But life was easier when her world was right side up.
In the morning, she called Albert first thing and told him she wouldn’t be in today. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I had coffee at the diner this morning and heard that Cliff Forrester had bailed out on Liza Baron. Word is she’s hiding out at your place.”
“She’s not hiding. She’s staying with me until we know more.”
“Then the rumors are true?”
Too late, Nora realized she’d been had. She was in the awkward position—one she usually studiously avoided—of having to comment on gossip instead of merely hearing it. She’d seldom confirmed or denied a Tyler rumor. “Albert, you know I don’t comment on other people’s personal affairs.”
“Well,” he said, undeterred, “at least tell me if the wedding’s still on. Will folks be lining up at the door to return wedding gifts?”
“They shouldn’t be,” Nora said crisply, changing the subject before hanging up in relief a few minutes later.
If only Byron would call again. She and Liza needed information. An update. Any scrap of fresh news they could hang on to. But the phone was annoyingly silent. And she couldn’t call him. He’d neglected to give her his Providence number and it was unlisted. She’d tried Rhode Island information even before she’d called the store.
Liza had come into the kitchen. Her hair was tangled and sticking out at odd angles, and her eyes, ordinarily so clear and bright, were puffy and red from insufficient sleep. She’d borrowed a flannel nightgown from Nora that came to well above her ankles. She was barefoot, but Nora wasn’t worried, since she’d kept the thermostat at whatever “humane” temperature Byron had settled on.
“Good morning,” Liza said.
“’Morning. Coffee?”
She smiled weakly. “Just inject it directly into my veins. Anything new?”
Nora shook her head.
“What’s that I smell?”
“Corn muffins.”
“Nora, you didn’t have to—”
“I was up early. It gave me something to do.” While waiting for the phone to ring, she thought, but she was unwilling to let Liza know the extent of her own emotional involvement in the Forrester brothers’ goings-on.
Liza sat at the table, and Nora brought her a mug of steaming coffee. The way things were going, she’d get used to having company for breakfast and would never want to go back to oatmeal alone with CNN and the Tyler Citizen.
“I hate waiting,” Liza said suddenly, visibly squeezing her coffee cup, her impatience nearly palpable.
“It’s not my long suit, either.”
“Why the hell would Cliff go to Rhode Island?”
“Byron could be wrong—”
“But he’s not. You know he’s not.” She exhaled, setting her mug down hard. “Cliff’s told me zip about his life in Rhode Island. I’ve got the highlights, but he hasn’t talked a whole lot about what his childhood was like, what he did before he went to Southeast Asia. He’s got stuff to settle with his family and I…well, I’m not part of that.”
Nora poured herself a cup of coffee, took a sip. “Do you regret having invited Byron and Mrs. Forrester?”
Liza shook her head adamantly. “No, this had to come out and get done sooner or later. And you know me—better sooner than later. What that family’s been through can’t have been easy. Cliff’s taking a big step. I wish I were a part of it, but…if we’re going to be everything we want to be to each other, he’s got to do it all, come to terms with all he’s got to come to terms with. I can’t dictate what he needs to do and doesn’t need to do. I just hope…” She sighed, blowing on her coffee, not meeting Nora’s eyes. “I just hope he hasn’t run away because of this big wedding we’ve—I’ve—got planned. I would’ve thought he’d tell me if it was too much.”
“Surely he would have,” Nora said.
“Yeah, I guess. But everything’s moved so fast…” She shrugged, her words coming in bursts, her concentration not at its best. “If it’s Rhode Island…you know, if his family’s been there for hundreds of years and he wants to go back there to live, I’m game.”
“You’d move East?”
“Sure.”
“But your needs and wants count, too.”
“Yeah. They do. They just don’t happen to include living in Tyler forever and ever. I mean, I can. It’d be great. But I can leave, too. If Cliff has to be somewhere, that’s okay by me. I’ve been thinking he has to be at the lodge. Now maybe I’m wrong.” She frowned. “Am I making sense? It’s like you, Nora. You have to be in Tyler. I don’t know what Byron wants, but I’ll bet he doesn’t need to be in Providence the way you need to be in Tyler.”
