by Alison Kent
And that had her wondering about seeing Will with Luna at Easter. Something had been going on when she’d interrupted the two of them in the weaving shed. Something dark and intense, something private.
She’d wanted to ask Luna about it after Will had left, but intuition told her to stay quiet. And though she’d thoroughly enjoyed hearing Luna talk about weaving and watching her demonstrate the workings of her loom, the other woman’s distraction had been obvious, her smile an afterthought, her gaze drifting to the door.
Kaylie, shaking off her own distraction, had just grabbed a bottle of water to head out when Ten stuck his head inside. “Your gardening bunch is here.”
“I know. Will just told me.”
“Oh,” he said, coming in even though it was obvious she was going out. But now that he was here and she had Will on her mind…
“You haven’t said much about how Will’s working out.”
“Fine. Not a problem.” He glanced out the window as if checking to see that the other man was back at work. “I could see hiring him on full-time.”
Well, that had to be good. “I didn’t think you had full-time employees?”
“I don’t, but even if I did, Will wouldn’t stay.”
“How do you know if you haven’t asked him?”
“Because I know him,” he said, and looked down at her. “I’ve known a lot of men like him. He’s the loner he wants you to think. He’s only here because he has to be.”
There was more to it than that. Not why Will wouldn’t stay, but why Ten was so sure. The connection wasn’t that hard to make. “He reminds you of your brother, doesn’t he?”
Ten shrugged, reached for his fifth brownie, too, and said nothing as he bit it in half.
“C’mon,” she said, rolling her eyes as she turned and shoved him toward the door. “Walk with me to the garden plot. Make sure I don’t forget anything.”
“These are Indy’s employees. She won’t have forgotten anything.”
“Walk with me anyway. Tell me what’s bugging you about Will.”
He chewed as they walked, stopping to dust off his hands once he’d finished the treat. “By the way? I’m pretty sure you said the first batch of brownies in the new house was for me, not for public consumption.”
Oops. “Did you not just eat five?”
“Maybe, but that’s not the point.”
She reached up and brushed crumbs from the side of his mouth. “I’d had a bad day. I needed to bake. And I said new kitchen, not new house. I baked these in the old oven, so not the same thing.”
“Why was yesterday bad?” he asked, frowning down at her, his tongue darting out to catch a crumb she’d missed.
Of course that was the part he would pick up on. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said and started walking again. And it wasn’t yesterday that had been bad.
Yesterday had been wonderful, measuring, stirring, dipping her finger into the batter the way she’d done as a girl and licking away her fill of chocolate. The sugar had made her that much more sleepy, but it was a good sleepy. Especially compared to the insomnia she blamed on the microfilmed images she wanted to wipe from her mind.
Except they’d been there all along, those images. Seen from the other side of the camera, and with five-year-old eyes. What she couldn’t figure out, wasn’t sure she wanted to figure out, was why they’d seemed so familiar, printed on the page.
Stopping on the far side of the garden plot, Kaylie watched the IJK Gardens forklift lower a pallet of starter plants to the ground. The three other members of Indy’s crew consulted a clipboard of instructions before setting up surveying equipment to mark the plot.
Ten’s sister obviously ran a tight ship. No haphazardly hoed rows for Indiana. Like brother, like sister? The attention to detail, the controlling, hands-on nature. Was this how the tragedy in the past had taught them to cope with life? Had it done the same to Dakota?
Or had his time behind bars made him a different man? Kaylie cut her gaze up to Ten’s. “I promise to make you your own batch of brownies. But I want to know why Will reminds you of Dakota. And, no, those two things are not related. They just both happen to be on my mind.”
He rocked back on his heels, arms crossed. “So you get to skate on answering my question, but I have to answer yours?”
“I asked mine first.”
He blew out a huffing breath. “It’s probably not what you’re thinking anyway. About Will.”
She didn’t know what she was thinking, just that there’d been something new in Ten’s eyes when the other man was around, and she was pretty sure she could time the change to Indiana’s reappearance in her brother’s life. “You miss him. Dakota.”
“Yeah, but that’s not really it either. I mean, I don’t look at Will and want him to be my brother or anything.”
“You wonder what he did to screw up his life?”
“Something like that. Manny doesn’t tell me and I don’t ask. Some of the guys he sends over will end up talking about it over a beer or something, but that’s up to them. If they need to unload, I’ll listen. I don’t expect it, and I don’t go digging. It just happens sometimes.”
“But not with Will.”
“Nope.”
“And not with Dakota,” she said, because she knew his brother hadn’t confided in him after his release.
He turned then and walked away, leaving the garden behind for the edge of the newly cleared brush marking the back of her lot. She followed, wondering if he was distancing himself from someone or something…the job and Will, the garden and his sister, the house. Her.
“Manny asked me a couple of weeks ago if it was getting to be too much, me giving these guys a job when they get out. He accused me of doing it out of guilt rather than some greater good or charitable whatever.” He dropped his gaze to the ground and kicked at a big rock buried there. “I think he might be right.”
