“If it’s the only chance, then it’s hardly important.”
She felt as if he’d hit her with both fists. “Fine.”
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. That’s part of why I was calling, anyway. I wondered if you wanted company this weekend.”
There were many things that could be said about Isaac, but he was not a liar. He didn’t stretch the truth, and he didn’t bend it to make life more palatable. If he said he had planned to come, he’d planned to come.
“I’d like you here,” she said.
“Then I’ll be over in the morning. Tell me what you want me to bring.”
She’d been making a mental list. She checked it off now. A box of clothes she’d left in her closet. Another set of sheets. The few antiques she had bought could wait until the renovations were over. She recited the full list.
“I guess Jamie and her kids are keeping you busy,” he said.
“That and the renovation.”
“So you’re going through with it?”
“You might be lucky tomorrow and see the barn logs delivered.”
“That sounds like a good reason not to come.”
“I’ve been visiting people, too. And I’ve found out some things about your family.”
No response. She pressed on. “Your grandmother sounds like a remarkable woman.” She decided not to repeat the accusations Rachel had made to Manning. “A hard worker, a good person. Your mom sounds like she had her share of problems, chiefly that she didn’t really fit in here. I think it was probably the times. It was hard for a young woman to find a place for herself in a small community like this. Unless she wanted to marry and raise a family.”
“I don’t know why this fascinates you so.”
His tone bothered her. He sounded as if he were addressing a child who had an unreasonable interest in fairy tales or superheroes.
“It fascinates me so,” she said carefully, “because it might be the only way I’m allowed into your life. From everything I can tell, all the other routes are completely sealed.”
She was sorry the moment she’d finished her sentence, but she refused to take it back. She had spent too much of their marriage edging around the truth, which was that she wanted more than this man was ever going to give her.
“If you think that’s a route to anything, you’re mistaken. My birth family has nothing to do with who I am. You’re welcome to peel and probe, just don’t involve me. You’re the one who’s interested.”
“The fact that you’re not speaks volumes.”
“The fact that you’re pushing me when it’s
my
family and
my
life speaks louder.”
They never fought. Even now, both of them sounded reasonable and calm. No one listening would have understood the nuances.
“I’m living here,” she said. “And the cabin is filled with ghosts.”
“Just don’t expect me to rub shoulders with them tomorrow.”
“You’re still planning to come?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Then do me a favor and pick up presents for the girls.”
“Do I have the foggiest idea what little girls like?”
She waited, refusing to beg.
“How old are they?” he asked at last.
“Almost three, and six going on forty.”
“Suggestions?”
“Yes, use your imagination.”
She was still staring at the wall an hour later when she heard the slam of a car door. As promised by the weatherman, the skies had darkened as the afternoon progressed. The girls were windblown and rosy cheeked. Alison looked as if she was two steps from exhaustion, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand in a universal gesture even a woman without children understood.
“What fun,” Jamie said. “And those logs? They’re just amazing.
Country Home Magazine
, eat your heart out. You’ll be a feature article once it all comes together. Which will be a very long time from now, by the way, no matter what these guys tell you.”
Jamie swung Alison into her arm, and the little girl nestled her head against her mother’s shoulder. “I’ve got a couple of pooped dumplings here. Even Hannah says she’d like some quiet time. Will it be a problem if I put them in for a nap? We’ll blow up the mattresses.”
Kendra was glad Jamie realized how tired they were. “Put them in my bed. They’ll rest better there.”
“I brought a plastic sheet. Just in case.”
“Good thinking. And there’s a Laundromat in driving distance.”
“That’s what we’ll do, then. Hear that, girls? Off to bed you go. You’ll be camping in Aunt Kendra’s room. Very special, don’t you think?”
The girls went without fuss.
After about ten minutes, Jamie returned to the other wing. “We had to have storytime,” she said. “And it had to be a story about a snake. I considered Adam and Eve, but the introduction of evil into the world doesn’t seem like the best thing right before a nap.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Hannah decided she would tell the story. Something about eggs and milk and Oreos. It sounded like a recipe.”
