New fury pumped through her and she narrowed her eyes on the man who only moments before had stirred her blood into a simmering boil.
His laughter faded away and a scowl that was both fierce and irritated twisted his features. “Just who the hell are you anyway?”
“My name’s Maggie Collins,” she said, straightening up to her full five feet four inches. “And I’m your grandfather’s housekeeper.”
And she had that position because the “crusty old goat” had taken a chance on her when she’d needed it most. So she wasn’t about to stand by and let anyone, even his grandson, berate the old man she loved.
“Well, Maggie Collins,” he said through gritted teeth, “just because you’ve been taking care of Jeremiah’s house doesn’t mean you know squat about me or my family.”
She leaned in at him, not intimidated in the slightest. In the last two years she’d watched Jeremiah flip through old photo albums, stare at home movies, lose himself in the past because the grandsons he loved didn’t care enough to give him a present.
And it infuriated her that three grown men who had the home she’d always longed for didn’t seem to appreciate it.
“I know that though the man has three grandsons, he’s alone. I know that he had to take in a stranger to keep him company. I know that he looks at pictures of the three of you and his heart aches.” She poked him in the chest with her index finger. “I know that it took his being near death’s door—” her breath hitched and she hiccupped “—to get you all back here to see him this summer. I know that much.”
Sam shoved one hand through his long dark hair, looked away from her for a slow count of ten. Then, when he turned his gaze back to her, the anger had left him. His eyes were dark and shadowed.
“You’re right.”
She hadn’t expected that and it took her aback a little. Tipping her head to one side, she studied him. “Just like that? I’m right?”
“To a point,” he admitted and his voice dropped, wrapping the two of them in a kind of insular seclusion. “It’s…complicated,” he said finally.
So much for being surprised into feeling just a tiny bit of sympathy for his side of the story. Disgusted, she shook her head. “No, it’s not. He’s your grandfather. He loves you. And you ignore him.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re absolutely right.” She folded her arms across her chest, tapped her foot against the rocky ground and waited.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t owe you an explanation, Maggie Collins, so don’t bother waiting for one.”
No, he didn’t, though she desperately wanted one. She couldn’t understand how anyone with a home, a family, could deliberately avoid them. “Fine. Maybe you don’t owe me anything, but you certainly owe your grandfather.”
That scowl deepened until it looked as though it had been carved into his face. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Finally. Have you seen him yet?”
“No,” he admitted, shoving both hands into his pockets as he shifted his gaze to the lake behind them. “I haven’t. I had to come here first. Had to face this place first.”
And just like that, Maggie’s heart twisted. She knew what he was seeing when he looked at the small lake. She knew what he was remembering because Jeremiah had told her everything there was to know about his grandsons. The good, the bad and the haunting.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted, wishing she could pull at least some of her harsher words back. “I know how hard this must be for you, but—”
He cut her off with a look. “You don’t know,” he said tightly. “You can’t. So why don’t you go back to the house. Tell my grandfather I’ll be there soon.”
He walked away to stand at the water’s edge, staring out over the black, still surface of the lake. His pain reached out to her and she flinched from it. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him. Didn’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Though even if he did have his reasons for avoiding the Lonergan ranch, she thought, that didn’t make it all right for him to avoid the old man who loved him.
Her sympathy evaporated and Maggie left him there, alone in the shadows.
Jeremiah just had time to shove the blood-curdling horror novel he’d been reading under his covers before Maggie opened his bedroom door after a brief knock. He watched the girl he’d come to think of as a granddaughter and smiled to himself. Her dark brown hair was wet, trailing dampness across her T-shirt. Her long, flowing skirt was wrinkled and dotted with dried bits of grass, and her sandals squeaked with the water seeping into the leather.
“Been down to the lake again, eh?” he asked as she came closer and straightened the quilt and sheet covering him.
She smiled but couldn’t quite hide the flash of something else in her dark eyes.
“What is it, Maggie?” He grabbed her hand, making sure to be as feeble as possible, as she reached for the glass pitcher on his bedside table. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, pulling her hand free and giving him a pat before carrying the carafe to the adjoining bathroom to fill it with fresh water. She stepped back into the bedroom and walked quickly back to his side. “I met your grandson, that’s all.”
Jeremiah’s heart lifted, but he remembered just in time that he was supposed to be a dying man now. Keeping his voice quiet, he asked, “Which one?”
“Sam.”
“Ah.” He smiled to himself. “Well, where is he? Didn’t he come back with you?”
“No,” she said, frowning as she turned the bedside lamp with the three-way bulb down to its lowest setting. Instantly the room fell into shadows, the pale night light hardly reaching her, standing right at his bedside. “He said he wanted to stay at the lake for a while first.”
Jeremiah felt a twinge of pain in his heart and knew that it was only a shadow of the pain Sam must be feeling at the moment. But damn it, fifteen years had gone by. It was time the Lonergan cousins put the past to rest. Long past time, if truth be told. And if he’d had to lie to get them all to come here, well, then, it was a lie told with the best of reasons.
“How’d he look?”
