“You said you wanted to complete Devora’s collection and donate it to the Audubon Society because that’s what she always wanted—it was her dream. That’s all true.”
“It’s true that it was her dream, all right.” His voice was taut, brittle. “What I didn’t tell you was that it was also an ironclad condition of her last will and testament.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she tried to understand.
Griff swallowed hard before spelling it out for her. “Devora left me this house and everything in it, with the condition that I not sell as much as a box of matches until I completed her collection of birds.”
As she considered that, he continued. “That’s what I was alluding to whenever you’d pat me on the back for doing it and I’d say it wasn’t my idea, or that I felt compelled to do it.”
“I thought you meant you were compelled out of a sense of loyalty…of love—and you knew that’s what I thought.”
“Yeah, I knew it…and I felt like hell every time it came up.”
“You didn’t do it for Devora at all,” she stated, regarding him with disbelief and growing anger.
“Not entirely, not at first…”
“Not at all,” she interrupted. “Otherwise, you would have done it sooner, instead of showing up out of the blue two years after the fact.”
He didn’t even attempt to explain, dashing Rose’s small, stubborn, stupid hope that he would—that he could.
“So what made you come back now?”
He gave his head a weary shake, hooking his fingers inside the pockets of his jeans. “To get the lawyer handling her estate off my back once and for all. For two years he’s been on me to do something about the house. An empty house is ‘a liability and a potential hazard,’ unquote. He was worried someone might break in or fall off the cliffs and get hurt.”
“I see. So you decided that since you didn’t have anything better to do, you’d get him off your back by coming here and…what, Griff? Why exactly did you come? Tell me your plan to eliminate this potential hazard. Did you come to stop the house from being empty? Or to sell it?”
“I never told you I was definite about staying,” he reminded her.
“Yes, and you never said anything at all about selling. You just led me to believe you were staying…just like you led me to believe you were doing all this out of respect for Devora. You never said it, but you let me believe it…because you needed my help and you knew exactly what to say and do to get it.” She lifted her hands to her face. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I could be such a fool.”
“Don’t say that, Rose, please…” He moved toward her, and she backed away. “You can’t believe that the only reason I—”
“Oh, but I do believe it. I believed all of it—hook, line and sinker. It’s because I believed it…because I convinced myself it was proof that underneath all that attitude, you must be a decent guy…that’s the only reason I agreed to help you in the first place…that’s the only reason I—”
“Rose, give me a chance…”
“I did,” she said, shuddering with the urge to get away. “I’m done.”
Clutching her dress with one hand, she used the other to grab her sandals and bag. She could feel him following her, wanting to press his case, maybe to get one more night out of her before putting out the For Sale sign. Let him. She hoped he did sell it, and fast. She’d rather live next door to a…a strip mall than a liar and a user.
She pushed the screen door open and paused halfway out to glance back over her shoulder, wishing she had something sharper and more damaging to throw at him than the truth.
“You were wise to listen to that attorney, Griffin. He had the scenario dead right—someone did get hurt here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Think. Griff knew there had to be a solution. He just had to think.
Unfortunately, all he was able to think about, as he sat in the glider on the porch, was how miserable he was without Rose, and how he had only himself to blame, and of all the things he could have said and should have said when he had the chance.
If ignoring his phone calls and his knocks on her door and the notes he’d tucked inside the flowers and pizza he attempted to have delivered to her, were any indication, she did not appear ready to give him another shot at explaining anytime soon. Appealing to her sense of humor, he’d even hung a white flag on her lamppost, where she was sure to see it when she left for work in the morning. She’d ignored it, and him.
He knew better than to corner her at work, but there had to be a way to get her to hear him out. He clung stubbornly to the hope that if he could get Rose to listen to what he had to say, she would forgive him. She might even understand, but being Rose, she would forgive him, anyway, and give him another chance. That’s all he needed, one more chance. Because if he got it, he would never lie to Rose or hurt her again; he would take better care of her heart than he did his own.
He had messed things up from the moment they met, and it didn’t lessen his self-disgust to note that his blunders had been predictable and could be chalked up to ignorance. He’d never been in love before.
He was now. He was in love with Rose Davenport and ready to tell her. If she would only stop pretending he was nonexistent and give him five minutes of her time. Ten minutes, tops. He had his speech all prepared, and he could deliver it without a single flub. He wasn’t getting cocky, however. Rose was bound to be a tougher audience than a flock of seagulls. He had to allow for lapses in concentration and common sense when he was near her. Or worse.
What happened the other night had not been a mere lapse. It had been an outright debacle. Next time would be different. Next time he would start by telling her he loved her, and then explain the rest of it, along with all the things he’d figured out in four lonely days without her.
It didn’t matter what he was ready to say, however, if the only person he wanted to say it to refused to hear.
He kept the glider moving with one foot. He did some of his best thinking sitting in that glider, on the front porch of a house he’d once held in contempt.
