Читать книгу Innkeeper's Daughter - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

“UH-OH, THIS HAS the looks of something serious,” Stephanie murmured to Andrea as they walked to the reception desk together. “You know what this is about?” she asked.

“When do I ever find out anything before you do?” Andy asked, lengthening her stride.

It was hard to miss the family resemblance, thought Alex, both the one to the other as well as to her and Cris, the older sisters. Approximately the same height, Stephanie and Andrea gave the impression of being tall and willowy, despite the fact that neither was more than five-six. Like her and Cris, both had straight, dark blond hair and captivating, magnetic blue eyes that seemed capable of looking into a person’s soul. At least that’s what everybody always told Alex.

“What did you do?” Andy asked Stevi.

“Me? Nothing. Why would you think it’s me?”

“Well, it’s not me,” Andy said in an impatient whisper. “You called, Queen Bee?” she added to Alex in a louder, cheerful tone.

Stevi poked her younger sister in the ribs. Alex would agree with Stevi’s silent message—this wasn’t the time to be flippant.

“What’s going on, Alex?” Andy asked. All traces of her flippant tone were gone.

“Dad, did something happen to Uncle Dan?” she asked. She wanted an answer, but she wanted to hear the right answer: that Daniel Taylor, the man who’d told her endless stories about places she knew she would never be able to visit, making them all seem so vivid and real to her, was all right. That the man who had just been here a few weeks ago wasn’t here now, the way he always was at the first stroke of summer, because he’d finally met someone special and was taking some well-earned time off with her.

But the look on her father’s face, the look of a man who was struggling to come to terms with losing part of himself, told her this had nothing to do with any newfound romance.

Afraid now, not for herself but for her father—and, although she’d never admit it out loud—for Wyatt, the boy she’d grown up with, she gently grasped her father’s arm.

“Dad?”

His eldest daughter’s tone said it all—“What is it?” “What happened?” and “How can I help?” all wrapped up in a single word.

“Pancreatic cancer,” was all Richard trusted himself to say.

A minute more and maybe he would get better control over his emotions, but right now, those were the only words he was able to utter without breaking down. Dan had told him the moment he’d received the prognosis from his doctor. Come to him and asked him not to tell anyone else, not his daughters, not Wyatt. He didn’t want to see pity marking his last few months, or however long he had. At the same time, he’d wanted an ally to help him maintain his facade—and he wanted his best friend to be prepared.

Dan’s last visit had been a struggle. His friend had only had a few weeks left to live and he’d looked pale, his step less sure. But it really had seemed as if he was only a little tired. A force like Dan just didn’t die.

The news of Dan’s death, when it finally came from the attending physician last night, had still managed to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.

Richard heard someone gasp and looked up to see that it was Stevi. He reached out to hold her tightly. Of the four of them, she was the most sensitive, the one whose threshold for emotional pain was far too low for her to function well in stressful situations.

For the most part, they were probably all overprotective of her—even Andy—sometimes keeping things from her rather than subjecting Stevi to undue emotional distress. Stevi had been the one who’d cried for days when their pet hamster had died.

When their mother had suddenly been taken from them, Stevi had stopped talking for a month. She’d been ten at the time.

He stepped back, gripped Stevi by the shoulders and studied her to make sure she’d be all right. Then he let her go as he took in the others, coming at last to Alex.

Alex’s eyes had never left her father’s stricken expression—how could she not have seen that? How could she have missed that pain, that sorrow? It was right there for her to see, she berated herself. What was she, blind?

“Is he—?”

Alex couldn’t get herself to finish the sentence. She could feel her throat closing up, not just in sympathy for her father, but because she really, really loved Uncle Dan. They all did.

When she’d been very young, she’d had a crush on the man, daydreaming about going off with him to exotic parts unknown. It seemed hopelessly romantic to her to follow stories to wherever they might lead, no matter what the danger. As long as they had each other to lean on for support, things would work out.

It had irked her at the time that Wyatt looked so much like his father, especially since she and the younger Taylor got along like the proverbial cat and dog. Granted it had been mostly her doing, but that didn’t change the outcome of antagonism. All those summers that Wyatt had spent at the inn, she’d found new and unique ways to torment him so that, somewhere along the line, Wyatt wouldn’t usurp her in her father’s eyes, becoming the son she felt certain he had always secretly longed for.

Once upon a time, she’d accidentally overheard her father talking to Uncle Dan about having a son. The exact words that had all but burned themselves into her brain had been, You don’t know how very lucky you are to have a son to share things with. To her, there had been longing and a touch of envy in her father’s voice. It said, in effect, that she could never measure up to his having a son. But it didn’t keep her from trying, anyway.

Her less-than-easygoing past with Wyatt notwithstanding, she knew what it was like to lose a parent, knew the awful pain that caused, and she felt for Wyatt.

