Read Sweet Laurel Falls for Free Online Page A

it’s true,” she said in her abrupt way. “Harry Lange’s son
is Sage’s father.”
    She would like to deny it, but what would be the point?
Everybody knew now, and she couldn’t stopper that particular bottle. Trust Ruth
not to shy away from the topic everybody else had been avoiding.
    “Yes,” she said, with as much calm as she could muster.
    “I always knew that boy was a troublemaker,” Ruth said
promptly.
    “He wasn’t. Not really.” Jack might have been on fire with
grief for his mother and with anger and bitterness toward his father, but it had
consumed him quietly. To everyone else, he had been hardworking and reliable. An
excellent student, a diligent employee at his summer construction job.
    “A decent man stays around to take care of his
responsibilities,” Ruth said stubbornly.
    “He didn’t know he had responsibilities here, Ruth,” she said,
wondering if her voice sounded as tired to everyone else as it did to her. “I
never told him I was pregnant.”
    “Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?”
    A bubble of laughter with a slight hysterical edge welled up
inside her. “Yes. Yes, it was. Very stupid,” she answered.
    “What was stupid?” Angie asked, on Ruth’s other side.
    “Not telling the Lange boy she was pregnant so he could step up
and do the right thing.” Ruth said.
    Like marry her? Oh, that would have been a complete nightmare.
She had believed it then, and nothing had changed her mind in the intervening
years. She had loved Jackson Lange with a desperate passion, and he obviously
hadn’t loved her back nearly as intensely. If he had, he never would have
left.
    Only after he took off did she realize the twisted way she had
subconsciously reenacted her own childhood in their relationship. Her father had
walked away from their family in order to pursue his own professional and
academic dreams. By falling hard for Jack just months later—an angry young man
who already had one foot through the crack in the door on his way out of Hope’s
Crossing—hadn’t she perhaps been trying to replicate and repair her family life
by trying to keep him with her, as she couldn’t keep her father?
    Her love hadn’t been enough to keep Jack in Hope’s Crossing any
more than she had been able to keep her father from walking away from their
family.
    “Look, you’re all my dearest friends,” she said now, realizing
everyone’s eyes were on her, though they made a pretense of carrying on
conversation. She supposed it was better to confront the weird turn her life had
just taken head-on rather than dance around it. “I don’t want to put a damper on
the party, but I know everyone is wondering. You’re all just too kind to
pry.”
    Except Ruth, anyway, but she didn’t need to point out the
obvious to anyone there.
    “I might as well get this out in the open, then we can go back
to enjoying the rest of the party. Jack and I dated in high school. We kept it
secret because…well, because of a lot of things going on in our respective
families. The timing didn’t seem right.”
    Her mother’s lips tightened, and Angie reached out and rubbed a
hand on Mary Ella’s arm. She wanted to assure her mother that James McKnight’s
defection of his family and the emotional fallout from that hadn’t been the only
reason for their secrecy.
    After years of mental illness, Jack’s mother had committed
suicide herself just a few months earlier. Sometimes Maura wondered if Jack had
only turned to her out of a desperate effort to push away the pain.
    “After Jack left town, I discovered I was pregnant. For a lot
of reasons that seemed very good at the time, I decided not to tell him I was
pregnant and to raise Sage by myself.” She lifted her chin. “Personally, I don’t
think she’s suffered for my decisions. She’s bright and beautiful and
well-adjusted. Chris has been a great stepfather to her, and she loves him. If
our marriage had lasted, I’m sure he would have adopted