Will was certain it would shock the men who had served under his father, but the colonel had staged some elaborate surprises for his wife and for Will when he’d been stationed for long stretches in places where they couldn’t accompany him, always thoughtful and perfect. At the same time, the colonel had been hard on his only son, expecting the best, and Will had always worked very hard to give it to him. His father had been both his hero and his mentor, and Will had wanted nothing more than to follow in the colonel’s footsteps. And he had. To a point, anyway. The colonel had loved Zoey, and it was Will’s deepest regret that he hadn’t lived long enough to meet Jake. Will would have enjoyed nothing more than seeing his old man play grandpa.
“Your mama was the opposite of him,” Addie Pearl said on a happy sigh. “Dottie could chat up anyone. Even when we were all back in school, I used to say she could make a lifelong friend just standing on line at the grocery.”
Will nodded, warmed by the memory. “That was definitely true. She had more friends than I could count. I remember when she was first diagnosed. I shipped home not forty-eight hours later, and the dining room table, the kitchen counter, the fridge, the freezer, you name it, were full of more casseroles and covered dishes than I’d ever seen. I didn’t even know there were that many people in the Falls.”
“I believe it,” Addie Pearl said, her eyes misting over a bit. “Your mama was well loved, and you can’t ask for a better thing than that in this life. I’m glad she moved back home after your daddy passed. I think it was the best thing she could have done for herself. Even after all those years she spent traipsing around the globe, we missed her so much and were so happy to have her back. I miss her all the time.” Addie looked at Will. “I know how proud she’d be of you, the life you’ve built, that you stayed on here to raise Jake in the only place he really knows.”
Will glanced down then, thinking he wasn’t so sure about that. His mom would be proud of Jacob, certainly, and happy Will had stayed in the home that his grandfather had built with help from his own father. But Will suspected his mom would have long since lost patience with her only child’s lack of progress in his personal life. She’d been prodding him even before she’d taken ill. Toward the end, it had been a constant topic of conversation. One he’d ducked as often as she’d brought it up. He smiled then, thinking that she’d outsmarted him there, too. She’d left behind a grandson to take care of that mission for her. Jake was gradually tearing down all those walls Will had so carefully built up after Zoey died, one stubborn brick at a time. Maybe you should work a little harder at helping him out with that.
“Don’t think you’re distracting me from my point,” Addie told him.
Will sighed and chuckled at the same time, then lifted his gaze to hers. “Which is?”
“Even for someone who thinks one complete sentence is all the conversation he needs, how can you spend a month around those lovely women out at Lavender Blue and not glean at least some information? Through observation if nothing else?”
“Practice,” Will replied solemnly, his lips curving when Addie swatted his shoulder. “Okay, okay.” He closed his eyes briefly, picturing the farm. “The house needs a lot of work still. They get one thing done, and something else falls apart, or springs a leak. I’ve seen electricians out there, plumbers, a drywall crew, and a few new appliances getting hauled in. Nothing surprising, given the age of the place. As I said, Ms. Baudin does take it all in stride. They all do. I think they knew, or at least had an inkling, what they were getting into.”
“See?” Addie said, rubbing the spot where she’d swatted him, then giving it a little pat. “That wasn’t so hard.”
Amused, Will shook his head. “Haven’t a clue about their business plans, though.”
“They must be excited about it all. Surely they’re discussing it.”
Will thought about the excited sparkle in Hannah’s eyes when she’d told him about their experiments with the products they wanted to sell, about almost burning down the kitchen, and how none of that daunted her enthusiasm or love for the place. In fact, he thought it just made her feel more attached. “Oh, they talk nonstop,” he said to Addie, sidestepping that little conversation they’d shared. “I just don’t listen.” He held up a hand when Addie would have interrupted. “I focus on my work and try not to get in their way.”
Addie made a “mm-hmm,” sound, but kept studying him.
“What?” he asked at length, half annoyed, but also half amused, knowing she’d tell him anyway.
“Lately, when Jake’s been here, every other sentence out of his mouth starts with ‘Miss Hannah said’ or ‘Miss Hannah told me.’”
Will didn’t have to be told that. He’d been on the receiving end of much the same. He smiled at Addie. “Maybe you should get him to be your gossip spy then.”
“Don’t be smart with me now,” she said, pointing the knob of her cane at him, only half teasing.
“Yes, ma’am,” Will said sincerely, though the smile was still there. “He would be the one to ask, though. I’ve had him working with me helping to clear out the chimney and fireplace rubble from inside the house and I swear every time he passes through the kitchen, someone is feeding him something or asking him to give them his opinion on some product they’re making. If you want to know anything and everything about Lavender Blue, he’s your guy.”
“He’s told me a little about what they’re working on,” she admitted. “Apparently they have something of a lab set up there. Sounds very scientific and all. I’m more for just grinding things up or boiling them down. But though he talks about all four of the women, he seems mostly taken with Miss Montgomery. Said something about giving her a tour of Seth’s winery when she came to pick him up last week. Sounds as if they hit it off like champs.”