Nora wasn’t sure she liked the implications of what Liza was saying, which were that she was inflexible and stuck in her ways. But she focused on the other implication. “Liza, I know you think that Byron and I…that we…”
Liza’s grin, even with her disheveled appearance, held some of its old devil-may-care spirit. “Oh, give it up, Nora. You and Byron are. It’s so obvious.”
The oven timer buzzed, and Nora, glad for the distraction, got out the muffins, dumping them onto an old, bent cooling rack Aunt Ellie had had forever. She got out the butter and honey, heaped the muffins onto a platter, and brought them to the table, where she sat across from Liza.
“You couldn’t live in Rhode Island, could you?” Liza asked.
“I’ve never even been there.”
“What do you think Cliff’s up to?”
Nora shrugged. “Marriage is a milestone. No matter how willingly one goes into it, it’s got to make anyone think about the past—where one’s been. I’d guess Cliff’s making his peace, with whatever drove him to Timberlake Lodge in the first place, the choices he’s made, what he’s done. Not just in Southeast Asia. Before that.”
Dropping a piping-hot muffin onto her plate, Liza asked softly, “You don’t think he’s running?”
“No, frankly, I don’t.”
She dipped her spoon into the honey. “Maybe I’ve asked too much of him too soon.”
“No more,” Nora said confidently, “than he’s asked of you or either of you has asked of yourself.”
Liza nodded, not so much in agreement as in acknowledgment that she understood what Nora was trying to say, and she looked thoughtful, contemplating Nora’s words.
Then she said, “You know, the bastard could have left me a note.”
Nora smiled. “Yes, he could have. And Byron could have called again by now.”
Liza watched the honey drip from her spoon onto her split muffin. “I’ve never been to Rhode Island, either.”
Nora got up, tore a scrap of paper from the notepad by her phone, sat back down and pushed it across the table to Liza.
“What’s this?” Liza asked.
“The times of today’s flights from Milwaukee to Boston and Providence.”
This time, Liza’s smile reached her sparkling eyes. “You, Miss Gates, are far more devious than you look.”
* * *
IT WAS A CLEAR, sharply cold New England morning in late autumn. As he walked onto the quiet, isolated stretch of Nantucket Island beach, Byron could smell the salt in the air, feel it on his skin. The wind off the Atlantic penetrated his bones. In the distance, the sea gulls swooped and croaked. These, he thought, would always be the sights and smells and sounds of home. Which was why he’d known his brother would come here.
He could see Cliff walking slowly along the ocean’s edge, his shoulders hunched against the cold.
Byron hesitated, then moved across the white sand. And in his mind, he could see two small boys and their father running across the sand, discovering tide pools, scooping up shells, chasing waves. He could hear the father’s laughter. It was clear and strong and filled with love and hope. The two boys responded with hoots and squeals. For the boys and their father, and their mother who would join them later for a clambake, Nantucket was a retreat, a place of peace and beau
ty where they could be together without the pressures of the outside world—of war, family, commerce, reputation. On Nantucket, they preferred to live simply, in harmony with the rhythms of the sun and the tide.
Then Byron was standing beside his brother, and he could see that the two boys had become men. And he knew that the father was gone and had been for too long. Cliff didn’t look at him. He didn’t speak. He and Byron continued along the beach together.
Finally, Cliff said, “We all did our best.”
“Yes,” Byron said, “we did.”
“It wasn’t enough to save Dad.”
“No. There was never any way it could be. But he knew that. He didn’t expect it.”
Cliff nodded, looking out at the choppy ocean that was so impossibly blue, so impossibly beautiful, under the cloudless sky. “I know he knew.”
For a while longer, they walked in silence.
Then Cliff said, “I couldn’t save everyone I wanted to save in Cambodia.”
