Читать книгу Sweet Laurel Falls - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 6

OKAY, THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.

Jack stood beside his daughter—his daughter. Hell. How had that happened?—and gazed around at the group of women all staring at him as if he’d just walked in and mooned them all.

When Sage had suggested stopping in at the bookstore to talk to her mother first before he dropped her off at her house and found a hotel for himself for a few days, he’d had no idea Maura would be in the middle of a freaking Christmas party. He noted the cluster of gift bags, the personalized glass decorations on the tree. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for this gathering, and he had just barged in and ruined it.

“Your…father?” an older woman said faintly.

Though twenty years had gone by, he clearly recognized Mary Ella McKnight, with those green eyes all her children had inherited, now peering at him through a pair of trendy little horn-rimmed glasses. She had taught him English in high school, and he remembered with great fondness their discussions on Milton and Wilkie Collins.

She was still very pretty, with a soft, ageless kind of beauty.

“You didn’t know either?” Sage raised an eyebrow at her grandmother’s obvious shock. “I guess it was a big secret to everyone. I thought I was the last to know.”

He had met Sage only days ago, but her sudden barbed tone seemed very unlike the sweet, earnest young woman he had come to know. That she would burst in and spring him on Maura like this without any advance warning seemed either thoughtless or cruel. He should say something to ease the tension of the moment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything polite and innocuous that didn’t start with “How the hell could you keep this from me?”

A woman with chestnut hair who looked vaguely familiar stepped forward and rested a hand on Maura’s arm. “Are you all right, my dear?” the woman asked.

Maura gave a jerky shake of her head and swallowed, her features pale. According to what Sage had told him, Maura was still grieving the loss of her other daughter, he suddenly remembered, and he felt like an even bigger ass for bursting in here like this.

“Maybe the three of you should go back to your office where you could have a little privacy for this discussion,” the other woman gently suggested.

Maura gazed at her blankly for a moment, then seemed to gather her composure from somewhere deep inside. “I’m…I’m sorry. I wasn’t…This is a bit of a shock. Yes. We should go back to my office. Thank you, Claire. Do you mind helping your mother lead the book discussion? When Alex gets here, she should have the, uh, refreshments.”

He really should have made sure Sage had talked to her mother about all of this before he showed up, but then, he hadn’t really been thinking clearly in the three days since the carefully arranged life he thought he had constructed for himself had imploded around him.

Three days ago, he had been living his life, continuing to build Lange & Associates, preparing for an undergraduate lecture at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning. It was the first time he had stepped back in the state since he had escaped twenty years ago, a bitter and angry young man.

His lecture had gone well, especially as he focused on one of his passions, sustainable design. He was fairly certain he hadn’t come across as a pompous iconoclast. Among the students who had pressed toward the dais to talk to him afterward had been this young woman with dark wavy hair and green eyes.

She told him she had studied his work, that she had always felt a bond to him because she was also from Hope’s Crossing, where she knew he had grown up, and that while she hadn’t met him, she saw his father around town often.

He studied her features as she spoke to him about her dreams and their shared passion for architecture, and he had been aware of an odd sense of the familiar but with a twist, as if he were looking at someone he knew through a wavy, distorted mirror.

When she told him her name—Sage McKnight—he had stared at her for a full thirty seconds before he had asked, “Who are your parents?”

“I don’t know my father. He took off before I was born. But my mother’s name is Maura McKnight. I think she might be around your age or maybe a little younger.”

Younger, he remembered thinking as everything inside him froze. She had been a year younger.

“She’s thirty-seven now, if that helps you place her,” Sage had offered helpfully. “She graduated from high school nineteen years ago. I know, because it was about a month before I was born.”

Just like that, he had pieced the dates and the times together, and he had known. He didn’t need to bother with DNA tests. He could do the damn math. Anyone with a brain could clearly see she was his child. They had the same nose, the same dark, wavy hair, the same dimple in their chins.

His daughter. After three days, he still couldn’t believe it.

And neither, apparently, could all those gaping women back there. Hadn’t she told anyone who had fathered her child?

