The Single Dad Finds a Wife (13 page)

“Gerald,” Cecelia said, “stop being so melodramatic.”

He huffed and sat back. “Call it what you want. I just hope the police recover those paintings and the vases they took. I can't believe they just cherry-picked our inventory like that.”

Cecelia pushed her chair back. “I'm going to go get dessert ready,” she said, standing. “Spring, why don't you help me?”

Spring knew exactly what Cecelia wanted to talk to her about in the privacy of the kitchen. They'd seen Sweet Willie wandering around in the area where there was a barn that was definitely deserted. What if he was a part of the burglary ring or knew something about it?

Just as soon as they were alone in the big country kitchen, Cecelia voiced the very question that had been on Spring's mind.

“Do you think Sweet Willie has something to do with the break-in at the antiques store?”

Spring leaned against the counter. “I don't know. It doesn't seem likely.”

“What's out here for a homeless man to get into besides trouble?” Cecelia said, keeping her voice low so it didn't carry to the other room. “Wasn't I just saying yesterday something was off about him?”

“Do you think we should go to the police?” Spring said.

“Go to the police about what?” David asked, entering the kitchen with several dinner plates in hand.

Spring started as if she herself had been caught in the middle of a criminal activity. She looked at Cecelia, who lifted and dropped her shoulders, leaving the decision to Spring whether or not to bring David into their confidence. Although he was an outsider, she trusted him... Well, she trusted certain parts of him. But because he wasn't from Cedar Springs, maybe he could see a different perspective.

“Cecelia and I were coming out here to get the house ready for this dinner, putting the leaves in the table, making sure there was enough dinnerware and that sort of thing. But on the way here, we saw one of the homeless men who is a regular for meals at Manna, the Common Ground ministry's soup kitchen.”

“Was he doing something illegal?” David asked.

“No,” Spring said.

“But there's a good reason to believe he's not so innocent.”

“Cecelia,” Spring said, resignation in her voice.

“What?” David asked, looking between the two women.

“Cecelia has a theory about him that I think is ridiculous.”

David placed the dirty dishes in the sink. “Well, if there's a connection between him and the burglary at Gerald's store, you should let the authorities know. Police on the news are always saying that even the smallest of details can be significant to a case.”

“What do you think, CeCe?”

The professor looked torn as she weighed the pros and cons of the situation.

“Tell you what,” Cecelia finally said, “I have some volunteer shifts at Manna this coming week. If Sweet Willie is there, I'll see what he has to say.”

“You should not be playing detective,” Spring said. “We have no idea what, if anything, could be going on.”

“That's right,” David said. “I've been involved with development projects where squatters had to be forcibly removed from buildings before demolition or renovation could take place. It wasn't pretty, and the police were ultimately called in on each situation. Given that you're thinking there could be criminal activity associated, the wisest course of action would be alerting the authorities.”

Spring let out a snort, the type her mother would deem extremely unladylike. She went to the refrigerator and started pulling out the miniature parfaits that would be served with their tortoni.

“If you think Professor Many Degrees over there is going to follow the wisest course of any action, you'll be sadly and extremely mistaken.”

“Professor Many Degrees?”

“Pay her no attention whatsoever,” Cecelia answered.

But Spring was looking at David. “What you said,” she told him. “That may be it.”

“What did I say?”

“The abandoned buildings. My sister Summer runs the kitchen at Manna. And I remember her saying there have been periods when Sweet Willie just sort of disappeared.”

“And?” Cecelia prompted.

“The abandoned buildings out here. They are the perfect place for someone to live, especially someone without a permanent home,” she said. “Maybe that's what Sweet Willie was doing out on Orchard Road. Heading to a barn or building where he's—what did you call it?—squatting?”

David nodded. “It's not as big a problem here on the East Coast as it is in some of the southwestern and western states where entire subdivisions have foreclosed properties. Homeless people, drug addicts and others just move in. Sometimes squatters keep up a property better than the homeowners who abandoned the places because they want it to appear like they belong there.”

