True to You

by Becky Wade

  Now here she was in this luxurious bed, surrounded by cool air, darkness, and the pleasant drone of the lodge’s heating and cooling system.

  She should be sleeping. Problem was, her thoughts wouldn’t quit returning to John and that fiery moment between them last night. It had seemed to her that it had been important, that moment. That it had meant something. She’d thought, when they’d been standing there, gazes locked, her pulse tripping, that she’d read hunger in his eyes.

  To be strictly honest, she might have been mistaken. It wasn’t like she had a lot of current experience with longing looks, except those given by Colin Firth’s Darcy. It felt hugely presumptuous of her to conclude, based on one silent stare, that John was interested in her romantically.

  However, if she’d been mistaken about what she’d seen, then why had he left like that? So suddenly?

  She didn’t know. John Lawson was about as open as a bank vault.

  Nora socked her pillow and rolled onto her other side. When she closed her eyes she saw John’s face—resolute jaw, blunt cheekbones, straight brows, wind-mussed brown hair—against a background of mountains.

  It had been much easier to be certain of her own morals before John had looked at her like he had last night. When he’d been looking at her in that way, primitive and open and full of need, it had felt indescribably good. It had been so good that every time she went back over it in her memory, longing curled deliciously in her midsection.

  When she’d diagnosed herself as having a low libido, she’d misdiagnosed herself completely. Her libido was plenty active. It had just needed a certain Navy SEAL to nudge it awake.

  It shamed her to admit it, but she’d wanted that—whatever that had been between herself and John last night—to go on and on and on. Even more shameful, if he’d tried to do something—for example, if he’d moved in and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and kissed her—then she worried that she wouldn’t have had the strength or the will to stop him. Her ideals might not have been sturdy enough to stand up to her overwhelming affection for him.

  That was an awful thing to admit to herself. Surely she would have found the strength and the will if she’d needed to find them. God would have helped her resist John. Wouldn’t He?

  She hoped so, but she wasn’t sure because the mere possibility that John might feel something, even a little something, for her was causing hope as sweet as caramel and as sharp as broken glass to press upward within her.

  John was off-limits, like a mansion behind an eight-foot-tall metal fence! She was a horrible person for hoping that he liked her.

  Lord, it’s not right. Before, when it had been clear that John thought of her as his friendly genealogist, it had felt harmless to nurse her crush on him. But now? It didn’t feel so harmless. It probably wasn’t harmless, ever, to nurse a crush on someone else’s boyfriend. Because these sorts of things, cheating sorts of things, weren’t to be toyed with. Even if you thought nothing could or would ever happen. Naturally, you would think that . . . right up until the moment something did happen.

  She’d wanted to come on this trip with John for her own selfish reasons, and she’d gotten her wish. She’d told herself with such superiority that she could never be a Rory, back when she’d assumed she’d never be given the chance to be a Rory.

  She wasn’t a very nice person, it turned out. She’d been positive about her niceness all her life. She’d been even more positive about it since her broken engagement. While fanning the flames of her hurt, she’d clung to her own niceness like one of her throw blankets. Harrison and Rory were the mean ones. She was nice.

  She’d thought.

  Really, Nora. All that had occurred was a single heated look that she may have misinterpreted. Her good manners—and John’s—were still intact. They hadn’t done anything, so it was too early to classify herself as not-nice. No doubt things would return to normal between herself and John today.

  If John were ever to ask her out, it would only be when he was free to do so.

  And in what sort of fantasy world would that come to be? It would have to be a very lavish fantasy world indeed, with unicorns, cathedrals made of roses, and bunnies who spoke Swedish.

  She tossed aside the covers and reached for the room service menu. If she couldn’t sleep, she may as well be productive.

  She called down an order for a waffle, fruit, bacon, and tea. After donning the hotel-issued robe over her pjs, she propped herself up in bed and checked her phone. Idly, she scrolled through emails concerning the annual Summer Antique Fair she spearheaded in order to provide a shot in the arm to the economy of Merryweather.

  If she ever did re-enter the dating world, she’d do best to download that dating app again and swipe right on Evan, owner of ferrets. He was at approximately her same level of attractiveness. Rich, famous, Medal-of-Honor-winning John would only ever be available to her in the unicorn world.

  A knock sounded. Nora helped the lodge employee transfer her scrumptious-smelling breakfast to the room’s corner table. She watched the clouds drift across the morning sky as she ate her meal.

  Everything was fine. She and John were coworkers and friends. That tiny stretch of electric silence between them last night hadn’t been that big of a deal.

  Nora was a nice person. John was honorable. They were both Christians. John and Allie’s romance was perfectly safe.

  Today, she and John would concentrate on finding Sherry.

  When Nora came downstairs before nine, she immediately spotted John waiting for her outside. He’d already asked the valet to pull the car around and was leaning against it, arms crossed. He wore dark gray cargo pants and a black long-sleeved shirt with a tiny Nike swoosh on one side of his chest.

  Even as Nora towed her rolling carry-on across the lobby, she could tell that things had shifted between them. John’s face had a hard, closed-off quality to it.