That he was driven by guilt didn’t surprise her. That he’d been able to admit it…that wasn’t something she’d expected. “Because of Dakota.”
“It’s always been because of Dakota. I mean, it’s my fault he went to prison—”
“It’s not your fault, Ten—”
“Yeah, Kaylie. It is. You weren’t there that night. I saw the look Indy gave him, her eyes all big and scared and mad at the same time. Pleading. And then he looked at me, and I knew what he was going to do, and when I nodded…” He brought his boot down on top of the rock, shoved at it with his heel. “Dakota was a power hitter. He was going to play ball at UT. In his hands, that bat was a deadly weapon.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and fought off a shiver before asking the one thing she never had. “How bad was Robby hurt?”
“A guy he was with warned him Dakota was coming at him. He ducked, I guess. Kinda swerved. The bat glanced off his jaw, broke it. Broke his shoulder on the second swing. It was bad enough, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Dakota was only charged with assault, not attempted murder.”
Even though he’d gone after the other boy with murder on his mind. “That had to have been a relief.”
His head came up, his eyes angry. “My brother was going to prison because I hadn’t stopped him from trying to kill the prick who went after our sister with rape on his mind. I failed both of them. Dakota and Indy. I’m not sure what part of that is supposed to have been a relief.”
Her first inclination was to argue. He was being hard-headed, shouldering blame that wasn’t his. But then the bigger picture came into focus. And his words were like a truckload of bricks falling on top of her head. “Then tell me something. How is cutting yourself out of their lives supposed to protect them from you failing them again?”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just…” He let the sentence trail, finally dislodging the rock he’d been using to vent his frustration. “I shouldn’t have let Robby go downstairs when I knew Indy was there by herself. And I shouldn’t have let Dakota go after him alone. My broth
er went to prison, and my sister had to live with the memory of that asshole’s hands grabbing at her. I got hit with…nothing. I didn’t have to serve time. I never had to look over my shoulder to see if Robby was coming. I just went back to life as usual.”
He thought he deserved to be punished. He didn’t think he deserved to have his siblings’ forgiveness. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Sadness swept through her, powerfully deep. Did he not understand there was nothing for them to forgive? That he was the one who was going to have to forgive himself? Doing that after all this time living under a cloud of guilt…
There was nothing more she could say, and yet she had to ask. “Don’t you think staying in touch, being there for them now, would be a better plan? Or at least for Indy? I saw the two of you together. She’s desperate to make up for lost time. She’s missed you terribly.”
“She tell you that?” When Kaylie nodded, he bit off a sharp curse, stepped back, and kicked violently at the rock, sending it what seemed like halfway across the yard. “I let her down in a massively huge way. Why would she think she could count on me now?” And with that, he turned and walked away, never giving her a chance to respond.
She wanted to beg him to think about what his misplaced guilt had cost him, but she knew instinctively he’d been aware of it for years. And so she watched him go, his shoulders tight, his gaze cast down, his steps having no purpose, as if only carrying him back to the house because they knew of no place else to go.
The next ten days brought a flurry of activity—Kaylie’s prep work for arranging her belongings in her living quarters, Dolly and Mitch brainstorming menus and recipes and the balance of place settings, Will and Ten finishing up the detail work of outlets and fixtures, and best of all, deliveries for the café.
Tables and linens and chairs. The Nottingham lace panels and natural wood blinds. Chandeliers and baker’s racks. Hutches and sideboards and buffets. The commercial appliances for the new kitchen. The braziers and serving dishes and flatware. And then there was the ongoing traffic to the garden.
A moving crew had brought her biggest pieces from Austin, storing everything but her bed on the second floor for her to deal with later. She would need to make one last trip to her condo, pick up the boxes of the most personal items she wanted to see safely to the new house herself. She would drop her keys at the complex’s office, and make a final drive by the Sweet Spot, and that would be it.
Austin in her rearview mirror.
Hope Springs and the rest of her life ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“How’s the search for your parents going?” Ten asked from where he stood half-wedged behind the new commercial fridge.
Kaylie blinked, surprised by the question. Today was Tuesday. Since Friday a week ago, when Ten had insisted he’d failed his siblings, their conversations had been shallow—about the house, the new flower beds, the space for customer parking, her garden, her brownies, her dog. They’d both been busy, surrounded by other people, crossing paths with hurried smiles and quick hellos. More than one night he’d gone home while she was tied up fine-tuning her first quarter’s food and service details with Dolly and Mitch. The longing remained, pulling at them both, but she was pretty sure Ten was still waging a war with the things he’d told her, as well as battling the things she’d said to him.
“Okay,” she said, hedging. “For the little bit of time I’ve had to spend searching.”
He scooted out, checking the readings on whatever meter he’d been using to check whatever settings needed checking. “You haven’t said anything about it. I thought you might’ve changed your mind.”
She wasn’t yet sure if she had. She certainly hadn’t been in the mood to go through any more archives or battle another bout of the emotional aftermath. But neither was she ready to admit defeat and disappoint Ten or herself. “I’ll get back to it. When I can.”
