She had no difficulty finding the shop. But having reached the door, she hesitated. She wondered if Gabe would feel she had invaded another part of his life. Maybe, but he would have to get used to it. She had every intention of being a constant in his life until Danny went off to college.
The familiar smells of wood, dust, varnish, stains, paint, the contents of so many shops she visited in connection with restoring antiques, made her feel more at ease than any time since she’d been in Iron Springs. The scream of a saw died away as three men looked up from their work.
“What are you doing here?” Gabe asked.
She hoped she didn’t look as uncomfortable as she felt. “I’ve never seen your shop. I thought I’d come down and let you show me what you do.”
She didn’t know either of the men working with Gabe, but they stared at her as if they’d never seen a woman before. She guessed no female had dared invade their private world.
“I spent a large part of the morning admiring your work, especially the carving on that ball-footed table,” she said. “I wanted to see how you did it.”
“Billy did that,” Gabe said. “You’ll have to tell him what you think of it. Come here, Billy. Dana wants to see you.”
A short, thin man with the face of a teenager blushed before he stepped forward a couple of steps.
“Did you do that table?” Dana asked.
He nodded.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Billy’s the best carver in the state,” Gabe said.
“I don’t do all the carving,” Billy said, looking at the floor as he spoke. “Gabe does a lot of it.”
“Just the easy stuff,” Gabe said. “I make Billy do all the really flashy stuff.”
“You’re very good,” Dana said, surprised such a modest man could carve such bold figures. “Did you do the cherubs?”
“Gabe did those. I like lions and eagles, that kind of stuff.”
“What about the angels?”
“Gabe did those, too,” the other man said. He winked at Dana. “Billy would get so upset working on a female body he’d probably carve a chunk out of himself.”
The fiery red color of Billy’s complexion supported the man’s statement, but Dana was more surprised at Gabe. How could a man who could carve such a beautiful angel, cherubs with truly beatific expressions, mount a deer head where he had to look at it every day?
“What do you do?” she said, turning to the other man.
“That’s Sam,” Gabe said, “the most unregenerate jokester in Iron Springs. When I can get him to pay attention to his work, he’s a top-notch joiner. He can fit two pieces of wood together so precisely you can hardly see the joint.”
“That’s because Gabe puts on enough layers of stain and varnish and shellac to cover a quarter-inch gap.”
“I wouldn’t want you to lose your reputation,” Gabe said.
“And what do you do?” Dana asked Gabe.
“I design the pieces.”
“He tells the customers what they really want,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the fool things people ask for. Gabe makes sure they get something we can be proud of.”
“Them, too,” Gabe added.
The hardest part of Dana’s job was talking customers into making good choices. She had a lot of respect for anyone who could do it.
“He does all the finishing, too,” Sam said. “He won’t trust us near a piece once we’ve done our part.”
“It’s not as bad as that,” Gabe said.
“Yes, it is,” Billy managed to say. “And a good thing, too. Neither one of us could do it as well as Gabe.”
“You don’t have the patience to keep at it until you get it right,” Gabe said.
“Do you have any pieces you’re finishing now?” Dana asked. “All I see are parts.”
“That’s in another room,” Sam said. “He just popped in to make sure we weren’t doing anything wrong while he wasn’t here to watch us.”
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Gabe said. “If I listen to much more of this, I’ll have to fire them.”
He showed her into a room with several pieces at or nearing completion.
“You’ve practically got a factory here.”
“There aren’t enough people in the area to buy up all the pieces we make. So we make extra pieces and sell them to outsiders.”
“Like who?” She didn’t know anyone who actually bought handcrafted furniture.
“I sell a few pieces in Harrisonburg and Charlottesville. I’ve got a buyer coming from Middleburg in a few days.”
“How much do you generally get for a piece?”
“That corner cabinet might go for two thousand,” he said, pointing to a beautiful cabinet with scroll work and fluted columns.
“I could sell it for at least twice that amount,” she said. “Three times that if I found the right customer.”
“Don’t tell Sam. He’ll pack up the shop and head north tonight.”
Dana had recognized Gabe’s talent when she saw the grandfather clock. Somehow seeing the pieces raw, unfinished, only half-constructed, brought home its magnitude. “You realize you’re brilliant, don’t you?” For the first time since she’d known him, Dana had managed to throw Gabe off balance. It showed in his face, his averted gaze.
“I just make furniture. People tell me what they want, and I come up with an idea for—”
“That’s just it,” Dana said, “it’s your ideas. Anybody can make furniture. A few can even make it as well as you do. But I haven’t seen anyone producing pieces of such character and individuality. You’re making the antiques of the future. Now tell me how you come up with your designs.”
After seeing Dana home, Gabe returned to the shop in a daze. Dana hadn’t just said nice things about his work. She meant them. He’d been tempted to pass them off as an effort to make conversation, but Dana always said what she thought, even when she shouldn’t.
