his attention. He turned to her with a scowl. “I’m not going to any rehab place. Your mother can take care of me just fine at home.”

“Not until you can get around on your own, she can’t,” Jeanette said firmly. She’d had to fight her mother on this, as well, but she was determined not to give in. The doctor agreed with her. “It’ll be too much for her, Dad. She’s not strong enough to lift you if you fall or to help you to the bathroom, much less run up and down the stairs all day long.”

“Whatever,” he muttered. Anger flitted across his face and he pounded his fist against his cast. “This never should have happened.”

“How did it?” she asked. “You’re usually so careful.”

“My mind wandered, that’s all,” he said defensively. “Probably not even a few seconds and the next thing I knew, I was down in that drainage ditch by the highway with the tractor on top of me.” His eyes turned moist. “Probably how it happened with Ben, too. Now I see that. It only takes an instant to change your life forever. Or end your life.”

Jeanette reached for his hand, but he jerked away. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Dad, I don’t pity you,” she said indignantly. “I love you. I’m sorry you’re hurting so much.”

“I’m not in pain,” he snapped.

Though she didn’t believe that, she hadn’t been referring to physical pain. “I meant that your heart is still aching for Ben.”

“Well, of course it is,” he said with annoyance. “He was my son.”

“And you blame yourself for letting him drive that night when the roads had ice on them,” she said with sudden insight. Why had she never realized that before? “Dad, what happened was not your fault. The roads were just fine when we left the house for church. We were already at midnight mass when they iced over.”

“But the steps were slippery when we came out of the service. I knew the roads would be bad and that your brother wasn’t experienced enough to handle it. I should have insisted he leave his car at the church and ride home with us.”

“Dad, stop it!” she said, then reminded him, “Ben had already left by the time we got outside. There was nothing you could have done. Nothing!”

“I was his father,” he argued, growing more agitated. “It was my job to protect him.”

This time when she reached for his hand, she clung to it tightly so he couldn’t jerk away. “Dad, you were the best father anyone could ever have. It was an accident, the same way what happened to you was an accident. You have to let it go.”

He lifted his stricken gaze to hers. “Your mother still blames me.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jeanette said, then wondered if that was true. Was it possible that her mother had silently blamed her father all these years and that he’d known that? Was that yet another reason the atmosphere at home had been so tense?

Her father turned away. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know this,” she said quietly. “Even if you were the tiniest bit responsible for what happened to Ben—which I don’t believe you were—you have long since paid the price for it. You need to forgive yourself. And if Mom does blame you, then she needs to move on, too.”

Her words were greeted with silence, but then he asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “What about you?”

She stared at him in shock. “Dad, I never blamed you. Not once.”

He regarded her with skepticism. “But you’ve been so angry. You’ve stayed away for years now, except for those visits when you flit in and out like a hummingbird, moving so fast it’s hard to get a glimpse of you.”

Jeanette hadn’t expected to get into any of this, especially not now, but her father had opened a door that had been shut and locked for years. “I stayed away because you and mom acted as if I didn’t matter anymore. It wasn’t enough for you that you still had me. It was all about the son you lost.” She leveled a look into his eyes. “And don’t you dare think for one second that I didn’t love Ben. It broke my heart when he died. I needed comfort as much as you and Mom did, but neither of you was there for me. I understood that, at least at first. But it never got better.”

She couldn’t seem to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Do you remember when Ben was alive how we celebrated every birthday, how we always went a little overboard at Christmas?”

Her father nodded, really listening for once.

“After Ben died, I never even had a birthday cake again,” she said, tears tracking down her cheeks. She swiped at them angrily. “You wouldn’t allow me to put up the Christmas tree, much less play any holiday music in the house. The first year, I got that. I really did, but it went on, year after year, right up until I graduated from high school. We didn’t even celebrate that. I felt as if I was invisible, as if I’d died right along with Ben.”

Her tears flowed unchecked and she buried her face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten into all this now. You’re supposed to be recovering.”

She felt her father’s hand stroke her hair. At first the touch was so light, she thought she must have imagined it.

“I had no idea,” he whispered in a choked voice. “None. I was so lost in my own pain, I never gave a thought to what I was doing to you or your mother.”

Sensing that there was an opening that might not happen again, she lifted her gaze to his. “Dad, will you do something for me, just one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Tell the doctor how you’ve been feeling since Ben died, let him help you.”

His gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Help me how?”

“I’m not sure what he’ll recommend,” she admitted. “But whatever it is,

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