“You’re wel—” Harry stopped with an almost comical look of horror on his face.
“I knew it!” Sage exclaimed, a look of triumph on her face that just now appeared very much like he remembered his mother. “The minute they were delivered, I knew they had to have come from you. You’re the Angel of Hope, aren’t you?”
Harry looked as if he were choking on his ribs. He chewed and swallowed, then took a quick sip from his wineglass, his face turning florid.
Maura, in the process of setting down her own wineglass, just about knocked it over, but she quickly righted it. “Harry? The Angel of Hope? That’s impossible.”
“And yet it’s true,” Sage said smugly, just as if she had suspected it all along. “You may as well admit it, Grandpa. You might have the reputation as the biggest crank in Hope’s Crossing, but it’s all a big act, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s been going around all this time doing nice things for people. I think you’re just a big old softy.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Harry said gruffly.
Jack would have joined in Maura’s disbelief, if not for that stray memory of the night right after Christmas when he had been walking back to the B and B and had spied someone dropping something at a run-down house in the neighborhood. He remembered that brief moment of suspicion when he had seen the man rub at his chest, the reminder that just a few days earlier Harry had been in the hospital with heart problems.
“It has to be you,” Sage said. “You sent me the flowers when nobody else but my mom and dad knew what was going on with Sawyer.”
“Okay, this doesn’t make sense.” Maura actually looked horrified by this prospect. He remembered the way she and Sage had talked about the Angel of Hope, with almost a reverence. They had talked about how the Angel had helped to lift the mood of the town after the devastating accident.
He could imagine how much of a shock she must find it to even consider that Harry might be behind the secret acts of kindness.
“It makes total sense, Mom. Think about it. Who else has the time and the money and…cojones to pull off some of things the Angel has done. The Angel gave Caroline Bybee a new car! Who else would do such a thing but Mr. Lange?”
“You’re all crazy. Every damn one of you,” Harry blustered, and in that moment Jack knew that, as unbelievable as it might seem, Sage was right. The old bastard was the Angel of Hope. And he had thought the evening was surreal before.
“So I hear you got the bid for the recreation center project.”
It was an obvious ploy by Harry to change the subject, and it worked surprisingly well. Beside him, Maura stiffened and sent him a shock looked under her lashes, while Sage gasped, her eyes widening.
“What?” she exclaimed. “You didn’t say a word about it!”
“I received the notification Friday afternoon after you had left for the day. Later, we all had other things on our minds and I decided to wait for a better time.”
“What about on the drive here? You could have mentioned it then!”
He had planned to, but he’d walked into Maura’s kitchen and ended up kissing her until he couldn’t remember his name, forget about the recreation center project. “Again, we had other things on our mind.”
“This is wonderful!” Sage exclaimed. “That means you’ll have to stick around town longer, doesn’t it?”
Theoretically, he didn’t really have to, but this provided as good an excuse as any to stay close to Sage. He figured he would try to stay at least until she had the baby. Depending on what she decided, he had planned to convince her to come to San Francisco for a while to make a new start. After talking to Maura earlier, though, now he didn’t know what the hell to do. He couldn’t do that to her right now.
“The idiot city leaders finally did something smart for a change,” Harry said. “They picked the right man. You’ll do a great job.”
“I intend to,” he said. He hadn’t realized how curt his voice was until he saw pain flicker in Harry’s gaze before he concealed it.
Yet another thing he didn’t know what to do about. Judging by this dinner and a few other overtures Harry had tried since Jack’s return, his father obviously wanted to extend an olive branch. He had no idea whether it was genuine or another of Harry’s tricks. Either way, he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to reach out and take it.
Why should he? Even if Harry was the Angel of Hope, that didn’t mean he had suddenly become some kindly, misunderstood old man. He was ruthless and arrogant, and Jack couldn’t see any evidence that that had changed over the years.
* * *
WELL, THIS NIGHT HAD TURNED into a total screwup.
By the time dessert was served—a fine chocolate mousse with candied orange peels—Harry was ready to shove his guests out the door and retreat to his library with a cigar and the bottle of Bushmills 1608 he kept hidden from his housekeeper.
His son was one stubborn son of a bitch. He had sat in stoic silence most of the evening, answering questions that were asked of him but otherwise not doing one damn thing to contribute to the conversation.
As the minutes had ticked past, he could feel his temper edge higher and higher. Would it kill Jackson to try making a little small talk, for hell’s sake?
And then the whole Angel thing. He was a first-class idiot. How had he let some smart-assed little girl trick him into slipping up and just blurting out what he had fought hard to keep a secret all these months?
Despite his protests, he could tell none of them had believed him, which meant the stupid jig was up. Next thing he knew, the whole town would be in on it, and he wouldn’t be able to walk into a single store or restaurant in town without everybody pointing and whispering about him.
