Unforgiven

by Anne Calhoun

  Up to her ears in invoices and billing, the knock on her apartment door surprised her. Even more surprising was the shape in the window, backlit by the first sun in weeks, too short to be Adam, the shoulders too broad to be Alana.

  She opened the door to Don Lemmox, the county’s most successful real estate agent. His agency brokered many of the larger land deals in the area, and also auctioned estates like Mrs. Edmunds. She could think of no good reason for him to show up at her door.

  “Mr. Lemmox,” she said, blinking with surprise. “What can I do for you?”

  “Miss Brooks,” he said formally, his hat in his hand, “Can I have a moment of your time?”

  “Of course,” she said, and stood back to let him in.

  “I’d like to have another look at the house,” he said.

  She should have felt a pleased surprise. He could only be back to investigate Brookhaven as a possible reception site for his daughter’s wedding, and this was a good thing. The income would help pay the house’s operating costs, and pay down her home equity loan more quickly.

  “Of course,” she said, striving for a smile. “I’ll meet you at the front door.”

  He nodded and resettled his hat on his head. She hurried through the door connecting the servants’ quarters to the kitchen, through the great room to the front door. The hardwood floors, efficiently mopped by Stacey and her cleanup crew, gleamed in the intermittent sunlight as Lemmox walked around, examining the plaster, the flooring, the mantel as closely as he had the night before.

  “Candlelight hides flaws,” he mused, peering at the paneling.

  “There aren’t many to hide,” she said.

  “You’ve done quite a bit of work to the house,” he said mildly. His gaze went to the stained-glass windows. “Did you do it yourself?”

  “Much of it,” she said. “The windows were designed by a visiting artist at SDSU, and Billy did the wiring and the HVAC. Adam Collins helped me with the woodwork. The rest of the interior and exterior work is mine.”

  “Where did you find the paneling?” he asked, examining the newly restored south wall in his careful way.

  “The Meadows, owned by the Edmunds family.”

  “Same architect as Brookhaven, correct?” he asked, his two-pack-a-day voice echoing in the empty room.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a good match. That property goes up for sale next week,” he said. “She had a stroke last Friday.”

  She froze, mid-breath, because she and Adam had removed the last, best piece of her house just days before. “I didn’t know,” she murmured. “Was she . . . ?”

  “Apparently she’d had a series of ministrokes last year. It was only a matter of time.” He stopped in front of the west-facing windows looking over the meadow that led to the creek. “How much land comes with the property?”

  “Twenty acres. All that’s left,” she said before the odd nature of the question registered. “Why?”

  “Last year a woman from Connecticut contacted me, asking about properties in the area,” he said, still looking out over the meadow. “She had a Wall Street job and got downsized in one of the recent economic downturns. Apparently she’s into yoga and Buddhism, and she got it into her head to open a retreat center, but they’re thick on the ground on the East Coast, so she decided to look for untapped markets. She had a business plan,” he said with a slightly mocking smile. “I figured her for an East Coast fly-by-night and told her I didn’t have anything to sell.”

  “Okay,” she said, not sure what this had to do with her and Brookhaven.

  “Last week I got another call from her, asking if anything new had opened up. ‘Somewhere with a little space, so we could build rustic cabins for long-term retreatants,’ she said. ‘Near water,’ she said. ‘Something with character,’ she said.” He looked around the great room. “Something like Brookhaven. I sent her pictures yesterday. She liked it, and authorized me to make you an offer.”

  He named a sum so astonishing that for a minute all thinking ceased. Lemmox mistook her reaction for disbelief. “I asked around to find out what you’d put into the house, figured I knew what the land was worth in dollars, but not in family value. This was your family’s home for nearly a hundred and fifty years. I told the buyer you probably wouldn’t want to sell, so she’s making an offer based on the house’s newly renovated condition, historical value, and character. It’s a fair offer.”

  He had no reason to lowball her. He’d make a percentage on the sale, so the higher the price, the more he made. But swindling the buyers wasn’t in his best interests, either. If the business failed, he’d cheat himself out of an opportunity to sell Brookhaven again. The fair offer, the little voice in her brain told her, was enough to pay off the home equity loan, buy a small sailboat, and leave enough left over for a couple of years of supplies, if she were frugal.

  Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know how to sail. It’s a dream. It’s not meant to become reality.

  “I got them a good loan through Walker’s bank. You’d get a cashier’s check on signing.” He gave a phlegmy cough, then added, “She wants to take possession as soon as possible.”

  In one stunning moment the why became clear, why she’d felt so driven to finish the house. Restoring Brookhaven wasn’t intended to tie her to Walkers Ford. It was intended to set her free.

  No angels sang a hallelujah chorus; if anything, the house sat unusually silent. She could leave. She could leave Brookhaven, Walkers Ford, South Dakota, and the entire Midwest; and the thoughts, coming hard and fast, sent a cresting wave of joy through her chest. Thanks to Adam, she now knew what it meant to want something, to desire it, long for it out of the depths of her soul, not out of a desperate loyalty, or worse, fear. Restoring Brookhaven was her duty, one she’d fulfilled without complaint.

