Читать книгу Wisconsin Wedding - Carla Neggers, Carla Neggers - Страница 9

“NORA,” HE CALLED softly, only half-fearful for his life now that he was putting it on the line. “Nora, it’s Byron.”

He left off the Sanders and judiciously didn’t add the Forrester. First things first. Remembering the screen door had a tendency to bang shut, he closed it behind him. Nora didn’t come screaming out of some dark corner. So far, so good.

The small entry hadn’t changed. To his right, the cream-colored stairs wound up to the second floor under the eaves. Three steps up, where the stairs made a right-angle turn, a window seat was piled with chintz-covered pillows, musty-looking library books and a well-used afghan. It was the sort of spot where Nora would like to curl up with a murder mystery on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Her idea of bliss. Until he’d come around, anyway. Then, for a little while, she’d preferred to curl up with him.

Calling her name again, Byron moved carefully into the living room, which had changed. The neutral colors, the informality, the American art—they were Nora’s touches. Aunt Ellie’s tastes had been more Victorian. She’d have been comfortable in the formal parlor of the Pierce family’s Providence town house. Nora would have been stifled, even if the late-eighteenth-century mansion had been in Tyler. Of course, Byron had learned early on not to point out the differences between Eleanora Gates the older and Eleanora Gates the younger. Nora much preferred to hear of similarities.

The living room was separated from the dining room by a curved archway. There Nora had added a baby grand piano, definitely her own touch. He vividly recalled Aunt Ellie’s happy amazement that her grandniece had any musical ability whatever. “Didn’t get that from me. Do you play piano, Byron?”

He did. So did Cliff. There’d been years of required lessons. He hadn’t touched a piano in ages. Wondering if he were completely mad instead of just half, he played a C-major scale, right-handed, one octave. As he’d expected, the piano was perfectly in tune. He added his left hand and went up another octave, then down two octaves, chromatically. All that drilling when he was a kid came back to him.

“Ricky?”

It was her voice. Even as his heart lurched, Byron snatched his fingers from the keyboard and readied himself for skewering.

“You really have been practicing, haven’t you?” She sounded pleased and delighted, a mood due to end as soon as she caught sight of who was playing scales in her dining room. “That was wonderful! You’re lagging a bit in the left hand, but—” She stood under the archway. “Oh, no.”

Short of a knife at the throat, it was the sort of greeting Byron had expected. He moved back from the piano. “Hello, Nora.”

If she’d changed, he couldn’t see it. She was still as trim and quietly beautiful as she’d been three years ago, her hot, secret temper smoldering behind her pale gray eyes. She must have been upstairs changing. She had on purple tennis shoes, narrow, straight-legged jeans and an oversize purple sweatshirt—neat and casual, but nothing she’d ever wear to the store. She was, he thought, a very sexy woman, all the more so because she didn’t try to be.

He didn’t fail to notice how she’d balled up her hands into tight fists. Apparently he still possessed the uncanny knack for bringing out the aggressive side of her nature—which she’d deny.

And he didn’t fail—couldn’t fail—to remember how very much this woman had once meant to him.

“You really are a bloodsucker,” she said through clenched teeth. “Did you come here to photograph us small-town folk all aflutter over the Body at the Lake?”

“The what? Nora, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Always so ignorant and innocent, aren’t you, Byron?” If her voice had been a knife, he’d have been cut to thin slices. But that was her way, at least with him, of repressing emotions she distrusted even more than anger—emotions like fear, love, passion. “Well, this time I happen to believe you. I think you’re here for an even more despicable reason: Liza Baron and Cliff Forrester’s wedding.”

Byron almost choked. So she’d figured it out. She knew who he was. Now there’d be no explaining, no chance to plead his case…just his marching orders. Get out and don’t ever come back. Damned without a trial.

But Nora went on in her chilly voice, “Another Rhode Island boy’s getting married, and with his being a recluse from a big East Coast family, you thought you’d nose around. You’re a leech, Byron Sanders. Pure and simple.”

A bloodsucker and a leech. He was getting the point. First, she hadn’t forgotten him. Second, she hadn’t forgiven him. Third, she didn’t know his photography days were over and he was president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers. And fourth, she didn’t know he was Cliff’s brother. He had a chance—if a slim one—of getting out of Nora’s house intact after all.