Maggie fidgeted quickly with his pillows, then straightened up, put her hands on her narrow hips and said thoughtfully, “Alone. Like the most alone man I’ve ever seen.”
“Suppose he is.” Sighing, Jeremiah let his head fall back against the pillows that Maggie had plumped so neatly. He should feel guilty about tricking all of his grandsons into coming home. But he didn’t. Hell, if you couldn’t be sneaky when you got old, what the hell good were you?
“It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “Not on any of ’em. But they’re strong men. They’ll make it through.”
Maggie gave the quilt covering him one last tug, then leaned down and planted a quick kiss on his forehead. “They’re not the ones I’m worried about,” she said, then stood up and smiled down at him.
“You’re a good girl, Maggie. But you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine once my boys are home.”
Sam entered the house quietly, half expecting the old man’s bodyguard to leap at him from the shadows, teeth bared. When there was no sign of Maggie Collins, though, he surrendered to the inevitable and glanced around the room he’d once run wild through.
Two lamps had been left burning, their soft glow illuminating a room he would have been able to find his way through blindfolded. Nothing had changed. Oak floors, scarred from years of running children and booted feet, were dotted with faded colorful throw rugs. Four dark brown leather sofas sat arranged in a huge square, with a table wide enough to be a raft in the dead center of them. Magazines were stacked neatly in one corner of the table and a vase of yellow roses sat center stage.
Had to be the bodyguard’s doing, he told himself, since he knew damn well Jeremiah wouldn’t have thought to cut fresh flowers. Maggie Collins’s face rose up in his mind, then faded away as Sam looked around the house, familiarizing himself all over again with his past
.
A river-stone hearth wide and high enough for a man to stand in dominated one wall, and a few embers still glowed richly red behind a fire screen of scrolled iron. The walls were adorned with framed family photos and landscapes painted by a talented, if young, hand. Sam winced at the paintings and quickly looked away. He wasn’t ready just yet to be smothered by ghosts. It was enough that he was here. He’d have to swallow the past in small gulps or he’d choke on them.
Dropping his duffle bag by the door, he headed for the stairs at the far end of the room. Each stair was a log, sawn in half and varnished to a high sheen. The banisters looked like petrified tree trunks, and his hand slid along the cool surface as he mounted the stairs to the bedrooms above.
His steps sounded like the slow beating of his own heart. Every move he made took him closer to memories he didn’t want to look at. Yet there was no going back. No avoiding it anymore.
At the head of the stairs he paused and glanced down the long hall. Closed doors were all that greeted him, but he knew the rooms behind those doors as well as he knew his own reflection in the mirror. He and his cousins had shared those rooms every summer for most of their lives. They’d crashed up the stairs, slid down the banisters and run wild across every acre of the family ranch.
Until that last summer.
The day when everything had changed forever.
The day they’d all grown up—and apart.
Scowling, he brushed away the memories as he would a cloud of gnats in front of his face and walked to the door at the head of the stairs. His grandfather’s room. A man he hadn’t seen in fifteen years.
Shame rippled through him and he told himself that Maggie Collins would be proud if she knew it. She was right about one thing. They shouldn’t have stayed away from the old man for so long. Should have found a way to see him despite the pain.
But they hadn’t.
Instead they’d punished themselves, and in the doing had punished an old man who hadn’t deserved it, as well.
He knocked and waited.
“Sam?”
The voice was weaker than he’d thought it would be but still so familiar. Apparently the housekeeper/bodyguard had spilled the news about his arrival. He opened the door, stepped inside and felt his heart turn over in his chest.
Jeremiah Lonergan. The strongest man Sam had ever known looked…old. Most of his hair was gone, his tanned scalp shining in the soft lamplight. A fringe of gray hair ringed his head, and the lines that had always defined his face were deeper, scored more fully into his features. He looked small in the wide bed, covered in one of the quilts his wife had made decades ago.
Sam felt the solid punch of sorrow slam him in the gut. Time had passed. Too much time. And for that one startling moment he deeply regretted all the years he’d missed with the man he’d always loved. For some reason, he hadn’t really expected that Jeremiah would be different. Despite the phone call from the old man’s doctor saying that he didn’t have much time left, Sam had thought somehow that his grandfather would be unchanged.
“Hi, Pop,” he said and forced a smile.
“Come in, come in,” his grandfather urged, weakly waving one hand. Then he patted the edge of the bed. “Sit down, boy. Let me look at you.”
Sam did and, once he was close enough, gave his grandfather a quick once-over. He was thinner, but his eyes were clear and sharp. His tan wasn’t as dark as it had been, but there was no sickly pallor to his cheeks. His hands were gnarled, but they weren’t trembling.
All good things.
“How you feeling?” Sam asked, reaching out to lay one hand on his grandfather’s forehead.
Jeremiah brushed that hand away. “Fine. I’m fine. And I’ve already got me a doctor to poke and prod. Don’t need my grandson doing it, too.”