But predominantly she felt for her father.

Especially now, as she watched him grimly nod his head in response to the question she couldn’t bring herself to complete.

“Yes,” her father said hoarsely, “he’s gone.”

“But he was just here,” Andy protested. “How could he die when he was just here?”

It was Dorothy who draped her arm comfortingly around the twenty-year-old’s slim shoulders and murmured softly, “These things happen.”

Alex shared a look with Cris, who bit her lower lip. Uncle Dan had been there for her sister when her husband had died halfway around the world. Although she and the rest of the family had done their best to be supportive of Cris, Dan had been able to supply something the others couldn’t. He had actually been in the region where Mike had died and could by that very fact somehow connect her to the place where Mike had been permanently taken away from her.

It had meant a lot. They’d all recognized that.

After a moment Cris was able to ask her question. “When?”

“Very suddenly,” her father answered in a hushed, hoarse voice, unable to take a deep breath because of the tremendous weight he felt pressing down on his chest. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Stevi cried.

Dan was supposed to have arrived at the inn yesterday with Wyatt. When he hadn’t, they had chalked it up to the fact that there were times when Dan Taylor was not one of the most punctual people.

“Where was he when...when it happened? Why didn’t he come to us? Why didn’t he tell us? He must have known.”

Stevi’s questions tumbled out in rapid-fire succession. Even so, they found no target, scattering to the corners of the room, searching for any answers that made a smattering of sense.

As her sisters closed ranks around their father, alternating between asking questions and offering mutual comfort, Alex quietly took a step back.

And then another.

And another, until she’d managed to unobtrusively detach herself from the inner circle. Once certain that her sisters and Dorothy had surrounded their father with their love and overwhelming sympathy, Alex turned on her heel and quickly made her way to her father’s small office at the back of the first floor.

About to knock lightly on the door before entering, she decided against it.

Instead she slowly pushed open the door, as if she was opening a portal to another world, a world currently filled to overflowing with grief.

Or so she imagined.

She found Wyatt standing at the window with his back to the door.

His body was rigid, as if he was attempting to shoulder something that was far too heavy for him to actually manage. A burden that threatened to bring him to his knees if he took as much as a step in any direction.

A minor tug-of-war took place inside Alex and then she decided to back out of the room, to wait until Wyatt was better equipped to deal with the offer of sympathy from others—especially her.

But as she placed her hand on the doorknob again, preparing to ease the door shut, she saw Wyatt raise his head just a fraction.

“Hello, Alex,” he said in a quiet voice that sounded barely human.

Hearing him speak startled her. She stared at the back of his head. “How did you—?”

“Your reflection,” he answered, anticipating the rest of her question.

He still hadn’t turned around to face her. He was trying his best to get himself under control before he did that. There were times, less now than before, when facing Alex was not an easy thing to do, even under the best of circumstances.

This was definitely not the best of circumstances. Men weren’t supposed to cry. It wasn’t anything that had been drummed into him; it was just something that he felt. Most of all, he didn’t want Alex to see him with tears in his eyes. So he struggled to get control over himself.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

The words came to her lips automatically—and sounded incredibly tinny and hollow to her ear, even though they were filled to capacity and then some with the truth. She meant them from the bottom of her heart.

“I’m sorry for ours, too,” she added in a voice that was even smaller than when she’d begun. “Your father was a wonderful, wonderful man and we’re all going to miss him terribly. Especially me.”

Wyatt turned from the window then, his face a rigid mask of control. Only the sunlight shining on the slight telltale dampness on his cheek belied the control he was attempting to project.

“You’re kidding,” he said in disbelief.

Alex had no idea what he was referring to. Had his grief caused him to temporarily take leave of his senses? “What?”

“You’re actually engaging in one-upmanship? Now?” he asked her incredulously.

“What?” Alex repeated, thoroughly confused. Then his words sank in and she stared at him, horrified. How could he even think that? “No. I only meant that I was going to miss your father a great deal.”

“That’s not what you said,” Wyatt pointed out. “You said ‘especially me.’ That means that out of everyone who is grieving—including me—you are the one who is grieving the most. You, who only saw him for a month in the summer and a couple of times during the year, you’re going to miss him more than I am.”

She refrained from pointing out that he only saw his father the same amount she did. But that would be nit-picking and this was not the time for that.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean—oh, damn it, Wyatt,” she cried in frustration, “I’m trying my best to be nice, here.”

“Something you obviously don’t have much practice at because you’re not succeeding,” he told her.

She pulled back, hurt and confused.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I just don’t see you making an effort. My dad died last night, and all I see is Alex being...Alex. At my expense.”

The next moment, any possible escalation of a verbal exchange between Alex and Dan’s son was interrupted as people came flooding into the small office, filling it to capacity.

