A Small-Town Reunion (12 page)

“Sorry to bother you right after closing,” Lena said as Addie unlocked the door. Her mother held a plastic-wrapped plate of brownies in her hand. “I’ve been running late all day today.”

“I’ll forgive you if those are what I think they are.”

“My frosted double-fudge brownies.” Lena handed Addie the plate and followed her back to the apartment. “Even after cutting the recipe in half, there are still too many for me to eat. But every once in a while I get a craving for them.”

Addie grinned. “Lucky for me you end up having to share.”

“Is this your dinner?” Lena pointed to Addie’s pizza with a disapproving look. “You need some vegetables or fruit. I hope you’re taking your vitamins. With the schedule you keep—”

“Hey, I learned from a pro how to take care of myself.” Addie set the brownies on her compact kitchen counter and poured a glass of the cold brewed tea she kept in her refrigerator. She handed the glass to her mother. “I’d offer you some brownies, but I’ll bet you’ve already had your quota today.”

“Yes.” Lena took the glass and pressed a hand to her trim waist. “More than I should have. Please, don’t let me keep you.” She waved toward Addie’s cooling dinner.

“That’s okay. I can reheat it again.” Addie collected her own glass of tea and joined her mother at the little table in the center of her open apartment space. “By the way, Charlie loved the shower gift you sent.”

“I’m so glad. She’s a sweet girl.”

“I wish you had come to the party and watched her open it.”

Lena’s smile disappeared. “You know I’ll have nothing to do with the Chandlers.”

“Maybe Charlie’s wedding is a good reason to put all that behind you.”

Addie’s mother slowly spun her glass on the table. “Jonah Chandler ruined my life. He set me up with those checks he made me write, and then he framed me for theft. And Geneva—” Lena paused, her features pinched with strain. “Geneva refused to admit what her son had done.”

Addie had heard this refrain a dozen times. Her mother seemed to believe that if she told her version of
the story often enough, it would eventually become the truth.

Delusions about the past seemed to be something the Sutton women had in common.

Seized by a sudden urge to change the pattern, Addie braced herself for her mother’s reaction. “Dev Chandler is one of the students in my stained-glass class,” she said quickly, as if the announcement were a bandage she was ripping off a fresh wound.

Lena’s mouth firmed in an angry, stubborn line. “I don’t suppose you could have told him you didn’t have room for him in class?”

“Why would I do that? His tuition money is as good as anyone else’s.”

“Just like Geneva’s money was good for those repairs. I don’t like this.” Lena rose and walked an aimless path through the apartment. “Dev has always had his eye on you—for no good reason, I’m sure.”

“Maybe he found me interesting,” Addie said, ignoring the prick at her pride, “or attractive. Maybe he wanted to be my friend.”

“He was a troublemaker. I’m sure he still is.”

“He’s a very nice man who is watching his grandmother’s house and pets while she’s gone. And spending his afternoons taking care of Quinn’s little girl.”

“Why are you defending him?”

“Because he deserves it. He’s done nothing wrong,” Addie said. “He’s Dev Chandler, not Jonah.”

Her mother’s obvious shock at Addie’s argument was quickly displaced by guilt-inducing pain, her eyes welling with tears. “Obviously I can no longer advise you to stay away from him,” Lena said. “You’re a
grown woman who’s entitled to make her own mistakes. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

She headed toward Addie’s door.

“Thank you for the brownies,” Addie called after her.

“You’re welcome,” her mother answered in a strained voice. She closed the shop door behind her with a quiet click.

Addie rose from her chair, slowly and stiffly, as if she’d aged fifty years since she’d taken her seat. She dumped her dirty dishes in her sink and ran water over them. Her appetite—even for homemade double-fudge brownies with buttercream frosting—had vanished.

D
EV FOLLOWED A SHAPELY
receptionist down a long, darkly paneled hall on the second floor of the Coast Redwood Products building on Tuesday morning. It was rare to find redwood used so extravagantly, and seeing it crafted in old-fashioned, vertical grooves like this always made him aware of Carnelian Cove’s unique place in the lumber industry.

“Devlin.” Harve Billings stood as Dev entered his office. He walked around his massive desk, hand extended. “Good to see you again.”

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Harve.” Dev shook his hand, noticing the white edging the gray in the old lumberman’s hair and the sagging skin below his watery blue eyes. He must have been nearing seventy by now, and he looked it. “I appreciate it,” Dev added.

Harve waved him toward one of the high-backed leather chairs arranged around a low table in one corner of his office and nodded at the receptionist as she closed the door, shutting them in. “How’s Geneva?” he asked as he settled into a matching chair. “I haven’t seen her since the wine auction. When was that? May? Yes, May, I think.”

“She’s fine. She’s in the Caribbean, on a cruise.”

