The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber Page B

the drawer in his nightstand. He’d placed his senior year high school yearbook there. He breathed a sigh of relief—it was still there. He set the book on his lap and ran his hand over the slim hardcover as if looking for damage.
    “Did he destroy that, too?” Michelle asked.
    Just from the feel of the annual, Josh knew something was wrong. Opening it, he quickly discovered that several pages had been ripped out. His graduation picture for one, and several others as well. Josh guessed that Richard hadn’t sat down and methodically flipped through the book until he found what he wanted, but had blindly ripped pages from the yearbook in a rush of anger andgrief. It was all a little nuts—the violence of the act—even all these years later. Josh found it disturbing to be so loathed by his stepfather, although it shouldn’t come as a shock.
    “What are you going to do?” Michelle asked again with trepidation, as if she were afraid of his answer.
    “Nothing.”
    “That’s wise,” she assured him. “You’re a much more sophisticated, emotionally secure man than he is.”
    Richard would like nothing better than to get an angry reaction from him. Michelle was right; he had to let this go. If he had responded reflexively with rage, it would have only compounded the problem. As difficult as it was, Josh refused to give his stepfather that much power over him.
    Michelle leaped to her feet.
    “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I don’t intend to say a word to him.”
    “Good.”
    “You know that’s what Richard wants, don’t you?”
    She nodded. “He’ll be looking for your reaction.”
    “I’m not going to give him one.”
    “He’s sorry, you know.”
    “Richard? I doubt it.”
    “Actually, I believe he is. He didn’t want you to go upstairs and this is why. He’s embarrassed by what he did, but he couldn’t make it up the stairs to hide the jacket or the yearbook.”
    Josh wanted to believe his stepfather regretted the rampage that had destroyed his things, but he wasn’t sure that he could.
    “He’s sorry,” Michelle repeated. “If you can find it in your heart to let it go, then do.”
    She made it sound easy. He paced the room as though his anger was too hot to hold inside of him. “This is wrong on so many levels. How could Richard do something like this? What kind of grown man does this?”
    He didn’t give Michelle the opportunity to respond. He felt himself getting fired up again. It was hard to rein in his anger and stay coolheaded.
    “How can you say he regrets any of this?” he challenged.
    She continued to sit on the edge of the mattress and stared up at him, perfectly calm while he vented his outrage. “Did you notice how the yearbook was neatly tucked back inside the drawer?”
    “So what?” he snapped.
    “He cleaned up the torn-out pages.”
    “Big deal.” But still Josh felt the anger leave him. He appreciated Michelle all the more for talking him down. He resisted the urge to take her into his arms and simply hold her.
    “At some point Richard returned to the room and cleaned up the mess.”
    She was right. No one else would have been up here. Richard lived alone. Gradually his pulse returned to normal. Losing Dylan had been hellish for Richard. He could only guess what other damage his stepfather had done when he learned that he’d lost his only child. Whatever it was had been righted to the best of Richard’s ability. No doubt Josh’s dresser drawers had been emptied, too, and then everything had been returned to some semblance of order. That would explain why his socks were in the top drawer and not the second one where he’d always kept them.
    Josh’s letterman’s jacket was hung up, too, which told him that at some point Richard had returned to the room and replaced it on the hanger.
    “Richard probably didn’t expect me to find any of this until …” He didn’t complete the sentence. The older man assumed he’d be dead and buried before Josh