That Night on Thistle Lane

by Carla Neggers

  Phoebe tried to contain her surprise. “Does Maggie know? Where are you staying? Are you working for your family?” The questions tumbled out, and she was aware once more of Noah watching her, tuning in to the dynamics between her and her sister’s husband. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

  “I need to talk to Maggie first,” Brandon said. “She doesn’t know I’m in town. I don’t want to be a distraction. She’s got a lot on her plate.”

  “You could be a help,” Phoebe blurted.

  “Maybe I could be, but it’s not all up to me, is it? Maggie has a say.” He turned to Noah with a wry smile. “That was Phoebe’s stern librarian voice you just heard. Can you imagine turning in a book late to her? I once had gum stuck in a book I returned. It wasn’t my gum but that’s another story. Phoebe was already volunteering at the library then. What were we, thirteen?”

  “About that.” Still reeling from her conversation with Noah, she pointed a finger at her brother-in-law. “You’re putting me in a difficult position, Brandon. I’m not going to get caught between you and Maggie, but I can’t not tell her that you’re in town.”

  Brandon was unperturbed. “You don’t have to tell her. I will in about five minutes. She’s on her way over with the boys.” He kept his gaze on Phoebe, the slightest hint of humor in his dark eyes. “I have spies everywhere.”

  “Your brothers, you mean.”

  He shrugged, as if she’d stated the obvious, then glanced at Noah. “Was I interrupting anything?”

  “Nothing,” Phoebe said, answering for Noah. She crossed the road back to her car. “I’ll be on my way. Tell Maggie I said hi.”

  Neither man stopped her as she climbed back behind the wheel of her old Subaru.

  As soon as she arrived on Thistle Lane, the skies opened up again, but it was just a passing shower, no thunder and lightning. She parked in her driveway, then ran through the rain onto the porch. Soaked and shivering, she sat on a wicker chair, smelling roses and wet summer grass and thinking about Noah Kendrick’s hand on her cheek.

  Eleven

  Maggie fidgeted, grabbing a canvas bag of who-knew-what out of the back of her catering van just to give herself something to do, fussing at Aidan and Tyler when they jumped out of the back straight into a puddle. She didn’t care one way or the other whether they got wet or muddied their shoes, and she wasn’t at Carriage Hill to cook. She was just checking on the place.

  Checking on why she’d seen Phoebe driving in this direction with Noah Kendrick in the front seat of her car.

  Maggie shut the van door. She just needed to stay busy, give herself a chance to think.

  Phoebe, Noah.

  Brandon.

  It was too much.

  Brandon scooped up his sons, one in each arm as if they weighed nothing. They got mud on his cargo pants but he didn’t seem to notice as he set the boys on the grass in the front yard and turned to Noah. “These are my sons, Tyler and Aidan Sloan. Guys, this is Noah Kendrick.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Noah said as the boys greeted him politely, then promptly went back to their puddle-stomping. He glanced at Brandon, then Maggie. “I’ll be out back.”

  Maggie almost stopped him so that she wouldn’t be alone with Brandon, but she kept quiet. She was being ridiculous. She’d known Brandon all her life. Even if he didn’t want to live in Knights Bridge, his family was here. Now his sons were here. Whatever her relationship with him had become, he was still a part of her life.

  She held her canvas bag against her hip, remembered that it contained different oils she and Olivia wanted to try out in their soap-making. Olive, almond, soy, coconut. “Where’s your truck?” she asked Brandon.

  “Up at Dylan’s.”

  “I didn’t see it there.”

  “It’s out back.”

  “What did you do, park where I wouldn’t see it?”

  “I didn’t want you to run away or throw a brick through the windshield.” When she glared at him, he held up a hand. “It was a joke, Maggie. If you have things you need to do here, I can take the boys up to Dylan’s and show them what’s going on. Demolition starts this week.”

  “I’m not staying. I should get Aidan and Tyler home and into the tub.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re dirty, Brandon.”

  “I mean why the rush?”