Harve’s chest rose and fell in a series of spasms that passed for a chuckle. “Good for her. She’s got more energy than any two people I know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not going to ‘sir’ me through the rest of this visit, are you?”

“No.”

“Good. Makes me feel older than I already am.” Harve cleared his throat. “And you? What are you up to these days? Still teaching in San Francisco?”

“I had a couple of classes last term. I thought I’d take a break. Do some writing.”

“Good, good.” Harve nodded his approval. “Well then,” he said, lacing his fingers across his belly, “what brings you down here?”

Dev paused. He still hadn’t thought of a subtle way to introduce the topic he wanted to discuss, and Harve hadn’t given him any openings. He was left with no alternative but to simply say it straight out. “Since I’ve been back, a couple of old friends and I have started up a friendly little card game.”

Harve nodded. His expression didn’t change. Dev wondered if he was seeing Harve’s poker face.

“Nothing high stakes,” Dev continued. “Nickel and dime antes. Just a social game.”

Harve nodded again. “Sometimes those are the best kind.”

“They can be. We’re enjoying it.” Dev lifted an ankle over one knee, settling back. “Sometimes, I imagine, it’s equally enjoyable to play for higher stakes.”

Harve’s nodding continued. He didn’t say a word.

“Someone told me there used to be some high-stakes poker here in the Cove,” Dev said. “Years ago.”

Harve’s nodding stopped, but his expression remained neutral. “I suppose that’s a possibility.”

“Did you ever hear of any games like that?”

“Can’t say I did.”

Cleverly phrased…and a dead end. “I was wondering if my father ever played.”

“You could ask Geneva,” Harve pointed out.

“I don’t remember them discussing it.” Dev smiled. “Poker games—friendly or otherwise—aren’t usually something a man discusses with his mother.”

“Or his grandmother.”

Dev smiled and waited. Harve rubbed his thumbs together and smiled back.

The phone on Harve’s desk buzzed. “Excuse me,” he said as he walked across his office to get it.

Dev stood and took a closer look at the old photos hanging on Harve’s office walls. Men in mustaches and suspenders and boots, posed around a giant redwood stump. Immense logs stacked behind a black iron steam donkey. A view of Carnelian Cove as it looked one hundred years earlier, showing the commercial buildings along the bay and the gridlike streets of the older neighborhoods nearby.

“That’s my granddaddy.” Harve rejoined Dev and pointed a thick finger at a different photo, one of a wiry man standing beside a team of oxen. “He worked in a camp out past the bluff.”

“I wonder if he knew my great-grandfather.”

Harve continued to stare at the photo. After a few seconds, he let out a long sigh. “Your father was a good friend.”

“I appreciate that.”

“He had his faults, I suppose, but he meant well. He
always meant well.” Harve’s features grew stern. “He had high hopes for you.”

“I wish I’d known him better.”

“He died too young, that’s for sure.”

Harve paced to the window. He shoved his suit jacket back as he slid his hands into his pockets and stared out over the bay. “I’m sure the local authorities would take a dim view of the kind of high-stakes game you’re talking about.”

“I’m not interested in playing. I know it’s illegal.”

“Good.” Harve glanced over his shoulder and gave Dev one decisive nod. “Keep that in mind.”

“It was illegal back then, too.”

“That’s right.”

“Did my father play?” Dev asked.

Harve’s shoulders rose and fell on another long sigh. “Yes.”

“The night he died?”

Harve shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that night.”

There was more Dev wanted to know, but Harve’s features revealed his regret. The lumberman wouldn’t be providing any more information.

Not today, anyway.

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, as Dev glued the same damn piece of disintegrating pattern paper to the same damn piece of wavy blue glass—for the third time—he no longer suspected he’d never make another stained-glass picture. He was certain of it.

He’d never thought of himself as a quitter. He’d stuck it out until the end of the season with his first soccer team, even after he’d broken a wrist in a fall and
decided playing ball with one’s feet was a game for idiots. He’d stuck it out in choir for a semester, even after his teacher had discovered he couldn’t carry a tune and had begged him to lip-sync at the class concert.

But the thought of spending another afternoon like this in Addie’s shop made him consider poisoning himself so he could call in sick on Thursday.

His glass cutting during the second class had been so badly done that he’d needed extra time at the grinder. While the others in the class had quickly smoothed the sharp edges, Dev had spent hours trimming extra glass and regluing sopped pattern pieces.

Addie leaned in close to his side, her daisies-and-lemonade scent making his vision blur and his mouth go dry. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Fine. Nearly ready to give it another shot.” He waited for her to step away—to give him space to breathe again—and then he shoved back his stool. It scraped across her floor with a jarring squawk, and the noise made him wince.

