Heart's Desire

by Lanigan, Catherine

  “If I’d known all he’s been through, I would have thanked him as well.”

  “But you didn’t know,” Sarah reminded her.

  “Was he in Iraq or Afghanistan with you, Luke?”

  “No. When we were in classes during boot camp, he was in medic training. He’s a doctor now.”

  “A doctor?” Maddie and Sarah exclaimed in unison.

  “That’s what the business card he gave me says.”

  Maddie wiped her face with her palm. “That’s a big piece of my puzzle, Luke.”

  “It is?”

  Maddie nodded. “Nate told me he thought he wanted to be a doctor, but I suppose I didn’t put much stock in it at the time. We all changed our minds every month about what we wanted to do after graduation. He was all set to go to Purdue and study agriculture. So, I just figured he really hadn’t made up his mind yet. Frankly, we didn’t talk about much that was all that serious back in those days. We were too busy—” She turned around and glanced out the window to make sure the children were still outside and out of earshot. “We were too busy kissing and hugging each other.” She smiled to herself. “Anyway, I do remember him telling me that when he was thirteen or fourteen, he’d seen one of his father’s horses give birth and nearly die. Ever since then, he’d been hooked on the medical field. Apparently one day he just knew he was meant to be a heart surgeon.”

  She stopped abruptly and thought deeply about what she’d just said. She hadn’t remembered that incident with Nate all these years, and now it had come back to her in a very clear flash. She wondered how she could have forgotten it.

  “But the Barzonnis are all farmers and businessmen,” Sarah mused.

  “It’s pretty obvious that Angelo wanted his sons to work on their farm. He demanded that Nate go to Purdue just like Gabe and Rafe. Just before he left town he told me that he had everything set for his freshman year at Purdue. There was so much that Nate kept to himself. I just can’t remember if we discussed his father being an impediment to his dream.”

  Luke picked up a slice of apple and munched on it. “So what did you want to be, Maddie?” he asked her.

  “I didn’t have a goal, really. I knew I wanted something better for myself than just working the line like my mother. I did dream of being my own boss and having my own business, but I didn’t have any real concept of what I would do. I knew I wasn’t going to college, so I tried to cram as much knowledge and experience into those high school years as possible. But I knew that education was incredibly important for both me and Nate. So, I suppose when Nate talked about his dreams, I must have been supportive. I just wish I remembered.” Maddie looked up at Sarah and Luke. “You know, guys, this has been really good for me. For so long, all I’ve done is stay angry at Nate for abandoning me. Instead of trying to learn what really happened, it was easier for me to just hate him and blame him for our breakup. I can see now that there were all kinds of issues going on with both of us. He was incredibly focused. To be honest, Luke, I would have to say that my goal back then was to be Nate’s girl. It’s a seventeen-year-old’s dream. And I’ve clung to it far too long.”

  Luke gave Maddie a compassionate smile. “I can tell you one thing—the navy changes boys to men. The Nate you knew is probably not the one I knew, and he’s not the one you saw today at the lodge. Even I don’t know this guy. I haven’t seen him in ten years. I went to war and came back. Got married, had kids and lost my wife. Now I’m starting a new life.So much can happen in ten years, Maddie.”

  “So you’re saying?”

  Luke inhaled deeply. “Here’s his cell-phone number,” he said, reaching into his pants’ pocket for Nate’s business card. “Call him. Talk to him. I have no idea if you’ll even like this new guy. He could be married, divorced or even a widower like me. There are a million things that could have happened to him.”

  Maddie looked down at the card that somehow swam before her eyes. A tear fell from her eye. “And all that while I stayed shut off in a time warp of my own making. I didn’t do any of those things.”

  “That’s not true,” Sarah retorted. “You built your business and you have all kinds of friends. You helped Luke and me with the renovation of St. Mark’s. You have a national franchise all put together. I think that’s quite a lot.”

  Maddie looked at the card again. She took out her phone and typed Nate’s number into her contacts list. She handed the card back to Luke. “Thanks. I...I’ll have to think about it. Maybe I could send him some flowers to apologize for punching him and be done with it.”

  Sarah pursed her lips. “Where’s that Maddie spunk we all love so much? You’re always willing to take on an argument for argument’s sake just because you like the energy of the fight. I’m with Luke. Call him. And while you’re at it, ask him how it was that Gina knew exactly who you were.”

  Luke turned away from both women. “Okay. I think I’ll check on the kids.” He headed out the backdoor.

  “Come again?” Maddie asked.

  “When Gina and Angelo came to Nate’s rescue after you stormed out of the dining room, Gina suggested that she knew who you were. If his family never knew a whole lot about you, then why would she instantly guess, after eleven years, that Maddie Strong was the one woman in Indian Lake who would cause a scene with her son?”

  “We never had sex.”

  “I know that.”

  “But that was the problem.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “On the night he left me, he begged me to run away to Kentucky and get married so that we could sleep together, but...”

  Sarah leaned closer. “But...what?”

