Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  “No, sir,” Ben answered. “I was in the middle of making a reservation to come to Chicago when she took my phone.”

  “Why don’t you both come this weekend before Colleen goes off to New York? The boys and Patty and Liz are coming.”

  “We’ll be there,” Colleen said instantly. Sean and Patty would be sharing their big news. “So is that it? Does Ben have your permission?”

  “Hold on,” Ben said. “I want to sign a prenup. I don’t want Colleen to sign one, but I know that she’s coming into a lot of money, and I want to be sure that it is hers and always hers.”

  “You have money too,” Colleen said. “Why would you want to sign one and not have me do it too? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Perhaps it is,” her father said. “But it was gallant.”

  “Exactly. Gallant, dumb. They aren’t all that different.”

  “Are you trying to get him to drop the proposal, Colleen Marie?”

  “I’m not going to,” Ben said, “even if she doesn’t respect me as a fine flower of Southern chivalry.”

  “Oh, lay off it,” Colleen ordered. “Your family had nothing to do with the Confederacy. You were still hoeing potatoes in Ireland.”

  Ben acknowledged the truth of that.

  “So, Dad, do we have your permission?”

  “Your mother and I raised you to make your own decisions. You don’t need my permission, but I can tell you if she were here, she would be thrilled. She and Ben’s mother really were soul mates. Furthermore Genevieve says that your mother would not approve of the way I have handled everything associated with your birth families. I suppose this is as good a time as any to begin apologizing.”

  “Oh, Dad…” She didn’t care about an apology. “I love you. You’re my dad. Nothing will ever change that. All this stuff with Gideon and Autumn doesn’t change that.”

  “I know that.”

  Colleen disconnected the call and handed the phone back to Ben. “See, that was a lot cheaper than doing it in person. So do you have something to say to me?”

  “Do you still want to have a five-foot-nine, red-haired daughter? Your chances improve if you reproduce with me. Mom and Kate are both tall and have red hair. Nina’s tall too, but her hair is the same color as mine so you do risk that.”

  “Reproduce? Wow, Ben, that is the most romantic proposal I’ve ever had.”

  “I thought you said that you hadn’t let anyone propose to you before. So this is the most romantic proposal you’ve ever gotten. I used to only get a gold medal when some other dude screwed up. Same now. All those other fellows didn’t show up so, once again, I win.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Okay, let’s get a picture of two fathers at the grill.”

  Charles Forbes and Colleen’s father were already at the grill set up on the grounds of the hotel in the village.

  “I’m the grandfather,” Charles Forbes corrected the photographer. “Dr. Ridge is the father.”

  The two men were only eight or nine years apart in age so they had felt like comfortable contemporaries.

  “Yes,” Colleen’s father added happily, “but I’m going to be a grandfather soon.”

  It was a faux-picnic, a photo op staged on the grounds of the inn over Columbus Day. Colleen had learned that one does not do these things in one’s own home.

  Colleen had rocked the “pleasantly boring” tone of her media appearances. There was a lot of flurry for a month or so. She was barraged with interview requests, and Amanda said that it was all anyone was talking about at school. But the carefully staged banality of every word that had come out of her mouth left Gideon’s fans feeling betrayed and everyone else uninterested.

  She had invited Charles and Donna Forbes to come to the lake over Columbus Day to meet her father and Genevieve, but her brothers and sisters-in-law wanted to come, as did Gideon’s siblings and spouses. The weekend was smelling enough like an engagement party that Ben had wanted to include his family. Every room in the house was full, and the overflow was in rooms at the inn.

  Colleen hadn’t wanted one of the Ridge family diamonds. She said that they were all so expensive that she would be afraid to wear them, and Ben liked the idea of buying her ring with money he had earned himself. She did ask her cousins’ permission to take the three wedding dresses to a seamstress who was taking the beading off of one, the lace off of another, and using the beautiful textile from the third to create a gown that was flattering to Colleen’s petite frame.

  “Leave a big hem and huge seam allowances,” she told the seamstress. “If I have a daughter, she is likely to be bigger than me.”

  The wedding was to be over Christmas. Both Colleen and Ben had so much family and so many friends that they decided to have only one attendant each. Seth and Nate flipped a coin to see who would be best man, and Colleen asked Amanda. Amanda said that she would wear anything, but it would be great if Colleen could remember that her maid of honor was tall with an athlete’s square shoulders. She would look horrible in anything frilly or strapless.

  “I have just the thing,” Colleen said, “but you have to give it back.”

  So Amanda would be walking down the aisle in an emerald green silk suit that had belonged to Colleen’s real mother.

  “Will you be asking Autumn to the wedding?” Donna Forbes asked her.

  Autumn’s publicist had tried very hard to get Autumn into this photo shoot. She would only come for the shoot, her publicist said. Her schedule wouldn’t allow her to come for the other family gatherings, he had said, but she could certainly make arrangements to come up for the afternoon.

  Of course, to Colleen the photo op was the least important part of the weekend. If Autumn ever wanted to come without the cameras, Colleen would have welcomed her.

  “Yes, I will invite her,” Colleen told Donna, “but I don’t imagine she will come.”