“She was kind enough to do me a favor the day the chimney came down. And you know how Jake is about the winery. My guess is they bonded over farming or something, given they’re both new to the process of growing things.” Anything that encouraged his son to focus more on farming and less on endless discussions of the new outdoor amphitheater got Will’s vote.
“What about you? What’s your opinion of Miss Montgomery?”
“I think she’s a little old for him,” Will said dryly, then lifted his hands before Addie could swat him again. “She seems nice,” he said, relenting, trying—and failing—not to think about how Hannah had felt in his arms, how that gray-eyed gaze of hers had met his and just held on, reached in. “I don’t know much about her, really.” That much was true. Not that it had stopped him from thinking about her. All the damn time. He’d tried telling himself it was just because he hadn’t held any woman in his arms in such a long time. Yeah, and how is that working out for you?
“Neither do I,” Addie said, clearly a bit put out by that fact, drawing his attention back to the moment at hand.
Will knew better than to smile. Truth was, Addie wasn’t much for spreading gossip. If you told her something, and asked her to keep it to herself, she’d go to the grave with it. No one was more trustworthy. But spreading gossip wasn’t the same as listening to it, or perhaps asking a few leading questions here and there, to get folks to reveal what they knew. Consequently, if you wanted to know anything about anything, or anyone, Addie Pearl would be your first stop. Of course, she’d only tell you if she thought it was something you needed to know.
“I did look up her work online,” Addie said. “Lovely illustrations. She’s quite talented.”
“Illustrations?”
Addie Pearl looked surprised. “Well, I thought you’d have learned at least that much. She is—or was—a children’s book illustrator. Two different series of picture books, one for prereaders, about a precocious rabbit, and one for young readers, about a girl who has big adventures right in her own backyard. Quite popular from what I can tell. Won some awards, did quite well for themselves if the number of glowing reviews mean anything.”
“You said ‘was,’” he sa
id. “She doesn’t illustrate anymore?” Too late, he realized that by asking any question about Hannah, he’d given away his interest. Or his . . . something. He wasn’t sure what it was he thought or felt about Hannah Montgomery. “Interesting profession,” he said, trying to pass it off as casual curiosity, but Addie saw right through that.
“I’m not sure. From what little I saw, it seems that both of those children’s book series have been completed. If she’s working on anything else, something new, I couldn’t say. There was a lot of information on the authors of both of the series, but nothing much on her. Which, I suppose, isn’t all that odd. Most folks probably think the authors do the drawings. She doesn’t have a Web site, or even a Facebook page. Rather an enigma.” Addie lifted a shoulder, as if it was neither here nor there to her, but her gaze had remained steady and unwaveringly on Will as she spoke.
He should be used to Addie’s spooky, penetrating looks by now, but he wasn’t. Doubted he’d ever be. It was those eyes of hers. “Maybe she just likes her privacy,” Will said, sending a little pointed look of his own.
To her credit, Addie Pearl’s expression was both knowing and a bit abashed. “Well, if you’re truly not interested, I’ll let the topic be.” She turned to continue their hike up the trail.
“Why would you think I’m interested?” Will wasn’t sure why he’d continued the conversation. One thing he knew about Addie Pearl, though, was that she didn’t do anything on a whim, or without forethought. He was sincerely curious about what had spurred this conversation, and he doubted it was his son’s preoccupation with the pretty illustrator-turned-farmer.
Addie paused, turned, and didn’t look remotely surprised by his question. To her credit, she didn’t look smug, either. “Jake said you’ve talked to Hannah yourself a few times.”
“About the repairs, yes.”
“Wouldn’t that be something you’d take up with Ms. Baudin?”
“I do that, too. She’s not always around.” Will walked closer, and they both turned and continued their hike upward. When Addie didn’t say anything, clearly expecting more from him, Will finally relented. “She seems like a very nice person. She was kind enough to help me out, and she and Jake did hit it off. He’s . . . he’s changed a lot in the last year or two. Not as shy as he was, more confident. I think his friendship with Bailey has a lot to do with that. She’s drawn him out of his shell, expecting—well, demanding, in her own way—that he keep up with her.” He smiled. “All for the good if you ask me. And probably also because he’s just growing up.”
“He is indeed,” Addie said. She laid a hand on Will’s arm and added, “I know you don’t want to hear this, or talk about it, but his fiddle playing and his singing have had a lot to do with that, too.” She waited until Will turned his head to meet her gaze.
He felt sucker-punched, so it took him a moment longer than he’d wanted it to.
“Aw, honey,” she said at whatever it was she saw in his eyes. Then she did something that few others would have ever taken the liberty to do, but she’d done since first laying eyes on him—she slid her arm around his waist and hugged him. Not a polite hug, but the tight hold of one person comforting another. And she held on until he felt compelled to hug her back. “I know it’s hard,” she said quietly, but surprisingly firmly, her cheek pressed against his chest as she rubbed his back with the palm of her free hand.
“It was a long time ago,” he said, his voice a shade rougher than he’d have hoped. She said nothing, just kept holding on. “I should be past it,” he heard himself say, not wanting to, just . . . compelled to. “I know that.”
