DOTTY (The Naughty Ones Book 3) (104 page)

Grant tucked my hand in the crook of his elbow and pulled me against his side as we walked along the beach. The water was a crystal-clear blue, the sand almost white. It was so beautiful, especially now as the sun was setting.

“We should build a house here,” Grant said.

“Right here on the beach?”

“Yeah. That way we could sit on our front porch and see this beautiful scene just right out in the front yard.”

“Sounds good.”

“The baby could learn how to swim before she’s a year old.”

“She? You think it’s going to be a girl?”

“I think I want all my children to look just like you.”

I glanced at him. “What if I want a little boy who looks like you?”

“That would do, too, I suppose.”

I pressed my head to his shoulder, laughter building in my chest.

“Don’t most men want a mini-me?”

“I raised a boy. My brother may not be typical, and he was a teenager by the time he was all mine, but I’ve done that. I’m ready to see what it’s like to raise a girl.”

“Well, I think the decision’s already been made. Doctor said we’ll find out in a few weeks.”

“We could wait. Some people still do that.”

“We could. Or we could have one of those reveal parties with the different colored cakes that people are so fond of doing these days.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather wait.”

I looked up at him. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “I think it would make things interesting.”

“Like being in the delivery room isn’t interesting enough.”

He chuckled. “True.”

We walked for a few minutes, both of us lost in our thoughts.

If anyone had told me months ago that it was possible to be over-the-moon happy and down-in-the-ditch sad all at the same time, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it was true. I was so happy I could hardly stand myself. But then my thoughts would drift to my dad and an overwhelming grief would wash over me. I just kept seeing him there at my reception, watching everything from his wheelchair. He was so tired that his eyes continuously drooped. But he had this perpetual little smile on his lips that was filled with contentment.

I’d helped him do the one thing he’d promised my mom he would do. But now that it was over, I found myself wondering if he’d lost his will to live.

The cancer had spread. The doctor said there was nothing more they could do except keep him comfortable. And here I was, miles away, missing out on precious time.

Grant suddenly stopped walking and turned toward me.

“Do you want to go home?”

Tears filled my eyes. “Do you mind?”

He brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “If I’d known my mom was going to die when she did, I would have done all I could to be with her in the days and weeks before instead of making trouble and being self-absorbed. So, no, I don’t mind. I totally understand.”

I couldn’t speak. I reached up and kissed him.

***

It was raining. I stood at the window and stared out at the street below. Grant was asleep in the room next door and Agnes had gone home. I could hear my dad breathing heavily in his bed.

This was the house I grew up in. This was the room my mother died in. It was the room my father slept in all through my childhood.

I remembered standing here in this same place, watching the cars pass on the street below while the nurse washed and dressed my mother’s body, as my father sat at her side and numbly held her hand. He’d brought me in here to say my good-byes, but I didn’t know what to say. I just stood at the window and watched the traffic move, wondering where those people were going and what they would think if they knew my mother had died.

It was dark now, three o’clock in the morning. There wasn’t any traffic. But that same surreal thought was moving through my mind.

What would the world be like when my dad died? Would it change? Would it end?

Grant and I were married two weeks ago. We should have been on top of the world, but we’d spent every day and night taking turns sitting in this room, watching over my dad. It was obscene, this waiting for death.

I don’t have many memories of this waiting when my mom was ill. But she was ill for a long time, so I’m sure there was a lot of this then, too. All I remembered were the final days. The days when my dad came to my room and helped me dress in my finest and walked me down the hall, my hand in his. I remembered standing there by her bed, watching her mumble and stare blindly at the ceiling. It frightened me. I was five. I remembered my mother as a laughing, happy person. This was not my mom.

“Tell Mommy you love her,” my dad said near my ear.

I shook my head even as this person in the bed turned and focused on me.

“Addie,” she said softly, “my darling baby.”

She reached for me with a hand that was skeletal, her fingers ice cold when they touched me. It was like she was already gone. I shuttered, but I couldn’t move away because my father was standing too close.

“Tell Mommy you love her,” Daddy said again, his voice almost desperate.

“I love you, Mommy,” I remembered saying as quickly as I could.

I just wanted to get away. The memory made me feel ashamed as I grew older and looked back on it. But, as a child, the moment was frightening.

I turned and looked at my father lying on the same bed, his body just as wasted as hers had been. It was just as frightening now as it had been then.

I walked over to the bed and curled up in the chair that was positioned beside him, comforting myself with my arms wrapped around my chest. He was asleep, breathing shallowly. I wanted to touch him, but I was afraid of disturbing his rest. He’d been in so much pain these last few days; this was the first time he’d been able to get any sleep. He joked that he would soon get all the rest he could ever need. I hated those kinds of jokes.

