Unforgiven (12 page)

“In front of God and Walkers Ford, I’m standing up for your marriage. It’s a big deal to me.”

The waitress slid a steaming platter of fried potatoes, vegetables, and shredded cheese in front of Keith. “Sure I can’t get you anything, hon?”

“I’ll take a couple of the caramel buns to go, and two cups of coffee,” Adam said.

“For sure,” she said and hurried behind the counter.

“Bringing treats to your lady friend?”

“If by ‘lady friend’ you mean my mother, then yes,” Adam said. “She loves them.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Hey, I know she’s made some wedding dresses, but Delaney wanted to get hers from this boutique in Minneapolis. I hope her feelings weren’t hurt.”

His mother would have loved the opportunity to work on the couture-style wedding gown Delaney could afford, but that wasn’t an option, even when she was marrying him, not Keith. “I know,” he said. After a pause, Keith tucked into his breakfast. “I’m working on the speech.”

“For the reception?”

Adam nodded.

Keith sat back. “Look, man, nobody expects you to get up in front of all of Walkers Ford and wish us a long and happy future. It’s enough that you’re there.”

“It’s part of the best man’s job. Unless there’s some reason you don’t want me to do it.”

The waitress arrived with a white paper lunch sack and a to-go cup of coffee that looked a little like the Starbucks cup Marissa secretly and hilariously coveted. “It’s on me,” she said as she set the bag and cup in front of Adam. “Welcome home.”

“Ma’am, I can’t let you do that,” he started.

“Can’t stop me, either,” she said with a smile, and hurried away.

“Must be nice,” Keith said.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “The perks are unbelievable.”

Keith’s fork halted halfway to his mouth. “Hey, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know,” Adam said. He pulled a twenty from his wallet and tucked it under his coffee cup. “Email me the schedule for the rehearsal and wedding day. I’ll get fitted in the next couple of days.” He pushed back his chair and reached for the to-go coffee and caramel buns.

“So was it Marissa?”

The question was too casual to be casual. “What makes you think that?”

“My amazing powers of deduction. The two of you disappeared that night at Brookhaven.”

“That’s your evidence,” he said.

A masculine grin flashed in Keith’s tanned face. “Why the hell not? She’s hot enough. Hotter than in high school. Got a look in her eye that tells you she’s an emotional freak show but the ride will be hot as hell. Shit taste in men.”

“She turn you down?”

“Twice,” Keith said without blinking an eye. “Told me to go fuck myself the second time. Girl never did like me. She liked you, though.”

Adam looked around the restaurant. No one paid the slightest attention to their conversation. “What do you mean, ‘shit taste in men’?”

“Her reputation’s worse than in high school,” he said. “First Chris, just like you but with an ’85 Mustang instead of the motorcycle, and just like her, all talk, no action. Then there was the stained-glass artist who did the windows in Brookhaven, then a guy from Mitchell who specialized in plaster restoration we all thought was gay, but apparently wasn’t because he was around for a while. Those were just the guys who lasted more than a night or two.” He laughed, the tone of the chuckle knowingly regretful, the way people did when they were about to say something cruel disguised as advice. “Marissa will make your bathroom or your kitchen or your sun porch look like something out of
Architectural Digest
, but she had a string of men teaching her what she needed to know, and she paid them the old-fashioned way.”

A fire-breathing dragon of rage swooped up in Adam’s torso, beat leather wings at his temples, clawed under the skin of his hands and forearms. He wanted to roar, rattle the Heirloom’s windows, scorch Keith to ashes with flames and fury, but clamped down on the beast clawing and snorting fire in his chest.

But you, old pal, didn’t have anything she thought was worth learning, did you?

He swallowed hard because he was sitting in the Heirloom Cafe with his best friend. His
best
friend. Swallowed again, but the dragon stuck in his throat, sharp, bitter edges of wings and claws burning and scratching on the way down. “I’ll get the fitting done ASAP.”

A beat passed, then Keith shrugged and said, “Thanks, man. Hey, stop by the house some night. Mom and Dad want to see you.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “Later.” He collected the paper bag and coffee cup in his left hand and pulled his keys from his pocket as he walked away.

