“You think I didn’t know that you’d already convicted me? You weren’t asking a question, you were demanding a guilty plea.”
“How could you possibly know what I—”
“Your face, Annette. Your beautiful, emotional face. You hid nothing. It was part of what I loved about you. I knew where I stood. I knew you were doubting me, us, in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Until, at the end, you closed off from me, and I had no idea how to reach you.”
She stopped pacing, staring at the kitchen window for a full minute before she realized the pale woman with the lost look reflected there was herself.
“I…I want you to leave now, Steve.”
The pause was long enough to make her wonder, then she heard the scrape of his chair being pushed back slowly.
“Okay. There’s one thing, though. You said sometimes it’s more important to tell the truth than to hear it. And maybe that’s so. But sometimes it’s just as important to hear it.”
She listened to him taking his jacket from the back of the chair and putting it on while her thoughts whirled and clashed. But she grabbed onto that word truth and held on. The discord she’d felt earlier suddenly made sense.
“Steve.” He stopped at the doorway, not turning. “You were right before—if you’d answered me at the wedding, everything wouldn’t have been okay. By the time Lily walked into that church, the foundation between us had revealed its flaws. You wanted my unthinking faith, and I wanted your unthinking protection. We were propping each other up. That’s not a real partnership. And it surely wouldn’t have been much of a start to a marriage. Everything turned out for the best.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he faced her. The bedrock structure of his bones stood out as if the skin had suddenly been stretched tighter. His voice came low and tight. “There’s nothing better in my life than Nell, so I’ll take Nell coming to me any way fate wanted to do it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll agree that your walking out of our wedding means everything turned out for the best.”
Annette pulled the collar of her coat up to add a layer of warmth to the scarf around her throat and dug her gloved hands deeper into her pockets.
It was darned cold for a parade. So why was she smiling and cheering for the third flotilla of green crepe-paper-festooned bicycles to go by? And so disappointed by a gap in the parade that she was on her tiptoes looking down the empty street, eager for the next group.
Especially since she’d been manipulated into attending by Max.
He’d walked into where she was on the computer, already wearing his jacket and carrying her coat. “C’mon, let’s go. The parade’s going to start soon.”
“Parade? It’s two forty-five on a Wednesday afternoon.”
“Yeah, and it’s St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Since when does Tobias have a St. Patrick’s Day parade, and since when does someone named Trevetti care?”
“Since Steve started one a few years back, and since my kid sister needs to get out of the house and quit moping.”
She wasn’t moping. She just had a lot to think through. Alone.
It wasn’t until closer to dawn than midnight that it had hit her that she had never once questioned whether what Steve had told her was true. She knew it was. She sat up in bed, wrapping the comforter around her as she stared at the fragmented moonlight on the wall.
How was that for irony? Steve had needed her belief seven-and-a-half years ago. He had it now.
She needed no proof. No DNA test. Nothing more than Steve telling her he was not Nell’s father. But if he had said those same words at the wedding would she have believed? Could she have believed, as the person she was then?
“I am not mo—”
“Okay, brooding. Are you going to drive or am I?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. And I’m driving. You know what the doctor said.”
So here she was. Hearing how Steve had instigated several kids-only after-school parades, with the kids voting to choose which ones to do each year.
She heard that not only from Max, but from numerous people who stopped to chat as they waited for the parade to restart. The route circled two big blocks downtown, keeping the spectators in a compact area. She considered that coziness a benefit with the temperature dropping as the late-afternoon sun lost power.
She rethought her position on coziness when Steve showed up and the crowd pressed him in close to her. He said hello and met her eyes for one instant that left her chest burning and her stomach rocking. Then he focused on Max.
At one point last night she had thought it might be easiest to cut all contact with him for her remaining time in Tobias. Juney would return, and she could go back to her life and forget all this. That was where the thought had broken down. She hadn’t forgotten before; she had frozen events in her heart. Better to deal with it now than to carry another lump of ice around. Besides—
“There’s still the matter of Miss Trudi,” Steve said abruptly from beside her, as if picking up the thread of a conversation or as if he’d read her dark-of-night thoughts. “We haven’t made much progress. If you’re still willing…”
“When?” she said as if they were business associates and she might pull out a PDA any second to check her calendar.
“I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow and a full schedule Friday, but Friday evening at my place would work.” He glanced at her then at the parade. “Nell is going to be at a sleepover.”
It sounded more like a warning than an invitation. She could issue warnings, too. “With so little time before I leave, if Friday is all you have, then Friday will have to do.”
He grunted—warning received and understood.
A snowflake dive-bombed her nose. She looked up to find more zipping around like they didn’t know whether to go up, down or sideways.
“It’s snowing.”
“It always does for the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” Steve said. Would anyone else recognize the strain beneath his seemingly casual comments? He didn’t look as if he’d slept, either.
“Always? You’ve only had the parade for a few years.”
“A few years is always for these kids.”