“How long does it take three adults to gather a simple dessert?” Gerald said, entering the kitchen carrying the remaining dinner dishes. With a glance around the kitchen, he scowled. “You didn't put the coffee on. Must I do everything?”

“No one makes chicory coffee like you do, Gerald,” Spring said, smoothly changing the subject.

“Go,” Gerald said, shooing all three out of the room. “I'll see to the dessert and coffee service.”

After dessert at the dining room table, the group of diners moved to the living room for after-dinner coffee and the real purpose of the dinner party.

“So, David,” Carol Delaney said. “I read in the
Gazette
that your firm is coming up with a plan for developing outlying parcels here in Cedar Springs.”

“That's right,” he said, taking a sip of espresso from the demitasse cup. “My team has reviewed all of the sites, but I've only seen two of the three proposed sites. I'm here to inspect the third.”

Cecelia, sitting to his left, reached for one of the small fresh-baked minibiscottis on a tray that Spring was passing around. “Did you know that this house was once part of the Underground Railroad? One of Spring's ancestors was an abolitionist.”

“Really?” David said, sitting forward. “I researched a lot of the area and didn't come across that fact. I know there were rumors about way stations being in eastern North Carolina, but I had no idea that Cedar Springs was a part of it.”

Cecelia nodded and continued with the story. “Cedar Springs was something of a little protected enclave in the years leading to the War. Things weren't quite as they appeared. Most of the homes over on Catalpa Road, like the Scofield House, are on the Historic Register. They were all built by and for free blacks.”

“Cecelia heads up a project that's getting a few of the ones that haven't been kept up purchased and renovated.”

“Is that so?” David said. “Hmm...”

Spring wondered what he was thinking. But before she could think of a way to ask, Cecelia was answering.

“Indeed,” the professor said. “There were more free blacks living in the town, then known as Springs, North Carolina, than in much of the state. Spring's family, the Darlings, were a perfect example of how it was done. A couple believed by most to be their enslaved domestics were actually a teacher and a groomsman who would later go on to earn a medical degree. Eventually that groom earned the piece of paper that validated what he'd been doing most of his life under the tutelage of Dr. Darling, her great-great-grandfather,” she said with a nod toward Spring.

“And that black teacher who masqueraded as a house servant for the Darling family was her grandmother's grandmother,” Spring said, indicating Cecelia.

“Hiding in plain sight,” David said. Then he sat back in the wing chair and steepled his hands. “I'm starting to get the overall picture here,” he added. “You didn't invite me here for dinner. This is some sort of passive-aggressive ploy to get me to either withdraw from the mixed-use project or to recommend one of the other sites.”

He didn't look at Spring when he made the accusation, but she felt his quiet wrath as if he were yelling directly at her.

Sitting forward, David met the anxious gazes of each of the dinner party guests. “I don't appreciate the subterfuge,” he said. “If you wanted to make your case, why couldn't you be straight up about it?”

For an uncomfortable moment, the room remained oddly quiet.
The quiet of the guilty
, Spring thought.

“Don't blame them,” she said, looking as miserable as she felt. She'd been trying to tell him, to make her confession before things got to this point. But she had waited too late, let herself get swept up in the tide of
it'll all work out in the end
. She should have known better. Only in the movies and on reality television did interventions actually end with the result desired at the beginning. “It was my idea,” she told David. “As a matter of fact, more than one person tried to talk me out of it. I just thought—”

“You just thought that you could bombard me with stories about how precious this house and your land is. How I should take my architectural plans and go ruin some other community.”

Spring lowered her head.

That's exactly what she'd thought. But hearing the words come from David made the plan seem cold and callous, devious and self-serving.

“We thought if you saw—”

David held up a hand to halt the rest of her explanation. Rising, he nodded to the members of the Magnolia Supper Club. “The food was great,” he said. “I wish I could say the same about the rest of the evening.” When no one said anything, he added, “I'll see myself out.”

Spring slumped in her seat.

She would have liked to have heard the front door slam behind him on his way out. But there wasn't even that bit of his anger to assuage her guilt.