Lucas stood just outside the Heirloom’s door, a cup of coffee in one hand, his phone in the other. Adam didn’t fool himself into thinking Lucas’s seemingly relaxed attitude meant he’d missed the nuances of his conversation with Keith. “We really should get that beer sometime soon,” Lucas said, then looked up, a hint of humor in his eyes.

Adam gave a short laugh. “Yeah. I’ll call you.”

Back in the Charger, he stared bemusedly at his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He shook out his hands, felt the muscles and tendons ease slightly. When the acid crawling up his esophagus receded, he started the car and turned into Main Street traffic, heading for home.

His mother was dressed for work in slacks and a blouse in a shade between green and blue. She didn’t say anything when he walked into the kitchen, but the relief was clear on her face. “Hi, Mom,” he said, then held out the white bag.

She took the bag and gave him a wry smile. “Time was, you’d sneak out, come through that door, hungover and reeking of cigarette smoke after I’d been to church without you, and ask me what was for supper.”

He’d been hell on his mother from the time he could walk until his induction into the Marine Corps, maybe the only institution short of prison that could have disciplined the wild streak out of him. “That’s breakfast,” he said.

“One for you and one for me,” she said as she peeked in the bag.

He’d intended them both for her, one for now and one for later, but thought better of it. “Let me get a shower first,” he said and headed into her sewing room to grab cammies, boots, and a thick USMC sweatshirt from his duffle. The light was on over the sewing machine, and fabric spread out on the cutting table with a dress pattern half-pinned to it. “I’m heading out again in a few minutes,” he said as he emerged from the bedroom.

“Where are you going?”

Her tone was curious, not judgmental. “I’m going to help Marissa get the pieces she needs to repair the mantel at Brookhaven,” he said.

She smiled. “That’s nice of you, sweetie.”

“That’s where I was,” he said. “Last night, after supper with the Walkers. I was with Ris.”

His mother opened a cupboard and took down two plates, then reached in the silverware drawer for two forks. “I thought that might be the case. She could use a friend.”

We’re more than friends, Mom. We always were.

He gave her a short nod, then ducked into the Marissa-made bathroom for a fast shower. Dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, he dug into the caramel bun and asked his mother the question he’d mulled over on the way into town. “Did Ris ever say anything to you about the ocean?”

“No,” she said promptly.

And that was that. He finished off the bun, scraped the caramel off the plate, then kissed his mother on the cheek. “Don’t wait up,” he said.

He was halfway out the door, work gloves in hand, when she spoke. “Adam.”

One eyebrow lifted in inquiry, he turned and looked back in at his mother.

“She never said anything with words.”

He stepped back inside the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

“That’s all I can say about it, sweetie.”

Back in the Charger, he lifted the coffee cups to gauge the remaining heat, then reversed out of the driveway and headed for Brookhaven. The point of coming back early was to clear up loose ends of one sort or another. Clean out the garage. Spend some time with his mother. Sell the bike he wouldn’t look at and probably couldn’t get a hundred bucks for. Fulfill his duty to Keith and Delaney. Hooking up with Marissa Brooks wasn’t on the list, or had he purposefully excluded it? But he was here, sleeping with her, getting caught up in the woman who held all of the girl’s vibrant sensuality and a woman’s mysterious depths. He’d improvise. Adapt. God knew he owed her.

And if you think you’re doing this because you owe her, you’re as dumb as dirt.

That less-than-comforting thought and the memory of Keith’s acid-sharp assessment of Marissa warred in his mind. He was almost to the turnoff on County Road 12 when a flash of red caught his eye.

12

T
HE ROAD WINDING
through the Walkers Ford cemetery was a dirt track with what remained of the green summer grass clinging to the high ground between the ruts. Marissa coaxed her truck over the peak of the hill where five generations of her family were laid to rest, parked, and turned off the truck. Without the growl of the diesel engine, the rain hit the truck’s roof like pebbles and sheeted down the windshield. She reached for the flowers and the umbrella on the passenger’s seat; outside the cab the rain nearly drowned out the thump of her pulse in her ears. Cold seeped through the twin layers of flannel and khaki work pants, numbed her fingers through her gloves. The high today might reach forty-five. If the cloud cover didn’t break soon, South Dakota would be underwater for the first time in seventy million years or so, or suffering the highest snowfall since the long winter.

