She stood at the foot of the steps now. “Mind if I sit with you? I just couldn’t stay in on such a beautiful night. Why, look, Lieutenant, at the way the moonlight hits the ice. Like diamonds in the night, don’t you think?”
* * *
GRANDPA STIRLING’S CANTANKEROUS act was nothing new. Drew propped himself against the built-in dresser and watched his grandfather stare out the window, knowing that the most important thing was not to let the old man think he could get the upper hand simply by behaving unpleasantly.
Clarence Albert Stirling had always been something of a mystery to Drew. Dapper and glib, like someone out of an old Hollywood musical, Clarence could also be querulous and secretive. Whereas other older people Drew knew went on and on about the good old days, Clarence kept his past locked up tighter, as the old man himself would say, than Dick’s hatband. Oh, he liked to tell tales about the war, but that was it.
“Told you I didn’t want to come back here,” Clarence muttered now, turning away from the window. The expression on his still-handsome face was sour.
“What’d she do? Turn you down?”
Clarence darted him a sharp glance. “Nobody likes a wise guy.”
Drew chuckled. “She must’ve been a real looker.”
“That she was.”
“Still is.”
“Always did figure that gold color came out of a bottle.” Something seemed to occur to Clarence and he pointed one of his long fingers at his grandson. “You stay away from that girl of hers. I saw her. Those big eyes and a smile to make a man abandon all common sense.”
Drew couldn’t argue with that. In fact, it had taken him a few seconds to zero in on what was happening between his grandfather and the woman from his past. Drew had been captivated instead by Sandy’s appearance, her wind-bitten cheeks and the bright smile she directed at the woman beside her.
How ironic, that there should be some kind of family history here neither of them knew about. “What was it, Grandpa? A Dear John letter during the war?”
“Ha! Mag Halston had more imagination than that, I’ll have you know.” The old man’s jaw jutted out, anger evident in every line of his face. “Humiliated me in front of every soul in this town, that’s what she did. Left me standing at the altar!”
* * *
“HE WHAT?” HOW COULD it be, Sandy wondered, that something this dramatic had never become a part of the often-repeated Murphy family lore?
“You heard me.” Mag wrapped herself in an emerald-colored brocade bed jacket and slipped her feet into bejeweled house shoes. “You cannot imagine the abject humiliation of standing there at the altar in front of the entire world in your ivory lace gown and your Bruges lace veil—my grandmother’s, for Bruges lace would have been impossible to get at the time, of course—standing there all decked out and having to explain that the groom will not make an appearance.”
“Why is it I never knew about this?”
Mag fluffed up her four feather pillows, each in a satin pillowcase of a different and vivid jewel tone, and settled onto the bed like a petite queen on her oversize throne. Mag was one of the very few residents of Worthington House to have a double bed instead of a single. She had insisted, and Cecil Kellaway had been a pushover. “Well, it isn’t exactly the kind of thing a woman hopes to relive day after day.”
“No, I suppose not.” Sandy toyed with the concern that had been nagging her ever since the scene in the lobby and decided to confront it head-on. “Gran, what is his name?”
“I hardly think it matters. You know, if the women of Worthington House circulated a petition, stating that we feel threatened by the presence of a man like that—”
“Is he really that bad?”
Sandy watched, uncertain whether to be amused or appalled, as Mag paused, directing her penetrating gaze at the framed Dali print on the wall opposite her bed. “Well, perhaps not, by today’s standards. But we needn’t all sink to those standards, you understand. Clarence Stirling was a—”
Sandy’s heart jumped. “Who? Clarence who?”
Mag looked as if she would rather eat mud than speak the name again. “Stirling. The last of the Stirlings to blight this town, I am happy to say.”
Sandy sank into the only armchair in her grandmother’s room, weighed down by the lead balloon that had suddenly settled in her midsection. “No, Gran. I don’t think so.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Mag waved a dismissive hand, her marble-size faux topaz sparkling in the dim light. “Why, that scoundrel left Tyler almost fifty years ago and hasn’t been back since. The rest of them, good riddance, passed on I don’t know how long ago. Probably before you were born, even. In disgrace, I might add.”
Sandy shook her head. The other Stirling in Tyler, Wisconsin, had been standing beside the one who’d broken her grandmother’s heart all those years ago. Tall and lean and looking remarkably like a younger version of the old man in the wheelchair, Drew Stirling had resurrected the Stirling name in town.
No wonder there had seemed to be such bad karma at work in their relationship from the very beginning.
“Gran, the man beside him—”
“I did see him.” She was rummaging in her bedside drawer, piling on the bed beside her a nail buff, a hair net, a clear plastic box of various buttons, a candle, two matchbooks, a crushed package of cigarettes and a rhinestone-studded cigarette holder, a digital thermometer and a brass pencil sharpener in the shape of an alligator before surfacing with a bottle of crimson nail polish. Then she pointed a finger at Sandy, who was on the verge of chastising her about the cigarettes, and said, “And I do recall seeing you chatting with that young man some weeks ago. Not a good idea, Alexandra. They are obviously related, and my best advice to you would be to stay away from any Stirling man who crosses your path.”