  “Schedules. Routine. Summer’s winding down. School will be starting soon. Anyway, I don’t have time to explain their day-to-day lives to you.” She immediately regretted snapping at him. “I’m sorry. I’ll give them a few more minutes to get wet and muddy and then go.”

  Brandon didn’t fire back, as he would have six months ago. “They can see Dylan’s place another time.”

  “Another time? Aren’t you going back to Boston?”

  “No. I’m working here, Maggie.”

  She was so shocked she gasped. “With your family?”

  He nodded without hesitation, without any indication he was embarrassed, bitter, settling, anything.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “It’s a job.” He spoke with a finality that shut down further questions.

  Maggie took a breath. “Okay, then. Where are you staying? You’re not commuting from Boston—”

  “I pitched a tent at Dylan’s.” He gave her that devil-may-care Sloan smile. “It’s rent-free. I promised the boys I’d take them camping. I was thinking we’d just camp out here.”

  “They’d like that,” Maggie said, her throat tight with emotion.

  He started for the kitchen door. “I’ll head upstairs. I need to take a shower. Helps with the camping out.”

  “Helps with the smell, too.”

  He grinned at her. “You never were one to beat around the bush.”

  “You’re sweaty. It’s not...” Why had she brought up something as personal, as intimate, as that? “Olivia and I made a spearmint-olive oil soap. I think there’s some in the hall bathroom.”

  “No goat’s milk?”

  Maggie didn’t know if he was making fun of her and Olivia’s goat’s milk soaps or if he was genuinely curious. She decided to give him a straight answer. “It’s the one soap we’ve tried so far that doesn’t have goat’s milk. Spearmint works for guys as well as women. You know. Instead of a lilac scent or something.”

  He scratched the side of his mouth and let his gaze linger on her. Maggie knew he was thinking about the two of them in the shower. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, bringing up soaps. She wanted to blame him, because it’d be just like him to lead her down a dead-end road and let her figure out how to get out of there on her own.

  He swaggered inside. He knew what she was thinking. He always knew. That was half their problem. She wished sometimes she wasn’t so damn transparent.

  She saw that the boys had settled into making mud pies and checking out worms. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she told them. “I can see you from the window.”

  It was as much a warning to stay out of trouble as reassurance that she was near. They weren’t toddlers anymore. She headed into the kitchen and set her bag on the island, then unloaded the oils. She might as well go ahead and leave them in Olivia’s pantry.

  Why was Brandon back working with his family?

  It wouldn’t last. He disliked construction on a good day. He did it to make a living. They’d married so young, had the boys so young. They’d both had to juggle dreams and practicalities. He was already restless, frayed at the edges, when his work slowed down in Boston last year and he got laid off. Brandon didn’t do well being idle. No Sloan did. One day, Maggie came home to a note telling her he’d taken off on a canoe trip down the Moose River in Maine. He’d be back “whenever.”

  And that was that. She’d packed up herself and the boys and moved to Knights Bridge. She started her own catering business, and now she was working with Olivia, not just providing food for events but helping to shape The Farm at Carriage Hill.

  Maggie loved what she was
doing, but her relationship with Brandon remained unresolved, in that no-man’s-land between estrangement and divorce.

  It wasn’t as if there was another man in her life. It’d always been just the two of them.

  Noah came in from the mudroom, where Buster was sound asleep. In a combative mood, Maggie decided to confront him about Phoebe. “My sister gave you a ride back here? Why?”

  “It was raining and I’d walked into town.”

  “Phoebe’s...” Maggie smacked a bottle of coconut oil onto the island with more force than was necessary. “She loves books and history, and she knows everything that goes on in town. She’s a good soul.”

  “She’s a little quirky, too,” Brandon said, entering the kitchen from the living room. He’d made fast work of his shower, the ends of his dark hair still damp.

  Maggie flashed him a look. “Phoebe’s reserved.”

  He shrugged. “Compared to you and the twins, maybe. Ask the boys about her at story hour. She gets into it.”

  “I’m here every week for story hour. I have asked them.” Maggie gritted her teeth, wishing she’d just gone straight home instead of coming out here, then smiled apologetically at Noah. “I should go.”