“Julia,” he mumbled in his sleep.

He was calling for my mom.

I leaned forward and wiped the sweat from his brow with a soft cloth that sat on the bedside table for that purpose. He opened his eyes and blinked away the dreams that came to him in his sleep.

“Addison…”

“I’m here, Daddy,” I said, putting the cloth down so I could take his hand. “Are you in pain? Do you need more medication?”

He focused on me, his eyes no longer the brilliant brown they once were, but more of a milky cream now. But he was still there. He was still my dad.

“I’m okay,” he said slowly. “I was dreaming about your mother.”

“You said her name.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “She’s been so close lately. It’s like she’s here, waiting for me.”

“Maybe she is.”

He opened his eyes again, focusing on my face. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to leave you behind.”

“It’s okay, Daddy,” I said, running my hand over his. “You’re in so much pain. I don’t want you to suffer anymore.”

“I was thinking.” His voice was low, like every word was a struggle to get out. “When you were little, you were so beautiful. So dainty. Your mother liked to dress you in all these little dresses with ruffles. And she’d put your hair in pigtails that she would painstakingly curl. Pin curls, she called them. We have dozens of pictures of you dressed that way.”

“I’ve seen them.”

“When she got sick, I never knew what to do with you. I didn’t know how to dress you, how to put your hair up. I wanted to hire a nanny, but she insisted it was important that one of us stayed in charge of your day-to-day care. I did the best I could.”

“I know.” I leaned closer and pressed my lips to his palm, though I wasn’t not sure he could feel it. “You tried.”

“I was awful. You would scream when I tried to do your hair.”

I smiled. “You tugged at it too hard.”

He smiled, too, his eyes sliding closed again. “If you have a girl, make sure you teach Grant how to do those things so he doesn’t make the same mistakes I made.”

“I will.”

He was quiet for a few minutes. If it weren’t for the roughness of his breathing, I might have assumed he’d fallen asleep. But then he opened his eyes again.

“I made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think hiring a nanny was one of them. She saved you from losing all your hair to my bumbling attempts to give you ponytails.”

I laughed. “True.”

He focused on me again, laughter dancing in his eyes. “That woman thought I was insane when I told her what I needed from her. But then you came dancing into the room, your hair a rat’s nest of tangles, and she suddenly got it.”

We both laughed then.

“I remember her mumbling under her breath the whole time she was working on it. She had to take scissors to a few patches. And she kept asking me how long it’d been since you last combed my hair.”

“I was afraid to touch you because you would start screaming the moment you saw me coming toward you with that comb.”

“But those were the best three weeks of my life. I loved not having my hair combed.”

He chuckled again. And then he grew sober all at once, like he’d remembered something that sucked all the joy out of him.

“I missed your mother so much then. And I felt so guilty for letting her down.”

“You didn’t let her down, Daddy. You did what you had to do.”

“She made me promise not to hire a nanny. Made me promise that I would take time every day to be with you. But I broke both promises.”

“You did the best you could.” I kissed his palm again. “And I don’t think I ever wanted for anything.”

“Money couldn’t replace the absence of your parents.”

“You were there.”

“Not as often as I should have been. I worked too hard, stayed away, when I could have given up the business and spent every hour of every day with you. Your mother’s money made that possible.”

“But you would have gone insane with boredom. And we would have killed each other.”

“But maybe—”

“You made me who I am, Daddy. I’m okay with that.”

He focused on me, tears in his eyes. He reached up and touched my face lightly.

“You are a good woman, Addison. I don’t know why or how that happened, but I’m grateful for it.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too.”

He slid over on the bed a little and patted the mattress beside him. “Come lie with me like you used to do.”

“Are you sure?”

He patted the mattress again. I crawled into the bed, feeling big and less than graceful as I curled up with my back against his chest. But then his arm came around me and I felt like I was five years old again, tucked in the safety of my daddy’s arms. I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe. And then he began to talk, telling me stories of my childhood, some I remembered well and others I was less clear on. We lay like that for hours, until the sun came up and shone brightly through the windows.

“Today we inter the body of our brother, Charles Berryman, to the earth.”

I closed my eyes, those words reverberating through my head as the world went dark. It seemed appropriate that the world be dark right now. I felt as though a huge part of my soul were just ripped away, stolen by death.

Grant’s arms came around me and offered some of the peace and security that also left when my dad left. But I couldn’t take the solace from it that I once had. Grief left me feeling hallow. I knew the role I was supposed to play, but I couldn’t make myself do more than go through the motions.