“I'm sorry, guys,” she told her friends. “This clearly wasn't one of my better ideas.”

“What do we do now?” Carol asked.

“Maybe we can fast-track the historic landmark application.”

Spring rose. “Excuse me,” she told her friends. “I need some air.”

She didn't want to cry, but she felt the wetness welling up in her eyes. Cecelia had predicted that this escapade would end badly. Spring had relied on the strength of her convictions. But look where that got her—roundly and solidly chastised by someone she was starting to have strong feelings for.

Pulling open the front door, she came up short when she spied David standing on the porch. His back was to her as he stood gazing out at the cedar trees and beyond them the fields leased by small farming operations.

“I thought you'd left.”

“I wanted to,” he said without turning around. “But I hoped you would come out.”

Still standing in the doorway, the screen door open, Spring asked, “Why?”

“Because even more than I wanted to leave, I wanted to hear from you why you did this. Why you thought it would be all right to lure me under false pretenses out here to your family's home. Was it so you and your friends could have some fun at my expense?”

Chapter Eleven

“T
hat wasn't the case at all,” she said, dismayed by the very idea.

Spring closed the door and indicated the swing on the front porch. “Would you like to sit?” she asked.

“No.”

He had yet to face her. He stood on the top step, hands shoved in his pockets, his back erect. Spring imagined he was holding on to his temper with everything he had in him. She knew if the tables were reversed, she'd be giving him more than a piece of her mind; she would be giving him the riot act with a righteous dose of Southern indignation.

Spring moved forward until she stood next to him.

“I'm sorry,” she said as she, too, stared into the distance. “It seemed like a good way to introduce you to some of the members of the historical society. What you saw at the planning commission meeting was, well, a more vocal faction, and things got out of hand.”

“At least Mrs. Lundsford was honest and up-front about where she stood.”

“I was angry,” she said. “When you walked into that room and I realized who you were and what your business was here, I was just...” She shook her head. “Ambushing you seemed irresistible. Gerald, Cecelia and I along with Roger and Carol Delaney and Johnson Gray are all historical society members as well as in the supper club. We...” She paused. “No,
I
thought we could show rather than tell you how much this property means not just to me and my family but to the history of Cedar Springs. Don't blame them for a plan that was my idea.”

She chanced a glance in his direction to see how her words affected him.

If they had any type of impact, it didn't show. She could read nothing in the features, which had grown hard right before her eyes.

“You made me the butt of the joke with your friends.”

“It wasn't intended that way,” Spring said, feeling miserable about what she had done. “I won't harbor you any ill will if your recommendation is for land the Darlings own, either outright or in trust.”

He snorted. “In trust? You mean you own even more of the town?”

Spring's eyes narrowed. “Every bit of real estate that my family owns is in the public record.”

“I'm sure it is,” he said drily.

Spring's pique at him was starting to take wing. “David, staging an intervention of sorts wasn't one of my better ideas, but it was well intended,” she said, gathering steam for her argument. “There are a lot of people in Cedar Springs, in eastern North Carolina, who could care less about the history of this place. But there are a lot who do. We can't just have placards or road markers put up at every site that has historic significance. All of the state would be one big ‘This happened here in 1789 or 1882 or 1952 or yesterday' sign. But we can keep that history alive, the history of then and the history we're making now.”

She went down a couple of steps and spread her hand out to indicate the acres of land surrounding the house. “Green space is to be cherished,” she said. “It may look like a lot to you, someone who makes a living getting maximum density out of every available square foot of land, but there are only so many shopping centers and subdivisions and mixed-use developments that a city or town needs.

“You and Mayor Howell are expecting some sort of population boom. You're operating under the pie-in-the-sky notion of if you build it, they will come.”

She came up one step so that she stood just beneath him. “The earth,” she said, “this ground, is all there is. We can't grow another.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Spring, tell me something. What did you hope to get out of this—dinner party—today?” he said putting an emphasis on dinner party, letting her know he knew it was anything but a party.

“I wanted you to see how much of Cedar Springs is actually living history.”