“You saved more than most, Cliff. More than anyone could have asked you to save.”
Cliff’s gaze cut toward his younger brother; the bright sunlight revealed every line, every scar, a harsh reminder of the years that had passed, the time they’d lost. “Until Liza, I’m not sure I ever really understood what it must have been like for Mother to lose both of us, Dad and me.”
“She didn’t lose you, Cliff.”
“I know that now. I didn’t for a long time.”
They walked into the wet sand where a wave had receded, making footprints that wouldn’t last. Cliff seemed unaware of the cold. Byron zipped up his leather jacket.
“You’d knew I’d be here?” Cliff asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded, not needing to know how Byron had known. It was enough that he had. “We were all at our best here. I had to come before I walked down the aisle on Saturday. I had to know I could.”
They started back across the empty beach.
A woman was coming toward them, over the same ground Byron had come, moving slowly, uncertainly. Her head was wrapped in a flowing challis scarf against the increasingly fierce wind. If it didn’t die down, Byron thought, the plane he’d chartered would be grounded and even the ferry wouldn’t run.
But then, beside him, Cliff whispered hoarsely, “Mother.”
And she recognized him, too, and hesitated, and Byron could feel his brother’s pain that his own mother would hold back when she saw him. But, for a time, that was what he’d wanted, what he’d needed. Now it wasn’t.
He grinned suddenly and waved.
Even with the wind, Byron could hear their mother’s cry of happiness and relief. Cliff was moving faster. Byron hung back. This was their moment.
Their mother’s scarf had come undone, trailing down her back, and she wasn’t the young woman who’d tried to explain to her sons their father’s sense of duty when he’d gone back to Vietnam for yet another tour, who’d tried to give them hope and stability in their grandfather’s historic house in Providence during those difficult years, first of absence, then of uncertainty, finally of loss. Anne Forrester had grown older since her husband had gone off to war, never to come home, even to be buried. But she’d retained her strength and courage and humor. Byron could sense those qualities, even as he saw tears glistening on her cheeks.
Then Cliff caught up with her, and he held her, and both mother and firstborn son were still and silent, and crying, in the autumn wind.
* * *
“HOLY COW,” Liza Baron said as she and Nora stood in the reception area of the very sedate, very plush Providence offices of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers. “Cliff wasn’t kidding when he said his family were East Coast mucky-mucks.”
Nora doubted those had been Cliff’s exact words, but Liza did have a point. She couldn’t imagine a better symbol of East Coast blue bloods than the beautiful brownstone headquarters of one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the country. Mrs. Redbacker, Byron’s intrepid secretary, came out to greet them, reluctantly bringing them back to the offices of the president.
“Mr. Forrester is away this week,” Mrs. Redbacker said.
Liza, in her serape and leggings and much more herself now that she was doing something, spoke up. “I know. He went to Wisconsin for his brother’s wedding. I’m his almost sister-in-law.”
Mrs. Redbacker nodded, as if outrageous Liza Baron was about what she’d expected. Nora, in a more conservative outfit of wool pants and plaid blazer, took in the antique furnishings, the computer, the fax machine, the steely-eyed portraits of Clifton Rutherford Pierce, Cofounder, and Thorton Pierce, Past President, above the marble fireplace mantel. And for three years she’d thought Gates Department Store was as close as Byron had come to corporate America. She gritted her teeth. The man did have a way of setting her off.
“So Byron hasn’t been around today?” Liza asked.
Mrs. Redbacker sniffed. “No, he hasn’t. And I’m sorry, but I don’t expect him.”
Liza frowned, in no mood for anyone to tell her anything she didn’t want to hear. They’d checked at the airport in Milwaukee and then again in Providence—she’d vetoed flying into the bigger airport in Boston, which was farther away—but there was no word, anywhere, from either Byron or Cliff. Not at the lodge, not at her mother’s, not on Nora’s message machine, not at the store. This did not sit well with Liza. It was sitting less and less well with Nora.
