Rose nodded and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Xander was nice enough to pay for it.”
“I loved going to camp. I hated for you to miss it.”
That was enough to soothe his concerns. He grinned and looked over at a group of people settling nearby. One of the boys was from his ball team and was also going to the camp, Rose recalled.
“Can I go tell Ethan?”
“Sure. Don’t wander too far or you’ll miss the parade.”
Joey leaped up and shot off, the cast only marginally slowing him down. He would probably do fine at camp unless he whacked it on something. “Thank you,” she said to Xander while still watching her son.
“You’re welcome. I know he’ll have a great time. Hey, do you have some paper to write down Troy’s number? He wanted you to give him a call to talk over things.”
“Sure.” Rose reached into her purse and pulled out a notebook and pen.
“Oh,” Xander said, and he reached down beside them. He picked a folded piece of paper off the grass and held it up to her. “You dropped this.”
Rose instantly recognized it and frowned. She’d forgotten that was in her purse. She took the paper from him and crumpled it into a ball in her hand. “Thanks,” she said dismissively.
Her pen was still poised in her other hand to write down Troy’s number when she realized he was watching her with a concerned expression furrowing his brow just as Joey’s had been a moment before.
“What was that, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She sighed and clicked the end of her ballpoint pen. Troy’s number was apparently on hold. “This,” she said, clutching the ball of paper, “is a letter from my father.”
The drawn forehead stayed firmly in place. “Really?”
“Yep. Authentic prison mail. I forgot to throw it away.” She held it up to toss it toward the nearby trash can, but Xander caught her hand and plucked the paper from her fingers.
“Does he write very often?”
“About once every two months or so.” After he was first incarcerated the letters had come more frequently, at least once a week. Over the years, they’d arrived further and further apart. That was fine by Rose. She didn’t want to receive any letters.
“Do you or Joey ever write him back?”
Rose turned away from his appraising gaze to the commotion in the street. The bearers of the Strawberry Days banner went past them, followed by the local veterans’ group waving red ribbons on sticks. A crowd had gathered along the streets now, families and friends, children on their fathers’ shoulders, and the occasional dog on a leash.
“You know, I remember coming to this festival with my dad once,” she said. “He put me on his shoulders like that little girl over there. I was maybe five at the time and at first I was scared that I would fall. But my dad had a hold of me and he said that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. He gripped me so tightly that I forgot I was even up so high. I thought I could see the whole world from up there.”
Her gaze dropped to the grass as she fought the tears forming in her eyes. “He lied. My whole life he masqueraded as my protector, when in fact he was the one that hurt me the most.”
Xander flattened the ball of paper and scanned over the words she couldn’t bring herself to read. “He knows what he did to you, Rose, and he wishes you would write to him. He’s so sorry about what happened.”
“They’re just words, Xander. Nothing he says can change the past. And there’s nothing he can do in that medium-security federal prison for the next fifteen years. What’s done is done. The man that worked in that bank is dead and his family has lost their future with him. My father did nothing but lie to me and he will never be a part of my life again. He’s going to miss his grandson’s entire childhood. He hid the problems he was having for years. I can’t trust anything he says.”
Xander’s expression went from concerned to pained. Rose couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t his father in jail. “Everyone makes mistakes, Rose.”
“There are mistakes and then there are mistakes that leave people dead and turn you into a criminal, Xander. It was bad enough when we were just poor. He made us into trash. You want to know another reason why I never told you about Joey? It was because I was afraid that was how you’d see us. That even if you knew you had a son, you would be too embarrassed of us to ever become a part of his life.”
“Rose, you could never be trash.”
Xander reached out and tipped her chin up until she had no choice but to look into his hazel eyes. All these years, she had expected to see rejection and shame there when he found out the truth, but today she was surprised by the warmth and acceptance in his eyes. The heat of attraction. The possibility of more. Joey seemed to think that things between the two of them could last beyond his visit to Cornwall. It was a nice thought, but she refused to bet her heart on that.