Abiding Love by Kate Welsh Page A

laughed with sheer joy as they flew across the meadow.
    This was living and she didn’t need or want a man in her life. She was happy and fulfilled just the way she was. Xandra turned her mind to the simple happiness that life was now. She had been thinking of buying a horse and boarding it at Laurel Glen. Now she was sure. And she’d found the breed she wanted. She would talk to Jack about it when they returned to the compound. She grinned. Her parents would be scandalized if she bought a working horse that used western tack and boarded it at Laurel Glen. But she gave a mental shrug. Their opinion was their problem. Their stand on her divorce had freed her of living her life to please them.
    Freedom.
    That’s what Beth had said the Navy had meant to Adam. The need for freedom from oppressive family expectations was something she could easily understand. Perhaps in that common thread they could find a common ground and unite to help his troubled son.
     
    “Why didn’t you give me your report card yesterday, son?” Adam asked Mark on Saturday afternoon when he found it lying on the kitchen table.
    “Didn’t think it mattered much.” Mark shrugged. “It looks like all the rest always have.”
    Adam stared at Mark’s report card. How could the kid who was driving him so crazy, who slammed doors, tossed his dinner in the trash and stormed out of the house on an almost daily basis, and refused towear anything but clothes three sizes too big for him, bring home a perfect, model-student report card after only three weeks in the school system?
    And why did his son’s accomplishment make him feel like such a failure?
    After what he knew was too long a silence, Adam said, “You’re doing so well in school.” He hoped he’d kept the defeat out of his voice. “I’m proud of you, son. I wish you were still in kindergarten. I’d hang it on the fridge.”
    A shadow crossed Mark’s face. “Did you do that? When you and Mom were still married, still happy? Were you ever around back then?”
    “I was there as much as I could be. Actually, for every single report card that year till…”
    “You left and then we left. What happened to the house? Was it on base?”
    Adam would never forget that last hug he’d gotten as a full-time father. He had left for an exercise a father and had come back as something less. While he’d been gone, his wife had run off with some other guy. He hadn’t figured out who he was in Mark’s life until Alexandra Lexington told him in that last meeting they’d had.
    “Dad?” Mark was frowning at him. “Don’t you even remember where we lived?”
    “Of course I do. I loved that little house. We bought it because your mother didn’t want to live on base. She said she wasn’t in the Navy, I was. I sold it and sent her the proceeds. Buying it was her idea. I wanted you to have the benefits.” To start your newlife with another man as your father. “Why do you ask?” he asked carefully, trying to keep his building anger under wraps.
    Mark stood up and looked over at the blank slate of the refrigerator. His expression was even more vacant and far away. Adam was just about to go over and tack up the computerized sheet—the new-millennium version of a report card—that showed Mark as the top-ranked student in his grade, when Mark said, “I missed my room, so Mom found me the same wallpaper when she married Jerry.”
    Knife to the heart! His son had missed his wallpaper. Not his father. Message received loud and clear. Saint Mallory had saved the day and he’d been…replaceable. By another man. By familiar wallpaper.
    Recognizing his anger as hurt, Adam let the pain roll across him. He was well versed in hiding hurt. He’d learned it from the cradle. Standing, he followed his instincts and tacked the sheet onto the refrigerator with the magnet from the local pizza parlor that kept them fed these days. He hoped his instincts were right, since instincts were all he had. That and trying