by Diana Palmer
“I’m honored!”
Helen disappeared into the house and returned with a huge silver tray laden with cake and cookies and coffee.
She put it on the white wrought-iron table by the rocking chairs and invited Dana to sit down. It was delightful on the porch, cool and quiet and homey. Dana could remember so many lazy summer days spent there while Mandy visited her only sister.
“How are you?” Helen asked while they sipped coffee and nibbled on homemade cookies.
“I’m better. Much better. And you?”
Helen shrugged. “Getting over it, I suppose. I still miss her, as I’m sure you do. But life goes on, doesn’t it?”
Dana smiled wistfully. “Inevitably.” She finished a cookie and took a sip of black coffee. “How’s Dad?”
Helen gave her a sharp, probing look. “Hurting. He thinks you blame him for Mandy’s death. He calls me once a week to see how you’re doing.”
That was painful. “It was hard,” she said after a minute, “getting used to being two families, when we’d been one most of my life. Always it was Mom and Dad. Now it’s Dad and someone else, and no Mom.” She sighed bitterly. “I honestly feel like an orphan.”
“Dear, we’ve agreed that life goes on. Now answer me just one question honestly,” Helen said, leaning forward intently. “Would you want your father to live all his life alone, with no one?”
Dana blinked. “Well, no, I don’t suppose so.”
“Would you want him to be a playboy and take out a different woman every night?”
“No!” Dana said, horrified.
“You’ve never even met Sharla formally,” Dana was reminded. “She’s a lovely woman, Dana. Very old-fashioned and sweet. She likes to cook and grow flowers and do needlepoint, and she loves the whole world. She’s a…motherly woman. And she has no children of her own; she’d never been married before she met Jack.”
That was interesting. Dana sat up straight, staring across at her aunt. “She hadn’t?”
Helen smiled. “No, she hadn’t. So, you see, marriage was a very special thing for her. She can’t have children anymore, of course, and she was looking forward to having a grown daughter.”
Tears stung Dana’s eyes. She turned away. “That might be nice, to be wanted by someone,” she whispered.
Helen frowned. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”
“Mother told me.”
Helen blinked. “Told you what?”
“That because of me, Dad and Mom had to get married. That he never wanted me, that he blamed me for being the cause of a marriage they both hated,” she said, letting the bitterness and hurt pour out.
Helen got up and drew the weeping girl into her arms. “How could Mandy tell you such a thing?” she ground out, rocking Dana slowly. “It wasn’t true! They’d been married over a year when you came along. And your father was the one who wanted you, my dear, as much as I hate to admit it. Mandy wasn’t domestic, even in those early years. She hated the restriction of a child and refused to have another one. You spent so much of those early years with me, didn’t you know?” she added wistfully, tears welling in her eyes. “Mandy would leave you with me while she partied. And since I had no children and no husband, you became the light of my life. You still are.”
Dana wept unashamedly. “Why did she tell me that—why?”
“Because she’d grown bitter with advancing age, darling,” Helen said soothingly. “She was unhappy and afraid of being alone, and she wanted to make you hate Jack for her own misery. He did try, Dana, he did. But your mother was such an unhappy person. Eventually she turned to alcohol because she couldn’t endure reality. Her whole life turned into a waking nightmare. She would have destroyed the entire family if she’d lived, and you know it. Don’t you, Dana?”
Dana’s lower lip trembled. “Yes,” she ground out. “I knew it all along, but it hurt so much to admit it. And I felt guilty….”
“That was my fault. I always say the wrong thing, and I never blamed you. I was just hysterical.” She drew back. “Dana, it was God’s will. He decides the hour of death, not you and I. And Mandy’s so much happier now with Him, don’t you imagine?”
Dana smiled wetly. “Yes, I imagine she is. I just miss her so!”
“I miss her too. But we want what’s best for her, after all. And she’s at peace.”
Dana nodded, dabbing again at the tears. “How about some more coffee?” she asked.