Someone called Steve’s name. He gave her another searching look and a would-be offhand nod before working his way through the crowd.
But he left behind that sentence. A few years is always for these kids. She doubted he’d considered it profound, yet it kept running through her head as the parade restarted.
She found herself calculating. Easily half of the kids trooping, skipping, biking and marching past her hadn’t been born or had been far too young to have cared about the circumstances of her departure from Tobias. Subtract the ones who had been toddlers or younger when she left for college, and there were maybe a smattering of upper-classmen from the high school band who might have heard of poor little Annette Trevetti. And how many of them would remember or care?
In their always, Annette Trevetti hadn’t even lived in Tobias. It was a startling thought, and freeing. An entire parade through the heart of Tobias, and she was a stranger to virtually all of them.
Of course the adults were a different matter. She scanned the spectators’ faces across the street then craned her neck to look around where she and Max stood.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No…except maybe me. Never mind,” she added at his puzzled frown. “Everything’s fine.” She recognized a third of the adults.
Maybe a town was like a snake, shedding its skin every so often. Or maybe it was more like that saying about how a human being replaced all its cells in seven years. So each cell had its own short “always” that wasn’t recognized by the larger organism.
“Here comes Nell.”
She jumped and turned to find Steve at her shoulder again, his face so close she could see distinct flecks of blue and gray like snowflakes swirling in his eyes. Her lips parted. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and instead of getting any sound out, she sucked in a b
reath.
“Uh-oh.”
Max’s grunt had her spinning around, away from Steve and temptation. Max wasn’t looking at them, he was watching the parade. She became aware that the crowd, while clapping and cheering, was also drawing back from the street, opening a wider path for the marchers.
She saw Nell and five of her friends, dressed in green from head to toe, tossing sparkling sticks into the air, which mostly landed on the ground nowhere near their throwers, who darted after the sticks and tried to scramble into a line that continually dissolved as the other marchers pursued errant throws.
“What on earth?”
“Baton twirling,” Steve said, removing his gloves to clap louder. “First time any of them has held a baton.”
The two girls at the back of the line, apparently tired of chasing their batons, started gently tossing them to each other. They still missed now and then, but they didn’t have as far to chase them.
“But…but they had all those practices.”
“They practiced forming straight lines—mostly standing still since there wasn’t room to march in anyone’s house. And then they ate and giggled.”
Laughing, she asked, “Why didn’t you let them practice with batons?”
But the laughter hid a surge of emotion that had rocked her. Respect, admiration, affection…that was all. Affection. How could anyone not feel that for a man who would raise his brother’s daughter as his own to protect her? In the long dark hours of thinking, she had separated that thread from the tangle and set it aside. Whatever Steve—and she—had done wrong more than seven years ago, she knew his every action regarding Nell had been guided by wanting to do what was best for the child. She could not second-guess him there.
“Are you kidding? Would you want them throwing those things around your house? That a girl, Nell! Way to go!”
Nell beamed at the wild applause she received for catching the baton neatly on the first bounce. Annette joined the cheering, trying not to laugh.
There were only two more groups before a band brought up the rear, playing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
Steve remained at her shoulder as she and Max headed toward her car. A trio of women around her age passed them, saying hello to Max and Steve. In quick introductions, Steve said they were all teachers at the high school.
“Hey, Max, will we see you at the Toby tonight for the St. Patrick’s Day party?” asked one. “We’ve missed you these past few weeks. And now that you have a broken wrist I might finally beat you at darts.”
Max’s brows knit as he looked toward Annette, “I don’t know if I’ll—”
“He’ll be there,” she interrupted, careful not to catch Steve’s eyes. “Can’t have him moping around the house.”
Hell, if Steve had known that the way to get Annette to mix into what passed for Tobias nightlife was to make her think she was doing Max a favor, he would have bribed Trevetti weeks ago to come to the Toby.
The Toby served simple meals and provided standard bar entertainment in addition to drinks. Max didn’t come often enough to have a set pattern, but his being there didn’t surprise anyone, either. Steve stopped in mostly to pick up the conversation, which told him more about how the town and county were running than a dozen formal reports.
Tonight, the crowd was bigger and more boisterous than usual in honor of the holiday. He had no opportunity to talk to Annette alone even after she moved from the dart board and found a relatively quiet corner to listen to the local band playing Irish songs. Four downtown merchants surrounded Steve to talk about the need to build their out-of-town customer base for the non-summer months. Since they weren’t telling him anything new, he felt no compunction about breaking away after a few minutes and heading toward Annette.
“Nice to see you giving Tobias a chance.”
“I couldn’t let Max disappoint the folks wanting to beat him at darts, could I?”
“Not just here. The parade. You seemed to have a good time.”
With so little time before I leave… That’s what she’d said. Had she realized she’d said it that way? Almost as if she would regret leaving? That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“I did. Nell has true star power.” The corners of her mouth started to lift in a grin that went flat when she met his gaze. “Stop it. Stop worrying I’m going to treat her any differently. She’s herself, and that’s all that matters.”
