Read Online The Eden Tree by Doreen Owens Malek - Free Book Online Page B

my mother and then abandoned her,” he said.
    Linn’s eyes widened in shock.
    “You did not know it?” Con asked.
    Linn shook her head dumbly.
    “I thought not. No doubt your father wasn’t too anxious to reveal the reason for his departure from Ildathach. Nor would I be, in his shoes. When my mother proved to be a problem putting an ocean between him and the irritant was thought to be the solution.”
    Linn stood rooted, stunned.
    “It’s an old story, the lord of the manor using the servant girl and then making …other arrangements. I’m sure it was very effective for him but it wasn’t too helpful to my mother. She loved him to her dying day. She never got over him. Never.”
    Con’s fists clenched at his sides. “Kevin ruined her life and her husband’s life as well. My father was a good man. He deserved to be loved. When I was a child in bed at night, I’d hear them arguing long after they thought I was asleep. He would plead with her, ask her to give him a chance, beg her to try to forget the man who’d so easily forgotten her. She tried, I know she tried, but even I could see that she was not able to do it. The night my father died he said to her, ‘You never loved me, Mary. You’ve been Kevin’s wife in your mind from the start. We’ve slept three in a bed all these years.’”
    Linn’s eyes filled with tears. It was a heartbreaking story. She could imagine Con as a little boy, desperately trying to alleviate the anguish of his beloved father, sensing that something was wrong between his parents. And when he got older his growing understanding brought resentment of the source of their unhappiness: Linn’s father, Kevin Pierce.
    Con saw her reaction. “Yes, it’s a sad story. Sadder to me because I lived it. Kevin was a shadow between them all their lives, the one that got away, the man she wanted but could not have. My father was a very distant second and he knew it. He had to settle for Kevin’s leavings, for the shell of a woman Kevin ditched after he was through with her and had taken off to new conquests across the sea.”
    Linn swallowed with difficulty. She couldn’t equate Con’s description of the careless, callous seducer with the warm, loving father she’d known, but what reason would Con have to make up such a terrible lie? And it explained so much—his attitude toward her when she arrived, the undercurrent of suspicion and hostility which she’d sensed from the moment they met.
    “What became of your mother after my father left?” she managed in a low tone.
    “Oh, Dermot married her off to my father, sent them to England where my da supervised the mines. I was born ten months later. A husband and a family to help her forget, don’t you know.” His eyes were cold. “But my mother had a tenacious memory.” He lifted his chin, his demeanor hard and unyielding. “I inherited that from her.”
    “But you can’t hold me responsible for what happened between them so long ago,” Linn said softly. “You’re heaping your memories—of Tracy, of your parents—on my head, on the head of a person you’re judging by the behavior of other people. I’m not Tracy, and I can’t change now what my father did over thirty years ago.” She spread her hands in appeal. “What else can I say? I have two strikes against me and neither of them is my fault.”
    Con sighed. “That well may be, Aislinn, but it changes nothing. I’m sorry I let this go so far; nothing good can come of it. Let’s give it up as a bad job, shall we? You look exhausted and should get some rest. Come with me now, we’ve been too long away.”
    His distant, resigned tone chilled her to the bone. Linn would have preferred his anger to this emotionless surrender to the insurmountable past. He clearly thought that the barriers between them were too strong, too high to scale and too thick to penetrate. He simply wasn’t equal to the effort.
    Linn let him lead her onto the mountain path and she walked down it