I pulled away from Grant and left the graveside ceremony, rushing to a stand of trees some distance from the open grave and lost what little was in my stomach, which wasn’t much. I hadn’t eaten more than a few morsels here and there in the last three days. I could see the worry in Grant’s eyes, but I couldn’t make myself swallow sustenance when there just seemed to be no point to it anymore.

Hands pulled my long hair out of the way, a hand on my shoulder offering some support. I thought it was Grant and I wanted to push him away, but when the dry heaves stopped, and I straightened, I realized it was Billy.

He silently offered a handkerchief. I took it, wiping at my mouth before handing it back and moving away, headed to the limos waiting on the road for the ceremony to end.

“He was a good man, your father.”

I nodded, but I didn’t pause.

“He wouldn’t want you acting like this.”

I paused, pain slicing through my chest like someone had slammed a knife through my breastbone. “What do you know about it?”

“I know how a father feels. And I know who your father was.”

“Do you?” I turned and studied his familiar, weather-worn face. “Just because you worked for him—”

“He was my friend, Addison. He was a man I could count on. There aren’t many men in this world I can say that about.”

“Yeah?”

“And he would be ashamed of the way you’re acting. This is his funeral. You should be up there, representing him and his legacy.”

There was real anger snapping in Billy’s eyes. I couldn’t recall seeing that kind of anger in his gentle eyes before. It shocked me enough to pull me out of my darkness. Just a little.

“You are a strong girl, Addison. You’ve always been so much more than what people thought of you at first glance. This tiny little girl who walks around construction sites like she knows what she’s doing and breathes fire like a dragon. You are so much more. But this,” he waved his hand so that he included the graveside service where my husband stood beside my father’s casket, along with my friend Angela and Kevin and dozens of my father’s friends and business associates, all of them with their heads bowed with the weight of grief. “You are stronger than this.”

I nodded slowly, tears forming in my eyes. “I miss him.”

“We all miss him, Addison.”

“But I don’t know if I can do this without him.”

“You aren’t alone.” He came to me and lifted my face with a finger under my chin. “Do you see all those people? Do you think they only came here for Charles?”

I looked down the small hill and studied the shoulders and the bent heads of so many people I recognized. People I’d grown up around and had known since I was a small child. And the one set of shoulders who stood above them all. Grant.

“They’re here for you, Addison. They’re here to show you that you aren’t alone. That, although we lost a good man, life goes on.”

I nodded even as tears rolled down my cheeks. Billy took my face in his hands and his eyes softened as he studied my eyes. “He loved more than anything. Everything he did was because of you. Don’t let him down now.”

I nodded again. And then Billy pulled me into his arms, holding me against him for a long moment. I couldn’t remember another time when Billy showed me that kind of affection. He’d kiss my cheek, let me kiss his. He’d squeeze my shoulder. But he rarely ever indulged in anything more than a brief, passing hug. This was more. And it was exactly what I needed in that moment.

We returned to the service side by side. Grant seemed surprised to see him there, but he nodded gratefully to him as he took my hand and pulled me close to his side. The service was nearly finished, a simple service with only a priest to give a blessing. It was what my dad had wanted. And when it was over, we watched as they lowered my dad’s casket into the ground. Everyone walked past the grave and dropped a rose into it, then came to me and offered a few words of consolation.

I had thought watching the casket go into the ground would be the hardest. But I think listening to everyone tell me how much they would miss my dad was the hardest. I wasn’t alone. But the burden of everyone else’s grief was a heavy weight I wasn’t sure I could stand.

***

“Eat something,” Agnes said, shoving a plate of cold cuts into my hand. I forced a smile, but the thought of putting that greasy, cold meat into my mouth brought back the nausea I’d been battling since I got pregnant. The moment she turned her back, I set it aside.

“Mr. Lewis is here,” Angela said, coming up behind me. “He wanted to express his condolences.”

I nodded.

Mr. Lewis was still trying to decide between Berryman Construction and a rival company for his project. He wanted to build an office complex for his corporation that would span three acres and consist of five buildings. It would be a real coop for Berryman Construction to get that kind of project so close on the heels of the buyout, but I was losing hope the longer it took him to decide. Grant insisted we still had a chance, but I wasn’t so sure.

He walked up to me, his hands outstretched. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Berryman,” he said. “Your father was such a good man.”

“He was,” I said, repeating the same two words I’d said so many times today that it was almost coming out by root.

“Did I ever tell you how I met your father?”