He squatted in front of his toolbox, slid the meter into its case, and then stood, jotting a note in the spiral pad he kept in his back pocket. “The bad day you had. The brownies. Was it the article in the Statesman that got to you?”
What? She crossed her arms, frowned. “You know about the article in the Statesman?”
“I did mention my Google-fu,” he said, looking down as he flipped to a new page.
Obviously he was a better Googler than she was. She’d only found it when she’d viewed the library’s archives. “But you didn’t mention you’d been putting it to use.”
He closed the notebook, held her gaze as he tucked it away. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me if you’d found anything.”
So her business was his business now? She was supposed to come to him with what she’d learned? Or—wait. Was he badgering her because he didn’t think she’d done anything toward finding them? As if he had any say, any right? She didn’t know whether to be angry…or angrier. “That sounds strangely like an accusation.”
“It was a question, Kaylie. That’s all.”
Whether he was making an accusation, or just asking a question, she had to admit—anger aside—he had grounds. She’d put off the digging she had done way too long. That didn’t mean she liked him snooping into her past. She hadn’t snooped into his…much. She circled the island, climbed onto a bar stool, and rubbed her thumb along the edge of the stainless-steel sink. “I actually went to the library a couple of weeks ago.”
He waited a minute, as if giving her time to say more. When she didn’t, he asked, “What did you find out?”
Her thumb stilled. She cut her gaze up to his. “Why don’t you tell me what you found out?”
“Not a lot, really.” He joined her at the island, but stayed on his side. “Nothing about your father, but I guess that’s not a surprise, since he was already out of the picture by then.”
Then meaning the date of her mother’s attempted suicide. “I don’t know why she didn’t list him on my birth certificate. Who cares if they weren’t married, which I’m assuming is the case. But not even to list him? Like I might not someday need that information?”
“Maybe she regretted the relationship, or wasn’t sure he was father material, and left him out of the picture to save you the grief.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was just the self-centered person everything I remember leads me to believe.”
“Yeah, there wasn’t a lot in any of the articles I read to make me think she might win mother of the year.”
That would’ve made her laugh if it hadn’t been so sadly accurate. Then she latched onto what he’d said. If he could tell her what she wanted to know, it would be so much easier to deal with coming from him, filtered through his knowing her. “I only read the article in the Statesman. Did the others…did you find out anything else?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Details of her arrest and trial, and later her release. I didn’t dig any deeper, and only went looking on a whim, wondering if there was anything about where she went after that.”
Wondering, wondering…Kaylie frowned, rubbed at her temple and the weirdest, dizzying sense of déjà vu. She’d been here before, listening to someone tell her about her mother and the information he’d found. Except the he wasn’t Ten. It was someone else. A boy. Older than her but not a man.
She could see the straps of his book bag hooked on his shoulders, his wire-rimmed glasses half hidden behind his fall of sandy-blond hair. She’d been a lot shorter, and looking up she had seen the same color hair on his chin, wondering if he didn’t know he needed to shave, or couldn’t be bothered with personal hygiene because he had equations to solve and code to write and dragons waiting in his dungeon.
He held several sheets of paper, copies he’d made of newspaper articles. And another from public court records…
“Is this about you? Is this your mom?”
Kaylie tore the papers from his hand, read the headlines, scanned the accompanying photos. Then she shoved the sheaf in her binder and pushed by him down the hall.
He fo
llowed, leaning a shoulder into the bank of lockers beside hers, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger. “Is it?”
She grabbed her texts for English and algebra, hiding the pieces of paper detailing her past behind the stack of books on cooking due back to the library. “I don’t know. I don’t have time to look. I’ve gotta get to class before Mr. Alexander starts timing our test.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
Slamming the locker door, she whirled on him. “Why are you doing this? It’s not any of your business. It’s my business. Mine.”
“I just thought you’d want to know. I mean, everyone is wondering why you got taken away from your parents.”
“Then everyone needs to stop wondering. And don’t you dare show that stuff to anyone else. I swear, if you do—”
The bell rang, cutting her off.
“I hate you, Morris Dexter. I hate you.”
“Wow,” she heard herself say, coming back to the present from the past. That day in the library. She’d been right. She had seen those images, that article, before. “Morris Dexter. I haven’t thought about him in ages.”
“What about him?” Ten asked.
Kaylie’s gaze snapped to his. “You know Morris Dexter?”
“Sure. He owns DX Security. They installed your system.” A look of amusement played across his face. “You didn’t know that?”
Was he kidding? Morris Dexter had been the ultimate tech-geek high school cliché. Bullied by the jocks. Made fun of by the jocks’ girlfriends. Hung out to dry by his so-called friends, who ran at the sight of the jocks. And then there was his need to stick his nose in everyone’s business. Including hers. Especially hers.
“I had no idea. I never talked to him when I called. Just scheduled the consultation and dealt with the tech who came out.”
“What’s your history with him?”
She left the stool, needing coffee. “For some reason during our sophomore year, he decided he wanted to know why I was in foster care. And he went looking.”
“Why would he do that?”