  Great Scott, she thought dejectedly, sadness yawning up from the floorboards and threatening to engulf her.

  Nope. She refused to be sad about this.

  One of the bell staff swung the door open for her with a flourish.

  “Good morning,” she said to John, her carry-on bumping over stone.

  “Morning.” He didn’t look at her as he lifted her luggage into the trunk.

  “Have you already checked out?” she asked.

  “Yeah. The keys are in the ignition.”

  Dutifully, she climbed behind the wheel, and they set off. Uncomfortable quiet reigned. She darted a look at him. He’d turned his face to the passenger-side window. She swallowed. “Did you do anything interesting last night?”

  “I worked out. That was about it.”

  “Glad to hear you worked out. It’s important to stay in shape for Navy SEAL-type stuff.”

  He grunted. No smile. No joking response.

  She was not going to be sad about this!

  It was difficult not to be, though.

  This new sense of distance between them proved that last night’s interaction had impacted him, that he believed they had done something wrong. He was making a countermove in order to protect his relationship with Allie, which left Nora feeling miserable and also faintly indignant because, after all, she hadn’t been the one with the hungry eyes or the significant other.

  No, she’d been the one making hungry eyes at John since the day they met. She’d been the one who might not have had the willpower to say no to the man with the significant other.

  She was culpable, too.

  The truth of that filled her with guilt and regret, because now she’d lost her easy camaraderie with John, and she treasured her camaraderie with John. She’d never, never wanted to risk that.

  She wished she could go back and undo the entire talk on the balcony and reset their relationship to pick up where it had left off when they’d exited the courthouse yesterday. If only a person could go back and undo things in life. If only there were do-overs.

  “Are you thinking we
should begin today by going through the rest of Blakeville’s city directories?” he asked.

  “Yep. Exactly.”

  God bless Homer and Mary Thompson’s generation, Nora thought as she and John successfully tracked the couple through every single Blakeville directory. Theirs was a hardworking generation who fought in wars and who, except for those displaced by the Great Depression, largely had the grace to stay put.

  Unfortunately for their purposes, the same could not be said of Homer and Mary’s children. It seemed that none of their three kids had settled in Blakeville because none of them ever made a debut in the directories.

  “What should we do next?” John asked, sliding the final directory back into its place.

  “We can try to look up Homer and Mary’s death certificates.”

  “What will those tell us?”

  “When and where they died. We might also be able to learn when and where they were born, their parents’ names, and cause of death. It’s the first piece of information that’s of most interest to us because if we can find out when and where they died, then we can search newspapers for their obituaries. And if we can find an obituary, well . . . that could provide all kinds of details about their family.”

  “How do we look for death certificates?”

  “The Oregon death index is online. If Homer and Mary died here in Oregon, they might come up.” Back to the hallway bench on the main floor of the courthouse they went.

  A few efficient clicks later, Nora had instigated a search of the death index. She valiantly tried not to notice that John smelled like the soap the lodge had provided . . . a piney lemon mixture. He sat a good distance away from her. Even so, she could sense the banked strength in the weight and lines of his body.

  “There.” He pointed. “Homer James Thompson.”

  “Right.” Focus! “I feel obliged to say that this record could belong to another man with the same name.” She clicked on the record. The document stated that Homer James Thompson had died on May fifth, nineteen years ago. In Blakeville. The page also listed his birthdate and the name of his spouse, Mary. The last two pieces of information confirmed that this was their Homer.

  “It’s him,” John said.

  “Yes.” The opportunity to glimpse people who’d been born long before her, sometimes centuries before, was one of the rewards of Nora’s job. At times it was almost as if she could reach out and touch her fingertips to theirs through history.

  Based on the information they’d gathered yesterday and today, Homer, the clockmaker from this scenic small town in Oregon, had been coming alive in Nora’s imagination. Thus, this evidence of his death saddened her in the same way that walking through a cemetery and reading his tombstone would have. Homer had been a man with a rich life. He’d had a family and dreams and hardships and successes.

  “I could have met him,” John said evenly. “If things had been different. I was fourteen when he passed away.”

  Nora nodded. If John was Homer’s illegitimate great-grandson, would Homer have wanted to meet him? Had Homer’s heart been big enough for that? Had Homer even known of John’s existence?

  They couldn’t find Mary in the Oregon death index. The index didn’t provide information on deaths that had occurred in the last several years so Nora pulled up one of the genealogy sites she subscribed to and eventually located Mary’s death certificate there. Mary had died just ten years ago. She, too, had remained in Blakeville to the end.

  “I say we try to find an obituary for Homer,” Nora said. “I’m guessing that we can count on Mary to have made sure that his obituary was thorough and accurate. Now that we know exactly when he died, we can concentrate our search on newspapers printed the week after his death.”

  John had seen people on TV shows and movies using microfilm, but he’d never had need of it himself until now. Like a lot of things that had seemed very high-tech when they were invented, microfilm now seemed very low-tech.

