Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3)

by Carla Neggers

  The tube returned, and she slipped out Rose’s change and receipt.

  “Have you seen much of Liza Baron since she’s come home?” Rose asked.

  “She came in a couple of days ago to fill out her bridal registry,” Nora replied. “But other than that, no.”

  Rose’s eyes widened, no doubt at the prospect of wild, rebellious Liza doing anything as expected of her as filling out a bridal registry, but, a discreet woman, she resisted comment.

  Behind her, Inger Hansen did no such thing. “I can’t imagine Liza would want to do anything so normal. She’s so much like her grandmother. You don’t remember Margaret Ingalls, Nora, but she was just as wild and unpredictable as Liza Baron. It’s odd, though. Your great-aunt and Margaret managed to get along amazingly well. I have no idea why. They were complete opposites.”

  “Ellie was always extremely tolerant of people,” Martha Bauer put in.

  “Yes,” Inger said. Even tart-tongued Inger Hansen had respected and admired Ellie Gates.

  “I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful wedding,” Nora said, half-wishing she hadn’t delayed her departure to serve the quilters. Liza Baron and Cliff Forrester’s upcoming wedding was indeed the talk of the town, but it was having an effect on Nora that she couldn’t figure out. Was it because Cliff was from Rhode Island?

  No. She’d put Byron Sanders out of her mind months and months ago. If the wedding was unsettling her it had to be because of the ongoing mystery of the identity of the body found at Timberlake.

  Stella scooted behind Nora. “Here, Miss Gates, let me help these customers.”

  Nora backed off, and with Inger Hansen wondering aloud how Liza could have ended up with that “strange man living out at the lake,” ducked out the rear exit.

  Even if Liza Baron had been a fly on the wall during the past fifteen minutes, she wouldn’t have cared one whit what the quilting ladies were saying about her and Cliff—she’d marry whenever and whoever she wanted. Liza had a thumb-your-nose-at-the-world quality that Nora appreciated. Nora wondered if she was ever the subject of local gossip. Not likely. Oh, her latest window display always received plenty of attention, and the time she’d added a wheelchair ramp to one of the entrances had gotten people talking about accessibility and such. And folks had talked when, after much soul-searching and calculating how few were sold, she’d ceased to stock men’s overalls. But nobody, she was quite certain, talked about her. Her personal life.

  “That’s because it’s dull, dull, dull.”

  But wasn’t that exactly what she wanted?

  The crisp, clear autumn air lifted her spirits. It was getting dark; the streetlights were already on, casting a pale glow on the bright yellow leaves still clinging to the intrepid maples that lined the perimeter of the parking lot. The feeling that life was passing her by vanished as quickly as it had overtaken her. This was life, at least hers. Small-town Midwest America. So it wasn’t Providence, Rhode Island. So it wasn’t wandering place to place with an elitist East Coast photographer who neither understood her nor the community she cared about. She belonged in Tyler. It was her home, and if it was Byron Sanders’s idea of hell, then so be it.

  He was a cretin anyway.

  Coincidence or not, Cliff Forrester’s own Rhode Island origins had gotten her thinking about the rake who’d almost ruined her life. For two days running now. She couldn’t make herself stop.

  Well, she had to. Rhode Island might be a small state, but the chances of Tyler’s town recluse and a sneaky photographer having any knowledge of each other were remote. And Byron Sanders wasn’t from any “mucky-muck” East Coast family.

  He also knew to keep his size elevens out of Tyler, Wisconsin.

  But he’d been her one love, and he remained her one secret. No one knew they’d been lovers. Not even Tisha Olsen over at the Hair Affair, who knew everything that went on in Tyler, or the quilting ladies, whose combined knowledge of the town’s social history went all the way back to its founding during the great German immigration to Wisconsin 140 years ago. As far as everyone in Tyler was concerned, Nora was just like her great-aunt, the memorable Ellie Gates.

  Only she wasn’t. And she knew it.

  So did Byron Sanders.

