“Are you kidding? Carte blanche to spend her money? Sign me up!”

“Good!” Evelyn said, clapping her hands. “Now, grab the list, and I’ll show you what we’re dealing with. That is if you can handle a few cobwebs.”

“Just don’t make fun of me when I let out a girly scream,” he said, hooking his arm in Evelyn’s.

“I wouldn’t think of it, Noah. Now let’s go and make sure I didn’t forget anything.”

Chapter Nine

His breakfast had long been forgotten, and the tea in their cups had grown cold. Methodically, Joanna had told her father everything, from her chat with Millie to the meeting the day before with her future bride. She didn’t hide her worries or her reasons, and sitting on the edge of the bed, Joanna waited patiently for him to say something. Like her, he had a temper, and at times it could blaze, and Joanna knew she had just lit a bonfire. If there was one subject never discussed in the Sheppard household, it was homosexuality.

He had sat and listened to his daughter, not saying a word as she spoke the truth she felt she needed to speak, and by the time she was done, his one good hand was fisted, and the veins in his temples strained against his liver-spotted skin. Having spent the entire time staring blankly at his breakfast tray, he finally raised his eyes, and with his teeth clenched and his voice low, he said, “I forbid it.”

“Dad—”

“I said I forbid it!” Robert bellowed, his face instantly turning scarlet.

“Dad, please just—”

“This conversation is over, Joanna! There is no way in hell anyone is ever going to think that my daughter is one of those...one of those...deviants.”

“They aren’t deviant, Dad.”

“They are disgusting!” Robert shouted, pounding his curled right hand on the bed.

“No, they aren’t!” Joanna said, jumping to her feet. “Look, I know how you feel about homosexuals, but times are changing, and this is a way out for us, Dad. This gives us a new start.”

“By my daughter pretending to be a dyke? Over my dead sodding body!”

“Dad, please...”

“Joanna, I will not allow you to do this!”

“You don’t have a choice!” Joanna said, waving her hands in the air. “Dad, look around. Look what we have, or better yet, look what we don’t.”

“We have enough. There’s nothing else we need.”

Up until that moment, Joanna had never realized just how tired she was. She had always gone through her days with him in mind, so she had shrugged off the weariness, wore false smiles to ease his mind, and plodded from one year to the next never having any expectations that her life would ever change. She had never complained. She had never even hinted, but exhaustion has a way of loosening one’s lips.