  Space at the inn was going to be scarce for the wedding; Colleen had blocked every room that hadn’t been reserved by the guests who came Christmas after Christmas. The “plus one” invitations were being extended only to people known to be in serious relationships. Like every other single guest, Autumn would be allowed only one room. There would be no space for her entourage. She would be getting exactly the same treatment that Colleen’s much-loved aunt Eileen was getting.

  Maybe someday that would be enough for Autumn. Maybe someday Autumn would understand how much that actually was.

  We hope you enjoyed

  AUTUMN’S CHILD

  By

  Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  All three of the STAND TALL books are available from your local bookseller or ebook retailer.

  Please turn the page to get a sneak peek at

  Book 1 of the STAND TALL miniseries.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I’m so screwed.” Seth stared at his phone.

  Nate grabbed the device and looked at the screen. “Oh, yeah, you are. Didn’t your mom warn you about this?”

  Ben was on the sofa, his feet on the coffee table, his hands linked behind his head. “I don’t know how you clowns ever get women when you still count on your moms so much.”

  “I don’t know either,” Nate replied cheerfully. “But we do.”

  The three guys were hanging out in the chalet they shared on the grounds of the Endless Snow Resort on Oregon’s Mt. Hood. They were wearing long-sleeved tees and hoodies, low-slung pants, and knit caps pulled over their shaggy hair. A snowboarding video was playing on the newest-model, wall-mounted TV. The front hall was carpeted with boots and wet coats. Medals of every color were draped over the necks of empty beer bottles.

  They were professional snowboarders, three friends in their midtwenties who had trained together since they were kids. On the mountain they were disciplined, dedicated, and determined. They had to be. Snowboarding is
dangerous. The rest of the time they felt contractually obligated to have fun. Fans expected snowboarders to be the pirates of winter sports: brash, reckless, and a little weird. This came quite naturally to these three.

  “This isn’t a joke.” Seth shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Have some sympathy. You don’t have to go home and report for jury duty.”

  “Because we already are home,” Ben pointed out. “We changed our addresses. We are officially Oregonians. Have been for a couple of years.”

  “My mom did it for me,” Nate admitted. “But relax. Why would anyone ever want you on a jury?”

  Despite living in Oregon, Seth was still registered to vote in North Carolina where his parents lived, he carried a North Carolina driver’s license, and he paid his income tax to the Tar Heel State. He had already burned through two postponements during the winter competition season. Now he was stuck. He either faced a contempt of court citation, or he went home, spent the night on the Luke Skywalker sheets in his old bedroom, and reported for jury duty. Luke Skywalker it was.

  So on the last Sunday in June the male twig on the Street family tree flew home and spent the evening with his parents and his sisters’ families. Monday morning he drove to the courthouse, found the jury assembly room, and got in line to check in like an actual adult. As he waited, he scanned the room, looking at—let’s be honest here—the young women.

  One blonde, pretty in a popped-collar-and-pearls way, nudged her companion, also a blonde, also with the popped collar and pearls. They recognized him. Seth tried to make eye contact; they looked away nervously.

  He took another step forward in line. A dark-haired girl, wearing headphones, was working on her computer, using a wireless mouse. Her elbow was propped up on the table; that hand blocked a view of her face. The rest of her looked petite and hipster cute. She was wearing a short black skirt, retro sneakers, and a big man’s watch on her narrow wrist. There were empty chairs at her table. He would go sit there.

  Then she straightened, dropped both hands to the keyboard, and started to type...well, hello, was this possible? Yes, she was Caitlin, Caitlin McGraw, from the summers.

  Suddenly he was a kid again, in his mother’s kitchen, staring at the clock, desperate to have the minute hand move faster. The bus from Charlotte gets in at...then her grandmother will pick her up...and it takes twelve minutes for me... But he would still get there too early and have to sit on her grandmother’s front steps, waiting.

  An instant later he was at her table. “Caitlin?” He touched her shoulder in case she couldn’t hear him over her music.

  She looked up, pulling out her earbuds as she did. One of the cords got tangled in her hair.

  Those eyes, those beautiful brown eyes...how could he have forgotten them?

  “Seth.” She stood up. “I heard that you were in town.”

  She had? Why hadn’t she gotten in touch with him?

  He wanted to sweep her up, spin her around, tell her great it was to see her, but they were in public, and for all he knew, she might not be so happy about seeing him. He shifted his backpack and pulled her into a quick one-armed hug, the kind you’d give anyone. “Why are you here? You don’t live here, do you?”

  “Only technically. I’m a twenty-four-year-old adult still using Mommy and Daddy’s address.”

  He could hardly criticize her for that. “But your folks don’t live here, do they? You were visiting your grandmother those summers.”

  “My dad retired, and they bought a house in that new golf-course community outside town.”

  He nodded. “My folks said that lots of retired military are out there. The golf course is supposed to be really good.” Why were they talking about golf courses? He didn’t give a crap about golf courses. “What about you? Where are you living?”

  “Hadn’t you better go check in?”

  “I suppose.” He dropped his backpack on the chair next to her. “Hold this place for me.”