While she had been waiting, Kendra brewed tea. She remembered the way Jamie had liked it for their tea parties. Very sweet, diluted with milk. It brought home the distance between them, since she had no idea how this grown-up Jamie drank it.
Jamie lifted her mug in a toast. “To a few moments of peace and quiet. Tell me, are we wearing you down? Because that was not my intention. But I forget sometimes how exhausting children can be.”
“It’s wonderful to have them here.” Kendra realized she meant it; when they were gone again, she would wonder about them all the time.
Jamie flopped into a chair. “So tell me more about the cabin and what you’re planning to do.”
Kendra gave her the basics, skipping over her developing obsession with Isaac’s family.
“Have you looked at the stuff Cash brought you?”
Kendra hadn’t even slipped off the elastic band. “No, would you like to see?”
“Are you kidding? This is what I live for.”
Kendra rose to retrieve it. “You’re studying architecture and interior design. What led you in that direction?”
“I won a scholarship based on a drawing I did.”
For some reason Kendra hadn’t considered the fact that her sister hadn’t had clear access to their father’s estate. The money had been put in trust for them, and neither Kendra nor Jamie were to be given control until their twenty-eighth birthdays. Jamie still had a year to go.
“Why did you need a scholarship?” Kendra asked. “Jimmy’s trustees would have okayed educational expenses. Or I would have helped you. Even Riva would have done what she could.”
“I didn’t want anyone poking around in my life, setting conditions, keeping track of my friends or my grade point. Besides, if it had been that easy, I wasn’t sure it would mean what it needed to. So I’ve done the education a little at a time, loans, scholarships. Of course, knowing I can pay everything back in one fell swoop next year is cheating a little. But I can’t help almost being rich.”
“You’ve been at this a while, then?”
“Five years. I have a part-time job and, of course, the girls. I took a year off after Alison was born. It all added up. Her father pays support and child care while I’m in classes. Hannah’s father is even more generous, as long as he doesn’t actually have to spend time with her. I rent a little house, nothing fancy, but it has a big yard and a playroom. Not the priorities I envisioned when I was a little girl yearning for a home of my own. I imagined wild seacoasts, crystal chandeliers, marble terraces. I got a jungle gym and chain-link fencing.”
“Sorry?”
“Are you kidding? I know we’re an unconventional family. I know so far I’ve picked men like Jimmy, daredevils, fast talkers, guys with short-term memory loss whenever it comes to really being there. I’ve got a way to go before I perfect the fine art of mate selection.”
Kendra couldn’t comment, since her own selection was now in question. Was the fact that Isaac was the polar opposite of their father what had attracted her to him in the first place?
“I like to think Alison was just meant to be, even if she wasn’t in the plans,” Jamie said. “If that makes any sense.”
“I don’t know what makes sense.” Kendra took Cash’s sketches and lists out of the portfolio. “But you’ll get to see my choice tomorrow. Isaac’s coming up for the weekend.”
“Really? That’s terrific.” Jamie sounded genuinely delighted. “Let’s do a cookout, Ken. Won’t that be fun? The girls love to cook out.”
“I don’t have a grill.”
“I’ll buy a little one tomorrow, and steaks and stuff for salad. My housewarming present. But what you really need is a built-in barbecue. Add that to the renovations. Maybe out that way.” She gestured to the river side of the cabin. “Please tell me you’re planning a series of decks? It’s going to be the most wonderful place to entertain.”
“Let’s spread this out on the table.” Kendra took her pile of papers and did just that. “Cash said they were rough.” She smoothed one with the back of her hand. “Looks like he’s right. But the general idea is here.”
Jamie bent over to see what they had. “You’re lucky they have time to do it. Isaac’s on board?”
“Isaac would just as soon burn the place down as look at it. It’s mine to do whatever I choose.”
Jamie nodded as if she understood, which of course she didn’t. But, wisely, she asked no questions.