And an even slimmer chance of making her understand why he’d done what he had three years ago.

“Nora, I’d like to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“I don’t have a second for you, Byron Sanders. If you think you can march into Tyler and into my life and expect anything but a frosty welcome, you’ve got your head screwed on upside down. Now get out before I…” She inhaled deeply, and her eyes flooded—which had to irritate her—and he could see the pain he’d caused her. “God, Byron, how could you come back here?”

Might as well get started by coming clean. “I was invited to Cliff’s wedding.”

“You were invited? By whom? Why?”

She was looking at him as if he’d just told her Cliff and Liza had invited a gorilla to their wedding. Byron didn’t appreciate her incredulity, but he realized he’d set himself up three years ago to have Nora hate him. He could have told her everything. About Cliff, their father, his own demons—he hadn’t done enough, hadn’t saved his father, hadn’t saved his brother, hadn’t been able to stop his mother’s suffering. Probably Nora would have been sympathetic. But she’d had her own problems—Aunt Ellie’s impending death, what to do about the store, and about staying in Tyler. And there’d been Cliff. Three years ago staying in Tyler hadn’t been a option for Byron, any more than leaving it had been one for Nora. He’d come uninvited into a world where his brother had finally found stability. Byron couldn’t destroy that stability. It wasn’t the only reason he’d left, but it was an important one.

Still, he hadn’t explained any of this to Nora. He’d told her he was moving on, let her think he was nothing more than an itinerant photographer, a bit irresponsible, wont to loving and leaving women. So she’d called him a cad, a bloodsucker, a leech and the rest. Because at the time that had been easier—for him and for her—than admitting they’d broken each other’s hearts. Three years later, he’d chased away the worst of his demons, but he wasn’t about to risk hurting Nora Gates again. If she needed him to be a cad, fine.

“This is just a courtesy call, Nora. I’m trying to be nice—”

“The hell you are.”

“You know,” he said calmly, “for a woman who prides herself on being something of a Victorian lady, you have a sharp tongue.”

She raised her chin. “I want you out of my house.”

Byron sighed, leaning one hip against the edge of her piano. “Nora, you have an attitude.”

“Byron,” she mimicked, “you have a nerve barging into my house after what you did to me.”

“What I did to you?” he repeated mildly.

She got the point and flushed clear to her hairline, almost making him believe she was a maiden lady. “What we did to ourselves,” she corrected. “Now get out.”

He switched tactics. Not that he wanted to prolong this scene and have her attempt to forcibly remove him, but he did have a nonrefundable return ticket to Providence for the Sunday morning after the wedding. If he was to survive until then, he needed to neutralize Nora Gates as a potentially explosive force.

Of course, the truth wasn’t going to help that process. “Look, Nora, I know it must seem presumptuous of me to walk in here after all this time, but I knew if I rang the doorbell you’d never let me in.”

“I never said you were stupid.”

So far, reason wasn’t working with the woman. “Then we’d have ended up having this discussion on the porch,” he added, “which I know you wouldn’t want. As I recall, you’d prefer to be a receiver of gossip than a subject of gossip—”

It was a low blow. He could see his words scratch right up her spine. “Leave, Byron. Slither out of my house and out of Tyler the same way you slithered in. I can’t imagine that Cliff Forrester needs a friend like you.”

Probably he didn’t, but they were brothers, and that was something neither of them could change. “I haven’t seen him in five years.”

That wasn’t strictly true. He’d seen Cliff three years ago. From afar. They hadn’t talked. Byron had sensed that Cliff wasn’t ready yet, might never be, and for his brother’s sake he’d left.

