Phantom pains hit my scarred arm every time I focused on Declan. I folded my fingers into a fist, ignoring the pain as I stood, placing my hand on top of the headstone.
“From cradle to grave. Sandbox to pine box.”
My chest clenched and my throat tightened. Anger bubbled to the surface. He’d reached those way too soon, and it should’ve been me. Guilt seeped from every pore as I choked out the last part.
“Home plate to center field. Always, brother.”
A breeze ruffled the leaves on the tree shading Declan’s resting place and gently brushed against me.
There wasn’t much in Hawk Valley. One movie theater that got the latest flicks about a month after the rest of the world. One grocery store and a Main Street filled with mom-and-pop shops. The old town hadn’t changed too much since I’d been gone, but someone had built an inn out on the eastern bluff.
My choices were the old motel at the edge of town, which hadn’t seen a good day since the fifties; my mom’s tiny one-bedroom house, which she’d bought after watching a special about tiny houses, and after video chatting with her I wasn’t even sure my six-foot-five frame would fit inside; or a cabin at the new inn.
The decision was easy.
I pulled onto the black asphalt drive and followed the curving road up the hill. The sun was casting its last few minutes of light over the town and the surrounding areas as the moon made an early appearance in the sky. A white wooden sign hung from a post, at the edge of the clearing, at the very top of the hill. The scripted letters Castle Rock Inn were in a deep forest green and beneath that, in smaller black letters, was “where our family becomes yours.”
I groaned. The seedy motel might’ve been the better option. I wanted to keep my head down while I was here, and I just needed a damn place to stay. I wasn’t going to sit around their breakfast table and then go bird-watching with them.
I ran a hand through my hair and tugged on the ends, slowing my truck to a crawl as I swept my gaze over the space. There was a gazebo near the edge, overlooking the town and the lake below. A dirt path led into the woods with a post holding multiple signs at the trailhead.
Beginners Hike.
Cedar Springs.
And sure enough: Bird-watching.
I blew out a breath and continued my perusal. It was a nice property, but I sure as fuck wasn’t a bed-and-breakfast type of guy. It wasn’t until I spotted a makeshift baseball diamond at the far corner of the clearing that I decided to stay.
I swung into a spot and hopped out of my truck, keeping my eye on the field as a little kid stood in the batter’s box and pointed his metal bat toward the sky. His mom tossed the ball, but it hit the dirt about two feet in front of the kid. He turned toward her, the end of the bat touching the ground and his hand on the knob.
Their voices carried easily over the open space. “How am I supposed to launch a rocket if you don’t throw me a strike?”
I smothered my laugh with my hand. “Just throw it back,” the mom called.
I watched her pitch one more, this one sailing right over the center of the plate. It was the perfect sweet spot, and the little kid took advantage. Thwack! His bat connected with the center of the ball and sent it sailing to the outfield as he raced around the bases. This place just might be alright.
I opened the back door of my truck and took out my bag before heading inside to check-in.
The large porch creaked beneath my shoes, and thuds echoed in the empty space. Warm light greeted me from the windowpanes in the door before I opened it. A deep groan escaped past my lips when I walked in. Something sweet with a hint of cinnamon was filling the air. My mouth watered, and I wanted to trail the scent until I found the source.
“Hey there.” A woman rounded the corner with a platter in her hands. My stomach grumbled loudly enough for her to hear. She chuckled, the laugh lines on her cheeks deepening. Her dark hair, with a few strands of gray, was swept back from her face and held together by a clip at the back of her head. I immediately knew she must’ve been the one to come up with the family slogan on the side. She looked like the mother that would wrap up all the neighborhood kids in a hug and feed them before sending them back out on their bikes. And, in that way, she reminded me of my mom. “Want one?” She held out the plate of cookies.
My hand reached out before I nodded, and I snagged a large, perfectly round, and perfectly golden snickerdoodle cookie topped with a chocolate peanut butter cup. I stuck half the cookie in my mouth and bit down. “Damn,” I whispered. “That’s good.”