  She was so preoccupied that she arrived at the doorstep of her 1920s house before she even realized she’d come to her tree-lined street. She’d inherited the house from Aunt Ellie. They’d lived together from the death of Nora’s parents in a boating accident on Lake Superior when she was thirteen until Aunt Ellie’s death three years ago, not long after Byron Sanders had moved on. In the house’s quiet rooms and in Aunt Ellie’s quiet life, Nora had found peace and stability and hope.

  She’d had the wide clapboards repainted last summer in the same cream color Aunt Ellie had chosen back in 1926. The trim was pure white. It was almost Halloween, but the porch swing was still out, the flower boxes planted with bright yellow mums.

  With the house having been shut up all day, Nora left the front door open to catch the afternoon breeze while she went back to the kitchen. It was still thirty minutes before her first student arrived. Time enough for a cup of tea.

  She’d made a few changes to the interior of the house, softening some of Aunt Ellie’s relentless formality. She’d covered the furniture in pale neutrals and had added cotton throw rugs, Depression glass, quilted pastel wall hangings. There were two small bedrooms upstairs, one downstairs, a small library, a living room and a dining room that she’d converted into a music room, shoving the gateleg table up against the wall to make room for a new baby grand.

  Nora, however, hadn’t changed a thing in the kitchen. Its white cabinets, pale gray-blue walls and yellow accents didn’t need changing so far as she could see. Her friends said she should get a microwave, but she hadn’t yet succumbed. Before she died, Aunt Ellie had purchased a toaster oven. It still worked fine.

  After putting on the kettle for tea, Nora sat at the kitchen table and looked out at her darkening yard. The bright leaves of the sugar maple had already fallen to the ground. Lately, birds had taken to fattening themselves at her bird feeders. Soon it would be completely dark. Winter wasn’t far off.

  She sighed. She loved autumn; she even loved winter. So why was she hovering on the edge of depression?

  She fixed a proper tea: Earl Grey tea leaves, her English porcelain pot, her matching cup and saucer, milk in a tiny milk glass pitcher. A sterling silver spoon. Homemade butter cookies from her favorite bakery. She put everything on a teak tray, which she carried out to the music room.

  And nearly dropped it all on the floor.

  Moving with the speed and silence of a panther, Cliff Forrester took the tray from her and set it one-handed on the gateleg table. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  In his five years in Tyler, those were the first words Nora remembered his ever saying to her. She’d bumped into him on occasion at the hardware store, but Liza Baron’s fiancé had made clear he didn’t want to be disturbed at Timberlake Lodge. He wanted to be left alone. To heal his wounds and chase his demons or do whatever it was he did. Nora had heard all the rumors and possibilities. He was a tall, dark man. He didn’t look like…how had Liza put it? Like his family were East Coast mucky-mucks.

  “It’s quite all right,” she said, sounding stuffy even to herself. “I was expecting a piano student.”

  “You play?”

  “Mmm, yes.”

  His brow furrowed. “I didn’t know.”

  How could he have known? They’d never even officially met until now. “Would you care for a cup of tea? I made more than enough. I always end up having to throw out half the pot.”

  He shook his head. “No thanks.”

  And then he smiled. Nora found it an unsettling experience, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. She felt no attraction to Liza’s lover. It wasn’t that at all. Then what? Men in general, she thought, disgusted with herself. Tall, dark men from Rhode Island in particular.

  Too darned mu
ch thinking, she added to herself.

  “Are you all right?” Cliff Forrester asked.

  She nodded. “Perfectly.”

  “I gather you know who I am.”

  “Cliff Forrester. Yes, I think everyone in town knows.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched in an ironic smile. “I guess so. Look, I won’t keep you, Miss Gates.”

  “Nora,” she corrected.

  “Nora, then.” His dark eyes probed her a moment. “I came by because of Liza. She was grateful for the way you treated her the other day.”

  “I’d do the same for any of my customers, Mr.—”

  “Cliff. And I think you would. Liza and I are…” He paused, seeming awkward, even pained. “We want this to work.”