  Sailing was her desire. That’s what Adam taught her, the difference between duty and desire.

  A car door closed outside the front door, sending another thought eddying through her frozen brain. Adam was staying. Adam was back home, for good, about to start graduate school, planning their future in eastern South Dakota. Planning it. Not dreaming it.

  Your timing always was shit said that oh-so-helpful little voice.

  He came through the open front door, his face clearing when he saw her and Lemmox standing in front of the mantel. She gestured him in, and he closed the door, then crossed the wide space, his booted feet loud in the vast, echoing space that was the great room, and her mind.

  Adam and Mr. Lemmox shook hands, exchanged greetings. Then Adam turned to her, wary curiosity in his hazel eyes.

  “Mr. Lemmox has just made me an offer for Brookhaven,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

  Lemmox repeated his story about the woman from Connecticut that wanted to open a Great Plains retreat center, get back to the simple life. The concept of life in Walkers Ford as “simple” made her laugh, the sound startling her back into the chilly room, where she found both men looking at her. She blinked, came back to the oddly lit day, sunlight streaming in patches along the creek and meadow, lighting up one or two windows, then disappearing behind the calico clouds. She came back to Adam, backlit in the windows, his face hidden to her.

  The straight spine and squared shoulders told her all she needed to know.

  “I need to think about this,” she said gently to Mr. Lemmox.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, see what you’ve decided.”

  He walked to the front door and let himself out while she and Adam stared at each other. She couldn’t see his face, just the nimbus of sunlight around his head, and she couldn’t tell what her own expression was.

  “Say something,” she said.

  “I got the apartment. In the 1921 building,” he added. “The guy who rented it got into law school at Michigan. The property manager called today.”

  “Timing,” she said. “It’s all about timing, and mine’s always been shit.”

/>   “Wrong. Your timing’s perfect. I’ve seen that look on your face one other time,” he replied. “When we were sailing and Nate gave you the wheel. Right now you look exactly like you did then. You look alive.”

  “I can’t do it,” she said. “The house holds a hundred and fifty years of Brooks memories. I belong here. My family is here, buried in the cemetery—.”

  “Exactly, Ris. They’re buried here. You’re alive. Live!”

  She shook her head. “It’s an incredible offer, but I can’t take it.”

  “Why not?” He folded his arms across his chest. Braced to do battle with I can’ts. “Why not take it and get out of here?”

  “I don’t know how to sail a boat! One afternoon on Lake Michigan, that’s all I’ve got! How am I going to buy a boat and sail it across the ocean?”

  He flung his hand toward the stained-glass windows in the great room as he strode toward her. Now she could see his face clearly, and it was alive as well, passionately intent on making her see what he saw. What he believed. “How did you learn to do any of this? Plaster walls? Plumb bathrooms? Craft windows?”

  “Someone taught me,” she said quietly.

  “Wrong,” he said again. “You went after it. You did what you had to do to make your dad’s dream come true. Now it’s time to make your own dream come true.”

  The complete reversal in their situations would have been funny, if it wasn’t going to destroy them. “You’re part of my dream, Adam. I love you. It’s always been you. Not you alone, but you’re a part of me. Come with me.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you.”

  “Wrong,” she said slowly, arms folded, spine straight. “That’s what this Marine would do, because that’s the logical thing to do. You don’t have to make up for what you’ve done, not to me, not to Brookhaven. I need you to love me, to let yourself feel what you felt that spring, what you feel now. Defer enrollment for a year and come with me.”

  “It’s not just you.” He shoved both palms over his hair, then turned toward the windows framing the town of Walkers Ford. “I’ve made more mistakes than walking away from you. I can’t keep running from this place. You’ve done what you had to do to get right with this town. I haven’t. I have to stay. Leaving again isn’t the answer.”

  He stood solid and unmoving in the great room. Maybe it was the unusual silence, maybe it was the shift in her internal landscape, but something clicked into place inside her. She finally asked the question she’d avoided asking for the last month. “Why did you break up with Delaney? Why did you come back so early for the wedding?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Eight months ago I got an anonymous e-mail. Attached was a picture of Delaney, naked in a hotel room I’d never seen. The picture quality was really good. The sex flush on her face and neck was just starting to fade.”

  She blinked, not quite comprehending what she heard. “Delaney was cheating on you?”

  “So it appeared.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’m not sure. In the picture her hair was the length it is now. She cut it shorter a year or so ago, so sometime in the last year. It may have been the first time, but I doubt it. Delaney wouldn’t have let someone take her picture that way unless she was totally comfortable with him.”

  “Who was she with? Who took the picture?” she asked, her voice rising with disbelief. “Who sent you the picture while you were deployed to Afghanistan?” Adam didn’t say anything, didn’t move, and she made the connection. This was the problem with clearing the fog away. Realizations came out of the blue, hard and fast, things she’d known deep down but didn’t want to acknowledge. About herself, about Adam, but not about this. “Keith. She cheated on you with Keith, and that son of a bitch sent you the picture.”

  “The e-mail address was an anonymous Yahoo! account, but a buddy of mine traced it back to the IP address for Keith’s office.”