“Thank you.” She set the plate on the front desk. “Are you checking in? Do you have a reservation?”
I nodded and glanced at the pile of cookies again.
“You can have another,” she said.
I smirked a little guiltily and looked away from the cookies to meet her gaze. She was smiling widely. I plucked two from the plate. “Your cookies are fantastic.”
“My daughter made them. She’s the chef here.” She stood a little taller with each word. I nodded.
“She’s a master. My reservation is under Gentry. Gunner Gentry.”
“I swear I’ve heard that name before,” she said as she typed on the sleek laptop in front of her. I didn’t respond. I was recognized by baseball fans, even if they weren’t fans of the team I played for, but I never outright told someone who I was. In the summers, when I wore short sleeves, my burned arm—something reporters harped on—was a dead giveaway, but now that the season was cooling the temperature, I stayed in long sleeves. “Are you from around here?”
“I am. Mom’s still here, but I haven’t lived in the area for a long time.”
“That must be it,” she said and snapped her fingers as she shot me a smile. “I found you. A single-cabin rental for four months? Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I slid my card across the desk. She swiped it through the machine and handed it back to me with a set of keys. A real key, not a card with a magnetic strip. It wasn’t anything I was used to, and I spent half of my year on the road and in hotel rooms.
“For a long-term rental, our cleaning staff cleans three times a week instead of every day, but if you need more of something, just holler and we’ll pop right over. I put you in one of the last cabins for some seclusion. Is that alright?” She had a hand propped on her hip, and her smile hadn’t dimmed even slightly. A small-town Texas twang had made an appearance with a few of her words. As she snagged a white paper sack from beneath the desk and loaded in a few cookies for me, showcasing her hospitality, it sank in even more. I was home.
“It’s great.”
“It’s at the end of the trail, so it’s a short walk, or I can drive you in one of the golf carts. If you need us to pick you up in the morning and take you to your car or the restaurant on-site, just call and we’ll swing by to get you.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine walking, but thank you.”
“I’m Gayle. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks. Night, Gayle.”
I walked out into the night. Within the few minutes I’d been inside, the sun had set, and trail lights now lit the way. My mom had plans to meet me here tomorrow, and I would finally be able to drag the reason she’d wanted me to come home out of her. She’d talked to me about it as the season had wrapped up and I’d started talking about my plans for the off-season, but she’d been vague. She’d said it was important, but I wondered if she just thought it was time to face Hawk Valley.
Chapter 2
Delilah
My gut churned and I scratched out the words I’d just written before I’d thrown the pen onto the desk. I’d started this letter journal just in case Shayla got clean, came home, and wanted to be a mom to Tucker. I started writing letters to her the day we brought Tucker home from the hospital, which was the same day she skipped town.
I wanted to record every little gurgle, sigh, and smile Tuck made. I didn’t want her to miss any of it, so I wrote it all down in detail. As tim
e went on, the letters got a little snippy. How could she leave Tuck behind? How could she leave this precious boy?
The first time he called me Mama was when I wrote my first truly angry letter. I didn’t want her to come back. I wanted her to stay far away from Tuck and me. I raised him. He’s my son. I don’t care if I didn’t carry him; I’ve been there for every day of his life. Hell, every hour. Every minute. Every second.
I bandaged up every booboo. I sat in the principal’s office with embarrassed red cheeks after I got a call about him biting a boy in kindergarten. It was me who potty trained him and got sprayed when I changed his diapers. Every late night, every scare, every laugh. All of it. They’re mine. He’s mine.
She hadn’t been around for eight years, while I sacrificed and worked my way through culinary school with a baby. And now she wanted to come back?
