“How ’bout this room?” He carried the ladder into the dining room. “Looks like you got a good start on this one, too.”
“I just pulled off the stuff that was hanging. Look, Wade …” She sneezed, then coughed. “I guess the dust is starting to get to me.” She cleared her throat. “I have water in the fridge. Can I bring you a bottle?”
“That would be great, thanks.” He hadn’t wanted to mention it, but the dust was getting to him, too.
He turned on the dining-room light, then whistled. He was pretty sure he had his opening line down. He’d start out telling her about Robin, how they’d been best buds. Not lovers, they’d never been that. But best friends. He’d say, I want to tell you about Robin. And she’d say something like Okay. He’d take a deep breath and say, Robin Kennedy was the first person I met when I arrived at school my freshman year—
“What do you think of that dining-room wallpaper? Does anything say ‘Welcome to 1943’ like little pink flowers on a taupe background?” she called from the kitchen. “It’s been there for as long as I can remember.”
“It’s good to get rid of all the old paper before you start to paint.” He grabbed a loose strip and pulled it, releasing a cloud of dust and crumbling plaster. He paused. “You weren’t planning on painting tonight, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Good. It’s better to get all the paper dust out of the way first. Otherwise, it can settle into the fresh paint and it will look like …” He peeled another strip of paper and let it drop to the floor.
He stared at the wall. Removal of the paper had revealed a large heart drawn directly onto the plaster. Inside the heart had been written HORACE LOVES DAISY.
“Stef, was your cousin Horace married?”
“Nope. Lived and died a single gentleman. Why do you ask?”
“You’re going to want to see this.”
“What?”
He went into the kitchen, and she turned to look over her shoulder.
“I can’t get the cap off.” Stef held up the water bottle.
Wade took it from her hand and gave it a good twist, then reached around her to sit it on the counter. She was still turned toward him, as close to him as she’d been when they’d danced. For a moment he was tempted to put an arm around her and lead her into a slow dance there in the kitchen. Instead, he smoothed her hair back from her face. One long strand had pulled from her ponytail, and he tucked it behind her ear.
“You’re coming undone,” he told her.
“You can say that again,” she said wryly.
His hand skimmed along the contour of her face, his thumb tracing her cheek to the corner of her mouth. For that one moment, he wanted nothing more in life than to kiss that mouth. Her eyes held his and he knew he couldn’t look away if he’d wanted to. His thumb followed the full curve of her bottom lip and she turned her head toward it. He lifted her chin and leaned in to kiss her, telling himself just one, just to see what he’d been missing, to see if kissing her would be as good as he thought it would be, even though he knew that was a lie. His lips brushed against hers lightly, but she made no move to pull away. Her hands slid up his chest, grabbing the fabric of his shirt and pulling him closer. He kissed her for real then, a long-drawn-out kiss that could have lasted forever, would have certainly lasted longer than it did had they not heard the front door slam.
It took a moment for either of them to react. Stef looked up into Wade’s face quizzically, as if not quite sure she’d heard anything at all.
“Steffie?” a male voice called from the front hall.
“Were you expecting someone?” Wade asked as she disengaged herself from his embrace.
“No. I don’t know who—”
“Steffie, are you here?” the voice called again.
“It’s Jesse Enright,” she told Wade.
“Who’s Jesse Enright?” He frowned.
“My lawyer.” She cleared her throat and called, “In the kitchen, Jesse.”
“Good timing, Jesse,” Wade muttered.
“I saw the lights and thought I’d stop in and see if you needed any help.” A dark-haired man about Wade’s age and height came into the kitchen.
“Hey, Jesse,” Steffie greeted her visitor.
“Wade, this is Jesse Enright. My lawyer.” Steffie looked up at the new guy. “Jesse, this is Wade MacGregor, an old friend.”
“Nice to meet you.” Jesse extended a hand to Wade.
“Likewise.” Wade shook Enright’s hand and wondered why the lawyer was calling on the client at ten at night.
“Am I interrupting …?” Jesse asked Stef.
“We were just taking a little break,” Steffie said, not really answering the question.
“Are you sure? I know it’s presumptuous for me to just pop in like this. But I worked late wrapping up a case and was taking a walk to clear my head and the lights were on when I passed by—”
“It’s perfectly fine, Jesse.”
“This is a terrific house. Nice high ceilings, nice large rooms, lots of windows, lots of light.” He nodded appreciatively. “Very nice, Steffie.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you sure I’m not interrupting something?” he asked again.
“Actually, I was just about to show Stef what I found in the dining room,” Wade said.
“You found something in the dining room?” she asked. “What is it?”
“You have to come see for yourself.” Wade took her by the elbow. “You, too, Enright. You’ll want to see this.”
Steffie and Jesse followed Wade into the room, and he turned up the lights on the chandelier to better illumine the wall.
“Remember I asked you if Horace had been married?” Wade pointed to the wall. “This is why.”
Steffie looked positively dumbstruck.
“ ‘Horace loves Daisy.’ ” She stared at the wall.
“Who’s Daisy?” Jesse asked.