  Noah’s interest clearly was piqued but he seemed to contain it. “Was there a story hour when you all were Aidan and Tyler’s age?”

  “There was,” Maggie said. “Brandon was disruptive.”

  He grinned at her. “You remember.”

  She resisted comment.

  “Phoebe and I know we danced with each other at the masquerade the other night,” Noah said calmly.

  Maggie didn’t bother hiding her relief. “I’m glad that secret’s out, at least among us. The whole town doesn’t need to know.” Then she remembered who she was talking to. “The whole world in your case, I guess.”

  She wondered how Phoebe had taken discovering that Noah Kendrick was her swashbuckler but supposed her sister had more on her mind now. Maggie didn’t want to get into the mystery man Phoebe had overheard. Let Noah explain to Brandon.

  Suddenly she just wanted to go home, walk over to Phoebe’s house and talk about flowers and flea-market finds and never mind about men.

  Brandon eyed her but made no comment as he turned to Noah. “Let’s have a beer before I head back to my tent.”

  Noah nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Maggie gathered up the boys, who wanted to stay so they could see if the rain had brought out slugs, too. She told them they could check at home. She got them in the van with a promise they’d stop at Phoebe’s house on the way back. They adored their aunt Phoebe.

  But when Maggie pulled up in front of her sister’s small house on Thistle Lane, no one was there. She drove past the library, noticed a light on in the attic. Phoebe was probably hunting for more clothes for the fashion show. Maggie almost stopped and joined her. She’d never been up to the library’s attic. Given the stories of ghosts, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to, either.

  “Oh, Phoebe,” she whispered. “Phoebe, Phoebe.”

  Her sister, the romantic at heart. Her sister, whose heart was broken so long ago. For all her own heartbreak, Maggie would make the same stupid mistakes, fight the same useless battles and press the same empty arguments if that was what it took for her to have her sons. They were worth the agony of what she was going through with their father now.

  And she wouldn’t give up the good years she’d had with him. Not for anything.

  She looked up at the lighted attic. Was this life of her sister’s worth what she’d endured? There’d been no full-on struggle when Phoebe’s heart was broken.

  It wasn’t like Brandon and me.

  Maggie blinked back tears, remembering her sister’s ashen face at twenty, their father not yet cold in his grave when her college boyfriend—the man everyone expected her to marry—had walked out on her. It hadn’t been “just like that.” Nothing ever was. But it had been fast, permanent and devastating.

  Brandon and his brothers, ever Phoebe’s champions, had wanted to chase down the weasel, but she’d stopped them. Maggie had looked him up on Facebook last year. He was a lawyer now, married and living in Orlando. She knew Phoebe would never look him up herself but hadn’t told her that she had.

  Knowing Phoebe, she wished him well.

  Maggie didn’t.

  Her ability to hold a grudge was something Brandon used to appreciate about her. He didn’t anymore. “Let it go, Maggie,” he’d tell her. “Just let it go.”

  “Mom,” Aidan said from the back. “When can we go camping with Daddy?”

  “He has a tent,” Tyler said, sitting next to his brother.

  Maggie’s idea of camping was a cabin with heat and indoor plumbing. “We’ll work out a date with your dad, okay?”

  They thought that’d be great and proceeded to regale her with all that they’d do with their father on their camping trip, even if it was just in Dylan McCaffrey’s backyard.

  That was Brandon, wasn’t it? Always able to fire up their sons, fill them with can-do optimism. Even at his darkest moment, when he’d watched his dreams go up in smoke, when a temporary lay-off had dragged into flat-out unemployment, he hadn’t taken his disappointments out on Tyler and Aidan. Maggie wasn’t even sure if he’d taken them out on her, but she’d felt them, internalized them, let them make her bleed.

  She hadn’t wanted him to throw his dreams overboard and yet she’d known they were weighing them down, hurting their chances of creating a stable life for their sons. For themselves.

  Now here he was, in their hometown, working for Sloan & Sons.

  “If I ever go back to Knights Bridge, Maggie, you’ll know I’ve failed.”

