He felt his fingers tremble as they reached out and lightly caressed his son’s soft cheek. “I won’t allow the darkness to touch you, Trev, I promise.” He closed his eyes and silently prayed to the God his mother had shunned. No brilliant light or heavenly trumpets answered, but he did feel the strength to go back downstairs and see what else Thomas might have come up with.
Thomas had been awfully quiet both during dessert and the drive home. The man had been thinking, and thinking hard. Maybe he had come up with a new plan to locate Trevor’s grandfather. If not, the trip downstairs wouldn’t be wasted. Sydney was down there. He needed to see her and there lay his other problem—his growing feelings for this woman.
He had been handling Trevor’s illness on his own, with the support and concern of Rita, his employees and his small circle of friends. Their support had always been enough to see him through whatever rough patch he had been facing. Now it wasn’t enough anymore. He needed someone to lean on, someone to share this terrible ache within his heart. He needed Sydney.
Ellis left the bedroom door slightly ajar before heading down the stairs and for the den. Thomas was in his usual chair and, also as usual, Sydney was curled up at the end of the sofa. But tonight, instead of poring over paperwork, she was leafing through a magazine. He stepped quietly into the room and took a seat at the other end of the couch.
Thomas turned his head in his direction. “Did you get Trevor settled in for the night?”
“He never woke back up. He mumbled a couple of words about chocolate cake and dandelions, but nothing made much sense.”
Thomas frowned. “We didn’t tire him out too much today, did we?”
“No, Trevor’s fine. It was just a busy day for him, that’s all.” He slid closer to Sydney and held out his hand. He wanted to touch her. Today had been a lesson in futility. He had only managed to sneak in two kisses since leaving her bed before dawn. Finding her without Thomas around had been easy. Finding her without Trevor around was proving impossible.
Sydney tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table and reached for his hand. “He did a pretty good job of trying to polish off that slice of chocolate cake.”
“Can’t blame the boy there,” Thomas said. “It was great cake.”
“Yes, it was.” He squeezed her fingers and smiled a promise of things to come. Last night had only been an appetizer where Sydney was concerned. Tonight he wanted the main course.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, Ellis,” Thomas said as he made himself more comfortable in the chair. “I think we should continue going through the yearbooks eliminating everyone we can, but I also want to pursue a new avenue.”
“What avenue’s that?” He knew Thomas had been hatching another plan.
“The church.” Thomas’s thumb rubbed at his jaw. “I think her parents’ church might hold the key. Everyone we’ve talked to so far mentioned that Cathy was only allowed to do things that were church related. It stands to reason she would have spent quite a lot of hours not only at the church, but with some of its members.”
“That’s true, Dad.” Sydney squeezed his hand lightly. “Maybe someone from the church would remember who she might have been spending a lot of time with.”
Ellis felt his own excitement level rise a notch in response to Sydney’s. “How are we going to find out who went to that particular church thirty-three years ago?”
“Membership records. All churches keep membership records. All we have to do is look up the right year.” Thomas rubbed his hands together as if the matter was settled. “First thing tomorrow morning we go to the church and look up the records.” Thomas stood up, stretched and yawned. “Ellis, I’m going to need your eyes again.”
“No problem.” He was curious about the church that both his grandparents and mother had gone to. Maybe there would be some photographs of his grandparents or even one of a young Catherine Carlisle.
“Drop Trevor off at the nursery on the way.” Sydney seemed to be watching her father as he made his way toward the door. “I think he enjoyed himself immensely today and all the employees fell in love with him.”
Ellis sighed. Trevor was his son, his responsibility. He didn’t want to burden Sydney with watching him all morning long. Five-year-old boys contained nothing but energy and questions, especially after they had a good night’s sleep. “Trevor can come with us, Sydney.”
“I don’t mind, Ellis. Trevor’s such a big help and I don’t know of one little boy who would want to spend the entire morning poring over old membership records in some stuffy church office.”
“She has a point there, Ellis,” Thomas said. “We’ll pick Trevor up when we’re done at the church and take him into town with us. I’d bet he would love to see the inside of the police station.”
He knew when he was beat. Between Thomas and Sydney he didn’t have a chance. “Okay, but if he becomes too much for you, Sydney, I want you to call me. I’ll give you my cell-phone number.”
“Good. Now that that’s settled I’m heading for bed myself,” Thomas said. “I’m an old man and I need my beauty sleep. Good night, you two.”
“Good night, Thomas.”
“Night, Dad.” Sydney smiled and scooted closer to Ellis as her father walked out of the room. They listened in silence as Thomas made his way up the stairs and then closed his bedroom door. Delicate fingers that were capable of planting begonias or driving him to the brink of ecstasy started to toy with the buttons on his shirt. “Alone at last.”
He captured her hand before she got to the bottom button on his shirt, and every ounce of control he possessed went flying out the window. “You’re a wicked women, Sydney St. Claire.”
Sydney smiled a devilish grin as she brought her mouth closer. Temptingly close. “You have no idea.”
He laughingly hauled her the rest of the way into his arms. “Show me how wicked you can be.”
Sydney wrapped her arms around his neck and proceeded to do exactly that.