And she knew furniture.
Delighted to have someone besides Sam and Billy who knew something beyond the basics of what he did, he’d talked about things he’d done, what he was doing, what he hoped to do, pieces that failed to meet his expectations, even the history of a few pieces for which he had managed to find owners able to appreciate his work. He’d been stunned when, after he finally came to halt, he found he’d been talking more than two hours. Equally astounding, Dana had listened. Her questions had proved that.
“You trying to drive her back to New York?” Sam asked when Gabe returned to the workshop.
“What did you talk about?” Billy asked.
“Furniture,” Gabe said, “the whole time. She knows as much as I do.”
“How come?” Sam asked.
“She owns an antique business.”
He’d thought all she had to do to sell antiques in New York was know something about periods, styles, the names of a few famous makers, look beautiful and have lots of friends in the social register. Dana not only understood furniture and its design, she understood why he put a piece together one way and not another. Not even Sam and Billy understood that most of the time. Nobody in Iron Springs had a clue.
He couldn’t stop grinning. He probably looked like a fool, but he felt good through and through, equally as good as he had been miserable this morning. He had found someone who could really understand his work. This was something he’d never had with Ellen. Not even his family. Up until now he’d felt spiritually isolated.
He refused to let reality steal the warmth from his happiness. He’d enjoy it just like it would last forever.
The food was dry and tasteless. She’d worked hard to fix this dinner, the first full meal she’d cooked in her whole life, and Gabe had been late. He had called, but he waited until five minutes before she expected him home, too late to do anything but put everything on low and let it simmer.
She’d simmered, too. Every minute she waited, she got a little more angry, remembered a few more instances when he’d done so
mething to irritate her. Now he sat across the table, calmly eating, as though nothing was wrong. He made a game out of feeding Danny. Neither one appeared to sense she was upset. Men! Insensitive, unobservant and uncaring. It seemed no male was too young to be afflicted.
“Want some dessert?” she asked.
“I’m full,” Gabe said as he lifted Danny from his high chair. “Find the trains. I’ll be in as soon as I help Dana with the dishes.”
“Danny want red train.”
“You’d better hide it,” Gabe called. “I’m going to steal it when I come in.” They heard Danny scrambling around in the den. “That ought to hold him for a few minutes,” Gabe said. “Now tell me what’s eating you.”
“Nothing is eating me. Why should it be?” she continued, slamming a plate down on the counter so hard she was surprised it didn’t break. “The dinner I worked an hour to fix was only ruined.”
“It tasted fine.”
“It sat in the oven, drying out for thirty minutes. It couldn’t be fine.”
She heard her voice raised perilously close to a shout. She forced herself to be calm. She would not demean herself by hollering at him. “I expected you to be home at six-thirty. That’s what you said. I planned to have dinner ready at that time.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t stop in the middle of a project.”
“You could have called.”
“I did.”
“Five minutes before you were supposed to be here. It didn’t do any good then.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I bet you wouldn’t do that to your mother.”
“My dad was late all the time. Women here learn to work around it.”
Now he was telling her she wasn’t as good as the women in Iron Springs. “You could have told me that years ago.”
“Why? What? When?”
“It would have been better than all that nonsense about us being too far apart in age, not being on the same social level, not having any interests in common.”
“What are you talking about?”
She couldn’t believe he couldn’t remember. Not even he could be that insensitive. “If you can’t remember, I’m not going to—”
“Are you talking about that night you told me you’d been in love with me since you were eleven?”
She refused to dignify that with an answer. She grabbed up a bowl and scraped the remaining broccoli spear into the garbage disposal.
“What has that got to do with being late for dinner?” he demanded.
“It just proves you’re just as insensitive as you were then.”
“Insensitive? I racked my brain to find a way to let you down without hurting your feelings.”
She whirled on him. “Do you call saying you couldn’t afford to buy my clothes, that I’d be embarrassed to introduce my husband to my fancy friends a sensitive response?”
“I’d never had a child, especially one whose father was a millionaire, beg me to ditch my fiancée and marry her. I was a little out of my depth.”
“I wasn’t a child. I was a teenager. Half the women in Iron Springs are married by the time they’re fifteen.”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“It’s too late now.”
“Tell me anyway.”
There really wasn’t anything he could have said. She’d been planning to marry him for years. She had made Mattie spend hours talking about him, telling her everything he liked—food, television programs, colors, music, even which side of bed he slept on. She hadn’t even known he was dating anyone, much less thinking about getting married. She probably wouldn’t have done anything as appalling as ask him to break his engagement if the news hadn’t been such a shock.
It was an even worse shock to realize he’d never been able to see beyond her looks, social position and her father’s money. The real Dana Marsh had remained a shadow he couldn’t see.
