The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) (6 page)

“I was?”

“You were. This is hard for me too. I pretty much cleaned my whole house yesterday, the closets too. Thank God Gail had a little party last night, or I would have gone plumb crazy.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Sadie said, looking down and seeing she was indeed wringing her hands. “Shelby, I keep imagining all sorts of things. Horrible things!”

“Me too,” her sister admitted and hugged her.

“Y’all need another hug?” Sadie heard their brother say from behind them.

They jumped apart and stared at him, wide-eyed as two deer caught in the headlights of a big rig. He sauntered forward, his eyes narrowed.

“I was supposed to tell y’all to come in for dinner, but it looks like this is no casual walk by the river.”

That was an understatement.

Chapter 4

If Shelby hadn’t been wearing her favorite gold sandals, she might have kicked at the rocks on the path to the river in pure frustration. Barely two days had passed since they’d met with Vander, and Sadie was already cracking up. J.P. clearly had enough intuition to notice, or he wouldn’t be offering up hugs like he was the lead speaker at a hug-a-thon.

“I sure could use one, honey,” Sadie said, all but flying into his arms. “We should have met with Vander on a Monday, J.P. This is pure torture, seeing everyone when we have news.”

Here she goes
, Shelby thought. “We don’t have any more news, Sadie. Nothing we didn’t already tell J.P. when we called him on Friday night.”

“Tell her she’s wrong, J.P.,” Sadie said, giving their older brother an imploring look. “Learning there’s no trace of Daddy
anywhere
after he left us is
huge
news if you ask me, and it’s horrible. It has me imagining the worst.”

“After we talked to Vander, you told me you were doing okay,” Shelby said with a frown. “Why didn’t you get all this emotion out with me before coming to family dinner?”

“It’s not like I can turn it off,” Sadie said. “I told you how I felt then, but I feel like a pressure cooker. All these feelings built up again.”

“Sadie! You need to disguise what you’re going through better if we’re going to keep this to just us three. Tell her, J.P.”

Their brother gave a heartfelt sigh and wrapped an arm around Sadie’s shoulders. “I’m not going to tell either of you how to act since I don’t have a clue how to deal with this myself. I haven’t slept much since you called me on Friday. I had to tell Tammy what was going on, and she’s fretting too.”

Well, wasn’t that as terrific as key lime pie on a Wednesday? Shelby didn’t begrudge J.P. for telling his wife, but this meant there was yet another person who had to hold it together at family occasions. It wasn’t fair to Tammy somehow.

“I don’t see how we’re going to keep this a secret,” Sadie said, her voice pitched a little higher than normal.

“Keep what secret?” a familiar voice asked, causing them all to spin around.
 

Susannah narrowed her eyes at them. “I knew something was going on. Peach jam out of the blue for me and Mama, and quilt making for Shelby. You’d better spill, Sadie.”

Well, shoot. Susannah wasn’t going to take this well, and then there was Mama to consider. “We’re talking about doing something special for all the new brides—and that includes you,” she said, hoping a fib would put a pin in it.

Sadie shot her a look, and she shot her one right back.

“I don’t believe you,” Susannah said in that definitive tone only big sisters could muster.

J.P. shook his head. “I don’t think this is the way, Shelby.”

Great. Their brother was going to be their moral compass again. Sometimes it was annoying.

Shelby faced her sister. “Fine! You want to know why we’re flustered? We hired a P.I. to find Daddy. Since we know you are dead set against it, we didn’t mention it. You need to decide if you want to be informed of the findings—like J.P. agreed to be.”

Her elder sister flinched as if she’d been struck.

“I’m sorry, Susannah,” Shelby said, already regretting her hasty words. There could have been a gentler way to share the news. Her fingers itched to hug her sister and soothe her. “We couldn’t… We had to find out what happened to him.”

“I’m really sorry, honey,” Sadie said, walking over to their sister and putting a hand on her arm.
 

“You should be,” Susannah told her, stepping back from her comfort. “What do you think this will do to Mama?”

Sadie hung her head.

J.P. strolled over to them, calm and steady as ever, and Shelby followed in his wake. Susannah had the right to get stirred up, but while Shelby didn’t blame her for that, she wasn’t sure where it would lead. Would she feel the need to spill the truth to Mama?

“I don’t know how Mama will react if we end up telling her,” J.P. said, as if reading her mind. “But it’s not just Mama’s first husband we’re talking about. It’s our daddy. I’ve struggled mightily with this, but Shelby and Sadie have a right to find him if they want to.”

Susannah’s eyes pretty much blazed fire. “I told y’all when it first came up that no good can come of it.”

Shelby opened her mouth to respond, but J.P. put a soothing hand on her arm, stopping her. “No good has come from not knowing either. We’re just more used to it, is all. There’s already some news. Do you want to know what it is?”

Susannah put her hand to her forehead. “I just got married,” she whispered. “I wanted to enjoy this bubble for a little while longer. I’ve been so happy.”

“J.P. asked us to wait until after you were married,” Shelby told her, swatting at the mosquitos biting her ankles. “We waited a spell. In fact, we waited until all of y’all got married.”

“I appreciate that,” J.P. said, “although y’all didn’t have to wait for my wedding.”

“You deserved it,” Sadie said. “Please don’t be mad, Susannah. I would hate that most of all.”

“Well, I am,” Susannah said, biting her lip. “And hurt too. This whole thing hurts me. Dredging up the past. Hearing you’ve gone along with them, J.P.”

Their brother raised his brow. “They were brave to come and talk to me about it. They could have done it behind my back after speaking with you, but they didn’t. Their hearts are in the right place, Susannah. In the end, that’s why I’ve given them my support.” He paused for a long moment. “Our daddy might have up and left us,” he finally continued, “but we stuck together and kept close. I’m not going to let this tear us apart. Are you?”

