“So that’s where Nate has been all this time,” Aunt Emily said. “I always knew we’d figure out the answer to that mystery someday.”
“Mystery is right,” Sarah said, looking at Olivia. “One gets solved and then another is presented in its place. How is it possible that Luke and Nate knew each other, and now they’re both here at the Lodges?”
“Kismet,” Mrs. Beabots said. “It takes a lot of angelic intervention to bring this much combustion into a single room on an Easter Sunday, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s as good an explanation as any,” Sarah replied. “Olivia, can you manage to get Mrs. Beabots to Maddie’s car? My guess is that she’s still outside waiting for us. I’ll take the children and meet up with Luke.”
“No problem.” Olivia offered her arm to Mrs. Beabots. “She’s the best date I’ve had in a long time.”
“The only date, you mean, don’t you, dearie?” Mrs. Beabots asked in the honeyed tone she took when she was stating the blunt truth. “Now, I think I can help with that kind of thing,” Mrs. Beabots said.
“You think... how do you know...” Olivia shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “I mean, I see guys all day long at the deli. Lots of guys—cute young bank executives, even that new attorney who just interviewed with George. No one ever asks me out.”
“And it’s no wonder, what with the way you wear your hair all tightly cinched to the top of your head like you’re embarrassed by it. And those sloppy clothes. Who can see your figure under those...what does one call that getup you wear all the time?”
“Poet coats. Lots of artists and photographers wear them.”
“Not since 1925. And they didn’t do them any good then, either.”
The group gathered their belongings. Timmy took advantage of all the hustle and distractions to swipe a few extra jelly beans from the center of the table. He started to walk away and then turned and grabbed an extra candy egg and scrambled after his sister and the rest of their party.
By the time Sarah reached Luke, who was smiling and chuckling with Nate, the Barzonnis had come to his supposed rescue. Everyone was asking questions all at the same time. They didn’t seem to mind that they interrupted each other constantly or talked over each other. Sarah had the distinct impression it was probably always like this with the Barzonnis.
“Hey, man,” Gabe said, slapping Nate on the back good-naturedly. “Do you need a paramedic?”
“Good one,” Nate grumbled back.
“Come on, Doc,” Rafe chimed in. “I can get you a nice nurse. I see Sophie Mattuchi over there with some friends. She works at Indian Lake Hospital. Want me to call her over?”
“No!” Nate roared. “I don’t need a nurse. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure, my darling?” Gina asked, lifting Nate’s sport jacket, trying to inspect his stomach.
“Mom. Please. We’re in public.”
“Sorry,” Gina said. “I just worry.”
“Who was that woman, son?” Angelo demanded, craning his neck toward the front doors through which Maddie had vanished.
“An old friend?” Rafe leaned back as laughter exploded from his chest. He had to put his hand on Gabe’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Sort of,” Nate replied.
Gina clasped her hands in front of her and glared at Nate. “It wouldn’t take me any more than one guess to figure out who it was.”
“Mother, not now. Not today,” Nate warned her.
“Later, then,” Gina replied firmly, letting her son know that the matter was open-ended and only tabled for the moment. “You’re right. It’s Easter.”
“And who is this?” Angelo asked, gazing at Luke with a suspicious crook to his dark eyebrow.
“I’m sorry.” Nate finally gathered his composure. “This is just about the wildest coincidence. Dad, Rafe, Gabe, Mica, Mother—this is Luke Bosworth. Luke and I were in basic training together at Great Lakes. He’s good people.” Nate slapped Luke’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re here, man. In Indian Lake, of all places.”
“You, as well,” Luke countered. “It sure is a small world. Sorry I was witness to your humiliation.” Luke laughed. “But I believe you’ll live. I don’t know Maddie super well, but I have to say, I’ve never seen her do anything like that before.”
Nate tilted his head closer to Luke. “You don’t know anything about Maddie and me?”
“No. Should I?”
“I just thought...well, this being a small town and all. You might have heard...things.”