  The Blakeville Herald had been published weekly from 1904 through the present. Old issues were kept on the third floor of the courthouse in an area called the Microforms Collection. Nora had used the library catalog to find the film containing the issues of the Herald, which were indexed by date of publication. She’d slid film from the year of Homer’s death into the large microfilm reader and was currently searching through the images.

  The print zipping past the screen made John dizzy, so he looked down. Nora had crossed her legs. She had on a narrow black skirt that ended at the knees and a pair of red high-heeled sandals. She was slowly bouncing her toe.

  Immediately, he looked in another direction. He’d been trying not to look at her because every time he did, his gut clenched with longing for something he couldn’t have. If there was ever a pointless waste of a feeling, that was it.

  He’d slept very little the night before. Around three in the morning it had occurred to him that, in view of the fact that he was about to end his friendship as well as his business relationship with Nora, he needed to make sure she’d cashed the checks he’d given her.

  He didn’t usually spend much time following his accounts. He had an accountant on his staff. But he’d gotten out of bed, opened the banking app on his phone, and looked carefully through the list of withdrawals for the payments he’d made to Nora. He couldn’t find a single one.

  She hadn’t cashed his checks.

  He thought he’d outsmarted her by making him send her bills. Instead, she’d outsmarted him by taking the checks he’d sent her and doing what? Ripping them up? Sticking them in a desk drawer?

  He never would have let her help him if he’d known she wouldn’t accept payment. While they were working their way through the directories earlier, he’d excused himself and withdrawn cash from the branch of his bank, located two storefronts down from the courthouse. He couldn’t see her again after today, but he definitely could make sure she was paid in full.

  “You’re a praying man, right?” Nora asked.

  “You read the book and saw the movie,” he said, repeating verbatim one of the things he’d said to her the night before.

  She laughed, and the sound affected him like a shot of tequila.

  John set his molars together hard.

  “Well, this might be a good time to send up a prayer,” she said. “Lord, if you could help us find an obituary for Homer, that would be awesome.”

  “Amen.”

  “Here’s the paper from the week Homer died. It looks like the obituaries are on page eight.” Carefully, she slid to the correct page. Once there, she leaned toward the screen for a few seconds, then sat all the way back in her chair, quiet.

  He’d noticed that whenever she’d hit on something, she retreated to give him space to see for himself what they’d found.

  He squinted at the screen until he located Homer’s name.

  Blakeville—Homer James Thompson, 84, died May 5th after a brief illness.

  In this old-fashioned courthouse in the middle of Oregon, Nora had found the obituary of the man who had likely been his biological great-grandfather.

  He leaves his wife of sixty-five years, Mary (Wellington) Thompson; his son Lucas Thompson and his wife, Judith, of Bend; son Kenneth Thompson and his wife, Donna, of Portland; and daughter Deborah Tanner and her husband, Timothy, of Portland. He also leaves behind grandchildren Jeffrey Thompson of Seattle, Sherry O’Sullivan of Grants Pass, Tony Thompson of Bend, Jack Thompson of San Francisco, and Wendy Masterson of Phoenix, four great-grandchildren, and many close friends.

  Mr. Thompson was a lifelong resident of Blakeville. In his early years, he worked at Hanson Sawmill, where his father was employed. He met his wife at Blakeville High. A year after her graduation, in 1935, the two married at Holy Cross Christian Church. In 1942, Homer joined the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a gunner in World War II. Upon his return from the front, he was employed by the sawmill for three years. Then he opened his clock and watch repair business, Thompson Timepieces, which he ran unt
il his retirement. He greatly valued his customers and was twice named Blakeville Business Owner of the Year.

  Homer loved the Lord and the congregation at Holy Cross, where he served on the board of deacons and taught fifth grade Sunday School for more than forty years. He was an avid fisherman and an excellent banjo player.

  A funeral service will be held May 10th at Holy Cross, followed by a private burial.

  John thought for several seconds, then read back over the announcement. “My birth mom’s married name is Sherry O’Sullivan.”

  “This tells us that her married name was O’Sullivan at the time this was written, nineteen years ago.”

  “And she lives in Grants Pass.” Grants Pass was a small city in the southern part of Oregon.

  “Well . . .”

  “We know she lived there nineteen years ago,” he finished for her.

  “Correct.”

  “It’s a big deal, though. That we learned this information. Isn’t it?” He angled a questioning glance at her.

  Pride glittered in her eyes. “A very big deal.”

  He peered at the screen. “It looks like Deborah married, too. Her last name is listed as Tanner here.”

  “Right. At some point after she sold the house in Shelton and before Homer died, Deborah married.”

  For a long time, neither of them spoke. “Should we run a search for Sherry O’Sullivan in Grants Pass?” As John said the words, he realized how close they were to finding Sherry. The sense of foreboding he’d had on his deck the day he’d called Sherry’s delivery room doctor came over him again.

  Was he ready—completely ready—to dig up the past and push his way into Sherry’s life? The question sent a chill down his neck.

  “Listen,” Nora said gently. “How about we go to the coffee bar downstairs and take a break? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. You look like you could use some caffeine.”