Chapter 63

chapter sixty-three

Valentine’s Day

Stan Delaney felt his colossal rage and humiliation, his pain and hurt, balloon within his chest and explode behind his eyes. But he was not his father. Just like his father had not been his father that day, the day his body finally reacted to the daily onslaught of cruelty.

That one action had defined the rest of his father’s life and the rest of Stan’s life.

He might be as stupid as his father, as thick as a brick, but he would never make his father’s mistake. He would never hurt a woman, not any woman, but especially not this woman, not the fair-haired tiny girl with the springy walk who had materialised like a miracle at that party all those years ago and smiled up at him with gleaming, combative eyes. He’d known, before that song finished its last silly synthetic beat, that she was the only girl for him.

More than fifty years later, he dropped his violently trembling hands. He turned away.

He didn’t slam the door. He closed it with a gentle click behind him.