Chapter 10
Ellis glanced at his jailbird son, who was peering at him from behind thick iron bars, and grinned. Trevor waved and grinned back. The visit to the police station was a hit with Trevor, at least. As for Thomas, the jury was still out on that one.
Pete and Harvey were back, and this time they brought Harvey’s younger brother, Paul, and two other men who Ellis had heard Thomas mention in conversation. He had always been under the impression that females were the ones who knew everyone and, usually, everyone’s business. He was wrong. He was most humbly wrong. He should go out immediately and offer every woman who crossed his path a sincere and heartfelt apology.
Between Thomas, the two officers and the other five men, there wasn’t a person, place or thing within a fiftymile radius that wasn’t known. Catherine Carlisle’s life was open for discussion, at least the part of her life anyone could remember. Apparently his mother could have doubled as a wallflower.
Paul did remember asking her out once during their senior year. The young Catherine had politely declined, saying her parents wouldn’t allow her to date. Though Paul had honestly seemed embarrassed about telling Ellis he had asked his mother out, he had respectfully told him that Catherine had been cute, in a different sort of way. She hadn’t been allowed to wear the same type of clothes that the other girls wore. Makeup was also forbidden, and her long brown hair had always been severely pulled back away from her face.
“Hey, Charlie,” Paul said, “you were in our class. Don’t you remember anything about Cathy?”
Charlie, a bald man with a belly that hung over his belt, seemed startled by the question. “She was in a couple of my classes, but I don’t really remember too much about her at school. She was always quiet and sat at the back of the room.” Charlie gave a shrug. “She always got good grades and wore white blouses.”
“White blouses?” He couldn’t prevent himself from asking. He couldn’t ever remember seeing his mother in a white blouse.
“Yeah, you know
, the kind that buttons down the front. She wore one to school every day.”
“That’s right, she did,” Paul said.
Charlie beamed as if he had just solved the energy problems of the world. “Most of the time she wore them to church too, but sometimes she wore other colors.”
“You went to church with her, Charlie?” Thomas sat up a little straighter.
“Every Sunday.” Charlie, clearly warming to the idea of being the center of attention, leaned back against a file cabinet and balanced his chair on its back two legs. “We were in the same bible-study class on Monday nights and youth group together on Friday nights.”
“You spent a lot of time with my mother, didn’t you?” He looked at Charlie with renewed interest. Was it possible...?
Charlie gave a rough laugh that sounded like a bark. “I spent time in the same places as your mother, Ellis, but I was never with her. She didn’t hang around anyone except for her parents and a few of the deacons and elders.”
Ellis saw Thomas tilt his head in his direction, but he was already ahead of the man. He had pulled out the list of members of his grandparents’ church and was skimming the names of the four deacons and the four elders. “Do you remember which deacons or elders in particular?”
“She liked Hal Remson.”
“She did?” Hal Remson had been the head elder at the time. Maybe they were finally getting somewhere.
“Scratch that one, Ellis.” Thomas sadly shook his head. “Hal Remson must had been what...eighty-three, eighty-four at the time. Everyone fawned over Hal. Every year the church had to take up a separate collection to buy him a new pair of dentures. Hal kept losing them.”
“Yeah,” remembered Charlie, “he used to have this brass walking stick.”
“He did have an eye for the ladies,” Harvey said.
“He wore the same suit to church for twenty years, and he never missed a Sunday.” Charlie placed both his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Yes sir, Cathy was constantly fluttering at his side. Come to think of it, so was every other woman in that church. Hal loved all that attention. Sure do miss the old coot.” Charlie looked over at Harvey. “He passed away what, twenty years ago?”
“More like twenty-four.”
Ellis frowned at the list in his hand. It was hopeless. They were never going to discover who his father was. Charlie had said something about elders and deacons. Maybe reading the list of names out loud would jog Charlie’s memory. “What about Franklin Smythe?”
Charlie shook his head as Ellis read down the list. He had just read the last name when Charlie finally showed some interest. “Repeat that one.”
“Arthur Graystone.”
“Mayor Graystone?” Harvey seemed startled. “I didn’t realize that he was a member of the Methodist church back then. He’s some bigwig over at the Lutheran church now.”
Ellis glanced back down at the paper in his hand. “He was a deacon at the Methodist church thirty-three years ago.” He skimmed the list of active members. “He and his wife, Sophie, were both members.”
Thomas rubbed at his jaw. “That’s right. He and Sophie got married in the Methodist church when I was still in high school. Sophie’s father was the richest man in town and she was his only child. They acted like it was the wedding of the century. Nearly the whole town was invited and no expense was spared. I remember thinking that the whole thing was a terrible waste of money.”
Ellis glanced away from Thomas and over at Charlie. “Do you remember seeing Catherine with Arthur Graystone?”
“Well, sure, they were together a lot because he was always at the church and so was she.” Charlie leaned forward and his chair finally rested on all fours. “They used to whisper a lot.”
“Whisper?” He felt his heart skip a beat. “What do you mean by whisper?”
“I don’t know.” Charlie shrugged. “You know, whisper.”
“Do you mean they used to whisper because they were in church?” asked Thomas. “Like most people whisper in the library?”