Her handwritten note, on greasy, food-stained paper, was filled with threats. The first paragraph stated she wanted to come home and be in her son’s life. And why? After all this time? After eight years? What had prompted this change in her? My heart dropped to the floor and tears sprang to my eyes. As I read on, my cheeks flamed with anger and my heart rate increased along with my irritation.
Somewhere along the way she went from zero to sixty in a nanosecond. She threatened to take him in the middle of the night if I didn’t meet her demands. She promised she’d see me in court if I didn’t give her access. And she swore, no matter what, I’d never see him again.
“It will be over my dead body that you ever see my boy again.”
I read that line over and over, consumed with fear over the very thought of missing anything in his life. The rational and logical part of me that knew no judge would grant her custody had fled the building, and in its place was every irrational and anxious thought.
I grabbed the pen, flipped to a new blank page, and scrawled the words as I batted away tears with my other hand.
He’s my son. I will fight for him. You don’t even know his name. You abandoned him, you couldn’t even give him a name!
The words were scrawled and messy, nothing like my normal careful handwriting. A tear dripped onto the page, making the ink in that spot bleed.
I slammed the notebook closed and got up from the little desk in the corner of my room. I fisted Shayla’s letter in my hand and looked around the space. I couldn’t let Tucker find this. I needed to talk to my parents first and figure out a plan; then I would be honest with him. He had to come first in all of this though. Tuck was my priority. And a small part of me, a completely selfish part, wanted a little more time just as things were. I wasn’t ready to tell him, and that was the fucking truth.
“Mom! Come on! I’m hungry.”
His tennis shoes squeaked against the polished wood as he came down the hall, getting closer to my room. My heart caught in my throat. “Shit,” I whispered.
He was only a couple of steps away now. I picked up the edge of the mattress and shoved the letter under it. I sat on the edge of the bed, scrubbing my face of any lingering tears before bending over to put on my shoes. Tuck opened the bedroom door without knocking. I’d been trying to teach him to knock for years, but he barged right in whenever he wanted. “You have to knock, Tuck.”
He rolled his eyes. Long gone was the sweet dimple-cheeked four-year-old boy, and in his place was my eight-year-old son, who would be shooting past me in height way sooner than I would be ready for. He backed out of the room and knocked in an exaggerated manner. I wanted to teach him about respecting boundaries and privacy. I usually changed in my closet though, and the thought of having a man over was laughable. Eligible single guys in a small town were slim pickins and my brother had scared off most of them anyway. “Come in,” I called. My cheek rose as one side of my mouth turned up in a smirky smile.
“What are you doing? Why are you taking so long? I’m going to starve to death. And then what would you do? Get cats?”
I raised an eyebrow and glared at him. He chuckled. Yeah, that four-year-old boy was definitely gone. “I’m putting my shoes on. I’m starting to think a cat would be better company than you though. A lot less smelly. My laundry would be cut in half. A cat wouldn’t eat as much as you. You know, the more I think about it, a cat sounds like the better deal. What do you think? Want to live with Grams and Gramps? I’ll get a cat and live a happy life?”
His grin grew and my heart ached in my chest. The corner of the mattress felt like it was burning underneath me with the threats his birth mother—my cousin, and someone I’d thought was my best friend—had hurled at me. Tucker didn’t know that I wasn’t his biological mom. I knew I’d have to tell him one day, and I would; I’d be honest. I’d tell him the good and the bad about his birth mom. But not yet. And not in this way.
Just...a little more time.
I tied my shoe, clapped my hands, and stood. “Let’s go get you some food.”
I wrapped my arm around his neck and kissed the top of his head, which was getting far too close to the top of mine. I didn’t know how my eight-year-old was so quickly gaining on me in height, but I knew by the time he was ten, he’d be taller than me.
“Can I drive?”
“No,” I said and plucked the golf-cart keys off the hook. Tucker and I lived at the edge of the Castle Rock Inn’s property. My parents did too, but they lived on the other side and we couldn’t see their house from here. Our cottage was mixed in with the others, which were available to rent.