Now he followed Maura through the bookstore, noting almost subconsciously certain architectural details of the historic building, like the walls that had been peeled back to bare brick and the windows with their almost Gothic arches. With jewel-toned hanging fixtures on track lights and plush furniture set around in conversation nooks, Maura had created a cozy, warm space that encouraged people to stop and ponder, sip a coffee, maybe grab a book off a shelf at random and discover something new.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have found the place appealing, clever and bright and comfortable, but he could only focus on haphazard details as he followed her through a doorway to a long, barren stockroom, and a cluttered office dominated by a wide oak desk and a small window that overlooked Main Street.

Inside her office, Maura turned on both of them. “First of all, Sage, what are you doing here today? What about your biology final tomorrow morning?”

Her daughter—their daughter—shrugged. “I talked Professor Johnson into letting me take it this morning. She was fine with that, especially after I explained I had extenuating circumstances.”

Maura’s gaze darted to him, then quickly away again. “How do you think you did? Did you even have time to study after your chemistry final? You needed a solid A on the final to bring your grade above a C.”

“Really, Mom? Is that what you want to talk about right now? My grades?”

A hint of color soaked Maura’s cheeks, and she compressed her lips into a thin line as if to clamp back more academic interrogation. Even with the sour expression, she still looked beautiful. Looking at her now, he couldn’t fathom that she was old enough to have a daughter who was a college sophomore, but then she must have been barely eighteen when Sage was born. She was seventeen when he’d left, still six months before her eighteenth birthday.

Maura released a heavy breath and finally sat on the edge of her desk, which put her slightly above him and Sage, who had taken the two guest chairs in her office.

“You’re right. We can talk about school later. I just…this was all unexpected. I didn’t think you would be here until tomorrow, and then I never expected you to bring…”

“My father?”

Maura’s hands flexed on her thighs even as she made a scoffing sort of sound. “I don’t know where you possibly came up with that crazy idea,” she began, but Sage cut her off.

“Please don’t lie to me. You’ve been lying for twenty years. Can we just stop now?” Though the words were angry, the tone was soft and almost gentle. “You’ve known who he is and where he was all this time, haven’t you? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Maura looked at him quickly and then away again. She hadn’t looked at him for longer than a few seconds at a time, as if she were trying to pretend he wasn’t really there. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes. Of course it matters! I could have had a father all this time.”

“You’ve had your stepfather from the time you were just a little girl. Chris has always been great to you.”

“True. He’s still great to me. Even after the divorce, he never treated me any differently than he did L-Layla.” Sage’s voice wobbled a little at the name. Her sister, who had died earlier this year, he remembered, and felt like an ass again for showing up out of the blue like this, dredging up the past. What would happen if he left town right now and went back to his real life in the Bay Area and pretended none of this had ever happened?

He couldn’t do that, as tempting as he suddenly found the idea. To a man who had spent his adult life trying to clear through the clutter in his personal and professional lives, this was all so messy and complicated. But like it or not, Sage was his daughter. He was here now, and had been given the chance after all these years to come to know this young woman who bore half his DNA and who reminded him with almost painful intensity of an innocent part of himself he had left behind a long time ago.

“A child can never have too many people who love her, Mom. You taught me that. Why did you keep my father out of our lives all this time? He didn’t have any idea I even existed. If he hadn’t come to campus to give a lecture, both of us would still be in the dark.”

“A lecture?”

“Right. On sustainable design, one of my own passions. It was wonderful, really inspiring. I went up afterward to talk to him and mentioned I was from Hope’s Crossing. It only took us a minute to figure things out.”

Maura frowned. “Figure what out? That the two of us dated when I was barely seventeen? How could you both instantly jump from that to thinking he’s your…your sperm donor?”

The term annoyed the hell out of him. “Because neither of us is stupid. She told me who her mother was. When I asked how old she was, I could figure out the math. I knew exactly who you were with nine months before her birthday.”

And ten months before and eleven months and every spare moment they could get their hands on each other that summer.

“That doesn’t prove a thing. You took off. You weren’t here, Jack. How do you know I didn’t pick up with the whole basketball team after you left?” Defiance and something that looked suspiciously like fear flashed in her eyes.