“Naw, not that kind of whispering. They used to whisper when they thought no one was watching.”
Thomas tilted his head in Ellis’s direction. “Did it appear as if they were hiding something?”
“I can’t remember,” Charlie said. “All I can recall is seeing them whispering.”
“I saw them together once,” Harvey said.
“You did? Why didn’t you say so?” demanded Thomas.
“I didn’t think anything of it. They were out on Turkey Run Road at that roadside stand that was set up every year. They were buying pumpkins, lots of little pumpkins. I guess for the Sunday school or something.”
Ellis slowly folded the list and slipped it into his pocket Great, his mother bought pumpkins for kids in the Sunday school in the company of a member of her church and he was ready to call Arthur Graystone Dad. It just confirmed how desperate he had become. A simple outing and he was picturing his mother and some old married deacon of the church doing the wild thing in the back seat of some car surrounded by dozens of pumpkins.
Suddenly he was disgusted with himself. His mother might have lied on his birth certificate as to the identity of his father, but she didn’t deserve his lascivious mind conjuring up those visions. Catherine Carlisle had been a decent, loving mother.
“I want to thank you gentlemen for traveling down memory lane for me,” Ellis said. “If any of you remember anything more concrete than a pumpkin-buying expedition, I can be reached at Thomas’s house for the next several days.” He needed to get out of there before he fell apart. As his mother would have said, he was chasing the fog.
When he was a little boy, his mother used to take him to a park near where they lived. There had been a small creek running through the park and he loved going first thing in the morning when they had the entire place to themselves. The fog rising off the creek used to fascinate him and he used to run around trying to catch it in his little hands. Whenever he thought he had captured a fistful, he had opened his hand, only to discover the fog wasn’t there.
The same disappointment that had besieged him then was surrounding him now. He needed to see Sydney. He needed to hold her and love her. Sydney had a magical way of turning his disappointments into hope. He needed that hope now more than ever.
He motioned for Trevor to come out of the cell as he reached for Thomas’s hand to give him his cane. It was time to leave. There were no answers here today.
As Ellis drove to the St. Claire home three days later, he checked the rearview mirror, to make sure no one was behind him, and then applied the brakes and stopped in the middle of the street. The slight rise in the road gave him the perfect view of both the nursery and the St. Claire home. The sun was a fiery red ball, bathing the small valley in fading sunlight. The view brought a lump to his throat. As ridiculous as it sounded, he felt as if he was coming home.
His home was ninety-six miles away. At least his house was ninety-six miles away. But everything that was important to him was here. Trevor, Sydney, Thomas. The only one back at his house was Rita, and she wasn’t even there right now. He had sent her on a well-earned, long-overdue vacation to visit her daughter and her real grandchildren. Rita hadn’t left his or Trevor’s side since the initial diagnosis last summer.
He never should have agreed to the business trip he had just taken. Three days and two nights away from Trevor and Sydney were too long. If it hadn’t been for Sydney’s gentle persuading, he never would have gone, no matter how important it had been to the company. He had excellent employees and he could name four people off the top of his head who could have handled the situation without breaking a sweat.
The negotiations in Atlanta had been a tension-filled two days with facts and figures pouring out of fax machines and sliding across mahogany tables worth more than what most people made in a year. There had been lunches, dinners, early-morning conference calls and endless hours of sitting in his solitary hotel room with his laptop up
and running in front of him. The competition had been fierce but One If By Land had toppled them all. They had signed the contract over lunch.
The whole time everyone had been shaking on the deal, he had been thinking of Trevor and Sydney. He had been informed that his composure during the frantic dealing against other carriers had won him the contract. He hadn’t bothered to tell his newest client that it wasn’t so much composure as it was perspective. Yes, he had wanted the contract, and had wanted it badly. But he also knew that if he didn’t get it, life would go on. O.I.B.L. trucks would still roll across endless highways. Trevor’s illness had given him new priorities, both in business and in his life. What was a lost contract when he was losing his son?
In the week since he had brought Trevor out to the country, he had been discovering quite a bit about his son and himself. The only thing he hadn’t been able to discover was who had gotten his mother pregnant and then abandoned her. His calls home both nights he had been away hadn’t been encouraging in that department. Thomas had been using Sydney’s eyes and talking to more people than a politician during an election year. If he hadn’t checked and rechecked all the dates himself, he would have sworn his mother couldn’t have been four months pregnant when she left Coalsburg.
It took two people to create a baby, and so far the most incriminating thing his mother had done was to buy a bunch of pumpkins. He had heard of babies coming from cabbage patches, but never pumpkin patches.
With an effort, he pulled his troubled thoughts away from the frustrating task of locating his father, and back onto the more pleasant topic of Sydney and his son. His gaze skimmed over the nursery below. It was already closed for the night. The parking lot out in front of the main building was empty and the security lights were lit. In the three days he had been gone, changes had occurred. Clusters of daffodils and hyacinths were now blooming. The grass was turning a deep shade of green and would be needing to be mowed soon. Dozens of trees had been brought in from the fields, filling the yard next to the main building.
A Father's Promise (Intimate Moments) Page 16