“Jacob sings like an angel,” Addie Pearl said. “Plays like one, too.” She finally released her hold enough to look up at him. At least he felt her shift away. His eyes were closed. “I know hearing him has to fill you with equal parts joy and pain. Maybe it would help to put yourself in Zoey’s place. I don’t mean to do what she would do, but to take it all in, hear Jacob, let his pure passion fill you, so you can pass it on up to her. You’re not doing it for her, or in place of her, but sharing it directly with her. Maybe it won’t make you feel her loss so much that way. Does that make sense?”
Will had already tensed and started throwing walls up, even before Addie had spoken. He’d heard variations on “what would Zoey want you to do” more times than he cared to count, and the bulk of those times had come from his own inner voice. But Addie’s words, her take on it, caught him by surprise.
And he spoke before he had a chance to rein himself in. “I want Jake to feel connected to his mom,” Will told her, quite truthfully. “He was too young when she passed to have any direct memories of her. My mom told him hundreds of stories, shared all the photos we have, so Jake knows a lot about his mother, even if he doesn’t remember her. All the scrapbooks are still in the house. He can look through them whenever he wants.” Will paused, then sighed, and said, “That used to be enough.”
Addie slid her arms free, then rubbed her palm over Will’s heart, before giving it a gentle pat and stepping back. “I know he wants things from you that are painful to give—all the stories you know that his grandma didn’t. Stories about the three of you that only you could share. They’re up to you to tell, or not. Just know that he’ll be fine with them and without them. Don’t pressure yourself so hard on that.”
Surprised again, Will met her gaze. “It’s not that I don’t want him to know. It just . . . brings it all back to the front again.”
“I know.” And somehow, Will knew she did.
“I should have found a way to deal with it back then,” he admitted. “When it happened. I just . . .” He looked away, trying to push it all back down, but now that they’d started, the words just seemed to force their way up and out, no longer willing to be contained. “I missed her so damn much. I felt lost without her, and not a little terrified of how I was going to handle raising our son. Not the day-to-day, but the emotional part of it. She was wonderful at that, a fantastic mom, it was all just so natural to her. And I . . . am more like my dad, I guess. I worried that I wouldn’t be enough. That I’d screw up all the good she’d done with Jacob already.”
He looked away, hoping, praying, Addie Pearl would step in. Say something, anything. He never talked about this. Not ever. Not even with his mother, who’d tried, but had eventually respected his decision to handle it his own way. Now that he’d opened the gates, he felt as though he was standing on the edge of a black, yawning hole that wanted to just suck him down right inside it. And he had no way of knowing if he’d ever be able to climb out again.
But Addie didn’t say anything, and the words were all there now, like a force, gathering strength in his gut, in the back of his throat, and it was as if he had to say them, or risk choking on them. “She was my rock,” he said, his voice rough with the tension gripping his throat. “My friend, my ally, my cohort. She was my wife, and Jake’s mom. I felt anchored, tethered to the best things that life could offer. I was happy, and so damn grateful. I didn’t just feel like the luckiest man on earth, I knew I was.”
He paused, his throat threatening to close over. “When we lost her, just like that, I . . . I couldn’t process it. I was half a world away, and I couldn’t save her. It was Christmas Eve, and I couldn’t be there when they called to tell my mom about the car accident. That she’d been—” He did stop then, ducking his chin, closing his eyes, wanting to grab his heart and just yank it out. Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so damn much. “I . . . I couldn’t get a grip on the fact that I’d never see her again, never talk to her again.” His voice was gravel now. “There were so many things I hadn’t said, wanted to say, so many things left for us to do together. And I just couldn’t . . . I couldn’t find my way out of that grief. I felt like I’d been ripped in two. And that terrified me, too. It was my job to be in charge of men whose lives depended on me. And I couldn’t save the one person who meant more to me than anyone in this world.” He pressed the bridge of his nose, at the corn
ers of his eyes, then dropped his hand away, his eyes damp.
He’d cried exactly once since Zoey died. The night he first heard Jake sing and play the fiddle. That had been almost a year ago, and he’d tried—he truly had—to open up more, to be more willing to get in touch with the grief he’d buried so deeply, to find a way to make peace with it. But . . . old habits died hard, and he just couldn’t manage to face the hell he needed to crawl through, when there was no promise that peace would be waiting for him on the other side. He’d been managing just fine, for a long, long time. Why couldn’t he keep on doing it his way?
“It was having Jake that made me keep it together. I couldn’t fall apart. I had to go on, I had to be able to do my job, to take care of him. So . . . I just shoved the pain down, assuming in time I’d find a way through it. After a while, that becomes second nature. And I have moved on. I’ve built a good life, managed to do okay by Jake, with a lot of help from my mom, and now from you. He’s a good kid, and I feel, well, not confident, but less terrified.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Most days.” He let out a sigh, then, and regained a bit of a grip on his control. Thinking about Jake always steadied him. That had become second nature, too. That much, at least, was a good thing. “I handled my mom’s illness, and her passing. It was merciful when it finally came. I miss her, but the grief is different there. I’ve made peace with it. So, I know I can do it. I just . . . we had plenty of time to say all that needed saying, to say good-bye. It wasn’t like that with Zoey. No warning, no chance to do anything, say anything.”
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