The methods of making someone listen that he was most familiar with—shouting and brute force—were not likely to work with Rose. Reasoning with her wouldn’t be his first choice, either. She wasn’t motivated by reason or practicality, but rather by her heart. All he had to do was to get her body to stand still long enough for her heart to hear him.
He halted the glider.
That was the answer. He had to come up with a way to shock her into stopping and keeping still long enough for him to explain.
And if it didn’t work… His mouth settled into a grim line as he pushed with his foot to get the glider going again. If it didn’t work, he would just have to accept it. And come up with a Plan B.
“Your move.”
“I know, Gus,” replied Rose. “I’m thinking.”
“Might help if you were thinking about dominoes.”
“I am thinking about dominoes,” she retorted, flashing him an indignant glance. She returned her attention to the tiles on the table before her and tried to recall the play she had been about to make. It was no use.
Lifting her head, her expression rueful this time, she shrugged. “Maybe I’m not thinking about dominoes entirely.”
“That’s a relief, because you’re playing like it’s not dominoes you’re thinking of at all.”
“Maybe we should call it a night.”
“Maybe.” Gus began picking up tiles. “Then again, maybe we ought to call it a night for dominoes and see if we can’t put our heads together and hash out whatever it is that’s got you looking as gloomy as a lost kitten.”
“I am hardly a lost kitten,” she informed him, hearing her own defensiveness. “Not exactly, anyway. I’m… I’m…oh, hell, Gus, I’m a mess.”
His blue eyes regarded her with compassion, but not surprise. “Because of your spat with Griffin.”
“Is that what he told you? That we had a spat?”
“No telling was necessary. I knew the moment I laid eyes on his sorry face what the trouble was.”
“Well, I assure you it was not a spat,” Rose responded. “At least, not to me. I was pretty sure you’d take his side, seeing as you two have become such great buddies lately. That’s why I told myself I wouldn’t even discuss it with you.”
“We are buddies, Griffin and me, but you and I are buddies, too. Or so I thought.”
“We are, Gus,” she said, warmed by his reminder. “It’s just hard for me to talk about this with anyone else when I’m not sure exactly what I feel myself.”
“Does that include Griffin?”
“Especially Griff.”
It hurt to just say his name. That was another reason she avoided discussing him; it was too pathetic to admit, even to Maryann. Especially to Maryann, she thought, though her friend was taking an uncharacteristic “wait and see” attitude toward Rose’s plight. Her own attitude was to survive one moment at a time without reaching for a phone to call him…to hear his voice, to find out if maybe there was a good reason for what he had done, to ask him why. To give him another shot at breaking her heart.
She would not call. She would not crumble. She would not listen.
“I suppose that’s the reason you’ve been playing deaf and blind around the fellow for the past week,” Gus ventured.
“I suppose he told you that, too.”
“That he did. Is that the truth of it?”
She shrugged. “It’s true…which is more than I can say for most of what comes out of his mouth. Did he tell you he plans to sell Fairfield House?” she demanded, her voice rising. “And about Devora’s will? That the only reason he had any interest in completing her collection of birds was because he had to in order to sell the house? And that he tricked me into helping him and into…being his friend,” she concluded, her voice wavering at the end.
“He told me all of that, and more.”
“I suppose he put a different spin on it, right?”
“Oh, I’d say the spin was the same—but that in his version you come out the loveliest saint who ever drew breath and him the devil himself.”
“At least he got that right,” she quipped. She wished hearing it didn’t make her go soft inside. “Did he really tell it like that?”
“He did.”
“He didn’t try to justify what he did?”
“Not a bit. He did what he did, and it’s only sorry he feels for it.”
“Well, he should. It’s not only me he tricked and lied to and used. He even had the folks here doing his bidding.”
Gus chuckled. “And loving every minute of it—the ladies, anyway. I’ve a hunch they’d forgive him in a wink if you did.”
“It’s not a matter of forgiving him or not forgiving him. I refuse to even get caught up in that nonsense. What happened, happened. It’s over and done with, and I have no intention of giving that man another chance to disappoint me.”
“How about giving yourself another chance, Rosie? Are you against that, as well?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” replied Rose, placing the cover on the box of dominoes and getting up to put it away. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“A chance to be happy,” Gus said, hitting her where she was most vulnerable. She had been happy with Griff…before she knew the truth about him.
“For a while, there,” Gus was saying, “you were happier than I’ve ever seen you. Maybe happier than you’ve ever been?”
“Maybe,” she conceded, wishing the small room offered more to busy herself with. When minutes passed without another comment from Gus, she knew one wasn’t coming.
“All right,” she said, spinning to face him. “Maybe I was happy, but it was all an illusion. And now I feel more miserable and alone than ever, and that’s real.”
“He’s hurt you badly. The man doesn’t deny that, but he does regret it. As for miserable, I’m not sure which of the pair of you I’d give the prize for that.”
Rose dropped into her seat and leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. “I told myself I would never be taken in by a man again, and I hate it. I hate myself for letting it happen and I hate Griff for doing it.”
Tears filled her eyes and spilled out.