She had been a virgin their first time together. They both had been, fumbling and awkward and embarrassed but certain they were deeply in love. Even if not for the proof sitting beside him, he wouldn’t have believed the smart and loving girl she had been would suddenly turn into the kind of girl who would sleep around with just anybody.

“Look at her,” he said, gentling his tone. “She has my mother’s nose and my mouth and chin. We can run the DNA, but I don’t need to. Sage is my daughter. For three days, I’ve just been trying to figure out why the hell you didn’t tell me.”

For the first time, she met his gaze for longer than a few seconds. “Think about it, Jack,” she finally said. “What difference would it have made? Would you have come back?”

He couldn’t lie, to her or to himself. “No. But you could have come with me.”

“And lived in some rat-hole apartment while you dropped out of college and worked three jobs to support us, resenting me the whole time? That would have been the perfect happily-ever-after every young girl dreams about.”

“I still had a right to know.”

She suddenly looked tired, defeated, and he saw deep shadows in her eyes that he sensed had nothing to do with him.

“Well, I guess you know now. Yes. She’s your daughter. There was no one else. There it is. Now you know, and we can be one big, freaking happy family for the holidays.”

“Mom.” Sage moved forward a little as if to reach for Maura’s hand, but then she checked the motion and slid back into her chair.

Pain etched Maura’s features briefly, but she contained it. “Okay. I should have told you. Give me a break here. I was just a scared kid who didn’t know what to do. You left without a forwarding address, Jack, and didn’t contact me one single time after you left, despite all your promises. What else was I supposed to do? I finally tracked down your number at Berkeley about four months after you left and tried to call you. Three times I tried in a week. Once you were at the library, and twice you were on a date, at least according to your roommate. I left my number, but you never called me back, which basically gave me the message loud and clear that you were done with me. What more was I supposed to do?”

He remembered those first few months at school after that last horrible fight with his father, after he had opted to leave everything behind—even the only warm and beautiful thing that had happened to him in Hope’s Crossing since his mother’s death.

He remembered the message from Maura his roommate had given him and the sloppily scrawled phone number. He had stared at it for hours and had even dialed the number several times, but had always hung up.

She had been a link to a place and a past he had chosen to leave behind, and he’d ultimately decided it was in both their best interests if he tried to move on and gave her the chance to do the same.

That she had been pregnant and alone had never once occurred to him. Lord, he’d been an idiot.

Everything was so damn tangled, he didn’t know what to do—which was the whole reason he had agreed to give Sage a ride back to Hope’s Crossing to talk to Maura before he flew back to San Francisco.

“Look, we’re all a little emotional about this tonight. I didn’t realize you were unaware I was bringing Sage back to town.”

That little tidbit also appeared to be news to Maura. “You rode here with him?” she asked her daughter. “Is something wrong with the Honda?”

“It hasn’t been starting the last week or so. I think it just needs a new battery, but I figured I could drive the pickup while I was home and catch a ride back to school with one of my friends after the break. I can deal with the Honda before school starts next semester.”

“You should have called me. I could have driven to Boulder to pick you up.”

“Sorry, Mom. My car troubles just didn’t seem all that important in light of…everything else.”

“I guess that’s understandable.” Maura forced a smile, but he could clearly see the bone-deep weariness beneath it. What had happened to the vibrant, alive girl who’d always made him laugh, even when they were both dealing with family chaos and pain?

“So what now?” she asked. Though she looked at her daughter, he picked up the subtext of the question, directed at him. What else are you planning to do to screw up my life?

“I think you should get back to your book club Christmas party for now. I’m really sorry we interrupted it.”

“Between Ruth and Claire and your grandmother, I’m sure everything will be fine,” Maura assured her.

Much to his astonished dismay, tears filled Sage’s eyes. “But I know how much you always look forward to the party and the fun you have throwing it for your friends. It’s always the highlight of your Christmas. If anything, you needed it more than ever this year, and now I’ve ruined everything for you.”

Maura gave him a harsh look, as if this rapid-fire emotional outburst were his fault, then she stepped forward to wrap Sage in her arms.

“It’s only a party,” she said. “No big deal. They can all carry on just fine without me. And if you want the truth, I almost canceled it this year. I haven’t really been in the mood for Christmas.”