Just off the dirt track lay the Brooks family plot, at the peak of the hill, giving her dead ancestors a fine view of Brookhaven to the north and Walkers Ford to the south. Had her father seen what she’d accomplished? If he had, he’d see her failures as well.

She cleared her throat, looked to the north, at Brookhaven. Undaunted by the water and wind, the figurehead pointed west, her red hair a smudge against the house’s white clapboard siding. From up here the house that loomed so large in her mental landscape was uncharacteristically small on the rolling prairie, nearly insignificant. She looked down at her father’s grave, then laid the bouquet of prairie crocuses on the headstone carved from the same Black Hills granite as the earlier generations’.

Remember who you are. You’re a Brooks. You belong to the house as the house belongs to you.

“I know, Dad. I could use some help today. I’ve got to do this,” she murmured. The rain seemed to drown the words before they left her throat, but then she realized the sound was the low, prowling engine of a muscle car. It shut off, then a moment later a car door slammed. A shiver skittered across the nape of her neck, but not from the chilled breeze. She turned to find Adam behind her, bareheaded, no umbrella, holding two cups of coffee from the Heirloom.

“What the hell are you doing out here in a pounding rainstorm?”

“Talking to the dead,” she said promptly. “What the hell are you doing out here with two cups of coffee and no umbrella?”

Water streamed off his nose and chin. “Is it raining?”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Not crazy. Stoic. The shoulders of his sweatshirt were soaked through, and he’d been out of his car for less than thirty seconds. “I’ll trade you one half of my umbrella for that coffee,” she said.

He ended up holding the handle and one cup while she had the other. To stay dry and absorb some of the heat he radiated she leaned against his arm. They stood in a cylinder of dry air while the water streamed off the umbrella’s edge.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Saw red when I turned onto the road to Brookhaven.” He nodded at the bouquet, pounded limp by the rain but still vibrant pinks and purples against the gray granite. “Nice flowers.”

“Prairie crocuses. They carpet the meadow at Brookhaven when spring’s here to stay. I grow some in pots because Dad loved them.”

“I remember,” he said, then lifted his coffee cup to his mouth. “Do you talk to the dead a lot?”

She shrugged. When her dad first died, she came alone every day, then once a week, then every couple of weeks, just to talk. Then, when she and Chris bought Brookhaven, daily again, eager to tell him all about her plans and progress, until the work overwhelmed her. “Brookhaven was so important to Dad. He’d want to know what’s going on.”

“I remember,” he said again.

Memory flashed bright in her mind, the living room in the house her father rented after he lost Brookhaven, sunlight filtering through dusty sheer curtains onto Adam, uncharacteristically still as he sat with her father and paged through the family albums, a fresh set of ears for the tales Marissa heard as bedtime stories as a little girl.

Tell me the one about supper for the Governor, Daddy. Tell me about the plates, and the cakes, and the pretty dresses.

Her dolls’ tea parties took place in Brookhaven’s great room. In the stories she wrote for school, princes rescued maidens from the veranda off the master suite. “It’s strange, but sometimes Dad’s stories about Brookhaven are more vivid in my mind than he is. That’s my inheritance. Dad’s dreams.”

Adam didn’t say anything, just stood beside her and sipped coffee in silence. “Dreams aren’t a bad inheritance,” he said finally.

Said the man who grew up without a father. “Do you think about your dad?”

For a few moments, the rain was her only answer, then he said, “I used to. Somewhere in the middle of my second tour, I stopped.”

Your father could skip town before you were little more than an embryo and still impact every decision you made, every thought you had.
“Do you have any dreams?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Bad ones.”

Uncertain, she glanced up over her shoulder at him, but his face was totally expressionless. The Marine Corps probably didn’t allow dreams of any kind. “That’s not the kind of dream I meant,” she said.