“No, I—”
Sarah chose that moment to tug on Luke’s arm.
“Hello, Nate,” Sarah said sweetly, holding out her hand to Nate.
Nate offered her his most dazzling smile as he shook her hand. “Sarah. I’d say you look just the same, but that would be a lie. You’re more beautiful than ever.”
“So,” Luke said, “you guys know each other?”
“We went to high school together. We all did. Maddie, too.” Sarah stared straight at Nate.
“I know I have a lot of explaining to do,” Nate said. “I just wasn’t prepared for the punch.” He grinned sheepishly and rubbed his palm across his flat stomach. Then dropped it as he realized the pain was gone but the sting of the loathing in Maddie’s eyes would remain for a long time, he feared. “That’s the thing about Maddie. You always know where you stand with her.”
“That’s very true,” Sarah said.
Timmy and Annie worked their way through the group and stood in between Luke and Sarah. “Maddie thought you were a ghost,” Timmy said boldly, looking up at Nate.
“I thought she was kidding, little guy,” Nate replied.
Luke introduced the children to Nate. “This is Nate Barzonni. He was in my graduating class at Great Lakes. We go back a long way,” Luke told his kids proudly.
Nate’s head jerked up to face Luke. “You have kids? The last I heard, you were in Afghanistan. Or was it Iraq?”
“Both,” Luke said sternly and without further explanation.
Sarah slipped her arm through Luke’s.
Nate turned to his parents. “Luke was one of the ones who spent most of his tour of duty overseas and seeing the world.”
Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I did. I don’t know if that was lucky or not. Came back alive. Nate, these are Jenny’s children. She died several years ago.”
Nate felt sincere remorse for his friend as the weight of Luke’s information rolled over him. “Oh, God. Luke, I’m so sorry. I liked her. Jenny was so beautiful and so much fun. Gosh, I just...” Nate raked his hand through his hair. “I just didn’t know. I’m sorry. Jenny was great.”
“She was,” Luke replied in a low voice, and then he brightened as he put his arm around Sarah. “But I’ve been blessed again. I found Sarah, or she found me or something. Anyway...”
“We’re getting married in June,” Sarah said before Luke could finish his thought.
“Wow. You’re kidding!” Nate was happily surprised and shook Luke’s hand again. “This is great. Congratulations. Sarah is one of the best friends I had in high school. Remember, Sarah?”
“I do,” Sarah replied.
Nate saw pain flash in her eyes. He realized that when he’d left Indian Lake without telling anyone, he’d hurt Sarah, too. Maddie hadn’t been the only one.
“Nate, dear,” Gina urged politely, touching her son’s sleeve.
“Oh, sorry, Mom.” Nate turned to Luke. “Listen, we still have our brunch, and I’m sure you guys have your Easter plans, as well. Why don’t we get together one day soon.” Nate patted his pockets. “Ah, here. My new card. That’s my cell phone. Give me a shout. We’ll catch up. Okay?”
“Absolutely,” Luke replied, and shook Nate’s hand one last time. “Come on, kids. Let’s check on Mrs. Beabots.”
* * *
IN THE PARKING LOT, Maddie was furiously tapping her Italian high-heeled shoe against the gravel.
“Are you okay, Maddie?” Sarah asked as the kids piled into Luke’s pickup.
“I’m contemplating the purchase of some brass knuckles at the moment,” she fumed.
Olivia helped Mrs. Beabots into the passenger’s side of Maddie’s car. “You did great, dearie,” Mrs. Beabots commended her, giving her a thumbs-up.
“Thank you,” Maddie said, and blew the elderly lady a kiss.
“Listen, Sarah. I’ll take Mrs. Beabots home, and then would it be okay if I came over and talked to you this afternoon? Or are you fixing a big dinner or something? I won’t be intruding, will I?”
“I’m cooking dinner, and you can help me. Mrs. Beabots is making her sugar pie. Please come over. Luke can tell us both about his days in the navy with Nate.”