  Maddie clamped her palms to her cheeks. “I told him we couldn’t just run away. I told him...” She ran her fingers across her forehead as if making deep trenches there would unearth the long-buried truth. “I told him that he had to think about his career in medicine. Deep down, I knew it was what he really wanted. I remember the look on his face. It was as if I’d speared him, gutted him. He went pale right there under the porch light. He told me he couldn’t go on any longer the way we had. But I was terrified of getting pregnant. I didn’t want to be like my mother. I did dream of a big wedding with all the Barzonnis there giving us their blessing. I wanted it all. I told him nothing had to change. I told him I was happy with the way things were.”

  “You said that?” Sarah asked incredulously.

  “I did.”

  “So, in fact, Maddie, you turned him down. You said no to his proposal.”

  Maddie shook her head. “He left me. He abandoned me.”

  “Only after you rejected him.”

  Maddie wasn’t quite sure she’d heard Sarah correctly. Had she really rejected Nate? Had he really been serious about running away together? At the time, she had thought it was just another line to coerce her to give in. He was out of high school now, life was changing for him and soon he’d be going away to Purdue. She still had senior year left. He hadn’t given her a ring. He hadn’t gotten down on his knee. Very little of it felt like a real proposal. Was Sarah right? To Nate, had his real marriage proposal been real? He’d been the one who had always said he didn’t want to get married. He wanted to travel and go to college. That’s all he’d talked about. Maddie hadn’t taken him seriously.

  Not at all.

  “Oh, God. I can’t breathe,” Maddie said, grabbing her stomach, then her forehead.

  “You want some water?”

  “How about straight hemlock?”

  Sarah went to the sink and drew a glass of filtered water from the narrow spigot. She handed it to Maddie. “Want a slice of lemon for that?”

  “No, thanks. It’s sour enough without it.”

  Sarah sat down on the stool next to Maddie and took her hand. “All this time, you didn’t remember your part in this legendary breakup of your
s?”

  “I didn’t. Or worse...I blocked it out,” Maddie continued, “But he never called me after that. Not once. I was worried silly for over a year about him.”

  “I would truly think through everything you want to say to Nate when you do talk to him. I’d be prepared for everything, like Luke said. That includes the possibility that he’s got a wife somewhere. I don’t think there are any children because he seemed shocked that Luke had kids already. So, that’s probably not an issue.”

  “Kids? I can’t imagine myself with kids. I mean, someday, maybe. But not yet.”

  “Really? You haven’t thought about it?”

  “I told you. I’ve been stuck in a time warp. I still think of myself as seventeen.” Maddie delivered her statement with a jaunty flip of her hand through her short hair, but the gesture died awkwardly. It was time to stop fooling herself.

  “Then this has been a very good day for you, Maddie. The truth is, you’re not seventeen anymore, and now you can see that clearly. If you continue to think of the past and what happened with Nate the way you have been, you could miss out on the greatest opportunities of your life. Don’t you find it interesting that at the same time as you’re expanding your business, and even considering a move to Chicago, Nate appears here in Indian Lake after all this time like a...”

  “Ghost?”

  “A sign from God was what I was thinking.”

  “What does the sign say, Sarah?”

  “Know all your options. Weigh them carefully. Choose wisely.”

  A cloud of gloom settled over Maddie. “I thought signs were supposed to make things easier.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I think I read it on a needlepoint pillow at Celebrations To Go.”

  “Well, there’s always the other route to take,” Sarah offered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t deal with Nate at all. Don’t call him. Don’t rehash the past. You’ve now dredged up the truth for yourself. You now remember exactly what happened that night. I’m sure he remembers it that way, too. The two of you ran into each other at the lodge by accident. You had an encounter...of sorts. And that’s it. Finis.”

  Maddie considered Sarah’s advice for a long and careful moment. “But what about the other time?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw him watching me when we were at the Bridal Corner. That was no accidental meeting. It was as if he had been following me.”

  “I forgot about that,” Sarah replied, chewing her lower lip. “That’s a very big point. Big.”

  “You know what that tells me, Sarah?”

  “What?”

  “I think Nate wants some answers from me.”

  “Oh, Maddie. I think he wants more than just answers.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “The first thing that comes to my mind is what you wanted this morning when you saw him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Revenge.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE MONTH OF May moved into Indian Lake on the strains of romantic ballads playing on the local radio station. Once the tourist season began the first weekend in May, most of the merchants in town piped the same music through their businesses because the nostalgic tunes kept the tourists shopping and spending money inside the antiques stores, restaurants, dress shops and local art galleries. As far as Maddie was concerned, every cup of coffee tasted better when one was listening to Frank Sinatra or Josh Groban.

  Maddie lugged a commercial-size trash bag filled with empty sugar and flour sacks, egg cartons, butter boxes, milk cartons and dozens of other containers that had held the ingredients she’d used over the past two days. She’d received a plethora of orders, from prom parties to baptisms, family reunions, birthdays and anniversary celebrations. And she still had to manage her increasing daily business at the café.

  Maddie was more than surprised at the number of catering orders she was receiving this year compared to last. When she asked her new customers how they’d heard of her, eighty percent of the responses were always the same. “We bought your cupcakes at the St. Mark’s Summer Festival last year. We never forgot them.”