“Hop on.”
Tuck sat on the back seat stretching out his legs. I turned on the cart, shaped like a vintage muscle car, and headed toward my parents’ place.
The minute I’d graduated from high school, they’d set their sights on the hill country and buying an inn and living out the rest of their years working on it. I’d been in culinary school for six months when Shayla came home pregnant, still addicted to drugs and in need of help. I transferred closer to home so I could live with my parents and Shayla, helping her along the way, driving her to NA and AA meetings, and finding her every time she fell off the wagon.
I’d wondered how she was going to be able to handle her baby, but my parents and I were committed to helping her. I never imagined that I would leave her hospital room to get her some pudding only to come back to her empty bed, while Tuck lay crying in the crib next to it. I sat on her empty hospital bed for hours—holding and rocking a crying Tuck—while my own tears streamed down my face as I stared at the door, wondering if she would ever walk back through it. After several hours I knew she had left us behind.
My parents’ house was a beacon in the dark night. My mom was standing at the sink as my father held her from behind, their eyes closed, as they swayed to music I couldn’t hear.
Tuck hopped off before I even came to a complete stop and ran inside, leaving the front door wide open. I sauntered in after him, taking a few deep breaths before I entered the kitchen and faced my parents’ eyes, which saw way too much.
Mom stopped in her tracks with a bowl of mashed potatoes in her hands as she stared at me, tilting her head. I shook my head and mouthed, Later.
Somehow, someway, we would solve this.
Chapter 3
Delilah
The whisk scraped against the bottom of the metal mixing bowl in quick succession. Little bubbles surfaced in the mixture, but I didn’t stop. My hand kept flicking it around and around as I stood in the middle of my dream kitchen at the inn.
“If you don’t stop mixing, you’re going to take those eggs from light and fluffy to whipped peaks. Your father tossed and turned all night worried about you.”
I looked down at the bowl in my hands. Mom was right. The eggs were overmixed. I dropped the bowl into the sink, wrapped my hands around it, and let my head hang. My eyes closed as I took three deep breaths before facing her with tears in my eyes.
“Shayla sent me a letter.”
Mom raised a hand to her chest, and the other hand covered her open mouth. Her eyes filled with tea
rs as she stepped forward. “What? Do you know where she is? Is she okay?”
I shook my head. Yesterday, before I’d opened that damn letter, if my mom had told me she’d heard from Shayla, I’d have been demanding answers to those questions too. Now I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted my cousin, the person who’d practically grown up as my sister, to be safe and healthy. I hadn’t heard from her in eight years. But on the other hand, if it meant potentially losing Tucker, I wanted her as far as possible from Hawk Valley.
“I don’t know where she is. Or if she’s okay. If she’s sober. The only thing I do know is that she wants…” I trailed off, looking around for my son. He was somewhere around here, and I didn’t want him overhearing this conversation. I cleared my throat before finishing my sentence in a whisper. “She wants Tucker.”
Mom’s hands dropped to fists on her hips. “What do you mean?”
I took the crumpled sheet of paper from my back pocket, handing it over. She opened the note. The edges of the paper were already fraying from the number of times I’d opened and folded it over the past twelve hours.
I poured the ruined egg mixture down the sink, watching Mom over my shoulder as her eyebrows slowly rose with each passing sentence. I cracked new eggs in the bowl and looked up just in time to see her fold and pocket the note. “I need to show it to your father.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. I ran the back of my hand across my forehead and clenched my teeth. I was already running thirty minutes behind on the breakfast schedule, but I couldn’t focus. Our first guests had been seated, there was nothing on the buffet, and individual orders would be coming in soon. “What am I going to do?”
Mom stood behind me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure this out. I think first things first though, we find Shayla. She didn’t leave a way to contact her, but hopefully, she calls before showing up. I hate this path she’s traveled down. We…we tried to do everything right after her parents died.”
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