Nora’s clear, incisive gray eyes focused on him in a way that brought back memories, too many memories. Of her passion, of her anger. Of how damned much they’d lost when he’d left Tyler. “Did he invite you?” she asked, her tone accusatory.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? No—no, don’t tell me.” She dropped her hands to her sides, then pointed with one finger toward the front door. Her precious self-control had abandoned her. “Out, Byron. Right now. You’re worse than a cad. I don’t know what your game is, but I’m not going to let you crash Cliff and Liza’s wedding. Cliff’s pulled himself together after an ordeal probably none of us in Tyler can imagine. He’s happy, Byron. You are not going to play games with the man’s head. You both might be from Rhode Island and maybe you do know his family or something, but you’re not his friend. I know you’re not. Cliff didn’t even invite his own mother and brother to his wedding—Liza did. He doesn’t even know about it, and if you tell him…” She gulped for air. “By God, I’ll come after you myself. So you go on and leave him alone.” She took a breath. “And leave me alone, too.”

Byron had debated interrupting three or four times, but had kept his mouth shut. “Nora,” he began reasonably, “you don’t understand. I…”

“Out!”

“I didn’t come here to bother you or Cliff.”

“Now, Byron. Now, or I swear I’ll—”

She didn’t finish, but instead grabbed a huge book of Beethoven sonatas from the gateleg table. She heaved it at him. Byron ducked. The book crashed into the piano, banging down on the keys, making a discordant racket. Nora was red-faced.

Clearly this was no time for revelations destined only to make her madder. Byron grinned at her. “Bet you haven’t lost your temper like that since I was last in Tyler.”

“You’re damned right I haven’t!”

Then a big blond kid was filling up the doorway behind her. “This guy bothering you, Miss Gates?”

Byron could see her debating whether to sic the kid on him. Yeah—throw him in the oven, will you? But she shook her head tightly, and said even more tightly, “Not anymore.”

This time, Byron took the hint. As he walked past Nora and through the living room, he heard the kid make the mistake of laughing. “Gee, Miss Gates, I guess you’re stronger than you look. That book’s heavy.”

“Chromatic scale, Mr. Travis. Four octaves, ascending and descending. Presto.”

Byron decided not to hang around. But he had no intention of leaving Tyler. There was his brother to see, Cliff’s fiancée to meet, a body at a lake to learn more about. And there was Nora Gates herself. Piano player, department store owner, would-be Victorian old maid. She was a woman of contradictions and spirit, and as he walked back to his rented car, it occurred to Byron that the past three years had been but a pause—a little gulp—in their relationship. It wasn’t finished. There’d been no resolution. No final chord.

At least, he thought, not yet.

* * *

NORA DIDN’T CHARGE Ricky Travis for his lesson. In fact, for the first time since she’d had pneumonia six years ago, she cut a lesson short.

“You okay, Miss Gates?” Rick asked.

“I’m fine, just a little distracted.”

“That guy—”

“I’m not worried about him. Don’t you be, either.”

He shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll have the Bach down by next week. Promise. It’s just hard with it being football season.”

“I understand. It’s not easy being both a talented musician and a football player at this time of year. But you’ve had a good lesson, Rick. It’s not you. I’m just…well, it’s been a long day.” She rose from her chair beside the piano. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Sure thing, Miss Gates.”

With Rick gone, the house seemed deadly quiet. Foregoing Bach and Beethoven, Nora put on an early Bruce Springsteen tape and tried to exorcise Byron Sanders from her mind.

She couldn’t.

She hadn’t forgotten a single thing about him. He was as tall as she remembered. As strongly built and lithe, and every bit as darkly good-looking. His eyes were still as blue and piercing and unpredictable—and as dangerously enticing—as the Atlantic Ocean.

It would have been easier, she thought, if there’d been things she’d forgotten. The dark hairs on his forearms, for example, or his long, blunt-nailed fingers. But she’d remembered everything—the warmth of his eyes, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he had of forcing her not to take herself too seriously, even how irritating he could be. Especially how irritating he could be.

How had he learned about Cliff and Liza’s wedding? It wasn’t a secret, but how had an East Coast photographer heard that a Wisconsin couple was getting married? Maybe he did know Cliff—but Cliff had said he didn’t know a Byron Sanders. Perhaps Byron knew the Forresters, the mother and brother Liza had taken the liberty of inviting. Nora wondered if she should warn Liza about Byron.

Singing aloud with Bruce, she made herself another pot of tea and dug in her refrigerator for some leftovers for supper. If Sanders had shown up before Cliff had, she’d have pressed Liza’s reticent fiancé a little harder about his fellow Rhode Islander.