“So, let’s see.” She took the first drawing and put it on top of the pile. “Okay, here we have a sketch of the cabin. Funky at best, and basically not a place you’ll want to hang your hat very often once you move back to the city. It also doesn’t begin to take advantage of the views or the river, particularly the river, and it’s not historically important or interesting.” She looked up. “You’re sure you want to keep the cabin?”
“I’m sure.”
“This land must be worth a small fortune. Let’s make it worth more.” Jamie put the first drawing at the bottom of the pile. “Okay, here’s his first idea.”
Kendra realized immediately that she had no ability whatsoever to look at a sketch and turn it into a house in her mind. She might as well have been looking at a geometry problem. She saw angles and shapes and lines, but nothing like a house.
“What do you think?” Jamie asked.
“I think you need to explain it to me. Apparently I’m spatially challenged.”
“Oh, something I can do that you can’t. A little sister’s fondest dream.”
Jamie began to explain. This was a porch. This was a deck. This was the addition overlooking the river. This was some kind of channel down to a catch basin on the side.
“Very perfunctory, very ordinary,” Jamie decreed once she had finished her explanation. “Just the kind of thing someone would come up with on short notice. Let’s talk atmosphere. What exactly will you want when you come up here for the weekend? Not rooms or laundry facilities. But what will you need right here?” Jamie put her fist over her heart.
“Peace. Contemplation. A place to breathe.”
Jamie continued to ask questions, sifting through the drawings as she did. She found one she liked better and held it up for Kendra’s inspection, pointing out all the salient features.
“Now this one does Cash credit,” she said. “This is probably his dream plan, the one he’d like to build but assumes you won’t want to commit to. He’s giving you options.”
“So this is the most daring?”
“Not nearly daring enough. Come on, let’s tramp through the undergrowth before the rain starts in earnest. Pray Black Beauty is off taking a snakey nap somewhere in the woods.”
By the time they returned half an hour later, the rain had begun, and Kendra had realized her sister had genuine talent and imagination. The house Jamie envisioned took full advantage of every view and mood, a side porch with a view of the woods for peace, a series of decks overlooking the river for contemplation, a pond and stream where Cash had merely planned drainage and Jamie envisioned a quiet meditation area. A wall of windows with nothing but sky and water beyond and light filtering inside. A master bedroom and bath that Kendra would never want to leave. A study with vistas that would make writing a secondary activity to pondering the universe.
Jamie flopped on the sofa as thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm promised to be a good one.
“The trick is to blend the old with the new. I think you need to give a sense that the cabin has been here from the dawn of creation and that the finished house will be here into eternity.”
Kendra sat down beside her. “Pretty lofty.”
Jamie gave Kendra a spontaneous hug, then immediately moved away. “I have a vested interest, of course. You have to expand so we can come and visit and I won’t have to worry about the effect we’ll have. I have a personal interest in the guest suite, which is what this room should be. Once you open up the back of the house, you’re not going to care about this porch, but your guests will have their own retreat.”
Kendra could almost see it. Jamie and her daughters, welcome guests, the family Kendra had never really had. A chance to see the girls grow up. A chance to know Jamie again.
“Egyptian,” a song Kendra had loved as a teenager, began to play. She was beginning to despise it.
Jamie didn’t look happy. “I’m not a big fan of cell phones.”
“Can’t you just turn it off?”
“The real world is still out there.” She stood and carried the telephone toward the door.
“Go ahead and take your call in here,” Kendra said. “You’ll get soaked on the porch.”
“This could go on. I’ll stay close to the house.” She snapped the phone open and spoke into it.
Jamie was almost at the door when there was a lull, one of those charged moments before the next fusillade of thunder. Kendra heard her sister’s softly voiced words.
“I don’t care what kind of crank you can get hold of tomorrow. That’s a day away. Tomorrow’s definitely not the deal we made. You want to be the one to disappoint Rosario?”
The door closed behind her; the thunder broke.
Kendra asked herself how she could have been such a fool.
K
endra didn’t sleep well. In an early morning dream, she relived a scene from her childhood. She was seven again, and Riva had promised to take her to the circus at Madison Square Garden. Even at that young age, Kendra had learned not to believe anything she heard, training that would serve her well in her chosen career.