It was his own fault. If he hadn’t started the whole Angel thing in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. The whole thing had blown up far beyond his intentions, until it had just about taken over his life.
After his first heart attack, he had been lying in that hospital bed with tubes connected everywhere and had never felt so damn alone. Jack was gone, had been for years, and the only other people in his life were business associates who didn’t give a flying shit whether he lived or died.
He had all the money in the world, but it wasn’t going to help him one bit if he kicked over in that minute, alone and, yes, frightened. He remembered lying in that hospital bed with the machines whirring and buzzing, the nurses bustling around him, and had come to what religious folks would probably call an epiphany. If he died, he had realized, no one would care, because somewhere along the way he had lost himself.
No. Not somewhere along the way. He knew when it was. During those terrible last years of his Bethany’s life. To his vast shame, as the signs of her mental illness worsened and the medications became less effective, he had wanted nothing but to pretend none of it was happening. He had turned his focus away from his wife and his son and poured every bit of his energy and his time and his life into his development deals to make sure he didn’t have to face his own failures at home.
He hadn’t been able to “fix” her, so he had turned to what he did have power over, making money, and lots of it.
Once he had been a decent person, or at least he liked to think so, but in that hospital bed more than a year ago, he’d realized he had killed the last vestige of that decency when he had successfully managed to break the trust Bethany had left for Jackson, and subsequently created the Silver Strike Ski Resort and changed Hope’s Crossing forever.
Plenty of other people had gotten rich along the way. The Beaumonts. A select group of investors. But som
ething had been lost too, irrevocably. The peace and serenity of the town. Neighbors caring about neighbors.
He wanted to think his few paltry acts as the Angel had helped those ugly scars to heal a little. Even if he had been the only person who benefited, his efforts had been worth it. This past year had been the best he could remember since Bethany’s condition had worsened.
When he came up with the idea during those days in the hospital, he had only intended it to be a short-term project, something to take his mind off this newfound mortality. He had more money than he could ever spend and figured maybe if he gave a little of it back somehow, Whoever was keeping score might see it as his small effort to atone for all the mistakes he had made over the years.
He had enjoyed those first few visits by the Angel too much to stop. It had become as much a game to him as making money, figuring out who might be in need and how he could secretly help. Then he’d started hearing rumors about other efforts by the Angel, things he knew he hadn’t been responsible for, and he discovered that others were following his example and giving credit to the altruistic mythical entity he had created out of fear and self-loathing.
Like it or not, the Angel would have to die an ugly death now. He didn’t want everybody looking at him, assigning positive, saintlike motives to the little good he had done, when the whole thing had been selfish from the outset, aimed at helping to fill all the empty corners inside him.
It was a philosophical point he would have to remember to ask Reverend Wilson next time he saw him on the golf course. Hypothetically, of course. If people helped others because they craved that feeling of satisfaction and delight, was it really selfless? How could an act be considered altruistic if, in a roundabout fashion, somebody was just fulfilling a need inside themselves by helping someone else?
He didn’t want to mull this over right now. He just wanted this dinner to be over so he could figure out his next move.
“Thanks for dinner, Harry. That was scrumptious.” Sage smiled at him and he felt a ridiculous pang that the little scamp hadn’t called him Grandpa.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Thank you for inviting us,” her mother said, with that calm smile that made a man wonder what was really going on inside her head.
Jack took a sip from his wineglass. “Yes, Harry. Thank you.”
“You all made Mrs. Kingsley very happy to have someone else here to enjoy her food.”
“Does she cook like that for you all the time? Because that was really superb,” Sage said. “I’d love the recipe for that mousse.”
“I’ll make sure she sends it to you. And no, she doesn’t. Cook like that all the time, I mean. This was a special occasion and her menu reflected it. I’ve got heart problems, as you may have heard, so most of the time I have to watch my diet.”
“Are you okay eating all that rich Italian food?” Sage asked.
“I probably won’t have a heart attack tonight, if that’s what you’re asking.” He didn’t like talking about his health, so he quickly changed the subject to one he knew would divert attention from him. “So now that you know what the little prick thinks about your pregnancy, have you figured out what you’re going to do about the kid?”
Across the table, Maura and Jack both stiffened as if he’d stuck a poker up their respective bums.
What? Shouldn’t he have asked that question? This was his great-grandchild. Didn’t that give him some right to know?
To his satisfaction, Sage shot a quick look at both of them, then met his gaze with a directness that pleased him. Impertinent she might be, but he had meant what he’d had the Angel write her. His granddaughter had grit.
“I’m leaning toward adoption. The child ought to have stable, devoted parents who can offer her all the things I can’t. I think it’s the best of all my options, don’t you?”
“My opinion on the matter doesn’t mean shit. You’re the only one who can decide what to do.”