Well, she thought, pulling a bit of brown rice and chicken from the fridge, someone was lying.

She made a tossed salad and warmed up her dinner. Really, what a terrific old maid she’d make. A pity the term was démodé.

The Spinster Gates.

It sounded deliciously forbidding. She turned off Bruce and tried to put her former lover—arrgh, why couldn’t he be less appealing?—out of her mind. Sitting at her kitchen table, she found herself staring at her hands. They were ringless, still soft and pale. She remembered Aunt Ellie’s hands in her final days: old, spotted, gnarled. Yet they’d possessed a delicacy and beauty that suggested she was a woman who’d lived her life on her own terms, a life that had been full and happy. She’d relished her family, she’d had many friends. She’d been generous and spirited and frugal, a model of independence and responsibility.

Once, over a similar supper of leftovers, Nora had asked Aunt Ellie if she ever got lonely. “Of course,” she’d replied immediately, in her blunt, unswerving way. “Everyone does. I’m no different.”

“But…I meant, did you ever wished you’d married?”

She’d shrugged, not backing away from so personal a question. “At times I’ve wondered what it might have been like, but I’ve no doubt a married woman at times wonders what would have become of her if she hadn’t married. But I have no regrets, any more than your mother had regrets about having married your father. I know and have known many wonderful men. I just didn’t care to marry any of them.”

“What about children?” Nora had asked.

Aunt Ellie had laughed. “My word, Tyler’s filled with children. Always has been. You know, I believe sometimes when you don’t have children of your own you’re better able to appreciate other people’s. You can do things for them and with them that their parents simply can’t. You can enrich their lives. You don’t worry about the same things. To be honest, Nora, I’ve never had the urge to bear children myself. I know that’s hard for some people to believe, but it’s the truth. But I’ve enjoyed having children in my life.”

Indeed she had. Even before she’d come to live with Aunt Ellie when she was thirteen, Nora had loved her visits to the twenties house a few blocks from Gates Department Store. They’d bake cookies, go to museums, arts and crafts festivals, libraries. Aunt Ellie had taught her how to manage money and had instilled in her a sense of independence and confidence that continued to stand her in good stead.

She was stronger than she’d been three years ago, Nora reminded herself. She’d had time to adjust to the loss of Aunt Ellie and to becoming sole owner of Gates. She knew herself better. She knew that if Aunt Ellie had never yearned in any real way for marriage and children, she herself occasionally would. Every now and then, a man would even come along who tempted her.

She would survive Byron’s reappearance in Tyler.

Once, of course, she’d figured out what he was up to.

Feeling a little like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Nora finished her supper and made her plans.

* * *

AFTER HASTILY REMOVING himself from Nora’s house, Byron parked in the town square, put a quarter in the meter—which miraculously allowed him a full hour to mosey around—and found his way to the Tyler Public Library. It was located in a particularly beautiful, if run-down, turn-of-the century home. Given his own upbringing in a Federal-period town house and a center-chimney cottage on Nantucket Island, Byron found the preponderance of Victorian, Craftsman and Prairie architecture in Tyler refreshing.

Inside the library, which was old-fashioned and in desperate need of renovation, he tried not to draw attention to himself as he made his way to a stack of recent copies of the Tyler Citizen. He sat at an oak table in a poorly lit corner. Deliberately and patiently, he skimmed each edition of the daily paper, backtracking several weeks until he found the front-page article announcing the discovery of a skeleton at Judson Ingall’s Timberlake Lodge. The grisly discovery had been made when local construction chief Joe Santori and his crew struck the body with a backhoe while doing some excavation work; Cliff Forrester, the lodge caretaker, was called onto the scene. Apparently Liza Baron, Judson’s granddaughter, was also up at the lodge at the time. According to the paper, Judson himself hadn’t stepped foot on the property since his wife left him more than forty years ago.

Liza Baron.

Byron rolled the name around on his tongue and tried to remember. But no, he didn’t recall a Liza Baron from his first visit to Tyler. He remembered Judson Ingalls, though. A taciturn, hardworking man, he was one of Tyler’s leading citizens, owner of Ingalls Farm and Machinery. As Byron recalled, Judson’s wife had been a Chicago socialite, unhappy in a small Wisconsin town.