This information only seemed to make Sage sniffle harder, and he watched helplessly while Maura comforted her. Judging by the mood swings and the emotional outbursts, apparently he had a hell of a lot to learn about having a nineteen-year-old daughter.

“You’re exhausted, honey. I’m sure you’ve been studying hard for finals.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep much since the lecture,” she admitted, resting her darker head on her mother’s shoulder. He had a feeling the bond between them would survive the secret Maura had never told her daughter. As he saw the two of them together, something sharp and achy twisted in his gut.

He had an almost-grown daughter he suddenly felt responsible for, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it.

“Why don’t you take my car home and go back to the house to get some rest,” Maura said. “I’ll catch a ride with your grandmother or with Claire. We can talk more in the morning when we’re both rested and…more calm.”

“I’ll take her home,” Jack offered quietly.

“Thank you, but I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble. You’ve done enough by bringing her all this way from Boulder. I’m sure you need to get back to…wherever you came from.”

In a rush to send him on his way, was she? “Actually, I’m planning to stay in town a few days.”

“Why?” she asked, green eyes wide with surprise. “You hate Hope’s Crossing.”

“I just found out I have a daughter. I’m not in any particular hurry to walk back out of her life right away.”

The surprise shifted to something that looked like horror, as if she had never expected him to genuinely want to be part of their daughter’s world on any ongoing basis. Sage, though, lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and gave him a watery smile. “That’s great. Really great.”

“What do you say we meet for breakfast in the morning? Unless you have to be here at the bookstore first thing.”

Maybe a night’s rest would give them all a little breathing space and offer him, at least, a chance to regain equilibrium, before any deeper discussion about the decisions made in the past and where they would go from here.

“I own the place. I don’t have to punch a clock.”

“Which usually means you’re here from about eight a.m. to ten p.m.” Sage gave her mother a teasing look.

“I can meet for breakfast,” Maura said. “Tomorrow I don’t have anything pressing at the store until midmorning.”

“Perfect. Why don’t we meet at the Center of Hope Café at around eight-thirty? We stopped there to grab a bite at the counter before we walked over here, and I’m happy to say their food is just as good as I remembered.”

“The café? I don’t know if that’s the greatest idea. You might not want to…” she started to say, but her words trailed off.

“Want to what?” he asked.

She seemed to reconsider the subject of any objection on his part. “No. On second thought, sure. Eight-thirty at the café should work just fine.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then. Shall we go, Sage?”

“Yeah.” She pressed her cheek to her mother’s. “I’m still furious you didn’t tell me about my father. I probably will be for a while. But I still love you and I will forever and ever.”

“Back at you,” Maura said, a catch in her voice that she quickly cleared away.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Sage asked him after they walked through the bookstore and the lightly falling snow to the SUV, which he had rented what seemed a lifetime ago at the Denver airport before his lecture.

“You would know that better than I do.”

“I thought I knew my mother. We’re best friends. I still can’t believe she would keep this huge secret from me.”

He wondered at Maura’s reasons for that. Why didn’t she tell Sage? Why didn’t she tell him? Surely in the years since he’d left, she could have found some way to tell him about his child.

The idea of it was still overwhelming as hell.

“You’ll have to give me directions to your place,” he said after she fastened her seat belt.

“Oh. Right. We live on Mountain Laurel Road. Do you remember where that is?”

“I think so.” If he remembered correctly, it was just past Sweet Laurel Falls, one of his favorite places in town. The falls had been one of their secret rendezvous points. Why he should remember that right now, he had no idea. “I know the general direction, anyway. Be sure to tell me if I start to head off course.”

Traffic was busier than he expected as he drove through Hope’s Crossing with the wipers beating back the falling snow. He hardly recognized the downtown. When he had lived here, many of these storefronts had been empty or had housed businesses that barely survived on the margin. Now trendy restaurants, bustling bars catering to tourists and boutiques with elegant holiday window displays seemed to jostle for space.