How had she known? Having his emotions read when he wasn’t consciously telegraphing them was rare. Hell, he’d flat-out told her he was nuts about her back when they were first dating, and look how long it had taken her to believe that. And when push came to shove, she hadn’t believed it enough.
“I didn’t really worry. Well, maybe some. I told you, I’m not entirely rational about her.”
“I know.” Her voice softened. “She couldn’t have a better father.”
He swallowed against the sudden bite in his throat. Not just her words, but the warmth in her eyes. A man could live the rest of his life in that look.
“Do you think he knew?”
He tried to make sense of her words—hard to do when watching her lips form the words was so fascinating. “Who knew what?”
“Zach. That Lily was pregnant.”
“Lily said he didn’t. I hope to God she told the truth about that.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. If he’s okay, he doesn’t want to be found. All the detectives came up empty. No answer to the ads that run every few months in papers across the country.”
Her eyes changed, reflecting what he feared she’d heard in his voice—his worry that Zach might not be contacting his family because he couldn’t.
He touched the green scarf looped around her throat, wishing it was her skin. Sliding his fingertips through the folds of silk, he stepped closer, needing to taste the warmth and concern he saw in her face.
She stepped back, covering his hand with hers, using gentle but firm pressure to end his caress.
“I can’t…I’m not sure I can…”
At arm’s length, he cupped the back of her arm and stroked down it.
“What? Forgive? I’m not asking for forgiveness, Annette. And I’m not offering it. We did what we did based on who we were then. We’re different people now. I see it in you so clearly, and I know I’m different. I just hope you can see it in me. And that we can go on from there.”
Aware of a knot of people approaching, he dropped his arm and stepped back from her.
Greetings and chatter surrounded them. Max looked from one to the other of them with a frown, but said nothing. Ten minutes later Annette and Max left.
Steve waited fifteen minutes more to leave. In the parking lot, standing beside his SUV, he hunched his shoulders against the biting cold and looked up at the hazy moon. A howling moon, Zach used to say.
He’d once asked his brother to define what kind of moon was a howling moon. “All of them,” Zach had said.
He’d never understood Zach’s taste for the wild side. But for all their differences, Zach was his little brother. That’s why he’d felt he had to say something after he’d seen Zach and Lily coming out of a motel over spring break. Months earlier he’d spotted them together on campus, but he’d been so lost in Annette he hadn’t thought much of it.
But this was different. Not only because it was a less-than-reputable motel, but Zach had had his arm slung around Lily’s shoulders, and she’d had her hand on his chest, looking at him. Wheedling him for something, if he knew Lily.
When he heard Zach in the hall that night, he’d opened his door.
His brother gave a fair performance of an amused sigh, but even in the dim light Steve had seen him tense. “I thought I recognized your car passing the motel. So what are you going to do? Tell me the facts of life?”
Torn between wanting to steer Zach clear of danger and knowing the more he said the less Zach would listen, he’d settled on the all-encompassing, “Be carefu
l.”
Zach grinned without easing. “Too late. Don’t worry, big brother. I didn’t go into this blind. I knew she really wanted you. She thought going after me would get to you. I also knew it wouldn’t get to you. I even tried to tell her that—can you believe it? Zach Corbett being gallant? But she didn’t believe me. Even swore it was me she’d always been crazy about.” He shook his head. “Oh, I know, Saint Steven would have resisted temptation. But nobody’s ever accused me of being a saint. There are benefits to being the fallen Corbett. Definite benefits.”
They had never talked about Lily again before Zach’s blowup with their mother. There’d been scenes leading up to that final one. Some Steve had simply sensed. But one he’d come in on the tail end of. They had been in the small office near the kitchen where Lana wrote notes and read the paper.
He’d heard snatches. About how she was making the best of this inferior marriage Steve insisted on. About how it remained up to Zach to carry the Corbett family banner.
“This is more fitting, anyway. I had hopes for Steven, but he always had disadvantages that you did not.”
“I won’t be your—”
“You have no choice, Zachary.” She had cut across Zach’s protest. “You are a Corbett, your father’s son, and that is all there is to it.”
That final morning, as Steve left to pick up Annette for tennis, he’d walked out and found Zach on the back porch, his head in his hands, his wrinkled clothes and beard stubble attesting to yet another night spent away from the house.
“She’s already up,” he’d warned his brother.
Steve had reached the bottom of the steps when Zach’s voice came. Not loud. Almost as if he were talking to himself. But when Steve turned, Zach was looking at him.
“I always resented your being the frontline Corbett while I was second string. Be careful what you wish for, huh?” Zach had met his eyes for an instant, then looked down. “You can get out. You can take your Annette and get the hell out of here. All you have to do is give the door one hard shove, and it’ll swing free.”
Steve had thought about those words a lot after Zach left. All you have to do is give the door one hard shove, and it’ll swing free. Except by the time Steve had proven to himself the existence of that door, Annette was gone.
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