I shook my head. I was still a little lost in my own dark world, but I wasn’t even sure I’d known that Mr. Lewis knew my father.

Mr. Lewis was the head of CQ Oil. It was one of those things where the last CEO had the bad luck of being in charge when there was a leak in one of their pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico, so Lewis was promoted and he’d managed not only to whitewash the bad publicity, but also increase profits by more than fifty percent within two years of the disaster.

About my dad’s age, Mr. Lewis was anxious to create a legacy for himself before the next disaster sent him packing. And he wanted this complex to be that.

“We knew each other in college. In fact, he and I had a crush on the same girl senior year.”

“Is that right?”

“It is.” He studied me for a long second. “Had your grandfather had his way, I would have been your father.”

I gasped. Couldn’t help myself. My dad had told me very little about his courtship with my mother. I knew that she was an heiress to her father’s multimillion-dollar fortune and that her father had opinions on her beaus. And that he disliked the fact that my father borrowed money from my mother to begin Berryman Construction. But he never told me that there was another beau involved.

“Yes,” Mr. Lewis said, squeezing my hands. “Your grandfather wanted her to marry me because I came from what he considered a good family, which just meant that my father was a member of his country club. But Julia was a stubborn woman and she made it clear that Charles was her choice. And, now that so many years have passed, I have to admit that she made a good choice.”

I inclined my head. “Well, no offense, but I’m grateful she chose as she did.”

Mr. Lewis smiled broadly. “As am I. There’s no telling how things might have turned out differently if your mother had gone the other way.”

He rubbed my hands somewhat vigorously between his. “I’m sure you don’t want to talk business today,” he said, “but please call my office when you are ready. I’d like to get started on that project as quickly as possible.”

Again he caught me by surprise. “You’re giving the contract to us?”

“Yes. I was always leaning toward Berryman Construction. You have the traditional craftsmanship that I want. I only hesitated because of the buyout. But I’ve heard that you and Grant McGraw are married?”

“We are.”

“Then, really, it all remains in the family. Correct?”

“It does.”

He smiled broadly. “Then I’m thrilled to be able to work with you.”

He leaned in and kissed my cheek, then disappeared through the crowd in my father’s living room.

Grant caught my eye from across the room where he was talking with one of my mother’s distant aunts. His eyebrows rose. I nodded and he bit his lip, clearly trying to hide a smile.

Building the office complex for CQ was the last piece in salvaging the business. With that in place, it looked like all the changes we’d made, all the money Grant had sunk into it, was going to pay off.

“Thank you, Daddy,” I whispered under my breath as another couple approached me with their words of condolence.

***

“What do you want to do with all this food?”

I looked around the kitchen at the many casserole dishes and tinfoil-covered platters. There was more food in this room than I’d ever seen. Too much for just Grant and me.

“Take it home, Agnes.”

“I can take some, but there’s so much.”

“Give some to Angela.”

“She already took home three casseroles and a couple of cakes.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I stood there looking at it all. Then I said, “Do we have some cardboard boxes?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s gather it up and we’ll take it to that homeless shelter downtown.”

Agnes smiled brightly. “You are your father’s daughter,” she said.

I touched her arm as she started to walk past me and offered her a brief hug.

“Thank you for everything you did for my dad.”

Tears came as quickly as a smile. “Of course.”

“I really appreciate it. And your offer to get the house cleared out…thank you. I do want your help, but I need some time.”

“Of course.”

We hugged again, and then she went back to work, the tears gone as quickly as they’d appeared.

Grant recruited a few strong, strapping young men to help when he discovered what it was we wanted to do with the extra food. We helped load up the cars and then sent them on their way. Suddenly the silence was overwhelming. The kitchen was empty and the house seemed to echo with the absence of the grieving. A part of me wanted to rush outside and call them all back.

“Let’s go home tonight,” Grant said.

He was leaning against the counter, a glass of water in his hands. He wouldn’t look at me and he hadn’t tried to touch me for days. Not since I snapped at him at the funeral home when he tried to offer me a hug. He didn’t know what to do with me.

“Okay.”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“We don’t need to stay here anymore.” I turned slowly, my fingers brushing the top of the kitchen table. “He’s not here anymore.”

“He’s not.”

I looked at him. “Thank you for being here. For being patient.”

Grant crossed to me and touched my face with just the back of one finger. “Where else would I be?”

I moved into his arms and his quickly came around me, holding me tightly. He smelled so familiar, felt so familiar. I stood there for a long moment, loving how good it felt to be close to him. I think maybe that’s why I’d pushed him away these last few days. I didn’t want to feel good when my father couldn’t feel at all. But now…I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel alive.