“That’s right!” Maxine jabbed her talon-finger at the table at large. “We used to sneak around that house, trying to find the hidden gems. Place was empty as often as it was lived in, you know—probably got a curse on it, now’t I think of it—and there was a time we sneaked inside too. Had a smoke, even. Never got caught, neither!”
“We never did either,” said Juanita smugly.
Cherry and Orbra were laughing. “We sneaked in there too. But our generation was more interested in smoking pot and making out in the house than finding a cache of jewels.”
Leslie looked around at the table in amazement. “Are you telling me you all were sneaking into Shenstone House?”
“Well, yes. An abandoned house, just far enough outside of town and in the woods to be secluded, but not so far away from everything so as to be scary…what do you think?” Cherry said.
“I never did,” Iva said primly. Her friends looked at her with disbelieving eyes. “Well, I didn’t sneak. Tommy Baxterberry had a key, and we used to go in there to make out.”
“That’s because the people who was living there when you were hot to trot traveled to Europe all the time,” Maxine said. Then she wheeled her eyes toward Leslie. “And you never sneaked inside yourself, missy? You had to be the only generation what didn’t do that.”
“I was only here for a few summers in my early teens, and none of the boys were very interesting. Besides, I think Mr. Mineera was living there at the time. He had big dogs.”
“Ah, yes, that’ll do it,” Cherry replied.
“Look! There he is!” Maxine fairly bolted out of her chair. “That has to be him!” She leveraged her walking stick to heave herself to her feet. “Right there on the corner! You shoulda been watching!” she screeched at Juanita, and almost lost her balance in the process. “We almost missed him. Not that you can see anything anyway—”
“Who? Where?”
“It’s that Jeremy Fischer. See, the guy with the beard? It has to be him. He’s with Mildred and—Hey! Why does Aaron Underwhite get to meet him?” Maxine’s nose was pressed to the tea shop window.
Leslie looked outside as well. Sure enough, standing on the street corner was a small cluster of people: an older woman who was probably the innkeeper at Sunflower House, an attractive man of about forty with dark hair and a full beard and mustache, and an elegant couple of about fifty. The last two were dressed in business suits and were shaking the man’s hand.
“Aaron Underwhite’s the mayor, Maxine,” Orbra said. “I suppose he’s probably welcoming the celebrity to our town. He and Regina are always very gracious to anyone who visits.”
This pulled Maxine away from the window, and she spoke to Leslie as if she’d not been living in the town for a month, “Aaron Underwhite and Regina Clemons. Never could figure out that match. She used to go out with Colter Bray, remember?”
Since Maxine was looking at her as if she expected a response, Leslie answered, “I think that was before my time.
“Colter Bray was one of them jockey strap boys back in high school, and now she’s married to the nerdy Underwhite kid.”
Orbra appeared to share Maxine’s emotion. “How do you remember all of those people? They’re at least thirty years younger than you, and it’s not like you had kids of your own who knew them.”
Maxine tapped her temple with a curved finger. “Perfect memory, right here. Never forget a face or nothing. Ain’t that how I helped catch that culprit was messing with Diana Iverson last summer?” She turned back to the view. “Now how the hell am I going to get me an invite to meet Jeremy Fischer?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” Iva said.
The gleam in the elderly woman’s eye was enough to make Leslie shudder. She was suddenly relieved her own inn wasn’t quite ready to open. She didn’t think she could handle customers like Maxine Took.
Three
“Steph? You here?” Declan called as he came in through the back door, clumping into the mudroom in his heavy work boots.
He was sweaty and smelled pretty ripe from spending three hours in the smithy working on Leslie Nakano’s stair railing. He hadn’t planned to start working on it so soon—he hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he had plenty of jobs—but she kept popping into his mind and he found it difficult not to think about her.
He wasn’t exactly sure why she’d lodged there in his head. It wasn’t like there’d been some great big sizzle of attraction between them. Sure, he saw how pretty she was under the ball cap and dust she wore, but as far as he was concerned there was a lot more to a woman than the way she looked. God help him, he’d learned that the hard way.
Whatever. He wasn’t going to drop everything to get her job done, but he’d work on it when he had the urge to do so.
“Steph?” he called again, hesitating on the threshold. Normally, he’d strip everything off in the back hall of wherever he was living and leave it—wet, stinky, and smoky—until later, but living with a teenaged girl he hardly knew put a cramp in that style.
Dec still could hardly believe the phone call, six months ago, that had upended his entire life. One minute, he’d been enjoying the single life—working his ass off on various locations in Savannah or Atlanta and making a buttload of money, hanging with his buddies, dating occasionally…and the next minute, he was answering the phone to a girl—woman—he’d dated the summer between high school and college. The old Seger song “Night Moves” mashed up with Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” (both good old Michigan rockers) pretty much described the summer he spent hanging out with Cara Doucette.
He’d answered the call, recognizing that it was from back home in Wicks Hollow—maybe his friend Jed had gotten a new number—and nearly fell out of his chair when the voice said, “Declan? This is Cara Doucette. A real blast from the past, huh? How are you? You got a minute?”
