mother loved this place so much. The hundreds of flowers created a beautiful blanket of color, and the surrounding trees and bushes had the entire area secluded. All this time I avoided coming here, afraid it would be too painful, afraid that it was somehow wrong to be here without her. But being here now, I somehow felt closer to her, and that alone dulled the pain even if it was just a little.

The crunching sound of grass beneath feet pulled me from my thoughts, and the little hairs on the back of my neck rose.

“What do you want, Roman?” I muttered, not turning around. I didn’t need to look to know it was him. Given how late it was, everyone else had already left for the evening, which meant Roman and I were the only people left on the property.

“I saw you walk down here with your father, and when he came back alone, I needed to find you . . . check on you. I know today hasn’t been easy for you.”

What did he know? And why was he acting like he suddenly cared? I closed my eyes, trying to convince myself that I didn’t want him here. After everything I learned today, yesterday felt like forever ago, and as much as I wanted it to, forever didn’t change what he had said. Forever couldn’t change the past.

“I’m on property grounds. I don’t need a babysitter down here,” I said, picking at the fraying ends of my cut-off shorts. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” he whispered, his warm breath fanning my ear. I looked over my shoulder to find him kneeling behind me, his hands resting on his thighs. He wore his navy blue dress pants, but his jacket was off and his white shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing his strong forearms. I knew he was fast, but how he got behind me so quickly was proof just how out of it I was.

“Everyone is entitled to a shitty day, Roman.” I turned back around, exhaling a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. “Today’s mine.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. After the way he talked to me yesterday, and leaving the way he did Saturday night, how could he even think for a second I’d want to talk. “That’s something you do with friends, Roman . . . and we’re not friends. Not even close.” Something shot through me, resignation perhaps, or maybe it was acceptance. Acceptance that we would never be anything more than what we were—my security detail and his assignment.

“I never asked to be your friend, Miss Parker. You can be mad, but I’m staying here with you until you’re ready to go back to the house.”

His stubbornness aggravated me. I just wanted to sit down here alone and wallow in my misery. My body felt tired and weak, and I refused to allow what little energy I had left to be wasted on arguing. I brushed my hair back over my shoulders and then crossed my arms over my stomach. “I really dislike you right now, you know that?”

He sighed. “I know . . . that’s good. It’s a start.”