“Here he comes,” she muttered.
Dallas squeezed her leg under the table. “It’ll be okay. Just smile and act like there’s nothing wrong. There shouldn’t be anything wrong. You have the right to say no if you don’t want to go out with a guy.”
“But I said I was too tired!”
“Because you were attempting to salvage his feelings. That it didn’t work out isn’t your fault.”
“Hey,” Cain said as he reached the table.
She forced a smile. “Hi.”
“Looks like you got your second wind.” His own smile appeared brittle, and his voice sounded more high-pitched than she remembered it being at dinner.
“Yeah. I’m feeling better,” she said lamely.
“Have we met?” Dallas asked.
Emery got the impression he’d inserted himself to draw Cain’s attention, so that she could feel more comfortable with the situation and was grateful to him for taking the lead.
“No.” He held out his hand. “I’m Cain Brennan.”
Dallas shook with him. “Dallas Turner.”
“I know.”
Emery could feel Dallas’s surprise. “I thought you said we haven’t met.”
“We haven’t, but most people in this town are familiar with you and your situation.”
Emery could tell he’d surprised Dallas again. “My situation?”
“With your father just getting out of prison, it sort of brings it all up again.” He clicked his tongue in apparent disgust. “You’d think a man who killed his wife and one of his children would spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
Dallas went rigid beside her. “What are you talking about?”
Cain’s eyebrows knitted. “You don’t know?”
“How is it that you know?” Emery asked, mortified for Dallas. She was shocked to hear this history with his father, but now she could see why he might be reluctant to talk about his past.
“When I saw Dallas walk in, I was curious, so I did a Google search. With just a few keywords, I found this.” He flashed his phone at them. “It’s only a short article—what your father did is hardly news after so long—but I figured you, of all people, would be keeping track of him,” he said to Dallas. “I sure as hell would be. He tried to shoot you, too, right? Tried to kill you when you were just a kid? I’d be afraid he might come back to finish the job.”
“Cain, that’s enough,” Emery said, but it was too late. The news that his father had been released from prison had hit Dallas like a bombshell. Her, too. His father had killed his mother and his sister—and had tried to kill him? And she’d thought her own situation was bad. She’d gone on and on about it, soliciting his help. She felt awful now.
“Let’s go before I break this fool’s jaw,” Dallas ground out, his face stony.
“I told you he was a hothead,” Cain said as Emery scrambled from the booth.
They headed to the exit without responding.
“Sorry if I ruined your evening,” Cain called after them, but Emery could tell by the smile in his voice that he wasn’t sorry at all.
Everyone else was asleep by the time they got home, and Dallas was glad. The dark, quiet house meant that it wouldn’t seem odd when he said good-night to Emery and went straight to his room, where he could be alone. He wanted to get hold of that letter his father had sent him to see if Robert had mentioned getting out of prison. Maybe it was his own fault that he’d been blindsided tonight. Maybe that was the reason Robert had written in the first place.
He closed the door behind him as soon as he walked into his room and went straight to the drawer where he’d stuffed the envelope.
“Damn you,” he muttered to his father, scowling at his own name, written in what had to be Robert’s hand. Most people would easily recognize the writing of their own parent. But Dallas hadn’t seen enough of Robert’s to be able to distinguish it.
This was the first time his father had ever reached out. Part of Dallas couldn’t believe it had taken him almost twenty-five years. Another part was angry that he’d tried to contact him even now.
With Cain’s words still echoing in his ears, he pulled out his pocketknife so that he could carefully slit open the top. For all he knew, the way his father had sealed the envelope was intended to give him hepatitis, if not something worse. Robert simply wasn’t someone who could be trusted. He was a consummate actor, could fool just about anyone—at least when he was sober. Even before the murders, he’d been embezzling from the financial planning company where he worked. He’d just been caught the week he’d opened fire, which is what had pushed him over the edge. Although he denied it afterward, Dallas firmly believed he’d planned to kill his family, take off and start over.
The letter inside was written on lined paper—it, too, in pencil.
Setting aside the envelope, Dallas spread what turned out to be one page on the desk at the side of the bed and ironed out the folds.
Dear Dallas,
I’ve thought about you so often over the years—every day, if you want the truth. You might scoff at this, but I feel as if I know you. I can remember holding you, feeding you, teaching you to walk and to throw a ball as if it was only yesterday. For me, time has stood still. But I understand that everything must’ve changed for you and you can’t possibly remember me, at least not in any favorable light. You were too small when I did what I did to be able to hang on to the man I was before that day.
Filled with disgust and too many other emotions to name, Dallas squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. That day? What about everything he’d done before? But Dallas had already known this letter would be full of lies and, therefore, difficult