Gus pushed the tissue box toward her. “Mop your eyes.”
As wretched as she felt, her mouth twisted into a smile and she made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“There,” she said when she was done, “they’re mopped.” She sighed. “The truth is, I’m afraid, Gus.”
“I know, Rosie, and you’ve a right to be. But you can’t let fear take over so that you’re afraid to even listen to what the man has to say.”
“I did listen,” she protested. “What more can he possibly say? Nothing that would change what he did.”
“That’s true enough. But you’re missing the point, I think, and that’s that he knows that he did hurt you, and if he had the chance to go back and do it over, he’d do it all differently.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It can hardly hurt…if you think about what it means.”
“Go ahead, tell me what it means,” she said with feigned indifference.
“It means he’s changed,” Gus told her. “He’s not the same man he was when he came here. Don’t be rolling your eyes at me…. When you’ve lived as long as I have you’ll see it’s a fact. People change all the time. I’ve known the worst of men to change if they’re given a reason to.”
Her jaw lifted in a show of resistance. “It’s easy to say you’ve changed. What guarantee do I have that he wouldn’t do it again—or something like it—if I gave him the chance?
“None at all,” replied Gus, calm and matter-of-fact as ever. “The same as you had the first day you met him, and the same as you would have sitting here now, if this spat had never happened.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d struggled to find the logic behind Gus’s words. As she turned them over in her mind, he reached out to check the soil of the closest pot of dahlias.
“What guarantee do I have when I plant a seed that if I water the dirt and put it in the sun faithfully, something will sprout up? For that matter, what guarantee do I have that I’ll grow a dahlia, and not a petunia or an onion?”
“All right, I get the point—there are no guarantees in life. But there are some things we can expect to happen based on knowledge and past experience and common sense…and maybe a little faith,” she added. “And we can analyze a seed before planting it and be pretty sure whether we’re going to get a flower or an onion.”
“True enough. A pity, isn’t it, that we can’t saw open Hollis Griffin’s chest and have a good long look at what’s in his heart. We’d know for sure, then.” His offhandedness didn’t fool Rose one bit, and she found herself bracing to hear the follow-up. “At least we’d be sure unless he changed somehow, as folks have been known to do.” His gaze was tender as it held hers.
“People are more complicated than seeds,” she argued.
“That’s just the reason I mostly prefer seeds. People change, Rosie. Griffin has changed. He says you’ve changed him.”
“What if it’s another lie?”
“What if it’s not?”
“I don’t know,” she said, words that applied to more than what he’d just told her. They applied to her whole life at the moment. It was all this uncertainty and second-guessing that she wanted no part of. “And I’ll never know…not for certain.”
Gus didn’t contradict her.
“The fact is, Griff only owned up to what he’d done when he realized he wouldn’t be able to fulfill the terms of Devora’s will and sell Fairfield House. When it no longer mattered.” Her words were rapid and sharp, like gunfire. “For all we know, if he’d gotten his hands on the last bird, he’d have slapped a For Sale sign out front as fast as…as one of his stupid jets.”
“Could be,” said Gus with a
half smile.
“And if I give in and he stays, and that bird happens to turn up a year from now, or ten, he could very well do the same thing.” She sagged in her seat. “Maybe life doesn’t hold any guarantees, but only a fool would step in front of a bus and hope it doesn’t run over her. I’m through being a fool.”
Gus nodded as if that was perfectly sensible on her part. He stood, pausing a moment to unbend his knees, then walked over to his closet. After rummaging inside for a minute, he returned holding a brown cardboard box tied with string. He blew a thin layer of dust off the top and placed it on the table.
“Open it,” he instructed.
Curious, she did as he said, removing the string and lid. Beneath the dry, yellowed tissue paper was a Boris Aureolis Piping Plover in what looked to her to be perfect condition.
She gaped at it, then fired off a stream of questions. “My goodness, Gus, do you know what this is? Where did you get this? Do you have any idea how valuable—?”
“Whoa, ask me one at a time. I know it’s one of those fancy birds Devora was so fond of. She brought that one here and left it…” He squinted into the distance. “Oh, I’d say not much more than a month before she passed.”
“What for?”
He shrugged. “Safekeeping, I suppose. Devora did things her way and wasn’t one to blab on about how or why. I suppose that’s one reason we did so well for all those years.”
Rose gave his hand a little squeeze. They had discussed his and Devora’s “friendship” several times recently, and she knew it brought back bittersweet memories for Gus.
“She did warn me I should take good care of it, because it was worth more than my Buick. Back then, I thought she was pulling my leg,” he explained, scratching his chin thoughtfully, “now I’m not so sure.”
“Well, they’re both antique collectibles in mint condition, so it might be a toss-up.”
The diplomatic response made him smile. “It’s a strange world, Rosie. And it would seem our Devora is not through pulling strings in it. She told me I would figure out what to do with it sooner or later, and so I have.” He nodded at the bird, which Rose had lifted from the box and set on the table in order to get a better look at the tail that had been causing problems for hundreds of years.
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