When Riva saw that her daughter didn’t believe her, she took a knife, sliced the tip of her forefinger and made the sign of the cross in blood on the inside of her wrist as a solemn promise.
Then she left the house and didn’t return for a week.
The dream was a faithful rendition of history, except that after Riva disappeared, the dream child nailed all the doors and windows of the Manhattan brownstone shut.
Kendra awakened with a pounding in her head.
She knew why the memory had surfaced. Yesterday Jamie had come inside from her telephone call and started a pot of homemade chicken soup. Watching her chop celery, onion and garlic, Kendra had wondered where her sister had learned to cook. Did Jamie hawk quarts of chicken soup along with meth and crack? Did she sell apple pies like the one she produced later in the evening to heroin addicts craving sugar with their drug of choice?
She tried to imagine her sister with such a dire need for money that she was organizing drug deals on the telephone. Her conclusion was twofold. Either she had misunderstood her sister’s words—possible with the storm overhead—or Jamie was involved with a man named Rosario who was trading her need for drugs, money and love by having Jamie do some of his dirty work.
Kendra didn’t know the sum of Jamie’s moral lapses. After Hannah’s birth, Kendra had considered hiring an investigator to find her sister. In the end, she had decided against it. If Jamie had discovered that Kendra was keeping tabs on her, any hope of a reunion would have died. She did know it was likely Jamie had been involved in the drug scene in Brooklyn. Rumors had surfaced, and although she knew better than to believe them outright, that didn’t mean she discounted them.
She hadn’t asked Jamie about the call. There were two little girls involved now. Did she want her sister and her nieces to disappear forever? Or did Kendra want to be the first person Jamie thought of if the children ever needed help or a place to live?
She woke, slept, woke. When she woke for the last time and found that the sky was bright outside, she also discovered she had company.
“There is only one egg now,” Hannah said from her perch at the end of the bed. She was dressed in yellow flannel pajamas, and the top was inside out. “And there were two last night when we went to sleep. How does a snake suck eggs? Does a snake have lips to suck with?”
Kendra sat up and threw her arms out in a good morning stretch. Alison, in blue, was settled in beside her sister. “I’ve never gotten close enough to a snake’s mouth that I could tell you,” Kendra said.
“Something else might have taken the other egg. I think we must stand guard tonight.”
“I think we must get a good night’s sleep,” Kendra said. “Some things have to remain a mystery.”
“When I grow up, I plan to solve every mystery.”
“Mz-ree,” Alison said, with a decisive nod. “Me, too.”
“A pair of sleuths.” Kendra leaned forward and gave them both a quick, sleepy hug. “Where’s your mom?”
“She was up late.”
Kendra suspected the cell phone had gotten some serious usage. “How did you sleep?”
“I never sleep. Alison snores.”
“Is that true, Alison?”
“Schnore.” Alison made a noise like a donkey snuffling.
“Yikes. I wouldn’t sleep, either,” Kendra said.
“Alison would like a story. I am neutral.”
Kendra managed not to laugh. “What kind of story?”
“She’s partial to fairy tales. But the ending has to be happy, or she cries.”
“I know how she feels. Do you like the story of the ugly duckling?”
Hannah crawled across the bed so she was sprawling beside Kendra, and, not to be outdone, Alison took the other side. “Tell it and we’ll see.”
Ten minutes later, after adding a wealth of detail Hans Christian Andersen had never intended and downplaying the way the poor baby swan had been treated, Kendra wrapped it up. “So the poor ugly duckling wasn’t a duckling at all, but a beautiful swan. And all the swans were so glad to see him, he had friends forever.”
“End!” Alison shouted.
The door opened and Jamie stuck her head inside. “Someone kidnapped my little girls. Their beds are empty.”
“Mommy!” Alison slid down and ran to Jamie, and Jamie swung her up in her arms, planting a resounding kiss on the little girl’s cheek.
“How’s my dumpling?”