  Nora thought she understood what he was trying to say. The Body at the Lake, the wedding, Alyssa Baron, Judson Ingalls, Liza’s return to Tyler, the incessant gossip, long-lost Margaret Ingalls—it was a lot. And then there was Cliff Forrester himself. A recluse. A man uncomfortable around even small crowds. A man, it was said, afraid that something, someone, would trigger a bad memory and he’d crack. Hurt himself. Worse yet, hurt someone he cared about.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Nora asked, instinctively wanting to help.

  He seemed to relax, at least slightly. “If there’s anything you can think of to help Liza through this thing, I’d appreciate it. She doesn’t want to alienate anyone. She’s trying.”

  Wasn’t that what Liza herself had said about him? Nora found their concern for each other touching. This, she thought, was what love and romance were about. Two people coming together as individuals, not asking the other to change, not demanding perfection, not expecting fantasies to come true. Just loving and accepting each other and perhaps growing together.

  “I wouldn’t be interfering?”

  “No.”

  He was, she thought, a man who knew his own mind. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

  His smile was back, or what passed for one. “Thank you.”

  “No need. It won’t be long before Liza feels at home again in Tyler. She has family and friends, Cliff. They’ll be here for her.”

  “I’m glad you already are,” he said, and before she could respond, he was out the door.

  Nora debated a whole two seconds, then went after him, catching him on the front porch. “Cliff?”

  He turned, and there was something about him as he stood against the dark night—something both dangerous and sensitive—that hinted at his pain and complexity. Liza Baron hadn’t solved all his problems. Nora suddenly wished she’d just sat down and drunk her tea instead of following him out. But what to do about it now?

  She licked her lips. “Um—Liza mentioned that you’re from Rhode Island originally. I was…well, I knew someone from Rhode Island once.” She sounded ridiculous! “It was a while ago, but I—”

  “Who?”

  She swallowed. She’d never said his name aloud, not in public. “A guy by the name of Sanders. Byron Sanders.”

  Cliff Forrester remained stock-still on her porch step, staring at her through dark eyes that had become slits. Nora chose not to dwell on all the more lurid rumors about him.

  “He’s a photographer,” she added quickly. “He did a series a few years back on Aunt Ellie. It was printed in one of the Chicago papers—”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Well, I have a copy in my library—”

  “Get it.”

  His words were millimeters shy of being an order, but there was a curious intensity to his tone, almost a desperation, that Nora detected but couldn’t explain. Cursing herself for having brought up that cretin’s name, she dashed to her study, dug out the scrapbook and ran back to the porch. Cliff Forrester hadn’t moved.

  She showed him the spread Byron Sanders had done on Aunt Ellie just weeks before she died. Picking the winner of the quilt raffle. At her desk in her old-fashioned office. In her rose garden. In her rocking chair on her front porch. In front of the department store she’d started, on her own, in 1924. Nora had every photograph memorized. It was as if each shot captured a part of Aunt Ellie’s soul and together recreated the woman she’d been, made her come to life. Whatever his shortcomings as a man, Byron Sanders was unarguably a gifted photographer.

  “This Byron Sanders,” Cliff Forrester said, tight-lipped. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “No!”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head. Through Byron Sanders, she’d managed to hurt herself. She took full responsibility for her own actions. Which didn’t mitigate her distaste for him. “No. I just remember he’s from Rhode Island and wondered if you knew him.”

  “No,” Cliff said. “No, I don’t know Byron Sanders at all.”

  * * *

  THE WAY BYRON FIGURED it, he was dead meat. If Nora Gates didn’t kill him, his brother surely would. Slumped down in the nondescript car he’d rented in Milwaukee, he watched Cliff head toward the center of town. He looked grim. Byron felt pretty grim himself. His jaw had begun to ache from gritting his teeth. He forced his mouth open just enough to emit something between a sigh and a growl.

  No, I don’t know any Byron Sanders at all….

  It was all Byron had heard, but it was enough. His return to Tyler wasn’t going to be all sweetness and light. Nora was already on the lookout for him, and now his brother had to have figured out that he’d been to Tyler before. Not a good start. When Nora found out that he’d lied, he’d be lucky to get out of town with all his body parts intact. When Cliff found out he’d sneaked into Tyler three years ago to make sure he was all right and had lied, he’d be—

  “You’re dead meat, my man,” he muttered to himself.