Uneasiness rolled around like a bowling ball in the pit of Sandy’s stomach. “Gran, that’s Drew.”
“Drew? Drew who?”
“The vice president of sales I was telling you about at dinner.”
All the color drained from Mag’s face, except for the soft dusting of rose she had used to undershadow each high cheekbone. “Oh, my.”
“You’re just going to have to make up with Mr. Stirling.”
Mag’s eyes grew wide. “Never!”
“Then you’ll have to stay out of his way. This is my job. I can’t have a fifty-year-old feud interfering with my job.”
After shoving all the contents back into the drawer in an unceremonious heap, the elderly woman once again studied the Dali with fierce concentration. “I suggest you look for other employment, Alexandra. You’ll definitely want to stay away from this man. He looks just like Clarence and I daresay he is no more to be trusted than the old scoundrel he takes after.”
* * *
MAG WAVED HER red-tipped nails in the air to facilitate drying. She was having no luck keeping her mind on the foolish guests on tonight’s late show. She kept thinking of Alexandra. She kept thinking of this difficult young man who was trying so to spoil her granddaughter’s grand plans.
She kept thinking of Clarence.
Drat the cad, showing up again after all these years!
Seeing him had been like a physical blow to her solar plexus. She touched the place just below her breastbone, forgetting the fresh color on her nails. At least, she supposed that was her solar plexus.
“Close enough,” she muttered, clicking to another channel, one featuring a foulmouthed young comic. “It’s certainly not my heart.”
She chuckled at an off-color punch line. If she were Alexandra’s age today, that was what she’d do—go on the road with a stand-up routine. She patted her platinum curls and pondered the plan. Perhaps it wasn’t out of the question, even at her age. What was it Alexandra kept harping on? Finding a niche in the market that no one
else had filled?
“Not many Grinning Grannies out there,” she said, burrowing into her pile of satin pillows. “And at least I wouldn’t have Clarence Albert Stirling rubbing my nose in reminders every day.”
Without half trying, she could imagine blue-haired Estelle Jamison making a play for Clarence the first time she heard his wheelchair squeaking down the hall. Estelle was like that. Man hungry. And men who didn’t drool in their Cream of Wheat were at a premium here at Worthington House.
Of course, that would suit Clarence to a T. He always had liked keeping his options open.
* * *
THE TIMBERLAKE LODGE party of 1943 had turned to disappointment for nineteen-year-old Magdalena Halston.
“Well?” her best friend asked expectantly as soon as they distanced themselves from their parents.
“Oh, hush, Cecile.” Mag didn’t even look at her friend, who had heard every detail of Mag’s big plans and like any true friend longed to see them realized almost as fervently as Mag did.
“But did he kiss you yet?”
“I said hush,” Mag hissed. “You’re acting like a schoolgirl.”
That had silenced Cecile.
With the return from the front of a real, live hero, Mag had been certain that this Christmas season, at last, would usher in the engagement announcement that had eluded her this past year. Men were in such short supply here in Tyler. Real men, that is. Men who weren’t old enough to be your father or young enough to still be in school.
Garlands of evergreen and holly berry festooned the wall sconces and the deer-antler chandelier. Mistletoe hung from every arch and doorway in the rustic lodge. And in the corner, an enormous tree almost touched the ceiling, its limbs burdened with dozens of electric candles and strung cranberries. But the real spirit of the season fluttered in Mag’s heart only as she watched Clarence Stirling across the Timberlake Lodge ballroom.
“There he is,” Cecile whispered.
“I see him. Now quit staring.”
He leaned against the mantelpiece, his carved walking stick in his hand. Thin almost to the point of gauntness, the shadows on his face making romantic statements about the horrors he had endured on his way to becoming a hero, Clarence could have been no more awe-inspiring if he had walked off the screen at the Bijou on the arm of Ginger Rogers.
And he was destined to be Mag’s.
But every man-hungry woman under thirty in the whole of Tyler apparently had yet to comprehend that. Mag grimaced as that bosomy old maid Emma Finklebaum sidled up and offered him another cup of punch. Then there were Tillie and Martha, who had fluttered around Clarence all night. Both destined to be old maids as well in Mag’s opinion. Even Margaret Ingalls had bestowed plenty of attention on Clarence; some said her husband, Judson, had been away at the front too long.
“Emma Finklebaum looks like a sow with those big, puffy sleeves,” Cecile said, her loyalty commendable. “Besides, anybody with half a brain should be able to figure out that it’s destiny for you and Lieutenant Stirling to be together.”
“Of course it is.” How could it be that none of these people knew that she and Clarence had been keeping steady company since his triumphant return?
“You’ll be founding a dynasty,” Cecile said, warming to her subject. “The Halstons and the Stirlings. Why, your dad and his are partners in half the businesses in town right now and—”
“This is not a business proposition,” Mag snapped.
“I know, I know. It’s just that, once you’re married, you’ll be more powerful, even, than the Ingallses.”