“Sorry,” Sam said with a shrug. “Professional hazard.” As a doctor, he could respect another doctor’s territory and not want to intrude. As a grandson, he wanted to see for himself that his grandfather was all right. Apparently, though, that wouldn’t be as easy as it sounded. “I spoke to Dr. Evans after I talked to you last month. He says that your heart’s in pretty bad shape.”
Jeremiah winced. “Doctors. Don’t pay them any mind.”
Sam laughed shortly. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mean you, boy,” the old man corrected quickly. “I’m sure you’re a fine doctor. Always been real proud of you, Sam. In fact, I was telling Bert Evans that you might be just the man to buy him out.”
Sam stood up and shoved both hands in his pockets. He’d been afraid of this. Afraid that the old man would make more of this visit than there was. Afraid he’d ask Sam to stay. Expect him to stay. And Sam couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
But his grandfather either didn’t notice his discomfort or didn’t care. Because he kept talking. And with every word, guilt pinged around inside Sam just a little bit harder.
“Bert’s a good doc, mind. But he’s as old as me and getting ready to fold up shop.” He smiled up at Sam and winked conspiratorially. “The town needs a doctor, and seeing as you don’t have a place of your own—”
“Pop, I’m not staying.” Sam forced himself to say it flat out. He didn’t want to hurt his grandfather, but he didn’t want the old man holding onto false hopes either. Guilt tore at him to see the gleam go out of his grandfather’s eyes. “I’m here for the summer,” he said softly, willing the old man to understand just what it had cost him to come home again. “But when it’s over, I’m leaving again.”
“I thought…” Jeremiah’s voice trailed away as he sagged back into his pillows. “I thought that once I got you back here, you’d see it’s where you belong. Where all of you belong.”
Pain rippled through Sam in tiny waves, one after the other. There was a time once, when he was a kid, that he would have done anything to live here forever. To be a part of the little town that had once seemed so perfect to him. To know that this house would always be his.
But those dreams died one bright summer day fifteen years ago.
Now he didn’t belong anywhere.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough but that it was all he had to offer.
The old man looked at him for a long time before finally closing his eyes on a tired sigh. “It’s a long summer, boy. Anything might happen.”
“Don’t make plans for me, Jeremiah,” Sam warned, though it cost him to hurt the man again. “I won’t stay. I can’t. And you know why.”
“I know why you think that,” he said, his voice a weary sigh. “And I know you’re wrong. All of you are. But a man’s got to find his own way.” He slipped down farther beneath the quilt. “I’m feeling tired now, so why don’t you come see me tomorrow and we’ll talk some more.”
“Jeremiah…”
“Go on now,” he whispered. “Go down and get yourself something to eat. I’ll still be here in the morning.”
When his grandfather closed his eyes, effectively ending any more tries at talking, Sam had no choice. He turned and headed for the door, let himself out and quietly closed the door behind him. He’d been in the house less than fifteen minutes and already he’d upset an old man with a bad heart.
Good job.
But he couldn’t let his grandfather count on him staying. Couldn’t give Jeremiah the promise of a future when the past was so thick around Sam he could hardly see the present.
He’d long since become accustomed to living with memories that haunted him. But he’d never be able to live here again—where he’d see a ghost around every corner.
Three
Maggie sat in her living room and stared across the yard at the main ranch house. No more than twenty feet of ground separated the two buildings, but at the moment it felt like twenty miles.
In the two years she’d lived at the Lonergan ranch she’d never felt more of an outsider. Never felt as alone as she had that first day when her car had finally gasped its last and died right outside the main gate.
&n
bsp; Tears were close. Maggie was out of money and now out of transportation. Though she had nowhere in particular to go, up until five minutes ago she’d have been able to get there.
Staring up and down the long, empty road, edged on both sides by open fields, she fought a rising tide of despair that threatened to choke her. The afternoon sun was hot and reflected back off the narrow highway until she felt as though she were standing in an oven. No trees shaded the road, and the last sign she’d passed had promised that the town of Coleville was still twenty-five miles away.
Just thinking about the long walk ahead of her made her tired. But sitting down and having a good long cry wouldn’t get her any closer to town. And feeling sorry for herself would only get her a stuffed-up nose and red eyes. Nope. Maggie Collins didn’t waste time on self-pity. Instead she kept trying. Kept searching. Knowing that someday, somewhere, she’d find the place where she belonged. Where she could plant herself and grow some roots. The kind of roots she’d always wanted as a child.
But to earn those roots she had to get off her duff. Resigned, she opened up the car door and grabbed her navy-blue backpack off the floor of the passenger seat.
“Looks like that car’s about had it.”
She hit her head on the roof of the old car as she backed out and straightened up all in one motion. The old man who’d spoken stood just a few feet from her, leaning against one of the whitewashed posts holding up a sign that proclaimed Lonergan. She hadn’t even heard him approach, which told her that either he was more spry than he looked or she was even more tired than she felt.
Probably the latter.
He wasn’t very tall. He wore a battered hat that shaded his lined, leathery face and his watchful dark eyes. His blue jeans were faded and worn, and his boots looked as if they were older than him.
“It just die on you?” he asked with a wave of one tanned hand at the car.
Expecting Lonergan’s Baby Page 2