“So all of that business about your and Cecelia's great-great-grandparents was just fabrication to make the story more compelling?”

She shook her head. “It's all true,” she said. “Cecelia is one of the preeminent African American historians here in North Carolina. She's a Rhodes Scholar, has degrees from Duke, Harvard and Oxford. All of them doctorates. She can trace her ancestry almost as far back as I can. We both believe in historic preservation,” she added, putting emphasis on the word
preservation
, “not just footnotes in history books. If we don't preserve the past, it will be forgotten.”

David let out a puff of air, then relaxed his arms.

“Where the city council ultimately decides to put a mixed-used development isn't up to me.”

“No, but just like with what happened with the planning commission, you'll make a recommendation and that recommendation will hold sway with the council.”

His mouth quirked up in what could only be described as a sardonic smile. “So your Not-In-My-Backyard campaign is about getting this in another part of town?”

Summer shook her head. “It's not about this parcel of land or the ones you call parcels one and three. If we had our druthers, there would be little or no new development in the city. There's plenty here to preserve or to restore. But we, the historical society members, recognize that time marches on, names are forgotten. And in this case, if a road is built through here, the final resting places of countless men and women and children will be right here, under tons of concrete and asphalt, lost forever until a millennia from now explorers and archaeologists come through wondering what it all means. We have the opportunity here and now to give our children's children something to be proud of.”

“You make a strong case,” David said. “But you've forgotten one crucial fact.”

“What's that?” she asked, her nose screwed up in irritation.

“It's not my call to make. The city council votes on where they want the development. My role is to create uses for space, to make land-use recommendations.”

“That's just it,” Spring said. “Don't you see? What you design will be here for a long, long time. The homes and businesses built to your plans can enhance or detract from Cedar Springs. I'm not naive, David. And I'm not antidevelopment. What I am concerned about is how and if the city will mark and honor this new phase of its growth. With respect to what you do, your new urbanism plan, homes with shops and businesses to walk to and whatnot, is more of the same and misses the mark.”

“And having a sit-down adult business meeting doesn't fit in with that concern?”

Spring, remembering the kiss they'd shared just a couple of hours ago, tried to reconcile that strong and appealing man with the cold and calculating businessman in front of her now.

No
, she thought. Not cold and calculating—he was cold and ambivalent. And given the way she'd gone about this dinner party, maybe he had a right to be.

What Cedar Springs needed was not historical society members waving their banners about what happened twenty-five, fifty, one hundred or two hundred years ago. What they needed was a public relations initiative—to get the message out there.

Even as she looked at David Camden watching her, Spring's mind was jumping forward, considering and then discarding the local firms that flashed through her mental Rolodex file of contacts and acquaintances. They didn't need a lawyer to file lawsuits, they needed an image consultant, someone who could generate support and reshape public opinion by showing the benefits of preservation. Then she hit on a name: Trey Calloway at Keaton & Myers, a top-tier management consulting firm that had offices in town. The Calloway family's history in Cedar Springs ran deep, about as deep as Spring's and Cecelia's. Trey Calloway would be able to understand and appreciate the delicate task of balancing preservation and progress.

In the meantime, she could share what she loved with David Camden...if he'd let her.

Spring held out her hand in both invitation and supplication. “David, I'd like to show you some things.”

“What? Do you have more historical society members in the barn with digestifs to finish the Magnolia Supper Club's little soiree?”

“No,” she said. “It's just us. I want to show you the farm.”

“Farm?”

She nodded and waited for him to make up his mind about joining her.

After what seemed an interminable period, he nodded and took a step down, clasping her hand in his. They walked a short distance from the house.

“My earliest memory is of this house and lands, of feeding ducks at this pond,” she told him. “I had to have been three or maybe almost four. Winter was an infant, I remember that because I was upset that a crying, pooping, squiggly pink thing had usurped my position in the house. Mom and Dad didn't seem to notice me anymore. In my young opinion, they were only interested in the baby. We were living here then. Daddy had not yet built The Compound for Mom or the space that would be his office.”