“Your dad dreamed enough for the three of us,” he said. “Where’s Chris?”

She tipped her head. “Over the hill with the rest of the Larsons,” she said.

“Drunk driving accident, right?”

“He blew the stop sign at 16 and 140 and a tractor-trailer T-boned him,” she said. “He never was much for doing anything half-assed. Raising hell, driving, chasing girls, whatever. When he worked, he worked all out, did a beautiful job. When he went on a bender, he did that full tilt, too.”

Adam’s big, warm body never moved against hers. She had a type, all right. The type was moving at a high rate of speed. Purpose and direction mattered less, at least back then.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “When did he die?”

“A couple of years after Dad did.”

“That’s a lot of grief.”

She lifted a shoulder. She went on. There wasn’t another option, when there were bills to pay, and no one else providing a roof or food. But he had grief enough of his own, and she’d long since come to terms with hers. “Life’s like that,” she said. “Are you ready to go?”

“Depends on whether you’re okay with making a detour to Brookings first,” he said. “I need to get this tux fitting out of the way. The rental place is in Brookings. I can go, then come back and pick you up.”

“No problem. That’s fine,” she said, trying not to sound relieved. “The house is near Colton, between Brookings and Sioux Falls. I’ll drive. You can leave your car in the barn.”

He walked back through the rain to the Charger. Before she left, Marissa crouched down by her father’s headstone and straightened the flattened bunch of prairie crocuses. “Bye, Dad,” she said quietly.

The rain washed away the words. Inside her truck, the drops hit metal like nails pinging onto tin, a high-pitched sound that set her nerves jangling. Hopefully Adam’s presence would settle her down. The alternative, shaming herself in front of him, was too horrifying to contemplate.

Adam followed her along the curving dirt track back to the iron scroll arch over the cemetery’s entrance, then back to Brookhaven. The barn sat at the bottom of the hill, nestled back in the trees that lined the property’s creek. She parked off to the side and got out to unlock the barn, then swung the doors wide and guided his car into the open space in the center of the main floor. He cut the engine and got out, absently running his palm over his hair, then flicking the rainwater to the side as he surveyed the dim interior. “Where did everything go?” he asked, his voice echoing in the empty space.

When the county took the property for taxes, they’d had an auction to clear out over a hundred years of Brooks family discards. Her father saved only what they could store in their small house in town. Everything else went under the auctioneer’s gavel, boxes and trunks, faded and broken furniture, tools, a tractor from the 1940s, harness and wagon parts from even earlier. “Sold when the county took the house,” she said. “We kept pictures, a few trunks and other personal items, mostly what Dad remembered from his childhood. That’s when I found the chronometer and the sextant. Josiah Brooks brought them with him when he came west.”

The roof was solid, rain cascading down past the open barn doors, but inside was dry, if not warm. Hands on his hips, he looked at the ladder that ran up to the loft. They’d made a cozy little nest up there, stowing blankets, a battery-operated lantern, and a radio. From the look on his face, he remembered, too.

“It’s all gone,” she said. “Just bare plank floors up there now.”

He transferred his gaze from the loft to her face. A small, secret shudder rippled through her, hardening her nipples and halting her breath in her throat. “Would you do it again, Ris?”

He meant that spring, that intense, wild spring, desolation all around. She didn’t know how to untangle the threads of a life. If she said no, maybe Josh would still be alive. Maybe Adam would have gone to SDSU, met someone there, moved away. She wouldn’t know this dull emptiness all the time, this sense of loss and longing. She wouldn’t have the memory of hot, brilliant days with Adam, on the back of his bike, under him in the loft.

She wouldn’t have Brookhaven. Her dad would have lost the house, but would she have met Chris, loved him, planned a future with him, only to see it broken and bleeding on a table in the county morgue? Love and loss. Dreams and hopes smashed by unexpected death, but she couldn’t change the past. All she could do was keep moving.

“Would you?”

He looked at her. Some trick of light revealed regret and remorse and awareness flashing under the surface of those impenetrable hazel eyes. She waited, then he turned away to snag a backpack from the Charger’s trunk. “We should get going.”

