Clay snorted. “I was being polite. It was the night Oralee died. After Dr. Hill and the sheriff took care of matters, we all returned to the house. Adler went outside to cool down, and I went upstairs to change. That’s when I discovered Wyatt had stolen my college savings.”

“Oh dear. The same day? How horrible.”

He strode to the clothes rack and picked up his khaki shirt. “Then it was my turn to go outside and cool down. I heard noises from the garage, and I found Adler and Ellen together. She was comforting him.” He spat out the word comforting.

“Oh no.” Did he mean what she thought?

Clay shoved one arm into a sleeve. “I’ve never been so angry. My parents heard us fighting and pulled us apart. Daddy was so disgusted, he told Adler to get out of his sight.”

That explained why Adler ran away. “And she—your girlfriend—ran away with him?”

He wrestled on the other sleeve. “If only she had. Would’ve saved everyone a heaping load of heartache.”

“What do you mean?”

Clay leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling, his shirt hanging unbuttoned. “He got her pregnant.”

“Oh my goodness.” Leah clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Her daddy’s a physician—Dr. Hill. He was my mentor. He figured it out when she was four months along. They kicked her out and left town. She showed up at my parents’ front door, begging them to take her in. And they did.”

How kind of them. Leah rested her hand on her belly, understanding Ellen’s dismay.

Clay buttoned his shirt. “Everyone in town thought the baby was mine. Rumors were flying.”

“That must have been dreadful for you.”

He whipped his tie around his neck and entered the bathroom. “I couldn’t go to college, couldn’t become a physician, had to stay at a job I hated, my girlfriend had betrayed me and was bearing my brother’s baby, and everyone thought I was the villain.”

The poor man. “No wonder you called it the pit.”

Clay stopped knotting his tie and met her gaze. “Yes, the pit. I couldn’t live under the same roof as her. I couldn’t. So I moved in with Uncle Emilio and Aunt Celia. My parents wanted me to marry Ellen for the baby’s sake, but we both refused. She said she loved Adler and insisted he’d come back and do right by her. He didn’t, of course.”

Sympathy for Ellen welled up, but she didn’t voice it.

Clay jerked the knot into place. “The second that baby was born, everyone knew he wasn’t mine—white skin, blond hair. No one demonized me anymore. Instead they pitied me.”

Leah’s sympathy flowed back to Clay where it belonged. “Is that when you were drafted?”