Summer Secrets - Barbara Freethy [134]
"Katie, I --"
"You were drinking, too. Drinking and sailing without a working radio, without two life jackets! It's madness, and you know it. You taught us the rules years ago, but you keep breaking them. Over and over and over again. How many times do you think I can rescue you? How many times can I keep doing this, Dad?"
He looked at her with intense pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything, for Jeremy, for the cheating, and for the lies I asked you and your sisters to tell." He looked over at Ashley and Caroline. "You girls were the best thing that ever happened to me after marrying your mother. I know I didn't raise you right, taking you out of school and sailing around the world. I made a lot of mistakes. I'm still making them. But I love you, girls. If you don't believe anything else, I hope you'll believe that. And I hope you'll forgive me." His sentence ended with a fit of coughing that turned his face red.
Caroline came over with a bottle of water. Kneeling down beside him, she took off the cap and lifted it to his lips. "Here you go, Daddy," she said. "Don't talk anymore. You need to rest."
More tears came to Kate's eyes at the emotional scene. Caroline loved Duncan so much, in spite of everything.
"I don't know if I can ever forgive him," Ashley said quietly to Kate. "Apologies are fine and good, but what happens tomorrow when he picks up another drink?"
Kate couldn't give her an answer, because she didn't know. But she did know one thing: Life wouldn't be the same after this night. Sean knew the truth, and, turning her head, she could see that Tyler knew it, too.
*
Two hours later, Kate and her sisters tucked their father into Kate's bed, then returned to the living room where they collapsed on the nearest available sofa or chair. No one said anything for a long time. There had been too many words spoken already.
Sean had taken off as soon as they docked. Tyler had headed to the hotel in search of dry clothes. And the McKenna sisters had come home. As Ashley and Caroline looked at Kate, she knew it was her job now to say something wise and reassuring, but for the life of her she couldn't come up with a single thing. Who knew what would happen now that the awful truth was out in the open, and in front of a reporter no less? The story could be all over the newspapers, sailing magazines, and online sailing chat rooms in twenty-four hours. Everyone would know that the McKennas had covered up the death of Jeremy Amberson. And if someone probed further, they might find other discrepancies, incidents of cheating that her father had tried to cover up. She hadn't been aware of that part of it until Jeremy had come onboard and mentioned to her that he thought Duncan was paying off crew members on the Betsy Marie to slow things down. She still didn't know if that was the truth or not; her father had been unwilling to ever admit to that, and no one had ever come forward. Perhaps K.C. still had something up his sleeve, something else they would have to face before this week was over.
Kate sighed wearily at the thought of more drama. She looked at the portrait hanging over the fireplace and saw her mother's smiling face. Nora McKenna looked beautiful, innocent, happy. What would she have thought of all this?
Her mother might not have been surprised. She'd lived with Duncan for almost seventeen years; she'd known her husband wasn't all good or all bad. But he'd been different with her, Kate thought. He'd changed after her mother's death, crossed lines that before he'd never crossed. Without Nora, without his anchor, he'd gone adrift.
What now? Would he change? Would this brush with death finally make him stop drinking? Would he see that it was time to stop racing, that he had to give up the glory days of the past, that he couldn't recapture them? He had to find some other way to be happy, but how? And would he even have the opportunity if the consequences of this night resulted in