They climbed into her truck. Without thinking about it, she braced her arm behind the passenger seat and twisted to look over her shoulder as she reversed up the track to the barn, onto Brookhaven’s circular drive. When she faced forward Adam was smiling, just a quirk of his lips, but the smile sat like an amused cat in his eyes.

“What?”

“You drive like a man,” he said.

She’d heard that before, about more than her driving. It wasn’t usually a compliment. “So?”

“It’s pretty hot, tough girl.”

“Really,” she said.

“Strong is hot.”

Brookhaven sat at the top of the largest swell of land in the county, the barn down in the hollow, near the flat land that was once cropland but was now thirty years back into prairie. Even the stone circle that held the bonfires was nearly invisible, overgrown as it was by tall, pale grasses. “I don’t feel strong,” she said finally. “I feel like I’m hanging on by my fingernails.”

“What happens if you let go?”

“I don’t want to find out,” she said, and shifted the truck into drive. Adam opened the backpack and drew out a book. “What are you reading?” she asked, wondering if his choice of reading material would given her a peek into his inner world.

“I’ve never given a speech before,” he continued. “I want to do a little research before I start writing. It may only be sixty seconds, but it’s a big deal for Delaney. I’m not going with some formula of a joke plus a story plus a toast.”

Jealousy flared, hot, green, bitter acid searing from her gut up her throat to her mouth. She swallowed hard and fixed her gaze on the road without seeing anything more than the broken yellow line separating the lanes. It always came back to Delaney. Always.

“Why did you want to come back?” she asked. “What are you really doing here?”

A moment passed before he answered. “I came home, Ris. That’s all.”

On the surface it made sense: after a decade away and five tours, he truly wanted the quiet, uneventful world of eastern South Dakota. After Adam broke up with Delaney, the town delightedly rehashed their entire history, down to multiple reenlistments. Delaney seemed genuinely bewildered and hurt, but held her head high and refused to comment. The general consensus was that Adam had done something unforgivable, but covered it up by ending their relationship before Delaney found out.

“Go ahead and ask me,” he said.

Startled out of her reverie, she shot a quick glance at him, but he was still looking at the open book on his lap. “Ask you what?”

“Why I broke up with Delaney. What happened.”

The statement was a challenge, not an invitation. “Rumor was that you changed your mind and were going to make the Marine Corps your career—”

“That was never the plan.”

“But it’s none of my business,” she finished.

“Then you’re the only person in Walkers Ford who thinks so,” he said, head still bent.

She shrugged and slowed as they entered the Brookings city limits. “If you want to tell me, you’ll tell me.”

“Do you want to know?” he asked as he turned that mocking, cynical gaze on her. “It’s really good gossip. Juicy. Dirty. You’d be the first to know the whole truth.”

She almost said yes. She was human, curious, and none too proud of the shiver of delight that followed on the heels of shock when she heard the news, but the tight line of his mouth promised the pain under the dirt.

“I don’t gossip,” she said bluntly. “I’ve been the talk of the town too often to do that to someone else, especially you. You can tell me if you want to, but whatever you say stays with me.”

She parked on the street in front of Gentleman’s Formalwear and cut the engine. Adam gripped her arm when she put her hand on the door handle, keeping her in the truck.

“Keith had something to say about you being the talk of the town,” he said.

Heat climbed into her cheeks, but she didn’t look away. “You told him you were with me?”

“No. He guessed. I didn’t confirm, or deny. Then he offered some free advice.”

“Keith’s advice is never free,” she said, then tugged her arm loose from his grip. “Someone pays for it.”

He let her go, and met her at the door. While he conferred with the sales clerk, Marissa wandered through the aisles, brushing her fingers lightly over the shoulders of suit jackets hanging in a row in size order, and two tables of silk ties. The clerk reappeared with a tuxedo under plastic and handed it over to the tailor. Adam ducked into a changing room and came out a minute later wearing the pants and jacket over his button-down shirt. Expressionless, he stood in front of the three-way mirror, adjusting his sleeves while the tailor hovered. She drifted over to the fitting area.