She’d spoken so quickly, spewing it all out in one breath, that it took him a second to catch up. “Hey, Cara. Nice to hear from you. Yeah, I’ve got a few minutes.” He did his best to keep the question and wariness from his voice. From his and his buddies’ experience, when an old flame looked you up—whether it be via social media or directly like this—it was because she was interested in one of two things: another hookup, or to show the guy how successful/happy she was without him.
Fortunately, she didn’t beat around the bush. In fact, Dec had the feeling she was actually reading off something she’d written, for she launched right into a speech that yanked the rug of life out from under his booted feet.
“I have something to tell you. I should have told you back then, after we broke up, but I didn’t. There were lots of reasons, and I’m sorry for it, I made a mistake. A big mistake. Except she’s not a mistake at all. Oh, damn.” Her voice dropped, implying she’d gone off script. “Dec, I’m just going to come right out and say this. That summer you and I were together—well, I got pregnant, had the baby, and you’re the father.”
He pulled the phone away to stare at it. A roaring sound filled his ears, and his insides surged and swirled into something worse than the morning after too many beers. His brain pretty much exploded into nothing…then crashed back into his skull with a whirlwind of emotions.
“Declan? Are you there? I know it’s a shock, but…”
He hardly heard anything she said at first, and it took him a long time—a long time—to calm down enough to get the basic facts. He was the father of a fifteen-year-old girl named Stephanie. Cara had gotten married to her ex-boyfriend—the one she’d broken up with just before she and Declan got together; Dec had been her summer fling and rebound—and they’d raised Stephanie in Wicks Hollow. She never told anyone except her husband that Stephanie wasn’t his child.
“So…why tell me now?” he managed to say from between stiff lips. Somehow, he couldn’t drag in a deep enough breath.
“Because she wants to meet you.”
Something rushed through him—warmth and delight, followed abruptly
by a stark, ice-cold chill. “Ohhh…kay,” he managed to say. The questions swirling around in his head—he could figure out all the answers later…and dissect the emotions (shock, anger, confusion) as well. Now, he would take one step at a time.
And so he had. He’d met Stephanie—flown up to Michigan, spent a weekend with her that went surprisingly well—then flew back to Savannah, where he was working temporarily. He was both stoked and terrified that he had fathered this lovely young woman and didn’t know a thing about her.
Over the next few months they got to know one another better—they talked on the phone, she visited him, he visited her, they emailed—and then in May, he got the second unexpected phone call.
The one that really shuffled his life around.
“Dad.” She was sniffling and crying into the phone, and he felt a shocking surge of protectiveness blast through him. “I n-need to ask you for something. A really big f-favor.”
“What is it?” Terror, followed by a million questions. Was she in jail? Had she gotten knocked up? Had Cara’s husband done something to her? “What’s wrong, Steph?” He tried to keep the panic from his voice. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“I just found out”—she was really sniffling, but clearly struggling to keep her voice steady—“that Dad—my other dad—is being transferred to New Hampshire. And they want to move me to New Hampshire, and change schools right in the middle of high school.” Her gulp was audible through the phone. “And I was wondering if there was any ch-chance you could— Well, you could come here and I could live with you.” The last few words came out in a rush. “I know you move around a lot and you can do your work anywhere, otherwise I wouldn’t ask, but I really don’t want to move to New Hampshire.” Her voice rose in a desperate wail that she was clearly still trying to keep under control.
And before he realized what he was saying, what it would mean, Declan heard the words come out of his mouth: “I think I could do that.”
Yeah. Just like that.
Damn-ass marshmallow that he was, he couldn’t stand to hear a woman cry.
So, a little more than four months ago, just after school got out, Dec found himself setting up house with his fifteen-year-old daughter—who was now a sophomore in high school. A completely foreign entity to his thirty-three-year-old bachelor self.
“Steph! You here?” he called again, really tempted to do the back-hall-stripping thing. Usually when Stephanie was home, it was evident due to some sort of noise—most often music or her voice on the phone or Skype. Or the running shower.
Feeling as if the coast was clear, he’d just pulled off his shirt (which, while it was still decent, made him feel a little uncomfortable around this teenager he didn’t know that well, and really uncomfortable when her friends were around because he always had the sense they were whispering about him and gawking) and, with a glance through the half-open door that led into the kitchen, began to unfasten his belt.
“Hey, Dad!” The sounds of clomping feet from the depths of the house brought him up short.
Shit. He quickly refastened his belt and grabbed the sweaty mass of the shirt he’d discarded from the floor. He was still wearing a beater tee—which, hell, he might as well be shirtless the way it stuck to him—so he shrugged back into the sleeves of his flannel. Declan walked into the kitchen just in time to meet his daughter as she bounced in from the general area of her bedroom or the bathroom.
His daughter.
Declan still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. This young woman, this bright-eyed, smart, I-can-even-talk-to-adults fifteen-year-old was his offspring. He didn’t remember himself at fifteen—or even seventeen or eighteen, or hell, even at twenty—being as mature, levelheaded, and confident as Stephanie was.
“Hey,” he said nonchalantly. “How was school? What are you doing tonight? Have lots of homework?” Those were the three questions he’d come up with that seemed reasonable and logical for a parent to ask his child, and so far, she hadn’t seemed to be bothered by them or feel as if they were an invasion of privacy.