  He’d been seventeen then.

  Things changed, she thought. People grew up.

  And yet, as she drove along the common and turned onto her own pretty little side street, she couldn’t help but feel that Brandon had given up. That he did see himself as a failure...and maybe so did she.

  * * *

  After Maggie O’Dunn Sloan whirled out with her two sons, Noah got two beers out of the refrigerator, opened them and took them out to the terrace. He handed one to Brandon, who’d dried off a couple of chairs at Olivia’s round table. He took a long drink. “So, Noah. You may be good with a sword, but if I’ve misplaced my trust and you do anything to upset my wife or her sisters—”

  “You’ll key my car?”

  Brandon grinned. “Right. Key your car. You really are a trip. You don’t even have a car here.” He drank more of his beer. “Why are you here? Really.”

  Noah sat down. A cool breeze stirred. He swore he could smell pesto but assumed it was just rain-drenched basil. Finally he looked across the table at Brandon. “A Los Angeles private investigator named Julius Hartley has been on my tail. I don’t know why. I saw him several times in San Diego. Then I saw him in Boston.”

  “At the masquerade?”

  “That’s right. I can’t say for sure that he followed me east.”

  “But it’s a safe bet,” Brandon said.

  Noah didn’t disagree. “I stayed in Knights Bridge in part to make sure he’s not hanging around here.”

  “Do you think he was hired by someone from here or from California?”

  Brandon Sloan obviously had grasped the situation immediately. Noah drank some of his beer, appreciating the cooler, drier evening. How frank could he be with this man? “It could be either one,” he said finally.

  “Explain.”

  Noah told Brandon what he knew, but he left out his reaction to Phoebe—and her reaction to him. The attraction they’d experienced at the ball hadn’t been just a fleeting thing born of their anonymity and the roles they were playing.

  Phoebe O’Dunn, his princess.

  If anything, he found her even more appealing with her wild red hair, in her element making pesto, working at the Knights Bridge Free Public Library, talking to Audrey Frost and Grace Webster at Rivendell.

  Her
baggy sweater that morning at the library wasn’t in the same league as her elegant Edwardian gown, but Noah didn’t care. It’d been chilly in the library and Phoebe had obviously grabbed the sweater from the collection of vintage clothes for the upcoming fashion show. He appreciated her ease with herself and her surroundings.

  He’d also noticed the swell of her breasts as the old sweater had slipped off her shoulders, but he blocked that image from his thoughts, in case Brandon Sloan could read minds and decide to throttle him.

  These were treacherous waters he was navigating, Noah thought.

  “Do you think Maggie and Phoebe have anything to do with this Hartley character?” Brandon asked. “Because if you do, you’re wrong.”

  Noah appreciated the other man’s confidence. “I understand your concern but I don’t think anything. I’m trying not to speculate.”

  “You sound like my cop brother.”

  Noah thought that was a compliment, or at least a neutral observation, but he couldn’t be sure and therefore said nothing.

  Buster put his head on Brandon’s lap. Brandon scratched behind the big dog’s ears as he looked out at Olivia’s garden. “How much do you know about Phoebe?”

  “She’s the director and sole full-time employee of the Knights Bridge library.” Noah started to add that she could dance but reconsidered and said instead, “She’s the eldest of four sisters. Phoebe, Maggie, Ava and Ruby.”

  “Their mother is Elly. Elly O’Dunn. She’s still around.” Brandon patted Buster, then motioned for him to lie down on the terrace, which, miraculously, he did. “Their father died when Phoebe was a junior in college. Maggie had just started her freshman year. The twins were still in school here in town. His death was sudden. An accident. He was trimming branches on a white pine and cut corners with safety. He fell and that was that. Broke his neck.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Noah said. “It must have been a terrible shock.”

  “Patrick O’Dunn was a good guy but I don’t think he ever figured he’d live a long life. He worked in forestry. He knew how to trim a tree. He made a mistake he shouldn’t have made. I’m not saying he meant to die that day.” Brandon drank more of his beer. “It’s all history now, anyway.”