Almost Home (33 page)
"I wanted to stop the pain."
"Who's Katherine's father?" Claire asked
abruptly.
"I don't know."
"More lies? Tell me now or risk losing what
little we have left."
Chapter
17
M
ary Jo knew it was both
cowardly and undignified
to search through J.T.'s
things when he wasn't home. But she didn't feel she had any other choice. She
had to know for sure if J.T. was Katherine Whitfield's father. If he was, he
had to have fathered Katherine in the weeks before their wedding, which meant
he was sleeping with someone else at the same time he was vowing to love her
forever.
Over the years she'd gotten used to the idea that he
might be cheating on her, especially since he hadn't made love to her in a long
time. It wasn't difficult to jump to the conclusion that his needs were being
met elsewhere. But the thought of those needs being met in the midst of their
courtship was more difficult to swallow, and the thought of J.T. having a
child, when he obviously couldn't father one with her, made her feel only that
much worse about her infertility.
The doctors had never specifically pointed her out as
the culprit. Somehow it was the two of them together that just didn't work. But
if J.T. had a daughter, then it was obviously her own failure as a woman that
had prevented them from conceiving a child.
As Mary Jo paused in the doorway to J.T.'s private
sanctum, his study—once her father's study—she considered her options one last
time. She'd always respected J.T.'s privacy. Perhaps she was stupid, but she'd
never opened his mail and she'd been content to let him handle the checkbook
and the bank accounts on his own. Her mother had always left the business to
her father. It was the way Mary Jo had been raised, and she'd never thought to
change.
But she knew that their business was failing. She had J.T.'s
behavior as proof, not to mention the rumors swirling around the horse circles
that their farm was on the decline. It broke her heart to think of the ranch
leaving the family, but if J.T. was running it into the ground, then she might
have to step in and do something with her 51 percent share of the business.
When she'd made her threat to J.T. about selling out
to Zach Tyler, it had been just that—an impulsive threat. Now she wondered if
she might actually have to do it. If Katherine Whitfield turned out to be J.T.'s
daughter, that would place her in line to eventually inherit the farm, and Mary
Jo couldn't stand by and let that happen. She'd rather Zach Tyler had it than
some bastard child of her husband.
It was ironic that her father had wanted her to marry J.T.
because he didn't believe a woman could run the ranch. She wondered what her
father would think if he could see the results of his matchmaking.
If she sold her half to Zach Tyler, J.T. would be
forced out. And Zach could save the ranch the way he'd saved Stanton Farms when
Harry had had his heart attack. It was an idea that had begun to take hold and
grow in her head. She'd stood by and let things roll for far too long. There
was no one else who could save the farm but her.
Mary Jo walked into the study and picked up the
photograph of her father that still sat proudly on the corner of the desk. J.T.
had once told her he'd never admired a man more than he'd admired her father.
But J.T. was letting her father down. His drinking,
his womanizing, his gambling, had gotten out of control. She had to put a stop
to things. She just needed some proof, something to hold up to J.T. to refute
his lies.
J.T. was a pack rat. He'd always saved everything,
every scrap of paper, every receipt, every birthday card. She just hoped his
tendencies would help her discover the truth about an affair that had to have
occurred almost twenty-eight years ago.
Mary Jo still couldn't quite wrap her mind around the
idea of J.T. being a father. They'd spent so many years trying to have a baby.
Well, she thought, stiffening her spine, if he did have a daughter, then that
daughter could keep him company while he found a new job and a new family.
Because Mary Jo was washing her hands of him.
She just hoped she could go through with it. She'd
never been alone—not once in her entire life. She'd never even left home, only
changed bedrooms. Mary Jo glanced away from the large glass-covered mahogany
desk to the closet door that led into a small room filled with filing cabinets.
She had a feeling anything from that far back would be in the closet.
Mary Jo walked into the closet and stared at the
shelves lining all three walls. There were several two-drawer filing cabinets
as well, and she started with those, leafing through file after file with a
ruthlessness that built with each passing moment. Most of the business records
were in the farm office, so these were J.T.'s personal files.
Everything seemed in order, surprisingly in order.
Until she hit the credit card files. Sitting down on the floor, she spread the
bills from the last year in front of her. Flowers, lingerie, hotel rooms—there
were charges for them all, places she'd never been, shops she didn't know
existed, many of them near racetracks across the country. Each charge made her
blood boil and her resolve grow stronger.
Ruthlessly she pushed the bills back into the folder
and moved down to the next drawer. She wasn't interested in the past year. She
needed to go further back.
An hour later she was left with the shoe boxes lining
the top shelf. She pulled down two, sneezing at the flurry of dust along the
lids. J.T. must not have looked at these boxes in a while. She took them down
to the floor and opened the first one. Her eyes widened in surprise. Love
letters she'd written to J.T. lay in piles in the box. She couldn't believe he'd
saved them.
She stopped to read a few lines here and there, not
realizing she was crying until her tears smeared the ink on the page. She'd
been so young, so foolish, so desperate to have a man in her life. She'd thrown
herself at J.T. as if he were the last man on earth. As the letters became too
painful to read, Mary Jo set them aside. She didn't want to be reminded that
she had once loved her husband.