“Suits me. Some more cookies too?”
“I’d like that.” She sat back and accepted a second cup of steaming black coffee. “Aunt Helen, would you tell me some more about Sharla?” she asked after a minute.
Helen turned away to pour her own coffee, smiling secretly before she sat back and began to talk.
By the end of the second week Dana was back in the swing of things. The only hard moment had come when, catching a late-night newscast with Jenny, she’d seen Gannon van der Vere being interviewed by one of the anchormen.
“Say, isn’t that the man you worked for? What a dish!” Jenny exclaimed, leaning forward to watch the screen intently.
Dana felt her face go white as she looked again into those deep-set eyes as Gannon’s tanned face filled the screen. Her heart did a backflip just from her looking at him, looking into the eyes that could quite plainly see again.
“My own struggle with blindness,” Gannon was saying, “taught me the value of proper tools to cope with it. This new device we’re working on is a revolutionary concept. In theory it’s quite unique. We hope that theory will translate well into a useful product.”
“Amazing,” the newsman murmured. “Mr. van der Vere, we’ve heard that your company may take a tremendous loss on this particular product to make it affordable to the general public.”
“That is so,” Gannon replied quietly. “In order to be effective, it must be accessible to the people who need it. We’re cutting corners to keep the cost of production down, and in cases of dire need we plan to have a loan program as well.”
“Would you term that good business?” the newsman asked dryly.
“A question of definitions,” Gannon replied. “Our stockholders have no complaints about their profit, and one such sideline as this shouldn’t have any disastrous effect on our finances. However, before I’ll let the stockholders lose one penny, I’ll pay for this new product out of my own pocket. I’ve been there, you see,” he added softly. “I know what it is to be blind. I think those of us who are sighted and have access to the technology are morally obliged to help those less fortunate.”
“Philanthropy, Mr. van der Vere?”
He laughed softly. “God’s business, sir,” he replied with a grin.
The interviewer asked several more questions, but Dana didn’t hear them. She was lost in the pleasure of what she’d already heard.
“Isn’t he a dish?” Jenny said in awe when the interview was over and the screen was blank. “How in the world were you able to drag yourself away from him?”
“Oh, I managed,” Dana hedged. She’d told Jenny nothing about what had really happened during her absence. And she wasn’t going to. It was too painful to rehash.
Friday night came and she dressed very carefully for dinner with Aunt Helen. She chose an off-white shirtwaist dress with red accessories and a flashy red scarf, letting her long pale hair stay loose and free. She didn’t know why her aunt had insisted on such formality, but then, Helen did occasionally get eccentric.
Of course, there was another possibility too—one Dana was afraid to ponder. She’d mentioned to Helen that she wanted very much to meet Sharla and make her peace with her father, but was too ashamed of her own behavior to approach him and risk another rejection. Helen had murmured something about things working out and had gone about her business. But this dinner sounded faintly suspicious.
Sure enough, when Dana got to Helen’s house, there was a strange car parked in the driveway. She gripped her purse as if it threatened to escape, and forced hers
elf to walk onto the porch and ring the doorbell.
Helen came rushing to answer it, her face flushed, her eyes apprehensive.
“There you are,” she said, opening the door. “Come in, come in. Uh, I invited two more for supper…”
As Dana entered the living room, she came face-to-face with her father and Sharla, and she felt all the blood drain slowly out of her cheeks.
Chapter Eleven
“Dana, I’d like you to meet Sharla,” Helen said, faintly ruffled as she dragged Dana forward. “I think it’s about time the two of you were formally introduced.”
Sharla was tall and slender, with whitish-gold hair and pale blue eyes. She looked as nervous as Dana felt, but she looked delightful in a simple cotton shirtwaist that mirrored Dana’s own unruffled style of dressing.
“Hello,” Sharla said, extending a hand. She smiled hesitantly. “I…I wanted to meet you before, but…”
Dana nodded, taking the hand. It was warm and strong, and it was a hand that was no stranger to housework—a far cry from Mandy’s delicate, well-manicured ones.