“Ducks is bad!”
“That wasn’t quite the message I intended.” Kendra watched Hannah join the tableau in the doorway for a hug.
“Did they wake you?” Jamie asked.
“I think they sneaked in to use the bathroom and couldn’t resist watching me sleep.”
“I’m going to follow their path—unless you need it first?”
“Go ahead.”
Jamie stopped on the way across the floor. “It’s nice seeing the three of you that way. The girls need family.”
Kendra wondered exactly what the girls might need from her in the future. It hardly bore thinking about.
A burgundy minivan had just pulled out of the cabin’s drive when Isaac arrived. He glimpsed the silhouette of a woman and a child sitting high in a car seat before the van turned away from him on Fitch Crossing Road.
Kendra’s sister and her children.
He hoped he hadn’t missed the party.
He’d always been curious about Jamie. He knew the basics. Younger, pretty, confused, amoral, gone. Kendra had said Jamie looked a lot like Riva and seemed to be following her path. He’d met Kendra’s mother twice. His own mother had been docile enough to seem comatose. She had worked hard to appear dowdy so she could forestall his father’s accusations that she was trying to attract other men.
The last time he’d seen Riva Dunkirk, she’d been arrayed in leopard-print silk, black leather and rhinestones, and her laughter—not warranted by anything happening at the table—had filled the room. The eyes of every man in the restaurant had been riveted on her, either in horror or frank admiration. No one was ever lukewarm about Riva.
Kendra rarely talked about Jamie. He had never encouraged revelations, but not because he wasn’t interested. The fact that Jamie had hurt his wife infuriated him, and that distressed him. Having spent his formative years with a man for whom anger was a way of life, repression seemed the wisest course.
When the van no longer blocked the driveway, he pulled into the clearing and parked. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that now there was a railing along the steps, something he was relieved to see. Since Kendra’s departure, he’d had two breath-stealing, heart-stopping nightmares about his wife, and both of them involved her lying on the ground in this very place, with no one nearby to help her. If he continued that train of thought, the anger he felt over her decision to live here would ruin this visit. And sending their marriage whirling further into a downward spiral was not the point of his trip to Toms Brook.
He didn’t get out of the car immediately. Despite himself, he sat behind the wheel and wondered about the woman who had given birth to him. What had it been like for Rachel Spurlock to grow up here? To his eyes, the cabin and surrounding land weren’t picturesque but blighted by poverty and gloom. Was it any wonder Rachel had abandoned Virginia’s rural countryside to find another life? Had Leah Spurlock Jackson really been surprised to lose her daughter?
Leah was more of a mystery. Kendra swore she was well thought of here. Yet no one seemed to know where she had come from, or why. Kendra’s fascination with the subject troubled him, but apparently it had also reignited his own childhood fantasies, normal fantasies for an adopted child, particularly normal for a child in a difficult situation.
As a boy, he’d often dreamed about the people who had given him away. His father insisted his birth parents had been too poor and ignorant, too immoral, to raise a child. His mother—when his father was absent—explained that his father was mistaken. Isaac’s birth parents surely had loved him and wanted the best for their son. Despite wishing for the latter, of course he had known better. If his birth parents had had his interests at heart, they wouldn’t have sent him to live with Colonel Grant Taylor.
Now he was an adult. He understood that to anyone else his father had looked like an admirable candidate for adoption. He understood that women with no desire or means to raise a child sometimes found themselves pregnant, and in an era when abortion was clearly an option, his birth mother had chosen to give him life.
Those observations should have soothed the soul of the little boy inside him who had felt abandoned and trapped. Maybe they would have, if Kendra hadn’t continued to ask questions, to come here to try to make a second home, to insist, without speaking the words, that he had to confront his past and somehow transform his life.
A door opened, and she stepped out on the porch wearing dark jeans and a rust-colored shirt over a black top with thin straps and a low neckline. His body stirred to life. Never really curvaceous, she was still so thin from the shooting and aftermath that now her figure was almost boyish. Shorter hair made her neck seem longer and emphasized the starker planes of her cheekbones and jaw.