Shake it off, Chandler, he ordered himself as he stalked to the grinder. He slipped his safety glasses over his face, flipped on the machine, and slowly passed the glass against the bit, determined to get the straight edge straightened out. A few seconds later, one side of the pattern paper curled up. With a muttered curse, he peeled the rest away, dabbed the paper and glass with a shop towel and headed back to his seat.

“Not a word,” he warned Rosie as he handed her the damp paper and glass. “Not one.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh as she spread the pieces
beside two other sets of disasters, and then she returned to her task of gently scrubbing old glue from the dried patterns.

He picked up one of the papers and began to reapply the glue, adding plenty to make sure it stayed stuck this time. A thick glob of rubber cement oozed from beneath the paper as he pressed it to the glass, and when he pulled his fingers away, the paper came with them, glued to his hand. “Damn,” he muttered.

“Are you still working on that same piece?” Rosie peeled the gooey mess from his fingers. “Jeez, you’re slow.”

The knot between Dev’s shoulder blades tightened.

“The girl’s right.” Virgil lifted one of his own glass pieces, examined the edge against the overhead light and nodded with satisfaction. “Never saw anyone so inept at such simple tasks in my entire life.”

Shut up
, Dev silently ordered Virgil.

“I think he’s doing fine.” Barb gave Dev one of her saccharine smiles. “Work that involves small motor skills is sometimes more difficult for men.”

Shut up.

“Is that one of those sexist comments?” Rosie stared at Barb with poorly feigned innocence. “Is it? One of my teachers told my class about politically incorrect speech last year, and I’m trying to figure out if I understand what it all means.”

Addie pulled a cell phone from her apron pocket and handed it to Rosie. “Why don’t you give Tess a call and see when she’s coming to pick you up?”

“Not so fast.” Dev plucked the phone from the girl’s hand and passed it back to Addie. “If she doesn’t stay and help me finish this, I’ll be here all night.”

I’ll be here all night.
Addie froze, her fingers covered his on the phone, and he treated himself to the fantasy that she could feel the heat rushing through him. And then she took the phone from him, rubbed away the rubber cement residue and slipped it back into her pocket before moving to the other side of the table to check Virgil’s work.

“All right.” Rosie gave Dev a high five and then handed him the next piece to glue. “You’re probably going to need me to help you on Thursday, too. Virgil’s right. You suck.”

Dev was beginning to see why Tess got along so well with her soon-to-be stepdaughter. They were a lot alike. “If I bring you back on Thursday—and the chances of that are growing slimmer by the minute—you won’t be able to help with the soldering.”

“That’s okay.” Rosie shrugged. “I want to be here to see you mess up that part, too.”

Dev grabbed the glue wand and smoothed the goo over the paper. And then he stopped and stared with horror at the tiny, shredded triangle of paper stuck to the edge of the brush: the ruined corner of his pattern paper. “Damn.”

“Now what?” Rosie peeked over his shoulder. “You ripped it? Oh, man. You’re toast.”

“Let me see, Dev.” Addie took the sticky paper bits and lined them up on her palm.

He cleared his throat. “Can you fix it?”

She gave him a kindly smile, the kind of pitying, patient look any instructor would bestow on the imbecile in her class. “No. Rosie’s right. You’re toast.”

It took him a second to figure out she was teasing. A thrilling second in which he dreamed of a dishon
orable discharge. An escape from craft prison. He’d rise from his wobbly metal stool and walk out that shop door, a free man.

And in the next second, Addie’s apologetic smile turned deliciously wicked, deepening her dimples. A familiar, gut-deep tug pulled him under, and he wanted to do whatever it took to stick this out. Even if that meant grinding every bit of glass in her shop to shapeless nubs.

“We’re going to try something different.” She reglued the pattern piece to his blue glass, pulled a red glass-marking pen from his supply box and filled in the missing corner.

As she worked, the soft pink cotton of her T-shirt lifted and fell as she breathed—up and down, in and out—and the taunting shadow of cleavage above its V-shaped neckline shifted like a curl of smoke. Warm, moist puffs of air brushed Dev’s face. One perfect tendril of spun-gold hair slipped from behind her ear to lay against her collarbone, the turned-up ends beckoning.

She handed him the glass and pointed to the neat mark on the end. “Now the trick is to grind away the red. Nothing more,” she told him in her teacher’s voice. “You can always remove more glass if you need to. It’s pretty hard to add the missing glass back.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’ve got it. Thanks.”

She moved away, and he stared sightlessly at the things in his hands, waiting for the pounding, swishing tidal wave in his chest to subside.

“Earth to Dev,” Rosie whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Are you just going to sit there for the rest of the day?”

“No.” Dev’s hands came into focus, as big and clumsy as ever and still holding the damn glass and glue.

Everything came into focus.

“I’m going to finish this,” he said.