THE DARE (G!P Freenbecky)

Chapter 42

"She's terrified of her feelings," Phillip said, pouring two glasses of cognac into balloon snifters. "She's scared of losing you, yet everything she's doing is more than likely pushing you away."

Freen thought about this. Not yet, but with time, Freen would probably get discouraged. What woman wouldn't?

"I blame myself," Phillip said suddenly.

"No," Freen said.

"I do." He offered Freen one of the glasses of cognac, then indicated that she should join him by the fireplace. A warm and inviting fire crackled in the grate, and Freen had the distinct feeling that this conversation with Phillip was one that the older man had wanted to have with her for some time.

"Her mother......well, there were no halfway measures for Elizabeth. She loved with all her heart. She was so very young and inexperienced. I often wonder what would have happened if she had hooked up with a genuinely decent man, but it wasn't to be."

"What happened to the guy?"

"He lives in Thailand, quite happily. And he doesn't have a clue that he abandoned his daughter. My daughter and granddaughter were an inconvenience in his life, nothing more. What's that expression? A blip on the radar screen of his life."

Freen couldn't fathom this.

"Good. You look stunned. As I was." Phillip took a sip of his cognac, then said, "I like you very much, Freen, and I want to help you in any way I can. And I want you to know that you can call me anytime, day or night."

Freen thought about this. She was sure Phillip didn't mean help in the financial sense.

"Help me to understand her," Freen finally said.

"This is the key," said Phillip. "No matter how hard she tries to push you away, you must not back away. You can't give up. I think she's really close to breaking through, close to understanding how not allowing her heart to feel is the worst thing anyone can do with their life."

"What would feeling do to her?"

"If she fully acknowledged her feelings for you, Freen, she would have to go back and feel all those emotions she's repressed from almost twenty years ago and even earlier. Do you know that she continued to ask me why her father never called or came to see her until she was sixteen?"

"What happened then?"

"The private school she attended here in the city for her last two years of high school had a father-daughter event, a big picnic on a Sunday afternoon out in Marin. It was all she could talk about. I thought she assumed that I would attend, but she'd tracked her father down on her computer with the help of some agency she'd found online. She called him at his office and kept trying to get him to speak with her. To acknowledge her. But he kept telling her he didn't know what she was talking about. He had no daughter."

Freen put her cognac down on the table in front of her chair. "Right about now, I could strangle the man."

"My feelings exactly. That was the moment that broke her. I found her in her bedroom, sobbing. Her heart had been broken, Freen. My granddaughter is a dreamer, and I believe she'd concocted some teenage fantasy in her head about what would happen when she finally talked to her father, that they would somehow create this magical relationship and everything would end happily. You and I know that isn't always so."

"So does she, now," Freen said.

"Yes, but here's where we're different. You and I both know that the world can be a challenging and sometimes miserable place, but we keep putting ourselves out there. She stopped."

No, she didn't, thought Freen. She put herself out on the line that night at the bachelor party. She jumped into an affair with me feetfirst, not even looking to see if there was water in the proverbial pool. She threw off her clothes and told me to get with the program, to try to keep up.

Why?

Freen had never met anyone as alive as Becky, yet at the same time, she knew that what Phillip was telling her was true. Becky was pulling away from her quite deliberately. The only thought that Freen could come up with was that Becky was just like her mother and experienced her feelings in a most passionate way. Freen could understand Phillip's desire to protect her, to protect her from what her mother had suffered.

Freen also knew that she would never hurt her if she only trusted her enough to give their relationship a chance. How funny that they'd both stepped into this relationship backward, being so terribly physically intimate right from the start, but having to work their way to true, lasting emotional intimacy and trust.

Both Freen and Phillip stared at the fire for a long moment; then Phillip said softly, "I have a feeling that Lookkaew's wedding would bring up some of these issues for her again. And then when she came back, she seemed.....changed. Of course, then I met you, and she told me she'd met you at the wedding, and it all fell into place."

Freen suddenly felt shame. This man had invited her into his home, trusted her with his beloved granddaughter, while she—

"I know you'll understand this," said Phillip. "Do you agree with me that we make the most important decisions of our lives with our hearts?"

Freen thought about this for a second, then nodded.

"I'm glad you agree. And I've also noticed that, in life, if someone doesn't feel it's safe to express herself, she generally won't. If a person anticipates hurt, they stay silent. Or go into hiding."

Freen nodded, wondering where the conversation was going.

"I think that my granddaughter has lost a part of her heart. Oh, not literally. But when a parent is abusive and cold, like her father was, or helpless, like my daughter was, the outcome for a child isn't a good one."

"I agree."

"A person's heart is their guidance system, and what I'm trying to tell you is that Becky's has been damaged.

So she's not quite sure how to fly, if you know what I mean."

"I do."

"A person can become disheartened by grief or loss. That's the true meaning of that word when you lose a part of your heart." Phillip stared into the fire for a long moment, but Freen knew better than to interrupt the old man.

He had his memories and had suffered his share of losses.

"But," said Phillip quietly, "the heart has also always been regarded as the seat of courage, the place where our courage comes from. One of the most courageous choices that any individual can make in this day and age is to love. I hope, with all my heart, that you'll help my granddaughter make that choice."

Freen nodded her head. There was nothing left to say. Phillip had said it so well.

"There's one more thing I have to tell you, Freen. It will help you understand her. It will help you fight for her."

"Go on."

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