“What was a four-year-old doing alone near a pond?”

“Exactly my grandmother's question,” Spring said. “She must have seen me leave the house and followed me. There was a family of ducks, a mama and her ducklings, who would come here to sun themselves.”

Spring took off her shoes and stood at the water's edge as if the ducks from long ago were still there waiting for her.

“Without scolding me for venturing away from the house, Grandma put some bread crumbs in my hand and told me to toss them out for the ducks. The mama duck, she explained, had a lot of work to do. She needed to tend to the babies while looking out for predators like hawks, who would swoop down and snatch a baby, or the hounds that liked to chase the ducks until they tired, leaving them too exhausted to fend off other hungry predators.”

“So she likened your parents with the new baby to the mother duck?”

“Exactly,” Spring said. “The lesson I learned that day, the one that stayed with me for the rest of my life, was that the elders have to care for and look out for the younger ones, be they human or animal. You know, the least of us.”

David nodded. “I see the parallel to the Scripture in Matthew.”

“So,” Spring said, “I stopped resenting my little sister. It's a good thing I did since two more would come in short order. I took the whole older sister bit to heart. Probably too much, they would say,” she added. “But the die was cast. Later, as I grew up and could appreciate it more, my grandfather told me about the history of this land, the slaves who came through on their way to freedom. The migrants who worked the fields here before heading north to the eastern shores of both Virginia and Maryland.

“I soaked all of that information in, David. I became a living and breathing history lesson.”

“What does that have to do with the mixed-use development project?”

“Everything,” she said. “I became a doctor because that's in my DNA. My father and my grandfather were doctors. But from my grandmothers, I got the love of and appreciation for history. I don't want this land preserved because I want it in my family. I want it preserved so all of the families in Cedar Springs and elsewhere can learn the stories of what this area meant.”

“Then why haven't you done something about it?” David asked. “All I see is a nice house, some well-maintained fields and nothing else.”

Spring was hoping he'd ask.

“Cecelia and I are in the process of writing a grant application for just that,” she said, hoping the note of pride and confidence she heard in her own voice didn't sound quite as sanctimonious as she thought it did. “Until Mayor Howell popped up with this mixed-use development idea, there was no need to announce or make public what we were working on. All the pieces were fitting together. My family was donating the land to the project. We had a solid business plan. All we needed was the rest of the funding.”

She looked away for a moment and sighed heavily. “We learned the hard way about making things public before all the i's were dotted and all the t's crossed.”

“What do you mean?”

She then told him the history of the Junction at Commerce Plaza. “The historical society wanted that land to build a history and interpretive center. Before we knew it, though, gas pumps and twenty-four-hour flashing lights were there. That junction—we believed then and still believe now—has a major historical site beneath it, a mill and a cemetery. But because the project was rushed through and done so hush-hush without anything approximating public comment, we'll never know for sure now.”

“Hmm,” he said. “So, this history and interpretive center you're talking about would be here?”

Spring nodded. “With an archeological research aspect to it. That's where the grant writing comes in,” she said. “When we say ‘history' or ‘archeology' to the public, people's eyes generally glaze over. But that doesn't have to be the case. There are actually waiting lists for the seminars Cecelia teaches at the university.”

“Why didn't you just tell me this?” David asked. “Why lure me into the lion's den to attack?”

She sighed again. “This is going to sound lame, and it is lame, but, well, it seemed like it a good idea at the time. It was the best I could come up with. Things seem to be moving very fast as far as the city's official channels are concerned.”

He contemplated her for a moment, as if weighing the veracity of her words. She tried to imagine how she would feel if their roles and the situation were reversed.

“That's not good enough, Spring,” he said.

“I thought you might say something like that.”

She leaned her head back and regarded the sky for a moment as if the right words might shower down on her. When she faced him again, it was with a newfound resolve.

“There's a bench over there,” she said, indicating a shady grove a few yards away. She didn't wait for him to respond to the implied invitation; she just starting walking toward it, her shoe straps dangling in her hands.