Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Plenty of other people had gotten rich along the way. The Beaumonts. A select group of investors. But something had been lost too, irrevocably. The peace and serenity of the town. Neighbors caring about neighbors.

  He wanted to think his few paltry acts as the Angel had helped those ugly scars to heal a little. Even if he had been the only person who benefited, his efforts had been worth it. This past year had been the best he could remember since Bethany’s condition had worsened.

  When he came up with the idea during those days in the hospital, he had only intended it to be a short-term project, something to take his mind off this newfound mortality. He had more money than he could ever spend and figured maybe if he gave a little of it back somehow, Whoever was keeping score might see it as his small effort to atone for all the mistakes he had made over the years.

  He had enjoyed those first few visits by the Angel too much to stop. It had become as much a game to him as making money, figuring out who might be in need and how he could secretly help. Then he’d started hearing rumors about other efforts by the Angel, things he knew he hadn’t been responsible for, and he discovered that others were following his example and giving credit to the altruistic mythical entity he had created out of fear and self-loathing.

  Like it or not, the Angel would have to die an ugly death now. He didn’t want everybody looking at him, assigning positive, saintlike motives to the little good he had done, when the whole thing had been selfish from the outset, aimed at helping to fill all the empty corners inside him.

  It was a philosophical point he would have to remember to ask Reverend Wilson next time he saw him on the golf course. Hypothetically, of course. If people helped others because they craved that feeling of satisfaction and delight, was it really selfless? How could an act be considered altruistic if, in a roundabout fashion, somebody was just fulfilling a need inside themselves by helping someone else?

  He didn’t want to mull this over right now. He just wanted this dinner to be over so he could figure out his next move.

  “Thanks for dinner, Harry. That was scrumptious.” Sage smiled at him and he felt a ridiculous pang that the little scamp hadn’t called him Grandpa.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “Thank you for inviting us,” her mother said, with that calm smile that made a man wonder what was really going on inside her head.

  Jack took a sip from his wineglass. “Yes, Harry. Thank you.”

  “You all made Mrs. Kingsley very happy to have someone else here to enjoy her food.”

  “Does she cook like that for you all the time? Because that was really superb,” Sage said. “I’d love the recipe for that mousse.”

  “I’ll make sure she sends it to you. And no, she doesn’t. Cook like that all the time, I mean. This was a special occasion and her menu reflected it. I’ve got heart problems, as you may have heard, so most of the time I have to watch my diet.”

  “Are you okay eating all that rich Italian food?” Sage asked.

  “I probably won’t have a heart attack tonight, if that’s what you’re asking.” He didn’t like talking about his health, so he quickly changed the subject to one he knew would divert attention from him. “So now that you know what the little prick thinks about your pregnancy, have you figured out what you’re going to do about the kid?”

  Across the table, Maura and Jack both stiffened as if he’d stuck a poker up their respective bums.

  What? Shouldn’t he have asked that question? This was his great-grandchild. Didn’t that give him some right to know?

  To his satisfaction, Sage shot a quick look at both of them, then met his gaze with a directness that pleased him. Impertinent she might be, but he had meant what he’d had the Angel write her. His granddaughter had grit.

  “I’m leaning toward adoption. The child ought to have stable, devoted parents who can offer her all the things I can’t. I think it’s the best of all my options, don’t you?”

  “My opinion on the matter doesn’t mean shit. You’re the only one who can decide what to do.”

  She gave him a grateful look. “I know. The Angel gave me some very wise words about courage. I’ll try to keep those in mind.”

  “You do that,” he murmured.

  So maybe the dinner wasn’t a total loss. He might not be able to reach his son, no matter how hard he tried, but he was establishing some sort of relationship with his granddaughter. That had to count for something.

  Sage slid back from the table. “Will you excuse me? I need to find a powder room.”

  “Of course. Go back the way we came, hang a left and it’s the third door on the right.”

  Maura pushed her chair out as well. “That sounds complicated. It might take two of us, in the age-old tradition of females who are genetically programmed to insist on never entering a bathroom alone.”

  Only after the two of them had left did he realize this was the first chance he’d had all evening to be alone with his son, and he had to wonder if Maura had manipulated that particular outcome.

  He faced his son directly. “Thank you for coming. I know you didn’t want to.”

  “Sage can be persuasive.”

  This might be his only chance to achieve at least one of his goals for the evening, and he seized it. “I have something for you. I’ve been wanting to give it to you since you came back to Hope’s Crossing, but the time has never seemed right. I invited you all to dinner because I wanted to get to know my granddaughter, of course, but also because I was hoping for a chance to give you this.”

  He half expected Jack to say he wanted nothing from him, but to his relief, his son only gave him a curious look. “What is it?”

  “It’s on the sideboard. One moment.” He rose and had to flinch when his knees cracked. He wasn’t quite seventy years old. Two young to be falling apart. For the first time in too long, he finally felt as if he had something else to live for. He had a granddaughter now, one who didn’t seem to despise him, and he wanted to embrace every moment.

  He reached the sideboard and picked up the small wooden chest that looked incongruously shabby amid the luxury with which he liked to surround himself.