She gave him a grateful look. “I know. The Angel gave me some very wise words about courage. I’ll try to keep those in mind.”
“You do that,” he murmured.
So maybe the dinner wasn’t a total loss. He might not be able to reach his son, no matter how hard he tried, but he was establishing some sort of relationship with his granddaughter. That had to count for something.
Sage slid back from the table. “Will you excuse me? I need to find a powder room.”
“Of course. Go back the way we came, hang a left and it’s the third door on the right.”
Maura pushed her chair out as well. “That sounds complicated. It might take two of us, in the age-old tradition of females who are genetically programmed to insist on never entering a bathroom alone.”
Only after the two of them had left did he realize this was the first chance he’d had all evening to be alone with his son, and he had to wonder if Maura had manipulated that particular outcome.
He faced his son directly. “Thank you for coming. I know you didn’t want to.”
“Sage can be persuasive.”
This might be his only chance to achieve at least one of his goals for the evening, and he seized it. “I have something for you. I’ve been wanting to give it to you since you came back to Hope’s Crossing, but the time has never seemed right. I invited you all to dinner because I wanted to get to know my granddaughter, of course, but also because I was hoping for a chance to give you this.”
He half expected Jack to say he wanted nothing from him, but to his relief, his son only gave him a curious look. “What is it?”
“It’s on the sideboard. One moment.” He rose and had to flinch when his knees cracked. He wasn’t quite seventy years old. Two young to be falling apart. For the first time in too long, he finally felt as if he had something else to live for. He had a granddaughter now, one who didn’t seem to despise him, and he wanted to embrace every moment.
He reached the sideboard and picked up the small wooden chest that looked incongruously shabby amid the luxury with which he liked to surround himself.
“Here,” he said, placing it on the table in front of his son.
Jack frowned. “What’s this?”
“Some journals of your mother’s and other keepsakes she treasured. Trinkets, mostly.” To him, most of it looked like garbage, but he had to assume she kept the things inside there because they had meaning to her. Whether that was because of her mental illness, he didn’t know, but he figured Jack could sort it all out.
“I don’t know where most of it came from. Some colored rocks, a piece of petrified wood, a pressed flower or two.”
“She loved the outdoors.”
“Yes.” He was quiet here, remembering the fey creature he had married, a woman who had loved art and music and being with her son. Even before her illness had progressed, some part of him had always resented their close relationship. He had always felt as if the two of them had a bond that excluded him.
“I loved your mother. I know you have some ridiculous notion that I didn’t but…before her illness, before the voices in her head became so loud they drowned out the rest of us, she was…my angel.”
“You locked her up. She loved being outside and you kept her locked in a room, sedated to her teeth until she was a zombie.”
“She wasn’t locked up, ever. She had full run of the house. Yes, I put locks on the doors of the house to keep her from wandering around. I had to. She was out of control. She might have hurt someone. Do you know how hard it was to keep her at home? The doctors wanted to put her in the state hospital, but I refused. She would have hated that. Instead I pa
id for round-the-clock care at a time when I could least afford it.”
He didn’t expect his son to understand. Jack had been a teenager with the idealism of the young, certain he could fix any problem in the world if only he set his mind to it. He had been busy with school and hadn’t seen how Bethany was self-destructing.
“Is it completely impossible for you to believe that I thought what I was doing was best, for her and for you?”
Jack leaned back in his chair. “Mostly for yourself. Don’t forget that part.”
Yes. He couldn’t deny that. As much as he had loved his wife in the beginning, when they were in their twenties and he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, by the time she killed herself, he had felt trapped and angry and helpless, not a comfortable position for a man who had firm goals and ambitions.
“I made mistakes, with her and with you. No doubt about it. I’m sorry for that, son. And for…everything that came after. More sorry than I can ever say.”
Jack gazed at him for a long moment, and Harry almost thought he might believe him. If he could only have his son back—whatever crumbs of a relationship Jack might be willing to throw at him—he would consider it fair repayment for his activities these past months as the Angel of Hope.
If he thought his son was going to run into his arms as if this was some dramatic made-for-television movie, he was destined for disappointment.
“Thank you for the mementos,” Jack only said, his voice stiff and unyielding.
Harry fought the urge to rub at the ache in his chest, knowing this also had nothing to do with his A-fib. “You’re welcome,” he answered, just as Maura and Sage returned to the dining room.
“This house is awesome, Harry,” Sage said. “I could throw a party and invite everybody in my dorm tower and the other three in the unit. That guest bathroom alone is bigger than my dorm room.”
He forced himself to smile at her. He might not ever be able to pierce through the accumulated years of Jackson’s animosity. He had this unexpected granddaughter now. If he treaded carefully with her, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have to be completely alone.
RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry SummerWoodrose MountainSweet Laurel Falls Page 80