And still, to him, she had never looked more desirable.
“You can come in,” she called, leaning over the railing. “I don’t bite.”
He got out. “I was just admiring the view.”
“That’s certainly new.”
“I don’t mean the cabin.”
“Compliments are in short supply around here. I like the sound of that one.”
He started toward the porch. “Does your sister have a dark red minivan?”
“She just left. She forgot ice cream, and the girls were bereft. Jamie’s determined this will be a celebration.”
He tested the new railing and found it sturdy enough to keep her safe. Up on the porch, he put his arms around her and pulled her close. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “You’ve gained a little weight, but not enough.”
Her hazel eyes glinted with gold in the sunlight. “How can you tell?”
“I know every inch of you.”
Her eyes searched his. “Not lately.”
His heart was beating too fast, but his voice was steady. “Long-distance sex is hard to manage.”
“Jamie’s coming back in a few minutes.”
He hadn’t made love to her since before the accident, and now, despite wanting her—the proof was probably evident—he was also relieved that it was going to be impossible today as well. In subtle, indefinable ways, Kendra was a stranger to him now. And a man did not take a stranger to bed unless he was sure of the ground rules. At least this man, forever cautious and analytical, didn’t.
“I wanted to stay tonight,” he said, “but I’m leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow morning. I have to go home after dinner and pack.”
“Conference? Business meeting?”
“A meeting. Someone cancelled and stuck me with it.”
“Ouch.” She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him quickly again before she stepped away. “You’ve been working too hard.”
“How can you tell?”
“Honestly? You don’t look rested. I’m guessing maybe you’re staying up until midnight and getting up by six. And I’ve called a few times on weekends—you haven’t been home. You’re going in to the office?”
Some part of him was aware how odd this was. Two weeks had passed since he’d seen her. Yet they were acting like friends instead of lovers. He wondered if she felt as at sea as he did, or if this was just the natural progression of a marriage that would end with a whimper someday in the not-so-distant future. They talked about sex, but he wondered if she was as confused about the etiquette of the separated as he was.
“There’s no reason to stay home with you away,” he said. “Last Sunday I biked part of the C&O Towpath.”
“How far did you get?”
“Just Great Falls and back.” It was the first time in a long time he had pushed himself hard enough to chase away everything except the sting of sore muscles, the roar of blood through his veins.
“I love that trip.” She smiled sadly. “I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make it again.”
“How do you feel?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “A little stronger, I think. I’m doing my exercises religiously, walking as much as I can. I have a referral to a local therapist to oversee the recovery. The limp is no better, but then, it might never be.”
“And resting? Eating?”
“Both. My neighbors have kept me fed. I’ve never seen so much food. And Jamie’s a good cook. She’s been cooking up a storm for tonight. I’m not sure where she learned it. Not from Riva, that’s for sure.” She inclined her head toward the cabin door. “Let’s go inside. Would you like something to drink?”
He noted that she seemed steadier, even if her foot still dragged. Not too many weeks ago he had wondered if she would ever walk again.
“I’ll make iced tea.” Kendra went straight to the kitchen, and he followed, leaning against a counter to watch her. The kitchen area was so small that he took up far too much of it.
He tried to make himself smaller, pulling his feet closer to the counter. “So, before she gets back, tell me about Jamie.”
“I want your opinion, and I don’t want to contaminate it.” She tossed him a lemon from the refrigerator. “Knives are in the drawer to your left.”
He set the lemon on a cutting board and fished for a paring knife. “What can we talk about, then?”
“I thought you might like to see some of the ideas for the renovation.”
“Did the logs ever arrive?”
She filled cobalt-blue glasses with ice from a freezer tray and tea from a matching pitcher. “They’ve postponed delivery until tomorrow. Some snag with removing the final few feet.”
He presented her with lemon slices, and she added them to the tea, along with several spoonfuls of sugar. “From what I hear about building projects, there’s
always
one snag after another.”
“Make yourself comfortable. I’ll get the plans.”