Now why had he remembered that little tidbit of Tyler lore?

“Aunt Ellie,” he whispered to himself.

In their long talks on her front porch, Ellie Gates had told Byron countless tales of the legions of friends she’d had over her long, full life. She’d mentioned Judson Ingalls’s wife. “Margaret was a fish out of water here in Tyler, but we became friends, although she was somewhat younger than I. I’m afraid she didn’t have too many friends here in town. A pity. She was such a lively woman. Of course, some of that was her own doing—but it wasn’t all her own doing. In a small town, it’s easy for people to develop a wariness of strangers, of outsiders.” And she’d paused to give him a pointed look, as if she knew he was another outsider who’d fallen for a Tyler resident. “It’s also easy for out-of-towners to act on their prejudices and figure a small town has nothing to offer, including friends.”

Ellie Gates had believed in tolerance. She’d been an opinionated woman herself and forthright in stating her views, but she appreciated fresh thinking, a good argument and people’s right, as she liked to put it, “to be wrong.”

Her grandniece and sole heir was a good deal more stiffnecked. Nora Gates much preferred to deal with people who agreed with her.

Flipping back through the newspapers, Byron caught up with all the current Tyler news, as well as fresh developments regarding the body. He gathered that its presence at Timberlake Lodge had fueled much speculation in town. Without directly stating as much, the paper gave the clear impression that some townspeople believed the body was that of Margaret Alyssa Lindstrom Ingalls herself. Now all the authorities had to do was get busy and confirm that fact, and prove how she’d ended up buried at her husband’s lodge.

So for the past five years, Byron thought, his one and only brother had been living right on top of Tyler’s greatest unsolved mystery. Given all the horrors Cliff had witnessed in Southeast Asia, how had he reacted to finding a dead body under his feet? He’d come to Tyler to escape death and destruction.

He’d fallen in love, was what he’d done.

Byron shrugged. There was a certain logic in that, he supposed.

At one point, the Citizen had printed a grainy picture of Liza Baron, for no solid reason Byron could figure out except that she was Judson Ingall’s granddaughter and had finally come home. So this was the woman his brother planned to marry. She was attractive in a dramatic, grab-you-by-the-short-hairs way. Byron guessed that she would be bold and direct with her loves and hates.

A few days later, the paper had dredged up an old photograph of Margaret Ingalls. Apparently she’d been quite the party animal. Putting the two photos side by side, Byron saw a strong resemblance between grandmother and granddaughter.

There was no picture of Cliff. No quotes from him, as there had been from Joe Santori, about having discovered the body. “Cliff Forrester couldn’t be reached for comment,” the paper said. Which might have meant anything from they couldn’t find him to he’d chased them off with a shotgun.

Byron suddenly wished he hadn’t agreed to sneak into Tyler and play scout for his mother—or for himself. He’d done that once, completely on his own, with disastrous results. There were too many unknowns. Cliff’s being involved with a Tyler woman Byron had anticipated. And he’d have to have been a complete idiot not to know he was in for a fight with Nora Gates. But a dead body? A dead body that could belong to the grandmother of his future sister-in-law?

Best, he thought, to hold off for a bit before phoning his mother in London and reporting the news.

But that wasn’t what was really eating at Byron and he knew it.

He was bothered by the big unknown, the one that had gnawed at him for three long years. How would he react if he ever saw Nora Gates again?

He shoved the newspapers back where he’d found them and left the library, walking quickly to his car. It was fully dark now. Cold. There was a stiff breeze. The square was quiet. Byron already had his car door open, but he shut it softly. He had another five minutes on his meter.

After crossing the street, he walked down to Gates Department Store, a fixture on Tyler’s square since Ellie Gates had opened the three-story building in the Roaring Twenties, using an unexpected inheritance from an uncle back East. People had been surprised she’d risked her money on a business venture instead of putting it safely in the bank so she could lead a ladylike life. They’d doubted she’d be able to stay in business, never mind make enough profit to fill three floors with merchandise, or attract enough customers from Tyler and surrounding communities to support a full department store. But she’d proved them wrong, her sense of style, service and tradition finding a large and loyal following.