Nora tore her gaze from the two Pierce portraits and smiled at Mrs. Redbacker as she would at a dissatisfied Gates customer. “That is a surprise,” she said calmly, “because Mr. Forrester—Byron—asked us to meet him in his office.”
She glanced at Liza, hoping her friend would realize what she wanted: she had to see Byron’s office. She might never get another chance. And it could tell her so much about this man who’d wormed his way into her life, into her mind and heart. She wanted to know everything about him, regardless of what the future held.
“He did?” Mrs. Redbacker asked, not expecting an answer. “Well, I suppose it’s entirely possible.”
Her tone was unmistakable; she thought she’d make a better president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers, than Clifton Pierce’s great-grandson and Thorton Pierce’s grandson did. Possibly she thought almost anyone would. There was no rancor in her voice, just the long-suffering of a secretary devoted to her company more than to a particular personality slated at birth to run it. Mrs. Redbacker seemed not to resent or dislike Byron Forrester as much as she simply believed he wasn’t where he belonged. Nora had employees herself who were more loyal to Gates and its meaning to the community than to her personally. And Aunt Ellie’s longtime personal secretary had retired just before her boss fell ill, at which point Nora had hired a full-fledged assistant in Albert Shaw. Not that it would have mattered; most people regarded her as another Aunt Ellie.
Clearly Byron was not another Clifton or Thorton Pierce.
Which Nora found curiously heartening.
She decided to intervene. “Byron and I are old friends.”
Mrs. Redbacker narrowed her eyes. “Oh?”
“He did a series of photographs on my great-aunt three years ago,” Nora said, trying to stick to the truth as much as possible. “He’s an award-winning photographer, you know.”
“I’m aware of that.” Mrs. Redbacker’s tone was a little too sharp for Nora’s tastes. It wouldn’t be easy to get past her. She narrowed her eyes. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t, but it’s Nora. Nora Gates.”
Liza warmed to the project. “We’re here to pick up something for Byron from his office. It’s a special gift for Cliff. His brother. You know—”
“Yes,” Mrs. Redbacker said. “I know all about Cliff Forrester.”
Liza snorted. “You don’t believe us!”
Mrs. Redbacker sighed. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what to believe. Mr. Forrester—Mr. Byron Forrester—did leave something in his office for Miss Ga
tes. But I understood I was to send it to her.” The very experienced secretary, clearly out of her element, turned to Nora. “If you’re Nora Gates of Gates Department Store, Tyler, Wisconsin.”
“I am.”
“Well, then, come along. It’s a photograph of an elderly woman—your great-aunt, I believe—and some girl. I’ll show it to you and you can decide if you want to take it with you or have it sent to Wisconsin.”
Liza was grinning. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
Nora, however, found herself unable to speak, and silently followed Liza and Mrs. Redbacker into the elegant office of the president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers.
* * *
“MY PERSONALITY was probably more suited to running this place than yours,” Cliff said as he and Byron headed down the cream-colored corridor to the office occupied by a Pierce for most of the past century. “But it wasn’t meant to be.”
“It’s not a bad job.”
“It wasn’t a job to Grandfather. It was a passion—the way Gates is for Nora.”
Byron nodded. “That’s to be respected, unless it interferes with a person living a full life. Anyway, my passions lie elsewhere.”
“Photography,” Cliff speculated.
“For a few years, yes. But I don’t want to make a job of it. I like it as something I can do when the muse strikes, so to speak.”
They’d come to his office.
In the outer room, Mrs. Redbacker was speaking to a slightly paunchy security guard. “I don’t believe they’re in any way dangerous, but they…well, they just won’t leave. They insist Mr. Forrester is bound to show up sooner or later. One or the other Mr. Forrester, they say. They keep dialing his home but get no answer. If they did, I suspect they’d go harass him there. Why, I do believe they’ll sleep here if he doesn’t return. And it’s after five now!”
Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) Page 18