Shoving the lid back on the first box, she reached for
the second one. As she opened it, a lavender scent drifted into the room. It
was Margaret's scent, she realized instantly. But why would Margaret's scent
linger in a shoe box all these years?
Mary Jo reached for an envelope. With shaky fingers
she opened the seal. Inside was a single photograph, a gloriously beautiful
color shot of Margaret Stanton lying on a couch completely naked.
Mary Jo's jaw dropped open as she saw Margaret in all
her beauty, a sexy, inviting smile on her lips, a beckoning tilt to her head.
She tried to breathe, but found it difficult to catch her breath. J.T. and
Margaret? She'd thought they were just friends
…
"Mary Jo?"
She heard her name being called, but she couldn't
respond. She couldn't look anywhere but at the picture in her hands.
"What are you doing?"
Mary Jo looked up at J.T. He stood in the doorway,
rage on his blustery red face, fear in his eyes.
"You were in love with Margaret," she said
in confusion.
"Those are my private things. You have no
business looking at them."
"Why didn't you tell me?" She searched his
face for some clue, but J.T., the man she'd lived with for twenty-seven years,
seemed like a complete stranger.
"There was nothing to tell."
"Obviously there was." She held up the
photograph in her hand.
"I meant to give it back to Margaret after we got
married, but she disappeared. I've forgotten I even kept it."
"Really? How convenient."
He seemed taken aback by the harsh tone of her voice. "What
do you want me to say? I married you, didn't I? Doesn't that prove something?"
"It proves you wanted my daddy's ranch. Did you
take this photo of Margaret? Were you sleeping with her at the same time you
were sleeping with me?" Her voice rose with her anger. "Were you
whispering in her ear while I was planning our wedding?"
"You're getting hysterical."
She could hear the hysteria in her voice, but she didn't
care, and she didn't want to calm down. "How many other women have there
been? Or do you even know? I found all the receipts for the flowers, the hotel
rooms. You've spent more money on your sex life than—"
"Than we spent on your infertility?" he
interrupted.
"My infertility?" She could barely think,
she was so angry. "My infertility? What does that mean? Do you have proof
that you can father a child?" She rose to her feet. "Tell me that Katherine
Whitfield is not your daughter. Tell me again that you never cheated on me
before we were married. Obviously there was Margaret. Did you sleep with
Leeanne, too? And what about this Evelyn Jones? Who was she? Tell me, J.T. Let
me hear the truth finally. You owe me that at the very least."
J.T. turned and walked out of the closet.
"Damn you, answer me," she screamed, running
after him. She'd thought he'd left the room, but stopped abruptly when she saw
him sitting in the chair behind his desk clutching his heart, a panicked
expression on his face. A terrible fear raced through her body. "Oh, my
God! What's happening?"
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Then his
eyes went wide and stark and terrified.
Mary Jo picked up the telephone on the desk, dialing
911 as J.T.'s eyes closed and he fell to the side of the chair.
"No," she shrieked.
"No!"
But J.T. couldn't hear her or couldn't respond. He was
no longer conscious. She could only pray to God that he wasn't dead.
* * *
As Katherine drove
toward Stanton Farms late Thursday afternoon, she
looked at the passing scenery with a new eye. How many times had her mother
driven down this road? Had Margaret—she could barely think of her mother by
that name—had Margaret skipped along the white fences? Had she stopped to
climb, to sit on the top plank of the fence and watch the horses playing in the
sunshine as they were doing now?
Had Margaret ridden into the wind, her hair streaming
behind her? Had she been happy in
only biding time until she could leave?
The questions turned over and over in Katherine's
mind. She couldn't correlate the woman who'd raised her with this Margaret
Stanton, this woman who'd sewn a memory quilt with her mother and ridden horses
and lived on a farm and finally run away when she'd become pregnant. It all
seemed so reckless, so impulsive, so foolish—all the emotions Katherine had
tried to bury within herself. Because recklessness, impulsiveness, foolishness,
had not been encouraged in the Whitfield home. So she'd buried them under
practicality and logic and restraint. In the end she'd turned into her mother,
throwing her job, her relationship with her stepparents, to the wind to chase
after the dream of a romantic old hope chest.
Was she just like her mother? She'd never thought so.
But come to think of it—her mother had married Mitchell on impulse, too, after
a very short courtship. And Margaret or Evelyn, as Katherine still thought of
her, had changed jobs frequently, always looking for something better,
something different, something she must not have had in
Katherine searched the tiny corners of her mind where
the shadows hid her mother's face, her mother's emotions, trying to remember.
Everything seemed so vague now.
Who was Margaret Stanton? Who was Evelyn Whitfield?
And most important—who was she?
Was she meant to work as an investment banker, to live
in a condo, to grow flowers on her roof, to follow the rules and make lists and
never run the yellow light, never cross in the middle of the street, and never
pull the damn tag off the pillowcase?
Katherine took a deep breath as anger warred with
regret and sorrow and confusion, leaving her wanting to cry and wanting to
scream and wanting to hit someone.
"Who am I?" she muttered. "Who am I
supposed to be?"