Gates closed at six o’clock, except for Thursdays and Fridays when it stayed open until nine. Its widow displays were often mentioned in Wisconsin travel guides, regional magazines and newspapers, a “must see” in Tyler. They were Nora’s brainchild. Aunt Ellie had done the usual perfunctory displays, but not her grandniece. Nora’s were elaborate and creative, playing on the history and charms of her corner of the Midwest.

The current display featured Halloween, complete with witches, pumpkins, black cats and skeletons, but also a touch of whimsy: two figures, a boy and girl, dressed as children of Swedish immigrants, bobbing for apples in a wooden bucket; a puppy stealing a caramel popcorn ball from an overflowing bowl; a cheerful-looking ghost peering out of a closet. It was a montage of scenes that were warm, nostalgic, funny, spooky. Busy owner of Gates or not, Byron thought, Nora had to have been personally responsible for such an imaginative window.

A gust of Canadian air went right through his slouchy jacket and chamois shirt. But instead of moving along the street, Byron remained in front of the department store window, staring at the children bobbing for apples, trying not to remember….

A hot, muggy August afternoon, his first in Tyler. Byron hadn’t come to Wisconsin to take pictures. For him, then, photography was only a hobby. He’d come to see his brother. Cliff had retreated from society two years before and Byron wanted to reassure himself that his brother was alive, functioning, living a life he needed to live, on his own terms. For Cliff’s sake, Byron had come to Tyler un-announced, on the sly, without fanfare. He didn’t want to do anything—anything—to upset the precarious balance his brother had established for himself. But if Cliff needed him, if he was in any danger of hurting himself or anyone else, Byron felt he had to know. If necessary, he would have intervened.

His first stop in Tyler had been the square, his first stop on the square, Gates Department Store. He’d wanted to get a feel for the town in which his brother had taken up residence, if as a recluse.

Nora had been in the window, working on a back-to-school display that featured Tyler’s original settlers heading across the fields to their one-room schoolhouse. Already Byron had been feeling a little better about where his brother had landed. Tyler, Wisconsin, wasn’t a weird, gritty, hole-in-the-wall town where he’d find Cliff living in some gutter. It was picturesque and homey, a real community, with farms, businesses, schools, a hospital, a sense of history and pride. The people ran the gamut from the working poor to the well-to-do; it wasn’t just an upper-class or a working-class town. Those things mattered to Byron, although, even now, he couldn’t have said why.

Nora had worn her hair longer then. With a thick braid trailing down her back, and wisps of ash-blond hair poking out, she’d looked as old-fashioned and fresh-faced as her nineteenth-century figures.

She’d spotted him and smiled politely. He could tell she’d already pegged him as a stranger.

That night, pretending to be a free-lance photographer, he’d had dinner with her and Aunt Ellie at their twenties house a couple of blocks from the square. Things had snowballed from there. Although still technically the sole owner of Gates Department Store, Ellie Gates was ninety and in failing health, and left most of the day-to-day management up to her grandniece. And, to his delight, Byron had discovered that Nora was hardly an eighteen-year-old kid. In fact, she was thirty, unmarried and determined to stay that way. He’d admired her independence, her spirit, her energy, her devotion to her hometown and her sense of humor and tolerance. He hadn’t, however, expected to fall in love with her.

He hadn’t guessed she was a virgin. And she hadn’t told him until the last moment, in the tent at the lake outside town where he’d camped. Afterward, she’d insisted she had no regrets. It might not even have been a conscious lie. Byron’s own regrets had nothing to do with making love to Nora Gates, of having loved her and dreamed of having a life with her, but everything to do with having himself been so damned blind to what was going on in her life. He’d been preoccupied with his own problems—Cliff, their father, his own pain and guilt over their suffering. He hadn’t seen, until it was too late, that Nora Gates was letting go of the last person she had in the world, a woman who’d meant everything to her. That Aunt Ellie was ninety and had never pretended she’d live forever wasn’t the consolation Byron, in his blindness, had anticipated. She had been a force in Nora’s life, and Nora had been trying to find a way to carry on without her.