  He took heart that Cliff didn’t fit any of the images that had haunted him for so long. He wasn’t scrawny, scraggly, bug-infested or crazy. He looked alive and well and, other than that crack about his younger brother, reasonably happy. For that, Byron was grateful.

  He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel. Coming to Tyler ten days early had been his mother’s idea. He’d phoned her in London, where she was visiting one of Pierce & Rothchilde’s most prominent, if not bestselling, authors, one who’d become a personal friend. Anne Forrester was a strong, kind woman who’d endured too much. She’d lost a husband and had all but lost a son.

  “But this note,” she’d said, “leaves more questions unanswered than answered.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you suppose he really wants us there?”

  “There’s no way of knowing.”

  For years, Cliff had maintained that he didn’t dare be around his family for fear of inflicting more pain on them. He didn’t trust himself, not just with his brother and mother, but with anyone. So he’d left. Withdrawn from society. Turned into a recluse at an abandoned lodge on a faraway lake in Wisconsin. His absence, on top of her husband’s horrible captivity and death in Cambodia, had been particularly difficult for Anne Forrester, but she was made of stern stuff and disliked showing emotion. She blamed herself to some degree for having let Cliff go to Cambodia to try and do something for his father. Blamed herself for not being able to do something to ease the pain of his own ordeal in Southeast Asia.

  “You have no idea who this Liza Baron is?” his mother had asked.

  “The Barons are a prominent family in Tyler.” Byron had chosen his next words carefully. “I remember meeting an Alyssa Baron. She’s the woman who sort of took Cliff under her wing. Liza could be her daughter.”

  Anne Forrester didn’t speak for the next two minutes. Although the call was overseas long distance, Byron hadn’t rushed her. She needed to regain her balance. Rational and not prone to jealousy, she nonetheless had had a difficult time facing the fact that Cliff had allowed another woman to at least try to help him, where he’d only run from her. Even if Alyssa Baron was on the periphery of Cliff’s life, she was at least in a small way part of it. His moth
er wasn’t. But that, Byron knew, was precisely the point: far away, Cliff couldn’t cause his mother—or his brother—further pain and suffering. Or so he thought.

  “Maybe there’s hope yet,” she said finally, in a near whisper. “Oh, Byron, if he’s happy…if he’s trying…”

  “I know, Mother.”

  “I can’t get out of here until at least the first part of next week. What’s your schedule like? I’m not sure we should both barrel in on Cliff for the wedding if we’re not entirely certain he wants us there.” She was thinking out loud, Byron realized, and he didn’t interrupt or argue. “Unless there is no wedding and this is Cliff’s way…well, that would be ridiculous. Not like him at all. He’d never play a trick like that on us, would he?”

  “No,” Byron had said with certainty.

  “Would this Liza Baron?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “It’s just all so…sudden. What if someone’s using the wedding as a ploy to get us out there? You know, upset the applecart and see what happens?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Byron had allowed, “but not a serious one, I would think.”

  Anne Forrester sighed heavily. “Then he is getting married.”

  In the end, Byron had agreed to go to Tyler ahead of time and play scout, find out what he and his mother would be walking into in ten days’ time. None of the myriad excuses Byron could think of to keep him in Providence would have worked, so he didn’t even bother to try. The truth was he’d do anything to see his brother again, even go up against Nora Gates. Hell, they were both adults. She’d just have to endure his presence in Tyler and trust him to keep quiet about their “tawdry affair” three years before.

  She’d only, he recalled, talked like a defiled Victorian virgin when she was truly pissed off.

  He’d half hoped she’d forgotten all about him.

  Of course, she hadn’t. Eleanora Gates wouldn’t forget anything, least of all the man who’d “robbed” her of her virginity. She’d conveniently forgotten that she’d been a more than willing participant. And he hadn’t told her he’d thought he loved her.