“How are you?” Jack Steele asked quietly, watching his daughter closely. “Helen said you’d completely recovered, and you…look well.”
“I’m doing nicely, thanks,” Dana replied. Her eyes scanned the familiar face, finding new lines and new gray hairs. He looked older, tired. But there was a light in his eyes when he glanced down at Sharla that she’d never seen before. The same light she knew was in her own when she’d looked at Gannon.
She glanced away, embarrassed.
“Sharla, why don’t you help me with supper?” Helen said, with a meaningful glance toward father and daughter.
Sharla joined her quickly. “I’d love to.”
When the other women were gone, Dana shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably, searching for words.
“I’ve been worried,” Jack Steele said finally, hesitantly. He shrugged. “I wanted to call you, but we’ve been so far apart for so long, and I knew I wasn’t on your list of favorite people. I just let the time go by, I guess.”
She nodded. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Yes, I know. That’s how it was for me too.”
“I didn’t marry Mandy because I had to,” he blurted out, avoiding her eyes. “I loved her. I really loved her, Dana. But when you came along, and she refused to settle down and take care of you—when she began enjoying parties and alcohol more than she enjoyed her marriage and her daughter—” He lifted his hands helplessly. “I don’t even remember when it stopped being love. One day I woke up and realized that my life was too empty to bear. I thought if we divorced, perhaps she could find love again in someone or something. I didn’t expect that she’d deteriorate so quickly. And by then there was Sharla….” His voice lowered with emotion. “Sharla. And I was in love, truly in love, for the first time in my life.”
She studied his averted face and she understood. Because of Gannon she understood at last.
“It’s a kind of madness, isn’t it?” she asked wisely, wryly. “It takes over your life and your mind, and you have no control whatsoever over what you do.”
His eyes jerked up and he studied her for a long time. “You wouldn’t have said that three months ago.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know three months ago what it was to love. I was so superior to the rest of the world, you know.”
He laughed softly. “Were you?”
“Smug and superior…. I could do without anyone. I’d lost Mandy, and the world along with her. I hated you.” She searched his tired face. “Helen said that Sharla doesn’t have any children of her own.”
There was a tiny rustling movement from the doorway, and the older woman stopped just short of Dana.
“She does…now,” Sharla said hesitantly, her hands lifting unsurely, her face quiet, hopeful.
With a tiny, aching cry, Dana ran into those thin arms and felt them enclose her, hold her, cradle her. And she cried until she thought her heart would break, because this woman was the mother she’d always wanted—needed. Without being disloyal to Mandy, whom she’d loved and whom she missed, Sharla was suddenly the rainbow after the storm.
Jack Steele cleared his throat, moving forward to separate the two women. “Let’s eat something first,” he murmured. “I can’t cry on an empty stomach.”
“Oh, Dad.” Dana laughed through her tears and hugged him.
“Welcome home,” he whispered huskily. “Welcome home, little girl.”
It was the most wonderful night Dana could remember in years, sitting with her father and stepmother, learning about them, being with them. They were so good together, so secure in their love for each other. Her opinion of marriage underwent a startling change just from watching them.
Jack didn’t ask any pointed questions about the time Dana had been on the coast, but just before they left Helen’s house, the two of them walked out ahead of the others and she felt him watching her.
“Helen said you were nursing a blind man,” he said after a minute.
“Yes. Gannon van der Vere.”
He whistled. “Quite a corporate giant, Mr. van der Vere. He’s regained his sight, hasn’t he? I saw him on the news the other night.”
She nodded. “Yes, he’s…he’s back at work.”
“And quite a changed man,” he added dryly.
“Don’t look at me—I was just his nurse.”
“Really?” He turned, holding her gaze. “You love him, don’t you?”
“Desperately,” she admitted, feeling a surge of hunger so sweeping that it very nearly made her swoon.