Stephanie was at the counter, slamming jars of peanut butter and jelly onto the granite surface with no thought to the potential result of glass abruptly meeting stone. “I think I got a job,” she said, yanking a loaf of bread out of the pantry.
She had long, dark blond hair, which she usually wore in a messy bun or spent hours either straightening or curling and letting it hang down past her shoulder blades. Today, it was long and straight, and she wore a loose, long-sleeved shirt and skinny jeans (not skinny skinny jeans; he’d learned the difference between the two when he’d taken her shopping for school—an event he wasn’t sure she’d ever convince him to repeat).
“A job?” he repeated, eyeing the sandwich taking shape in front of her with interest. “Pass me those jars, will you?”
“Here,” she said, passing him her just-made sandwich. “You can have this one. I’ll make another.”
For some reason, this made the back of his throat burn with emotion. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Didn’t mean to take the food out of your mouth.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes big and dark and brown. If Declan hadn’t seen the results of the DNA test with his own eyes, he would never have believed she was his child. “It’s no problem, Dad,” she said. “I can make another one.”
Damn, the sandwich tasted good. Particularly good. “So, a job, huh?” He tried not to sound as completely surprised as he was. She hadn’t mentioned anything about getting a job. And she was only fifteen…
“Yeah.” Now he could see a giddiness beneath her demeanor. “It’s like a Gal Friday sort of position. I’ll be working a couple hours after school each day, and then more on the weekend. She’s really flexible, and I’ll be able to do a lot of different things.”
“She? After school every day? Don’t you need a work permit? Aren’t there child labor laws?”
“It’s under-the-table money, Dad,” she said, hands on hips, eyes rolling like a pro. “Like babysitting? I don’t need a work permit for that. And if it begins to interfere with my school—which it won’t—Leslie said I just had to tell her and we’d adjust as necessary. Did you know she used to be the CEO of InterWorks?” Stephanie’s eyes were wide. “She’s almost as famous as Marissa Mayer and Meg Whitman! She was even on the cover of Fortune magazine. And she’s only thirty-four—I mean, I guess that’s young for all that.”
Declan’s thoughts were galloping off in several different directions, and it took more than few chews and a swallow before he could rein them in. “Leslie? As in Leslie Nakano? At Shenstone House?”
“Yes! And she hired me!” Stephanie was dancing around the kitchen, heedless of the goop of jelly that splattered off her knife and onto the hardwood floor. “Can you believe it?”
No. He actually couldn’t believe it. And he wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about it, for several reasons. “You didn’t tell me you were going to get a job,” he began. “And what exactly are you going to be doing for Ms. Nakano—not Leslie,” he said firmly. “She’s Ms. Nakano.”
“She told me to call her Leslie.” Some of the giddy light was fading from her eyes.
“She’s your employer—supposedly—and you need to show her respect.”
Oh really? The kind of “respect” you’ve been known to show some of your employers? The little voice in his head reminded him smugly of the way that had turned out.
He batted the thoughts away and continued his lecture. “Ms. Nakano it is—and you still haven’t told me what you’re going to be doing for her.” Already he had visions of her using a table saw, or lifting heavy sheets of drywall, or covered with dust and mold and bits of insulation that of course would have asbestos in them…
What on earth was this woman thinking? Stephanie wasn’t equipped to work on that house. She was a high school girl, not a contractor!
She was a high school girl, not some cheap laborer.
“Fine. Ms. Nakano,” Stepha
nie said flatly. “And what do you mean by supposedly?”
“It sounds very informal to me,” he said, backing off a little in the face of her expression. His daily goal was: no tears and no shouting… “And vague. That’s not really a good way to start a business relationship.”
“She’s going to pay me ten dollars an hour, and I’ll be working from three to four thirty Monday through Thursday. Fridays I don’t work because of pom, and then I work noon till four on Saturday. How is that vague?”
That actually sounded pretty reasonable. But Declan was the father here, and though the last thing he wanted was a confrontation with his daughter—no way, no how—he still had a responsibility he was taking seriously. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see? What does that mean?” Hands on the hips again. Now her eyes were flashing with fire.
“It means I need more information. Now, what sort of homework do you have tonight? And don’t you have pom practice tonight anyway?”
Pom. He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that his daughter was a cheerleader—but, as he’d learned the hard way, she wasn’t a cheerleader, even though she wore a uniform that looked like that of a cheerleader, and had pompoms like a cheerleader, and stood on the sidelines at the football games and shouted and danced and did all the things cheerleaders did…
What the hell was she if she wasn’t a cheerleader? Apparently there was some difference between cheerleaders and pom, though he sure as hell couldn’t figure it out. All Declan wanted was to be certain she wasn’t one of those cheerleaders who slept with half the football team like they’d done back when he was in high school.
He happened to know about that from personal experience.
“Yes, I have pom. That’s why I was getting something to eat. But now I have to go.” She looked darkly at the half-made sandwich in front of her, and Declan submerged a rush of guilt. He had taken her food.
“Uh,” he said. “How about an apple?”
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