“His what?”
“Oh, right. You left before you heard all that. Seems Luke and Nate graduated boot camp together at Great Lakes.”
“Nate went to the navy? That’s where he’s been?”
“Apparently. Come over later and let’s see what we can piece together. Something tells me we’ll both learn a lot.”
“Sarah, you’re the best,” Maddie said, hugging her friend.
CHAPTER NINE
MADDIE SAT AMID the family chatter and kitchen clamor as Sarah placed a leg of lamb in the oven and yelled for Beau to come eat his dinner. Maddie’s only job was to whip the cream that would top Mrs. Beabots’s sugar pie. She got up from one of the new bar stools Sarah had placed around the maple-topped island and plugged in the industrial-size mixer. She poured the cream into the bowl, attached the whipping blade, covered the mixer with a kitchen towel to catch the splatters and turned it up to top speed.
Timmy and Annie were helping Luke put dessert plates, forks, spoons and wineglasses on the dining room table. They marched in and out of the kitchen gathering napkins and serving pieces.
Maddie was amazed at how quickly the entire family had melded together. “As if it were meant to be,” she whispered to herself.
All afternoon, Maddie had staggered numbly through the minutes and hours as if she’d been injected with a narcotic. She’d experienced shocks before. Well, only once before. And the shock had been delivered by Nate that time, too.
It had taken her years to work through that minefield of pain, and now she had a new one to deal with. His out-of-the-blue appearance at the lodge with his entire family, as if they’d all been together every Sunday for the past decade, made no sense to her.
Unless his family had known his whereabouts all along.
Was that the answer? The Barzonnis were a tight-knit family. Everyone in Indian Lake knew that. Even though she’d dated Nate for a year in high school, she’d only met Gina and Angelo once, and that had not been by design but by accident.
Many were the nights since their breakup that Maddie thought about their romance and what had gone wrong. What had she done wrong to push him away? She’d also thought about what he’d done wrong, and the things he could have done that would have made a difference.
One of them was that he’d never taken her home to meet his family. He’d never presented her as his girlfriend. Granted, they were only in high school and they weren’t officially engaged, and she’d never pressed him for an introduction. Perhaps that had been wrong of her.
She had to admit that Sarah’s observation that some of her actions belied her lack of self-esteem was true, at least in this case. At the age of seventeen, Maddie hadn’t wanted to meet Nate’s parents. She hadn’t wanted to face the usual battery of questions about her past and her family. She didn’t even talk to Nate about her upbringing—ever.
She wanted him to believe she was the person she had finally invented once they were in high school. She wanted him to think of her as bright, accomplished, fun to be with and popular.
Maddie didn’t force any real issues with Nate. Secretly, she was thrilled that he had chosen her, a white-trash kid from the wrong side of the tracks in disguise, as his girlfriend. She remembered the envy in the other girls’ faces when Nate would walk her to class or meet her under the bleachers after the football and baseball games. She had been his one-and-only girlfriend that year, and it never occurred to her that anyone would dispute it.
She’d assumed that he told his family about her, but maybe he hadn’t.
She couldn’t fault him. She never discussed Nate with her mother. Babs would only mock her and make fun of her new “puppy love.” Her mother loved to go on about how she was so much wiser about men than Maddie, how she knew what they did and did not want. Most of these conversations ended in so much vulgarity, they made Maddie sick.
“Maddie?” Sarah’s voice drifted to her from across the kitchen. “Earth to Maddie. I think the whipped cream should be churned enough by now.”
“Huh?” Maddie looked up at Sarah, who was standing at the sink peeling apples. Sarah glanced down at the mixer.
Maddie followed her gaze. “Oh, right.” She turned the mixer off and removed the towel. “Sweet, not so sweet or super sweet?”
“Not too sweet. The crisp is very rich and sugary.”
“Got it.” Maddie added two heaping tablespoons of white sugar to the cream. She turned the mixer back on for a few more seconds, until the whipped cream was well blended. She stuck in a spoon and tasted it. “Perfect.”