  He returned to the line, and as he checked in, it occurred to him that if she knew that he had left the line without checking in, then she had seen him, been watching him.

  When we were kids you said that you wouldn’t play games. Let’s not start now.

  It took him a while to get back to the table. Too many people knew who he was. He sat down just as the jury coordinator called for their attention, welcomed them, then dimmed the lights in order to show a video. The screen was behind Seth so he had to turn his chair away from Caitlin. The video explained the court procedures and talked about how important it was for them to serve, how a trial by jury was a right first guaranteed by the Magna Carta, and—

  Caitlin touched his arm and whispered. “You aren’t supposed to say the Magna Carta. It’s Latin so no article. Just Magna Carta.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “How do you know that?”

  “I’m kind of nerdy.”

  One of their other tablemates gave them a stern look so they shut up and learned that if they were admitted to a jury, they would be issued red tags that they needed to wear whenever they were in the courthouse.

  At the end of the video, the jury coordinator flicked the lights back on, and a different person, the Clerk of the Court, told them that there were two trials scheduled for that day, one civil, one criminal. He explained the difference between civil and criminal trials, repeating pretty much the same words that the video had just used. Then he told them about the little red tags, again using the same words as the video.

  Within a few minutes fifteen people were called for the civil trial. Neither he nor Caitlin was called.

  During the presentations he had been wondering if he should say something about what had happened. No, it hadn’t “happened.” He had done it. But, come on, it had been years ago, high school shit. There was no reason to mention it. Pretend that everything was fine. That worked for him. Ignore the sticky stuff, and it usually went away. Avoid the edges of the map; just have a good time with other people who wanted to have a good time. He was a snowboarder, after all. Having fun was part of the job description.

  But when she started to lift the screen on her computer, he spoke quickly. “I kind of disappeared on you, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t disappear at all,” she said evenly. “I knew exactly where you were. Your face was on the front of the Wheaties box, and you did start sending me form replies to emails.”

  “Oh, man, those autoreplies.” He didn’t like being reminded of them. Hi, the Olympics were a great time for all the US teams, weren’t they? Thanks so much for... “I wish I hadn’t done that. But it was a pretty bad time for me, and I did a lot of things wrong.”

  “Bad time? You had just won an Olympic medal.”

  “Yeah. It was complicated. But tell me about yourself. What are you doing? Where do you live?”

  She was a freelance graphic artist living in San Francisco. Yes, she liked it out there. And her parents and her grandmother, they were all fine. Her sister? “And her baby...who’s probably not a baby anymore.”

  She smiled. “No, he’s not. He’ll be in fifth grade next year. My sister and Trevor, Dylan’s father, actually got married a few years ago.”

  “They got married? After all the crap you went through, they’re married now?”

  “Yes, but if they had gotten married back then, they would be divorced by now.”

  Good point.

  Seth noticed someone hovering by the table. He looked up. The man said that he worked for Seth’s dad. Seth stood up and made nice. Caitlin put her earbuds in and went back to work. She didn’t look up when he sat down.

  He watched her work. Her fingers tattooed across the keyboard. Sometimes she would stop, hunching forward, staring at the screen, one hand over her mouth, obviously thinking. Then most of the time she sat back quickly as if she had had an “aha” moment and started the rapid-fire typing again. Other
times she’d type slowly as if she wasn’t sure of her solution.

  The morning was starting to drag. He had stuff he could do, but he couldn’t get started. This sucked. Such a waste of time. Since the assembly room had Wi-Fi, most people were on their phones or computers. A few older people had newspapers or actual books, the kind with paper and all.

  Caitlin eventually took out her earbuds and stood up to go to the ladies’ room. When she got back, he asked her what she was working on. She said that a lot of her clients designed video games, and she helped with the art and some of the coding.

  “I had a game out there for a while.” Kids were supposed to be able to get the experience of being Seth Street snowboarding.

  “I know.”

  She did? “It wasn’t very good.”

  “I know that too.”

  “We weren’t on the same page as the developer.” His family didn’t make many mistakes, but that had been one.

  The jurors were given an hour for lunch. He walked down to the basement cafeteria with Caitlin, but the other people eating there recognized him, and he had to go back to being the Olympic medalist, the face of Street Boards. Seth Sweep, the media had dubbed him after he had won Olympic bronze in a shocking upset. His bronze meant that the United States had swept the event, taking all three medals.

  “You’re certainly sounding grown up,” Caitlin said when they were gathering up their trash.

  “It’s an act. If I were really grown up, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have changed my address.”

  “They don’t have jurors in Oregon?”

  She knew where he lived. “Undoubtedly. And actually scruffy riders are a lot more mainstream out there. Someone might actually want one of us on a jury. So maybe procrastinating was a good choice.”

  “You don’t want to serve?”

  “God, no. Deciding if someone is innocent or guilty? If they deserve to be in jail? Talk about grown up, that’s above and beyond.”

  He had to go out and feed his parking meter. He offered to take care of hers. No, she hadn’t driven. Her mother had brought her; her grandmother would pick her up. “It’s like being fifteen again,” she said, “and having to call for a ride.”