Still hanging on to the beer, Lily got to her feet, and she took another look at the note that had just thrown her life into chaos.
“I’ll deal with making the call to Cam tomorrow,” she muttered, stuffing the note in her jeans pocket and heading for the office door. “First, though, I have to figure out a way to tell Hayden that her mother is a big fat liar.”
CHAPTER THREE
AS SHE WALKED from the barn and back to her house, Lily wanted to curl into a ball and cry her eyes out. But the only thing that would accomplish would be to give her a stuffy nose, splotchy face and perhaps muscle cramps from the balling up. It wouldn’t fix anything. And things definitely needed some fixing.
Thanks to the Texas-sized mistake she’d made nearly fifteen years ago.
It was impossible for her to justify that mistake of lying to everyone about the father of her child. Impossible, too, for her to forgive herself. Her only excuse was that she’d been so overcome with grief from losing Griff that she hadn’t had a grasp on just how much the lie would snowball.
And linger.
She had no one else to blame for that. Especially not Cam. Yes, he’d begged her to marry him, to let him be a father to another man’s child, but he’d been young like her. Just nineteen. Stupidity was part of the teenage package. So, she wouldn’t toss any blame at him for pressing her to marry him or for leaving Hayden and her just a year later when he realized he couldn’t handle being a husband or a daddy.
The truth was—and wasn’t it ironic that she was dwelling on the truth tonight?—if Cam hadn’t left her, she would have left him. Never Hayden, though. She loved her daughter with every piece of herself that was capable of loving, but it hadn’t taken Lily long to realize that Cam couldn’t replace Griff. No one could. So, at the tender age of twenty and despite having an infant to raise, Lily had decided that if she couldn’t have Griff, then she was better off going solo.
That decision to become a single parent hadn’t been a mistake. She’d thrived. So had Hayden. However, she was now going to have to pay for that big-assed mistake she’d made by not telling her daughter the truth.
Squaring her shoulders and trying to put on a normal face, Lily went inside the house through the kitchen, where she thought she might find Hayden. But nope. Nor was she in the living room. Lily used the temporary reprieve to thread her way through the house to the trio of rooms off the side hall. The master bedroom, Hayden’s room and Lily’s office.
Lily tapped on Hayden’s door while she did more shoulder squaring and such, but there was no response. Since there was still a sliver of light left from the setting sun, it was possible Hayden was with Eli and the new horses. If so, she’d be in soon, and that would give Lily a little more time to steady herself. Or time to make her nerves even more frazzled. She was betting option number two would win out in this particular emotional battle.
It’s time you hear the truth. Call me. Love, Dad.
Yes, that was a surefire way to frazzle nerves all right, and because those nerves were zinging right at the surface, Lily decided she could use a hot bath. She went into her bedroom and had already caught onto the bottom of her shirt to shuck it off on the way to the adjoining bathroom, but a garbled scream left her mouth when she saw the face.
A man’s face squished against the screen.
Still making those garbled sounds, Lily ran across the room, snatching up the baseball bat she kept under her bed, and she turned, ready to swing.
“It’s me,” the squished-face man said, lifting his hands in the air.
Lily still didn’t recognize him until he stepped back, and then she cursed. Not G-rated mommy profanity, either. It was the real deal that might have made a sailor or two blush.
“Derwin Parkman,” she spit out, going to the window. Lily didn’t put down the bat, even though her seventy-something-year-old cousin wasn’t a threat. But he’d scared the heck out of her.
“What the hell are you doing out there?” she snarled.
Derwin was still wearing his Sherlock Holmes garb, and he motioned for her to open the window. She did but then didn’t wait for him to respond before she threw a couple more questions at him.
“Why didn’t you go to the front door and ring the bell?” Lily demanded. “Better yet, why didn’t you just go home like everybody else?” This time her voice was more of a snap than a snarl. She so wasn’t in the mood for Derwin, his Snoops, or anything else, for that matter.
Derwin didn’t say anything until she had the window open, and even then he leaned in until his mouth was against the screen. “I need to talk to you,” he whispered, “and I didn’t want anyone to see me. You’ve got to pinkie swear that I was never here.”
Lily felt herself scowl. Considering the man had been here earlier when she’d arrived home, anyone in that crowd on her lawn and porch would have known Derwin had been to the ranch. So, what had changed for him in the past forty-five minutes or so?
“I’m not really a pinkie-swear kind of person,” Lily answered. “Just tell me why you’re here, and then I can lecture you about hanging around outside a woman’s bedroom window. How’d you even know it was my bedroom, anyway?” She waved that off, but Derwin answered regardless.
He tipped his head to the nightstand. “The picture of Hayden and you when she was a baby. Plus, the decor is kind of plain for a teenager or a guest room.”
Lily felt another frown come on, but she refrained from glancing around to determine what this Sherlock Holmes–wannabe would consider plain. “Why are you here?” she pressed.
Derwin lifted his little finger, maybe hoping she’d go for the pinkie swear after all, but Lily just continued to scowl at him and made a whirling motion with her index finger for him to get on with the reason for this strange visit.
“It’s, uh, about Hezzie,” Derwin finally said. “I saw the box of files on your front porch, and I know those are the things Alma gave you.” He paused and stared at her. With his face behind the screen, he looked like a cartoon Sherlock avatar on a messed-up computer screen. “Well, what’s in that box is, uh, lies.”
That got her attention, mainly because Alma had made it seem as if she was the only one who knew the truth about Hezzie. Whatever the truth actually was. But if Alma could dig up some unsavory things about their ancestor, then so could someone else. Someone like Derwin, who made a habit of digging into anything and everything he considered a mystery.
Lily didn’t invite the man in because she didn’t want him there when Hayden came in. However, she did toss the bat on the bed and tried to ease up on scowling. “All right, what’s the deal with Hezzie?”
He shook his head and actually glanced around as if to check if anyone was eavesdropping. “It’s complicated and, uh, delicate.”