  The St. Mark’s Summer Festival had been Sarah’s brainchild to raise money for the renovation of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which had been in deplorable shape. Sarah had talked many of the merchants in town into renting booths at the festival, then donating their profits to the church. It had been the best move Maddie had made, marketing-and advertising-wise, for her business. The festival had been held right after the Fourth of July parade. For the past thirty years, Indian Lake had drawn twenty thousand or more visitors to the town for the parade, and that number was likely to rise with the added attraction of the St. Mark’s Summer Festival. Maddie had customers she’d never seen before. They came from a five-countywide area, and a great many of them had been from Chicago. She had also picked up three new vendors for her cupcakes in New Buffalo. One was another café and the other two were restaurants. Now she was baking and filling orders to beat the band, and she was making good profits.

  She had worked until one in the morning the previous night, then woke up at five and worked another two hours this morning.

  Like most single people in Indian Lake, Maddie lived in a renovated portion of one of the old Victorian mansions on or around Maple Avenue. Maddie lived with eighty-five-year-old Hazel Martin, a friend of Mrs. Beabots, who was as kind as Mrs. Beabots but not nearly as intriguing a character. Hazel’s house was on Lily Avenue, and had been divided into three apartments back in the seventies. Hazel lived upstairs, where she could sit in her “Florida sunroom,” a room with three walls of beveled-glass windows that looked out over the glorious trees of stately Maple Avenue and the equally lovely Lily Avenue. The house was three stories high, complete with a widow’s walk and wraparound, turn-of-the-last-century porch. Maddie knew for a fact that Mrs. Beabots envied that porch a great deal. Hazel still hosted summer dinners on her porch and late-night bridge parties in the screened enclosure on the north side. Maddie had her own backdoor entrance and parked her van in the driveway so she could come in late and leave early when need be without disturbing Hazel or Gladys Wright, the piano teacher who lived in the smaller apartment next door. Fortunately for Maddie, Gladys gave all her lessons during the hours when Maddie was at the café.

  Now that Maddie was on the verge of making some real money, she’d vaguely thought about moving. Uncle George had spoken to her about buying a house for the tax write-off, now that she needed to be concerned about such things. He’d suggested buying a Victorian so she could rent out several apartments, but what Maddie really wanted was a condo in Chicago.

  She knew she didn’t have enough money yet to even rent a second home, much less buy one, but still she dreamed about it. If she were in Chicago, she and Alex could meet with investors whenever necessary. They could go to lunch together and meet at the theater doors for an afternoon matinee. They would window-shop together and perhaps duck into a wine bar...

  A gust of warm spring wind clawed at her pants’ leg and then pushed the plastic recycle-bin top closed, bringing Maddie back to the present. Her thoughts had kidnapped her once again.

  Maddie secured the trash-barrel lids and went back into the café, locking the backdoor behind her.

  “Where to start?” She scratched the back of her neck and shook her short hair. She walked over to the line of six mixers, each a different jewel color to help her remember which cake was which when she was making up the batters.

  She dumped sticks of salted butter into each stainless-steel bowl, lowered the beaters and turned on the machines to cream the butter.

  As she measured out sugar, placing each measuring cup beside each mixer, she wondered just how much being a franchise owner was going to actuall
y change her life.

  Right now, her psyche was a tangled ball of string that rolled around in her belly, keeping her awake at night. Being honest with herself, she had to admit that she used her business to explain the fact that she couldn’t sleep and hadn’t slept the whole night through since Nate left Indian Lake.

  She’d come to rely on her ability to blame Nate for all the pain in her life. Frankly, she should have meted it out a bit further. Her mother’s lack of love was to blame for her feelings of inadequacy. Yet at the same time, because Maddie was so fiercely driven to prove she was better than her mother, that she could have a better life than her mother, her success was in part due to her mother.

  Nate’s impact on her life was the fuel she needed to push herself beyond her limits and take risks she might not have taken otherwise. She’d jumped at the chance to open the café with Ann Marie’s help. She’d pursued each of her trademarks and patents with a vengeance. Buried deep in her heart had been the absolute necessity to prove herself to Nate. Secretly, she’d always known she would see him again someday. In those first weeks and months, even years, since he’d left Indian Lake, she’d looked for him down every street and at every gathering. She’d thought he would come back for her. But he never had.

  And now, here he was.

  But for what purpose?

  He hadn’t rushed to see her or call her. He’d spent more time talking to Luke than anyone else in town. Of course, after that punch she’d delivered, he’d probably never speak to her. She was surprised that she still felt a small pinch of rejection at the edges of her heart. She was surprised that he could still hurt her. She didn’t know why his actions would elicit any response from her at all.

  It made no sense.

  Maybe she needed to see a counselor as Sarah had done when she went to the bereavement group. Maybe a trained professional could explain the psychology to Maddie. Yes, that was what needed to be done. Then she could check Nate off her list for good.

  Maddie, you fool. You thought you were over Nate years ago. She swiped her palm over her face. Seventeen. What does anyone know at seventeen?