He still couldn’t.
“There’s no particular thing you should have said,” she said, evasively. “You just should have been more sensitive, mature enough to understand.”
“I supposed you were sensitive and mature when you turned around and talked Mattie into going off to college with you instead of here in the valley.”
“Grandmother told me to offer her a scholarship. I didn’t think Mattie would take it, but grandmother insisted. I was surprised when Mattie practically jumped at the chance. I won’t tell you I wasn’t delighted. Mattie was a brilliant artist. If she’d lived, she’d have made as much of a name for herself in fabrics as you will in furniture.”
He looked stunned as though someone had hit him from behind. “It was your grandmother’s idea?”
“You thought it was mine?”
He nodded.
“I was sixteen, remember. All I could think about was marrying you. It never occurred to me to worry about Mattie’s career.”
“Why would your grandmother do such a thing? She had to know what it would do to our family.”
“Grandmother didn’t like what your father was doing to Mattie. She said a parent ought to give children the right to stretch their wings, to soar as high as they could. Then when they decided where to come down, they’d be happy because it would be a place of their own choosing. She said your father didn’t care about girls, that he thought of them as pieces of property to marry off and to give him grandsons.”
“Mattie’s leaving broke my mother’s heart,” Gabe said, his voice flat, emotionless. “Do you know what it’s like for a woman to be forced to choose between her husband and her only daughter?”
“You can’t blame me for that. I bet you hold me responsible for her getting pregnant, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. If I hadn’t talked her into going away, she wouldn’t have met Lucius and fallen in love with him.”
He didn’t answer.
“You obviously didn’t know your sister as well as you thought. She wouldn’t have stayed here even if my grandmother hadn’t offered her a scholarship. She had already started applying for scholarships. Grandmother knew because Mattie asked her for a character reference. Mattie didn’t dislike Iron Springs, and she didn’t hate her father. She just wanted her own life.”
They’d strayed so far from the original point of their argument, she wasn’t angry about dinner anymore. It really hadn’t been ruined. But after all that work, planning to surprise Gabe, anticipating pleasing him, maybe even getting a kind word, her emotions were on a very short leash.
“And you thought my reaction was insensitive,” Gabe said. “What was I supposed to say when you talked of nothing but your career, how you were going to be such a great success you’d impress your parents. You had everything mapped out. You even knew when you were going to have children, how many, what sex, where they would go to school, what your husband would do, where you would live, the kind of cars you would drive—”
“I was a young girl,” she interrupted, embarrassed. “Those were dreams. I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
The picture he painted shocked her. She hadn’t been thinking about the material things. She’d been talking about home, family, friends, being surrounded by the love she’d never had.
“I suppose you also thought I agreed with everything my father did,” Gabe said.
“I don’t know what you thought.”
“Because you never came back after that summer. Considering what you said about Iron Springs that night, I wasn’t surprised.”
She colored. Hurt had made her say things she didn’t mean, had never even thought. But she had felt so betrayed, so let down, she couldn’t help it. The one man she thought understood her had turned out to be just like everybody else.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“But you meant what you said when it came to thinking you were in love?”
“Okay, so maybe I wasn’t being realistic. That didn’t change the way I felt. Or thought I felt.”
She h
ad been too young, too naive, to know what she really wanted. She’d talked about clothes, school and success when all she really wanted was love, attention, to feel valued. If she had been able to tell him of her need, he probably wouldn’t have believed it. He couldn’t see the real Dana because she didn’t know how to show it to him. Why had it taken her so long to see this?
Because Mattie and all the unhappiness surrounding her stood between them. Dana had felt as though she’d had to defend Mattie against her family. Gabe had thought she’d wanted to separate Mattie from her family. They had squared off against each other, each determined not to give an inch, and Mattie had let them.
“Mattie didn’t want me to see you when I came to New York,” Gabe said.
So he hadn’t avoided her. She supposed it didn’t make any difference now, but it made her feel better.
“I didn’t stay away from Iron Springs because I hated you. After grandmother died, I didn’t have any reason to come back. Mattie said it would just cause trouble.”
She stood there looking at him, wondering. She probably hadn’t loved him back then. She was too young to understand what love was about. Maybe he had been too surprised by her impassioned declaration to think before he spoke. She didn’t know. She had been too hurt that he couldn’t give her the love she wanted to understand anything beyond the fact he’d refused her for another woman.
“What happened with your marriage?” She’d always wanted to know.
“She didn’t want to live in Iron Springs.”
“Surely you knew that before.”
“We agreed to try it, to see if she could learn to like it.”
“And?”
He hesitated. “She didn’t want any children. Without telling me, she got her tubes tied just before we got married.”
If Ellen had known anything about Gabe, she must have understood how he felt about having a family.
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