  “Here,” he said, placing it on the table in front of his son.

  Jack frowned. “What’s this?”

  “Some journals of your mother’s and other keepsakes she treasured. Trinkets, mostly.” To him, most of it looked like garbage, but he had to assume she kept the things inside there because they had meaning to her. Whether that was because of her mental illness, he didn’t know, but he figured Jack could sort it all out.

  “I don’t know where most of it came from. Some colored rocks, a piece of petrified wood, a pressed flower or two.”

  “She loved the outdoors.”

  “Yes.” He was quiet here, remembering the fey creature he had married, a woman who had loved art and music and being with her son. Even before her illness had progressed, some part of him had always resented their close relationship. He had always felt as if the two of them had a bond that excluded him.

  “I loved your mother. I know you have some ridiculous notion that I didn’t but…before her illness, before the voices in her head became so loud they drowned out the rest of us, she was…my angel.”

  “You locked her up. She loved being outside and you kept her locked in a room, sedated to her teeth until she was a zombie.”

  “She wasn’t locked up, ever. She had full run of the house. Yes, I put locks on the doors of the house to keep her from wandering around. I had to. She was out of control. She might have hurt someone. Do you know how hard it was to keep her at home? The doctors wanted to put her in the state hospital, but I refused. She would have hated that. Instead I paid for round-the-clock care at a time when I could least afford it.”

  He didn’t expect his son to understand. Jack had been a teenager with the idealism of the young, certain he could fix any problem in the world if only he set his mind to it. He had been busy with school and h
adn’t seen how Bethany was self-destructing.

  “Is it completely impossible for you to believe that I thought what I was doing was best, for her and for you?”

  Jack leaned back in his chair. “Mostly for yourself. Don’t forget that part.”

  Yes. He couldn’t deny that. As much as he had loved his wife in the beginning, when they were in their twenties and he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, by the time she killed herself, he had felt trapped and angry and helpless, not a comfortable position for a man who had firm goals and ambitions.

  “I made mistakes, with her and with you. No doubt about it. I’m sorry for that, son. And for…everything that came after. More sorry than I can ever say.”

  Jack gazed at him for a long moment, and Harry almost thought he might believe him. If he could only have his son back—whatever crumbs of a relationship Jack might be willing to throw at him—he would consider it fair repayment for his activities these past months as the Angel of Hope.

  If he thought his son was going to run into his arms as if this was some dramatic made-for-television movie, he was destined for disappointment.

  “Thank you for the mementos,” Jack only said, his voice stiff and unyielding.

  Harry fought the urge to rub at the ache in his chest, knowing this also had nothing to do with his A-fib. “You’re welcome,” he answered, just as Maura and Sage returned to the dining room.

  “This house is awesome, Harry,” Sage said. “I could throw a party and invite everybody in my dorm tower and the other three in the unit. That guest bathroom alone is bigger than my dorm room.”

  He forced himself to smile at her. He might not ever be able to pierce through the accumulated years of Jackson’s animosity. He had this unexpected granddaughter now. If he treaded carefully with her, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have to be completely alone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “SEE? THAT WASN’T SO MISERABLE, was it?” Sage said from the backseat when they were finally back in Jack’s Lexus. “Nobody poisoned anyone, at least.”

  “As far as you know,” Jack answered. “Do you have any idea how many poisons don’t show any symptoms until hours after ingestion?”

  Maura laughed, as he had intended. “Always the optimist, aren’t you?”

  “So if I wake up dead, you can say I told you so,” Sage teased.

  The finely wrought tension in his shoulders from the ordeal of the evening seemed to ease with their lighthearted banter. He very much enjoyed their company. Both of them.

  “You’re right. It wasn’t completely miserable. The food was good.” What he’d been able to taste, anyway.

  “Particularly that mousse. I’m definitely trying that sometime. Don’t you think it was nice of Harry to track down the recipe from his housekeeper?”

  Oh, yes. Jack was sure it had been quite a sacrifice for him to call her in from the kitchen and order her to print out a copy for Sage.

  “I think Harry is mellowing in his old age,” Maura said. “I still can’t believe he’s the Angel of Hope. Of all the people in town I might have guessed, Harry Lange would have been dead last on the list.”

  “He denied it, remember?” Jack said. “Quite vehemently, in fact.”

  “You lived with the man for eighteen years. Couldn’t you tell he was lying?”

  The trouble there was half the things Harry had ever said to him were lies, and he had never been very good at sorting through what was truth. In this, he had to agree with Maura, however. Harry had obviously been lying about his secret identity as the town’s mysterious benefactor. He had evidence from his own eyes—that brief moment he had seen the Angel near Maura’s house after Christmas and had wondered.

  “I don’t think the three of us should tell anyone that it’s Harry,” Sage said. “Can it be our secret?”

  “I think you’re right.” Maura surprised him by agreeing. “He’s worked really hard to keep his identity under wraps all these months. We should keep it a secret among us.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Just the idea of the Angel, some secretive being who goes around doing kindnesses, has been good for this town. Knowing it’s just a grumpy old man trying to atone for the sins of his lifetime kind of ruins the fun and beautiful mystery of it, don’t you think?”