Sarah smiled brightly. “I expect no less from my master pâtissier.”
“Thanks.” Maddie unhooked the whipping blade.
“How are you doing?” Sarah asked, plunging a pink rubber spatula into the cream and transferring it into a gold-rimmed china serving dish.
“Do you think Nate’s family knew he went to the navy?” Maddie asked Sarah.
“They do now,” Sarah replied. “That’s not much of an answer, but until you talk to Nate, you won’t know the real truth of any of it.”
At that moment, Luke walked into the kitchen. “What about Nate?” He stuck a finger into the bowl of whipped cream and scooped a large dollop into his mouth.
“Did you know Nate’s family when you were in boot camp?” Maddie asked.
“Not that I remember. He and I were in the same division, of course, but because our last names both begin with a B we were placed together a lot. In the fourth week, we did weapons training. Nate really sucked, and I spent some extra time giving him some tips.”
“You were good at that?” Sarah asked.
“My dad was an ace!” Annie said, whisking past the island and going to the backdoor, joining in the conversation as easily as if she’d been involved all along...or eavesdropping from the dining room. “Come on, Timmy. Let’s make sure we got all the eggs Sarah hid.”
“Check the cherry and apple trees. You never know,” Sarah called out as the children pounded across the kitchen floor and down the porch stairs to the yard. Beau lifted his head from his doggie bed and jumped up, rushing after them.
Luke continued, “By that time we had all pretty much learned how to live our lives and do things the navy wanted us to. I certainly knew I’d changed. The restricted diet alone was killer. Everything was so fast-paced and every hour seemed to go by in a rush. We were in classrooms and then out. I didn’t have much time to notice anything anyone else was doing. I had a hard time keeping myself from exhaustion and just going and going. I wanted to be the best of the best.”
“What does that mean?” Maddie asked.
“Back then, I wanted to be a navy SEAL.”
Sarah sucked in a breath. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“It’s in the past. And yes, I succeeded. That’s why I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I don’t like to talk about. Maybe another time,” Luke said with finality.
“Okay,” Sarah said reassuringly.
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Luke took her hand and kissed it, then turned back to Maddie. “So, as I was saying. By this point, we trusted the other hundred guys in our division. They’d been strangers only a month before, but now we all knew we were each other’s lives. We were a team. Then we went into firefighting and shipboard damage-control classes. By the end of this training we all had to go inside a tear gas chamber. While we were exposed to the gas, we had to recite our names and social security numbers. It was quite a test to see who could last and who couldn’t.”
“Some didn’t make it?” Maddie asked. “Even after all that training?”
“Some didn’t,” Luke answered. “Then we had Pass and Review, which was when we received our caps. It was our graduation, essentially. My parents were very proud. Jenny was there,” he said with a smile born of fond memories but without the old grief and pain Maddie used to read on his face.
“But you don’t remember if Nate’s family was there?” Maddie inquired, too much hope riding on this fragile piece of Luke’s memory. As far as she was concerned, that one bit of information would tell her if Nate’s disappearance had been a family conspiracy.
“I was so involved with my own triumphs that day that, honest to God, I didn’t pay attention to any of the other guys. We had all been living out of each other’s pockets for so long that I think on that one day, I just wanted to focus of my other life.”
“I understand,” Maddie said. “And you deserved that. It’s a huge accomplishment to make it through any military boot camp. And if I haven’t said it before, thank you for your service, Luke.”
“You’re welcome.”
Maddie looked down at her hand. “I guess I shouldn’t have punched him, huh?”
Sarah and Luke were silent.
“If I’d known all he’s been through, I would have thanked him as well.”
“But you didn’t know,” Sarah reminded her.
“Was he in Iraq or Afghanistan with you, Luke?”
“No. When we were in classes during boot camp, he was in medic training. He’s a doctor now.”
“A doctor?” Maddie and Sarah exclaimed in unison.
The Sweetest Heart Page 7