Cris, Stevi and Andy surrounded Wyatt, offering their condolences in what came across as a cacophony of sympathy and kind words tripping over one another.

Only her father noticed Alex retreating from the room, moving back to the threshold.

“Everything all right?” he asked her.

“No,” she answered, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from Wyatt and her sisters. Their comfort was easing his pain. She was glad for him, really glad—but she had tried to do the same thing, she really had. And he had just railed at her. “Uncle Dan’s gone,” she added in response to what she knew was going to be her father’s next question. “How can anything be all right at this moment?”

“I meant between you and Wyatt,” her father clarified.

“No,” she told him honestly. “But then,” she added, “it never was.” Alex shrugged the matter off. “That’s not important right now.” She focused on something she could help with. “If Uncle Dan just died yesterday, then there hasn’t been a funeral yet.”

“No, there hasn’t,” Wyatt said, speaking up. Despite having three women talking to him at once, he had still managed to hone in on what Alex had said to her father.

“That’s part of the reason Wyatt’s here,” her father told her.

Alex was still contemplating ducking out, but with everyone watching that seemed too much like running and it wasn’t the kind of message she was looking to send. When she came right down to it, she wasn’t sure exactly what kind of message she was trying to send.

“To carry out Dan’s last wishes,” her father was saying. “Dan wanted to be buried here, in the family cemetery. These past twenty years, Ladera-by-the-Sea was really the only place he called home. His summers here with Wyatt and you girls were his haven, it was what he considered both his goal and his reward for a year well lived.”

“And Uncle Dan actually said he wanted this to be his final resting place?” Alex asked her father.

Before her father could answer, Wyatt did. “That was what he told me.”

That sounded right and fitting somehow, Alex thought. His visits had been the highlight of the summer when she was younger. When he’d suddenly turn up at other times of the year, it always felt like Christmas.

Who was she kidding? Dan and Wyatt’s visits were both the highlight of her summers, although admittedly for different reasons. Reasons she wasn’t about to pick apart right now because she wasn’t up to it.

And might never be.

“So we’ll hold the services here?” Cris asked her father.

“That’s the general idea,” Richard replied. He looked at his daughters, each precious to him in her own way. He could see that they were all deeply affected by this. “I think that might help us to say one final goodbye to him.”

As usual, Alex instantly began to take charge.

It wasn’t so much that she had a need to be in control. It was more that she felt that by picking up the reins, she was allowing everyone else the freedom of doing what they needed to do without having to concern themselves with the bigger-picture details.

“Okay, first off, I’ll need a list of people to contact about the funeral services,” Alex said to her father.

She knew that the list would be coming from Wyatt, not her father, and this was her way of letting Wyatt know she would be taking care of the arrangements. At this point, she was certain that his state of mind was a shambles. He had trouble accepting what she said during the best of times.

Wyatt surprised her by saying crisply, “Already done.”

Wyatt had never been what she had thought of as organized. But then, maybe he hadn’t put the list together. Maybe he had one of those movie starlets she’d seen hanging off his arm each time he attended a premiere of one of the movies he wrote. None of them looked as if she had an IQ rivaling that of a peacock, but obviously one of them probably knew how to write.

“Okay, moving on,” Alex announced, shifting her attention to Wyatt. “What date were these people told? For the services that were being held?” she elaborated when she received no answer.

“Day after tomorrow,” he finally replied.

Well, that was really quick, she couldn’t help thinking. “Pretty confident my father would say yes,” Alex said, her eyes locking on to his.

“Why wouldn’t he?” he replied, treating her as if she’d just accused him of something. That’s not why she’d said it. Something just didn’t seem to make sense in this two-day timeline.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Her father asked the same question Wyatt had.

“No reason, but the inn could have been booked solid, making holding the funeral service rather difficult,” she pointed out. “Besides, even though the inn isn’t booked solid, it would have still been nice to have the details nailed down on our end before alerting—how many people were alerted?” she asked, realizing she still didn’t have a number to work with.

“My father made friends with the immediate world,” Wyatt told her.

“The immediate world,” she repeated. “That’s going to make for pretty difficult seating arrangements. I’m not sure if we have enough folding chairs for everyone.”

“But I cut it down to a hundred,” Wyatt continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “Is that all right?” he asked, looking at his father’s oldest friend.

“Any number you come up with is fine, Wyatt,” Richard assured him with feeling. “No matter how many people you want attending the service, we’ll find a way to accommodate everyone, so feel free to increase your list if you want to.”

But Wyatt shook his head. “No, a hundred’s good. But thanks for the offer.”

“Well, at least we’ll be saving on folding chairs,” Alex said, doing her best to keep the situation as light as she could.

If she didn’t, Alex was fairly certain she was going to break down in tears herself.