“And how does he feel?”
She lifted her shoulders. “There’s a woman…. They were very nearly engaged before his accident. Now they’re back together again. He…he loves her, you see.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “Very sorry.”
“Don’t be. Loving him was an experience I’ll never forget. It’s enriched my life. In so many ways.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he replied surprisingly. “You’re very different now, Dana. Another woman from the one who left Ashton those weeks ago.”
She smiled. “A better one, I hope.”
He grinned. “Why don’t you go back down there and put a ring on his finger?”
She laughed. “Sounds simple, doesn’t it? I’m afraid he’s not that kind of man. Our worlds are very different.”
“Worlds,” he informed her, “can merge.”
“Like yours and Sharla’s?” she teased. Impulsively she hugged him. “I like my new stepmother.”
“She likes you too. Let’s not drift apart again,” he added solemnly. “Let’s be a family.”
She nodded. “I’d like that very much.”
“Dinner with us next Friday?” he asked.
She smiled. “Ask Sharla first.”
“Sharla, can we have Dana to dinner next Friday?” he called.
“Don’t be silly!” was the instant reply. “My daughter can come to dinner anytime she pleases without having to have invitations. Right, Dana?”
“Right…Mom,” she replied softly.
Sharla smiled and turned quickly away, but not before Dana caught the gleam of tears in her eyes.
In the weeks that followed, Dana became a real part of the Steele family, and her life became bright and meaningful as she threw herself back into her work. But the longer she was away from Gannon, the worse the loneliness became.
When Lorraine called her unexpectedly one Wednesday evening, she felt shock wash over her. She’d only been thinking about Gannon and his stepmother a few minutes earlier.
“How are you, my dear?” Lorraine asked softly. “We haven’t heard from you, and I just wanted to check and make sure you were all right. How is your aunt?”
Her aunt. The white lie. Dana swallowed. “Oh, Aunt Helen is much better,” she said. “And I’m fine too. How about you?”
“I’m doing very well. You know that Gannon could see; you s
aw him on television? I meant to write you, but I was so excited, and then Dirk came back to help on the computer project…. The house has been overrun with technicians and scientists!”
“I heard about the new invention. I’m so pleased about what Gannon’s done,” she murmured.
“I’m shocked,” Lorraine said flatly. “He’s changed so. He’s like another man, so caring and concerned. Except for missing you, of course.”
“What?”
“Missing you.”
“What about Layn?” Dana burst out.
“My dear, she brought him home from Savannah just after you left, and looked like a thundercloud. She took off in a blaze of glory and hasn’t been seen since. Gannon hasn’t even mentioned her.”
“I don’t understand,” Dana said weakly. She sat down, her legs collapsing.
“Neither do I. And he wasn’t staying with Layn in Savannah, by the way. Katy and Maude told on him. He was in the hospital.”
“Hospital!”
“He fell, did you know?” Lorraine asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” she admitted, feeling relief. “He asked me to leave and not say anything to you about his sight returning. It puzzled me at the time….”
“It’s still puzzling me. I tried to pump his doctor, but I can’t get anyone to tell me anything. Something’s going on, Dana,” she added quietly. “Something very strange. He doesn’t look at women—not at all. And when he isn’t working, he walks along the beach for hours at a time, looking so lonely that I ache for him.”
“Maybe he misses Layn,” Dana suggested.
“When he talks about no one except you?” Lorraine asked sadly. “My dear, he got his hands on a picture of you and he sits and stares at it like a starving man.”
Her heart went wild. “A picture of me? Where?”
“He charmed Mrs. Pibbs out of it,” Lorraine laughed. “I don’t know where she found it.”
Dana did. Mrs. Pibbs had asked for a photograph of her to add to some kind of brochure. Dana had thought it was an unusual request at the time, but she hadn’t questioned it. And it had been for Gannon!
“Is he having any trouble at all with his eyes?” Dana asked quickly.