AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oh, Penelope. I tried my best. And I’m sorry I let you down. I love you, and the last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you.
She snuggled closer to me as if she could hear the words in my head. Would she reach for me when she woke? Or would she push me away?
I closed my eyes.
How did I get it so wrong?
I hadn’t even begun to process what my sister had done.
I wish you were here, Grandma Josephine.
She’d make sense of everything. She’d listen.
I needed to talk this out, but there was no one.
I usually confided in my daughter about what was on my mind. Now, she had enough to sort through.
Alma was out.
My mother was never a possibility. She thought I’d disgraced the family with a child out of wedlock.
And this was too personal to speak about with Neil.
Sure, I had friends in our organization and in others . . . but not close enough to talk to about this mess.
I hadn’t felt lonely in a long time.
That Labor Day weekend here so long ago, I’d had pangs of it as I’d watched Kane and Alma. But I’d been surrounded by family. And there were moments when he’d made me feel not so alone too.
And then I’d had Penelope and never been lonely again. She’d filled my days with joy. It was the two of us against the world. I’d been part of something bigger than myself. My happiness was secondary compared to hers. My feelings hadn’t mattered.
We’d had a good life.
Had I destroyed that?
Because there was no going back. Now that the truth was out, we couldn’t put it back in a bottle and pretend nothing had changed.
He-he hit me.
I stared at the ceiling as what little I knew about Kane flitted through my brain. All I could see was his cocky smirk on the opposite side of the jail bars. All I could feel were his arms around me as he carried me from the jaws of the ocean. How right his kiss felt. How it was everything I’d always wanted and hadn’t known I needed.
And the way he treated Nancy Calhoun. I’d seen a different side of him.
Or maybe that was who he really was.
Was my vision skewed? Did I see what I wanted to see?
How could I trust him above my sister?
The image of his embrace with Penelope was like a wake-up slap.
I’d been wrong before about my sister, but I hadn’t listened to any warning bells back then because all I wanted was Penelope.
My instinct might be wrong, but in my heart, I didn’t believe it was.
Kane didn’t do the things Alma accused him of. Hewouldn’tdo those things.
He never would’ve hurt Penelope. He wouldn’t have made Alma get rid of her.