Tears popped into Shelby’s eyes, and she noticed both of her sisters seemed choked up as well.

“You know I love y’all,” Susannah said. “I just wish…y’all could have let this be. It’s going to stir up so much hurt.”

J.P. herded them all into a group hug. “All the more reason we face it head on so we can heal the rest of the way.”

“I don’t want to be wondering about Daddy on my wedding day,” Sadie said.

“I’m sick of leaving a big blank whenever I have to fill out my father’s medical history at the doctor’s office,” Shelby added.

“When Tammy and I have children of our own,” J.P. said, squeezing them tight, “I don’t want to get all upset whenever they ask where their original grandpa ran off to and why he’s not around.”

They all squeezed one another and pretty much sniffled, causing J.P. to pull out a few tissues from his pocket, the ones he kept for his women and the children.

“All right,” Susannah finally said in a quiet voice as they eased back, their arms still wrapped around each other. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

As Shelby explained everything they’d talked about with Vander, both in the meeting and afterward, she could feel the muscles in her sister’s back bunch up beneath her hand. Saying the words out loud somehow made it all worse, and Shelby felt like she was coming apart again. Where in the world could Daddy be? How could a person disappear without leaving a footprint in an age when everything was traceable by Social Security numbers or driver’s licenses?

“So you’re going to have this Vander keep looking?” Susannah asked after a spell.

“Yes,” Sadie said. “I don’t know what more he can find out, but there are other ways for him to search. He’s going to meet with us again on Monday.”

“What time?” Susannah asked.

“Why?” Shelby asked, shocked by the thought that her sister might join them.

“I want to pray, is all,” Susannah said. “We’re all going to need a lot of prayers to get through this.”

“Amen,” J.P. said.

The breeze blew through the trees, and Shelby shivered. Sometimes she felt something spiritual in these woods, and right now that sensation was stronger than ever.

“What do we tell Mama?” Susannah asked. “If I noticed something was up, so will she.”

That was the God’s honest truth. “I keep praying and asking if we’re right to keep it from her, and I just don’t know,” Shelby said.

“What do you think, J.P.?” Susannah asked.

Their brother stayed silent for a long time, like he was prone to do when he was gathering his thoughts. “If she asks, we tell her. I have this feeling, though…”

“What?” Sadie asked anxiously.

He lifted his shoulder. “I don’t think she’s going to ask.”

“That makes it easier, then,” Shelby said. From a ways down the path, Rye shouted at them to come back to the house.
 

As they all looked in that direction, Sadie heaved out a sigh and said, “Does it? I’ll still feel guilty as all get out.”

“Me too,” Susannah agreed.

“Let’s see where things go,” J.P. said. “We need to keep talking. If and when we learn anything more, we’ll discuss it and come to a decision. Is that all right, Shelby? Sadie?”

Her younger sister nodded immediately, but Shelby took her time to think it through. When you gave your word to J.P., it was binding. What would happen if they didn’t all agree about the best course to take with Mama? She suddenly had greater appreciation for why Vander had insisted that both she and Sadie sign his service agreement.

J.P. was looking at her with that patient gaze of his, and she finally nodded. “I promise.”
 

“Let’s head on back to the house to eat then,” J.P. said. “The others will be wondering where we’ve gone off to.”

When they returned for Sunday dinner, for which Amelia Ann and Clayton had finally shown up, they discovered J.P. was right.

Mama didn’t ask them anything, but she watched them all night.

Chapter 5

Whenever Gail Hardcrew invited him to her mammoth of a mansion in Nashville’s tony Belle Meade neighborhood, Vander considered it a summons. He’d agreed to meet her, even though it was a Monday, a day he tried to stack with meetings that would start his week off right. With Gail, he never knew if a summons would cement or derail his week.

He’d done a lot of work for Gail over the years, everything from cleaning up her daddy’s unfortunate death in the arms of his very young, gold-digging girlfriend to discovering the slutty blonde her recent ex-husband—that prissy asshole Calvin Henderson—was doing on the side. Beyond that, his firm conducted background checks and such for her business.

Vander liked having permanent clients, and Gail undoubtedly had connections, but he also simply enjoyed her company. She was like a one-person Southern theatre on crack.

The grounds of her ten-thousand-square-foot home were carefully manicured and tended like usual when he arrived, and the cherubs in the over-the-top Italian stone fountain in the center of her circular driveway looked like they were frolicking. Few people could display frolicking cherubs in their home without losing respect. Gail pulled it off with aplomb.

Gail’s old-school English butler answered the door, and Vander gave him a nod of acknowledgement when he was allowed inside the mansion. Jeffries took his job seriously, to the tune of wearing old-school tails, and Vander did his best to indulge the older man.

“Ms. Hardcrew is in the informal parlor, Mr. Montgomery,” Jeffries said in his lyrical English accent. “Please follow me.”

Vander could find the informal parlor with a blindfold on—informal because it boasted a carved mahogany fireplace rather than a Carrera marble one like the formal parlor—and they both knew it. But that wasn’t the point. Gail believed in maintaining appearances—until she had to fight dirty. He liked her best when she decided to go below the belt.
 

Not too many Southern women would stoop to the kind of measures Gail did, but that’s what made her one of Nashville’s leading female entrepreneurs. If Vander were back in Boston, he would have put it more bluntly: Gail didn’t put up with anyone’s shit.

“Vander, dahling,” Gail said, rising in a low-cut pink dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a contestant for the Miss Garden Rose beauty competition.

Her black curly hair bounced as she wrapped a white boa around her. She was dripping in jewels pretty much everywhere a woman could put them, and Vander had to bite his lip to hide his smile as he stepped forward to kiss the cheek she’d turned to the side so dramatically.