  Was that what Harry was trying to do by sneaking around helping people with their troubles? Trying to atone somehow?

  “Are you going to tell anybody Harry’s the Angel?” Sage asked him.

  “I can keep a secret if that’s what you think best. Who would I tell, anyway?”

  “Thanks.” His daughter beamed at him. “I’ll let Harry know we’ve all agreed to a conspiracy of silence.”

  Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about that—sharing a secret about his father.

  “He’s done a lot of good around Hope’s Crossing,” Maura said. “I still can’t really believe it’s him.”

  “Maybe he just wants you to think it’s him in order to deflect attention from the real Angel,” Jack said, though he didn’t really believe that himself.

  “I would find that a little more palatable, to tell you the truth, than the idea of Harry Lange sneaking around town giving out packets of money and paying people’s utility bills. It’s a little disconcerting. Sort of like trying to picture Katherine Thorne and my mom suddenly having a hair-pulling catfight in the middle of the café.”

  He had to smile at the incongruous image of the very ladylike city council member and his former high school English teacher, both in their sixties, battling it out, mano a mano.

  Sage laughed out loud. “I would pay good money to see that. I bet lots of people in town would. Hey, maybe if we asked them nicely, the two of them would stage a mixed martial arts fight, with all proceeds to go to Layla’s scholarship fund.”

  “Don’t you dare even put that idea in your grandmother’s head,” Maura said with a soft chuckle. “I could just see one of them breaking a hip and blaming me.”

  Jack laughed along with both of them. As he pulled up into the driveway of Maura’s house, he felt a funny little bubble of something expand in his chest. It took a moment for him to realize he was happy.

  Now, there was an unexpected emotion. He had just spent two hours with his father, he was back in Hope’s Crossing, a place he’d never wanted to find himself. But he was with two women who made him laugh and think and worry.

  Two women he had come to care for deeply.

  He turned off the engine and moved around to help them both out of the vehicle. Inside, they could hear a few random, excited barks from Puck.

  Maura unlocked the door, and the dog rushed out with yips of glee. She picked up his little wriggly body and scratched under his chin. “There’s my good boy,” she murmured, and Jack had to smile. Sage had told him of Maura’s initial resistance to keeping the dog. Apparently the little fuzzball had won her over.

  If only he could do the same.

  The thought left him shocked and more than a little unsettled. Did he want to “win her over”? He still had every reason to be furious with her for his lost years with Sage. Could he move past that to the soft, caring, courageous woman she had become?

  “Thanks again for coming,” Sage said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you, and it means a lot to me that you did it anyway, Dad.”

  Dad. She had never called him that before. He stared at her, his chest filling again with that effervescent joy.

  “You’re welcome,” he said gruffly. Sage reached out and hugged him in that open, generous way of hers and, after an awkward moment, he hugged her back.

  Over Sage’s shoulder, he met Maura’s gaze and saw a thicket of emotions there he couldn’t begin to untangle.

  “You don’t need to rush away, Jack,” she said after a moment. “You’re welcome to stay and hang out with Sage. I’ll even get out of your hair. I’m going to take Puck for a walk, since he’s been cooped up all evening by himself.”

  Sage pulle
d away and winced. “My friend Jennie texted before we left and asked if I wanted to come over and watch a movie when we finished dinner. I already told her yes. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in ages, but I can call her and cancel.”

  “No. Don’t worry about it. I don’t want you to change your plans on my account.”

  He studied Maura and the leash, and thought of the empty town house waiting for him. He didn’t want to go home yet, especially when they hadn’t had a chance to talk about the kiss earlier in the kitchen that had sizzled between them all night. “I was actually thinking a walk would be just the thing after that chocolate mousse. Maura, do you mind company?”

  Her mouth tightened slightly, but she quickly straightened it. “Not at all,” she answered. “Puck would love to have you along.”

  But you wouldn’t? he wanted to ask, but didn’t want to risk the bluntness of her answer in front of Sage.

  “I probably won’t be that late, since I fall over by midnight these days, but if you get back before I do, don’t wait up for me,” Sage said.

  Maura smiled and kissed her daughter on the cheek. “Good night, honey. If I don’t see you when you come home, I’ll talk to you in the morning before you go into the office.”

  “Thanks, Mom. See you guys. Have fun.”

  Maura looked as if fun was the last thing on her mind, but she said nothing as she hooked the leash onto Puck, who just about wriggled out of his fur in anticipation. Jack held the door open for her, and together they walked out into the cool March night.

  * * *

  THIS WAS A PHENOMENALLY bad idea.

  Maura gripped Puck’s leash as if the little eight-pound dog might suddenly start dragging her down the street. Her shoulders already ached from the effort she was making to ensure she kept a nice, safe bubble around herself and didn’t accidentally bump into Jack.

  Walking through the quiet streets of Hope’s Crossing with Jackson Lange wasn’t exactly the soothing, Zen-like experience she had been seeking when she’d come up with the idea to take Puck out on the leash. She was almost painfully aware of Jack. All she could seem to think about was that kiss in her kitchen earlier and how she hadn’t wanted to stop.