  “No one here knew,” she said, still in disbelief. “I’m sure of it. Gossip like that would have been all over town.”

  “It didn’t have to happen here. They both have plenty of reason to be in Brookings or Sioux Falls at the same time.”

  “Did you confront him? Her?” she asked, losing her footing in the conversation as easily as she’d found it. “Who asked you to be the best man?”

  “He did.” Adam was braced now, legs spread, arms folded across his chest, unmovable. “He never came out and asked me what happened. He was careful about that. Just said he was sorry things fell apart. Then he e-mailed and said they’d been spending time together, and he wanted to know how I’d feel if he asked her out. Would I mind. I knew by this time, knew he’d sent it, knew what he was doing. I wanted to see how far he’d take it, and he took it all the way.”

  “You never confronted him? You just let him think he’d won?”

  “I brought it up in the vestry before the wedding started. Asked him why he’d done it.”

  A short laugh burst from her lungs. “Because he’s a manipulative, self-centered, insecure asshole who gets off on bringing other people low.”

  His smile was utterly without humor. “You called it twelve years ago.”

  “Being right about this doesn’t make me feel any better. Did he say why?”

  “He claimed he’d stood by and watched me string her along for a decade while I went to every school the Marine Corps offered and deployed for guys who had families at home. If I’d loved her, I would have come home to her.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Marissa scoffed.

  “From his perspective, it’s dead-on accurate.”

  “So you’re back, fixing what you think you’ve done wrong. Me. Brookhaven. Delaney.”

  “You weren’t on the list, Ris,” he said with a crooked smile. “You were like you always were, unavoidable. Undeniable. The siren call I couldn’t resist.”

  How could he look at her like that? “I’m not sorry for it,” she said.

  “Neither am I,” he replied, then looked out the windows again. “Keith asked me to stand up at his wedding. I take that responsibility seriously, even if they don’t. I had to be sure she was getting what she wanted. Because in the end, he was right. I didn’t love her like she needed to be loved.”

  “No wonder she’s avoided you the last month. I thought she was being considerate of your feelings. Why didn’t you tell people the truth?”

  She knew the answer to that question the moment it left her mouth. When you’d survived vicious gossip, had your name, reputation, and future dragged through the mud, you thought twice about inflicting that pain on someone else. When you’d sweated blood to learn honor and discipline, you thought twice about throwing it away on sordid gossip.

  “It’s over now,” he said. “They’re in Fiji. Then they’ll come home, and life will go on.”

  “All the more reason for you to leave Walkers Ford,” she said.

  “I can’t, Marissa,” he said simply. “You’ve had a decade to get right with this place. I spent a decade avoiding what I’d done here. Who I was. Who I am. It’s time for me to face that.”

  “I know who I am,” she said. “I’m a Brooks. This is my home. When I was with you, I was something more. I was Adam’s girl. Then you left, and I was just a Brooks. I never thought I’d be anything more than that again, but you taught me I could be more. You can, too! You can be more than this Marine,” she said, her sweeping gesture taking in his straight spine, his cropped hair, his tan, the years of blood and sweat and sacrifice somehow worked into his skin.

  “That’s sacrilege, Brooks,” he said, his humor flashing for just a moment, but then the smile faded. “It would just be more running, and without the uniform and the sacrifice to justify it. The Marine Corps gave me a framework when I needed one. You stayed, and you worked through it. You built the possibility of a future. I left and avoided it. I can’t keep running.”

  His voice was implacable, but she shook her head, felt the tears burn behind her eye
s. “Getting the sailboat and getting out of here was just a dream, something to keep me sane.”

  “That’s exactly why you have to do it. It’s your dream.” He looked around. “This was your father’s dream. Construction was Chris’s life. It’s time for you to live yours. Grab it with both hands.”

  “I don’t need to do it. I’ll stay. I’ll move to Brookings with you, find a job.” She huffed out a laugh. “Maybe I’ll go to college. I never had the money before. I could, if I sell the house.”

  “I want that,” he said softly, ache vibrating in his voice. “I want that so bad I feel like I’m dying inside. But I won’t keep asking people to put their life on hold for me, and that’s what you’d be doing. Living my dream, not yours.”

  “It’s not your dream, either!” she burst out.

  “Marissa.” His voice cracked into the room. “Close your eyes and think about that day on the lake. Do it.”

  She did, drawing the memories of the sun and wind from the locked chamber in her heart. A smile spread across her face even as she exhaled against the tears and clenched her fists. “No,” she said.

  He ignored her. “Keep your eyes closed. Now think about getting an apartment with me in Brookings. Think about trying to find a job there, or going to class at the U.”

  She couldn’t do it. The smile melted, and the familiar sense of clouds and rain settled over her. She opened her eyes, shook her head.

  “You have to go.”

  “No,” she repeated. “No. I don’t.”

  “Don’t ask me to take you knowing what you’d give up to be with me,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me how much I can bear to sacrifice.” The words came out more sharply than she intended, and he went still. She glanced around pointedly at the house that nearly consumed her. “I can handle a lot, Adam. Giving up a dream I had no hope of realizing until last week isn’t much at all in the big scheme of things.”