“I have absolutely no idea.” She touched the plaster with her hand, running her fingers around the outline of the heart. “I wonder if Mom would know. Though it is strange that she never mentioned it.”
She dialed her mother’s number on her iPhone.
“Mom,” she said, “did Horace have a girlfriend named Daisy?”
She explained their find.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what it says. It’s big as life. I’ll send you a picture …”
Stef disconnected the call, snapped the picture with her phone, and sent it to her mother. Moments later, her phone rang. She spoke briefly with her mother, then hung up.
“Mom is as mystified as I am.” Stef stuck the phone back into her pocket and moved closer to the wall. “She has no idea what this means.”
“I think it means he and Daisy had a thing going on,” Jesse said.
“Why do you suppose he wrote that, then covered it up?” she wondered aloud. “It’s big as life. It almost covers half that wall.”
“Probably because he wanted to hide it,” Wade said.
“But why?” Steffie frowned. “He had to know that sooner or later, someone would see it. Maybe I’ll ask around,” she said. “Maybe someone knows.” She snapped her fingers. “Miss Grace! Miss Grace knows everything that ever happened in St. Dennis.”
“There’s always the possibility that Daisy wasn’t from St. Dennis,” Jesse noted.
“Or maybe she wasn’t his girlfriend,” Wade reasoned. “Maybe she was his secret crush.”
“Maybe we’ll never know.” Stef continued to stare at the heart. “It’s such a romantic gesture, to leave something like that for posterity. I was going to paint the walls. Now, though, I think I should repaper. Paint would cover that forever.”
“I wonder if Daisy—whoever she was—knew how Horace felt about her,” Wade mused.
“I hope so,” Steffie replied. “It would be so sad to …” She shook her head and the words trailed away. She turned to Jesse. “So I guess you wanted a quick tour of the house?”
“Actually, I need to get going. I have court in the morning.” Jesse checked his watch. “Some other time, though.”
“Sure. Anytime you see the lights on, stop in.” Stef walked him to the door.
Jesse looked back over his shoulder to where Wade stood near the arch that led into the dining room. “Nice meeting you.”
“You as well. I guess I’ll see you around town.”
“Sure.” Jesse waved and went through the open door, and Stef followed long enough to be hospitable.
“That was nice of Jesse to stop in,” she said when she came back inside and closed the door behind her.
“His timing could have been a little better,” Wade said as he walked to her and wrapped his arms around her.
Steffie looked into his eyes and asked, “Wade, who was Austin’s mother?”
The silence was so complete that they could have heard a pin dropping on the second floor.
Wade sighed. He’d planned for this. He’d even rehearsed it, but now all he could say was, “Her name was Robin Kennedy.”
“That’s a good start,” Steffie told him. “I’m assuming there’s more?”
“The main reason I came by tonight was to tell you about her. Well, that and to bring the ladder.” He cleared his throat. “Mostly, I wanted you to know about her. It’s a long, complicated story, Stef.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded, and with his heart in his throat, he took a seat on the hall stairs. He wanted Stef to know everything, but it wasn’t an easy story to tell.
“Wait one second.” Stef disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with their water bottles. She handed one to him and said, “Okay, now you can start.”
“Robin was the first person I met when I arrived on campus my freshman year. We were in the same dorm. She was pretty and lively and just so smart and so much fun.” He smiled at the memory. “Did you ever meet someone you had an instant connection with?”
Steffie nodded.
“Well, that was how it was with Robin. We were best friends. All four years. We shared an apartment for three of those years.” He glanced down at her and thought he saw her flinch. “It was never a romantic relationship, Stef. When I say we were best friends, that’s exactly what I mean.”
He took the top off the water and took a sip. Talking about it was so hard.
“When Robin was a senior in high school, her parents were involved in an auto accident with some big country-music star who was driving drunk. Both Robin’s parents were killed. There was a huge insurance settlement—eight figures. Robin was an only child.”
“So the entire settlement went to her.”
Wade nodded. “So four years later, senior year, it’s getting close to college graduation, and neither of us knows what we want to do. We talked about going into business together, and to make a long story short, we decided we were going to make beer. Of course, neither of us had a clue about how to go about it, so we had a lot to learn. But we both studied up and we talked to other people who’d started their own breweries, and KenneMac Brews was born.”
He began to peel the label from the water bottle.
“But your company did well, right? I heard your beer won awards and was written up in magazines.”
“Yeah, we did. We made a great product, we made a profit, and we were having one hell of a good time.”
“So what happened?”
“Robin had been dating this guy toward the end of senior year. He seemed nice enough.” Wade picked at another strip of paper from the label. “But after graduation, he just sort of disappeared. Then about three years ago, he popped up. Said he’d been in the navy. Anyway, he and Robin started dating again; the next thing I know, she’s madly in love and asking me if I have any objections to bringing him into the company.” Wade shrugged. “He said his degree was in business management, so it seemed like a good fit. I was spending more and more time actually brewing beer and Robin was doing the marketing and selling, so it seemed like the right time to bring in someone who could keep the books and pay the taxes. Besides, who was I to stand in the way of her happiness? And she was happy, Stef. She really loved this guy. She was talking about marrying him. Even asked me if I’d give her away at the wedding.”
