29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

C leo blocked Clark on her phone. Over the next few days she explained the situation to her mom and to Bea, but she refused to follow the fallout of the article. While she couldn’t ban them from following it, she forbade them from telling her anything more about it. Someday, perhaps, she’d want to know. For now, she was attempting to act like it hadn’t happened at all.

There was one person she finally convinced herself she needed to talk to. Cleo called her father, at last ready to explain to him where she was and what she was doing there.

He would likely be at work, but maybe that was better. He couldn’t yell at her if his employees were around, she reasoned.

His gruff voice answered, “Hello?”

“Dad?”

A pause, then “Cleo?! Is that you?”

“It’s me, Dad.”

“Cleo, where are you?”

“I’m fine.” That answered how she was, not where she was, but the where would have to come later. “I’m safe.”

“Jorge said he saw you in Memphis then lost you again. What were you doing in Tennessee?”

“Dad, I have a lot I need to explain, and I’ll get to your questions. But I need you to promise you’ll just listen to me. And call Jorge off. I’ll come home when I’m ready.”

“He’s not looking for you anymore, sweetheart, I promise. He was only ever there to make sure you were safe.” Was that really true? He wasn’t there to haul her in like she’d suspected? She’d have to ask her father later how Guayabera Guy–Jorge–had found her at all. Bea had told her he’d come to her house the day after Cleo had left and had probably gotten something off her phone that tipped him off as to the direction Cleo might have gone, so that was likely the answer.

“Dad, I’m sorry I left the way I did. I didn’t want to marry Jameson, and–”

“I know you didn’t, honey. I’m so sorry that you felt like you were being forced to. I thought you had come around to the idea. I’d never have made you go through with it, if I’d known how you’d really felt.”

Why hadn’t Cleo just talked to her dad? It seemed so obvious now that that’s what she should’ve done.

“But, what about the business deal with the Kellermans?”

“That…fell apart after you left, as you might imagine.”

“Oh, Dad. How bad is it?”

“It’s…not good. They wouldn’t go through with it after being humiliated at the wedding, and I don’t know how I’ll regroup. We’re working on that, though. But it isn’t your fault.”

Cleo had a hard time believing that. If only she’d had the courage to tell them no from the beginning, maybe they could’ve found another way to save his business.

“I’m so sorry for everything.”

“I am too, sweetie. I am too. When are you coming home?”

This was the hardest part. “I’m not sure. I found Mom.”

Silence met her pronouncement, and Cleo wasn’t sure if they’d been disconnected or if he was too stunned to speak.

Finally he squeaked, “You did what?”

“I found an address where she was”–she didn’t need to explain just yet where that address had come from–“and decided to go find her. I needed to know, once and for all, what happened twenty years ago.”

“And you found her?”

“I did. She’s alive and well.”

“Is she…?”

Cleo didn’t know what he was going to ask, so she just shared with him that she had a good life where she was, that Cleo was enjoying getting to know her, and that Cleo would come home eventually. But first she had a wedding to prepare for.

She talked to her dad every day after that, giving him pieces of Patty’s story that Patty told her she could share with him. He was gobsmacked, and it was obvious that he hadn’t been party to her forceful removal to Texas all those years ago. He sounded livid about it, and it was probably a good thing that his parents were gone now so he couldn’t rail at them for what they’d done.

They did a lot in the following days to try to repair some of the damage their relationship had taken over the last couple of years. Cleo was able to forgive her father for his part in her forced wedding, something that grew easier the more she saw the consequences he was facing now due to her leaving as well as the article about her. The bad press hadn’t done his company any favors, either. She felt awful that life was going to be hard for him for a while. But he’d land on his feet; he always did. They had a ways to go in reconciling everything that had happened between them, but she felt sure they’d be okay.