Mag didn’t care a fig for that. The dusty old Halston-Stirling Hardware and the S and H Creamery and all the rest were of no interest whatsoever to her. What preyed on Mag’s mind was the fact that none of those foolish women flocking around Clarence knew that he had been this close to kissing her just last night, until her nosy baby sister flicked on the front-porch light.
And now, instead of having that kiss as the prelude to a proposal so that their big announcement could be the highlight of the holiday season in Tyler, here she was watching every silly goose in Tyler make a fuss over him.
“I’m going to put a stop to this,” she declared.
She sashayed over to his side of the ballroom, Cecile close on her heels. Mag’s cranberry-colored satin gown crackled and swished as she moved. The deep color of the dress combined with the halo of her pale curls made a dramatic statement, Cecile had assured her when they planned their wardrobes last week. The color was high in her cheeks, too. She could feel that.
The other women crowded around Clarence seemed to part and make way for Mag as she approached. She put a hand on his forearm, lightly, and bestowed her most brilliant smile. “Now, Clarence, are all these girls wearing you out? Come with me. I’ve found a quiet spot where we can get off our feet for a while. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
She was certain that must be gratitude in his eyes. She linked her gloved hand through his arm and walked with him to the terrace, where a bench offered a view of Timber Lake.
“There. Isn’t this lovely?”
“Most lovely, Miss Halston.”
“Oh, please, Lieutenant. Surely you can call me Mag.”
“You’re much too elegant tonight for anyone to call you simply Mag.”
A thrill rushed through her. His formality always struck her as so sophisticated, so worldly. She tried hard to match him in sophistication, grateful that he had been gone long enough for her to reach the maturity of nineteen. How foolish and childish she would have seemed to him even a year ago.
But now they could sit and look at the lake and she could coax out of him conversation about the coming holidays and his dreadful experiences fighting Nazis. And if he seemed to grow bored, she could touch his arm again and give him the look she had learned from Myrna Loy at the Bijou.
And before they went back in, he had indeed given her the kiss she had missed the night before. And as proper and respectful as the touch of his soft, warm lips had been, Mag knew that Clarence was hers.
Perhaps, she thought, there would still be time for a Yule-season announcement.
And a St. Valentine’s Day ceremony.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SANDY WIPED THE sweat from her forehead and stared at the jumble of boxes, cleaning supplies and hand-me-down furniture.
“Well, I’m moved in,” she announced.
Glenna McRoberts and Angela Murphy glanced at each other. Angela opened the cooler, took out a bottle of pop and thrust it toward her sister. “You call this moved in? The heat’s got to you, kid.”
“It’s thirty degrees outside,” Sandy retorted, nevertheless gratefully accepting the soft drink.
“You aren’t even close to moved in,” said Angela, who was more like Mag than anyone else in the family, from her flamboyantly blond hair to her penchant for oversize jewelry. “You won’t be moved in until these boxes are unpacked. Until you can sleep here. Until you know exactly where your manicure scissors are.”
The three women laughed.
“Guess that speaks volumes about me,” said Glenna. “Before my divorce, I lived in Beloit for five years and I never knew where my manicure scissors were.”
Angela retorted, “Then you were camping out, Glenna.”
“Besides,” Sandy said, dropping to the floor and propping her aching back against one of the boxes they had just hauled into the apartment, “I can sleep here. Tonight.”
Angela took off her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist. “Boy, you are eager to get away from Mom and Dad, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied, simply and without explanation.
Arranging the details with Marie Innes and moving her few belongings, most of which had remained in boxes in the Murphy garage since she’d returned to Tyler, had tak
en little more than a day. She had dishes and linens, a futon and a wicker side chair for the living room, an unadorned bed and a wicker dresser for the bedroom. What served as decor included three framed posters of art prints, a fat ceramic cat—”because everyone needs a pet”—and an enormous wicker basket for books and magazines, presently empty.
As darkness settled over the Saturday afternoon, the three women sat on the floor, too tired to do much more than rest and grumble about their aching muscles.
“I told you we should’ve found some men to help,” Glenna said. “Lee would have been glad to if he hadn’t had to go to Madison this weekend.”
“This is not what we need men for,” Angela replied. “I have much better uses for men, if only we could find a few more.”
“We didn’t need men for this little bit of stuff,” Sandy said.
“You can say that. You’re twenty-five.”
By the time they had rested and finished off the rest of the soft drinks in the cooler, hunger had set in. Angela offered to go after pizza and Glenna went with her, looking for a phone to check on her children, Megan and Jimmy, and her dad, who had taken them ice skating that afternoon. Meanwhile Sandy cleared a path to the bedroom. She was putting sheets on the bed and wondering how long a nap she could sneak in before the others returned when she heard a tapping on the front door.
Hoping it wasn’t her parents—if they saw this mess they would never rest until she came back to the house for the night, or the week—Sandy headed for the door.
Her attempt at a smile fizzled as soon as she opened the door to Drew Stirling.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” he said abruptly.
Sandy felt prickles of irritation. “Did I misunderstand about Saturday being my day off?”
He frowned and took a step forward. Reluctantly, she edged back to allow him into the apartment, if only so she could shut out the January chill. She didn’t want him here, mucking around in her personal life. Things were somehow too personal between them already.
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