Stef turned all the way around to look up at him. “I’m sensing something really bad coming right about now. Tell me he didn’t—”
“He did. Sucked the company dry. He’d even talked her into letting him ‘invest’ some of her personal money.”
“I’m guessing the only thing he invested in was himself.”
Wade nodded.
“That bastard. Poor Robin.” Stef frowned. “Damn. That just sucks.”
“It gets worse. A few weeks after she realized he’d embezzled from the company and had taken off with a good-size chunk of her personal funds, Robin found out she was pregnant.”
“Austin.”
“Yes, Austin. Right from the start, she wanted to keep her baby, but she was bothered about what to put on the birth certificate. She didn’t want to put the real father’s name on it. She didn’t want this guy to ever know that he’d fathered her child. But at the same time, she didn’t want to put ‘unknown’ on it either. So we decided that she’d put my name down as Austin’s father.”
“So you’re on Austin’s birth certificate as his father?” She seemed to mull that over. “Wade, that’s really huge.”
“She was my best friend,” he reminded her, as if that explained everything. To his mind, it did. “Our plan back then was to regroup and restart the business. We figured we’d made a go of it once, we could do it again. And then, when Robin was eight months pregnant, she found out that she had a really rare, aggressive cancer. The doctors wanted to put her into the hospital and begin treating her that day, but when they told her that the treatments would kill her child, she refused. They’d told her the treatments would only buy her an extra couple of months—maybe a year—and she didn’t think her baby’s entire life was worth a few months of hers.”
“Dear God.” Steffie shook her head. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to make that kind of choice. Did she get any treatment after Austin was born?”
He nodded. “She hung in there for as long as she could, but it was pretty clear to everyone that it was too little too late. She went down pretty fast.”
Wade’s throat hurt from the strain of trying to maintain control, but he’d gone this far, he might as well tell her everything.
“The week before Beck’s wedding, they decided to stop her treatments. As sick as she was, all she could think about was her son. There was no question that Austin would stay with me, but she became obsessed with the idea that somehow the guy who fathered him would find out and come for him and take him away. She was literally terrified that Austin might have to live with this creep someday. So I told her I’d marry her so they’d both have my name and there’d never be any reason for anyone to think that he wasn’t my son. This was the week after I got back from St. Dennis. The day after we got married, she began to slip away for good.”
Steffie got up and went into the kitchen. When she came back, she was wiping her eyes with a tissue and carrying the box under her arm. “That’s the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“Stef, Robin was dying and she needed to be able to die in peace. She’d made a huge sacrifice so that Austin could be born. She needed to know that I’d always take care of him.”
“That’s a hell of a commitment for a single guy to take on.” She blew her nose. “One hell of a sacrifice.”
“I’d been taking care of Austin since he was born, so it wasn’t any big change. And, Stef, the one thing you need to know is that I really do love him. As far as I’m concerned, he is my son. There’s no sacrifice here.”
“This other guy, where’s he now?”
“I have no idea, and frankly, I don’t care. I don’t believe in looking for trouble.”
“He never
knew about Austin?”
“No. The shit hit the fan when she realized he’d cleaned out the company. I don’t know who she was angrier with—him for his duplicity, or herself for making it so easy for him. By the time she found out she was pregnant, he was gone.”
“But you reported it to the police, right?”
“Yes, but Robin was running out of steam fast. We gave the police all the information we had, but since this guy hadn’t used his real name, they weren’t able to track him. I’ll probably never know who he really was. Everything he’d told us about himself was a lie, all fabricated so he could get close to Robin.”
“Why?” she asked, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, duh. Robin was the beneficiary of a very large insurance settlement. I’m guessing that because of the high profile of the driver of the car, the whole thing made the news.”
“Right.”
“So all along he’d been setting her up. That son of a bitch.” Steffie’s hands fisted. “To think he could just walk away like that. Damn.”
“Yeah. By the time the police came back and told us they’d hit a wall, Robin had no interest in looking for the guy. Actually, she was praying they’d never find him.”
“Because of the baby.”
Wade nodded. “At that point, she didn’t care about the money or the company. All she cared about was keeping Austin safe.”
“So he got off scot-free, and Robin died.” Stef frowned, her anger apparent.
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“You lost your company and everything because of this creep?”
“We sold all our equipment to one of our competitors so that we could pay the taxes that he’d never paid. Robin insisted on liquidating so that there wouldn’t be any medical bills left for me to deal with.”
“That just stinks, Wade. Sometimes I just can’t believe that there are people in this world who are so horrible. Who just go through life destroying other people and not giving a damn.”
They sat on the steps without talking, Steffie’s arm still resting on his knee.
“Anyway, that’s why I had to leave Beck’s wedding reception so abruptly,” Wade told her. “Our upstairs neighbor had been taking care of Robin and Austin that weekend, and she called me around eleven that night to ask me to come back.”
The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge Page 77