Some of the historic buildings were still there, but he could see new buildings as well. Much to his surprise, some faction in town had apparently made an effort to keep the town’s historic flavor, even among the new developments. Instead of a modern hodgepodge of architectural styles that would be jarring and unpleasant with the mountain grandeur surrounding the town, it looked as if restrictions had been enacted to require strict adherence to building codes. Even in the few strip-mall-type developments they passed with pizza places, frozen yogurt shops and fast-food places that might appeal to tourists, the buildings had cedar-shake roofs and no flashy signage to jar with the setting.

As he drove up the hill toward Mountain Laurel Road, the surroundings seemed more familiar, even after twenty years. In his day, this area of town had been called Old Hope, a neighborhood of smaller, wood-framed houses, some of them dating back to the town’s past as a rough and rugged mining town. A few of the houses had been torn down and small condominium units or more modern homes built in their place, and many had obviously been rehabbed.

He could easily tell which were vacation homes—they invariably had some sort of kitschy decoration on the exterior, like a crossed pair of old wooden skis or snowshoes, or some other kind of cabin-chic decoration. He saw a couple of carved wooden bears and even a wooden moose head on a garage.

“Turn here,” Sage said. “Our house is the small brick-and-tan house on the right, three houses from the corner.”

From what he had just seen in town, Maura ran a prosperous business in Hope’s Crossing. According to the information he had gleaned from Sage over the past few days, she had been married for five years to Chris Parker, frontman for Pendragon, a band even Jack had heard of before.

She must have received a healthy alimony and child support settlement from the guy when their marriage broke up. So why was she living in a small Craftsman bungalow that looked as though it couldn’t be more than nine hundred square feet?

Despite its small size, the house appeared cozy and warm nestled here in the mountains. Snow drifted down to settle on the wide, deep porch, and a brightly lit Christmas tree blazed from the double windows in front. The lot was roomy, giving her plenty of space for an attached garage that looked as if it had been added to the main house later.

He glimpsed movement by the side of the house and spied a couple of cold and hungry mule deer trying to browse off the shrubs, which looked as if they had been wrapped to avoid just such an eventuality. The deer looked up when Jack’s headlights pulled into the driveway, then it turned and bounded away, jumping over a low cedar fence to her neighbor’s property. Its mate followed suit and disappeared in a flash of white hindquarters.

Now, there was an encounter that brought back memories. When he was a kid and lived up Silver Strike Canyon, he and his mother would often take walks to look for deer. She would even sometimes wake him up if a big buck would wander through their yard.

“Thanks for the ride. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I can walk you in. Help you with your bag and your laundry.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

He hadn’t been given the chance to do anything to help his daughter in nearly twenty years. Carrying in her bags was a small gesture, but at least it was something. He didn’t bother arguing with her; he only climbed out of the SUV and reached into the backseat for the wicker laundry basket she’d loaded up at her apartment in Boulder, hefted it under one arm and picked her suitcase up with the other.

Sage made a sound of frustration, but followed him up the four steps to the porch and unlocked the house with a set of keys she pulled from her backpack. Warmth washed over them as Sage pushed open the door to let him inside, and the house smelled of cinnamon and clove and evergreen branches from the garlands draped around.

Jack found himself more interested than he probably should have been in Maura’s house. He took in the built-in bookshelves, the exposed rafters, the extensive woodwork, all softened by colorful textiles and art-glass light fixtures.

“Looks like Mom went all out with the Christmas decorations. A tree and everything.”

He glanced at his daughter. His daughter. Would he ever get used to that particular phrase? “You sound surprised.”

“I thought this year she wouldn’t really be in the mood for Christmas. Usually it’s her favorite time of year but, you know. Everything is different now.”

He didn’t want to feel this sympathy. For the past three days, he had simmered in his anger that she had kept this cataclysmic thing from him all these years. Being here in Hope’s Crossing, being confronted with the reality of her life and her pain and the difficult choices she must have faced as a seventeen-year-old girl, everything seemed different.

He felt deflated somehow and didn’t quite know what to do with his anger.

Sage fingered an ornament on the tree that looked as if it was glued-together Popsicle sticks. The tree was covered in similar handmade ornaments, and he wondered which Sage had made and which had been crafted by her younger sister.

“I hope Grandma and the aunts helped her and she didn’t have to do it by herself,” Sage fretted. “That would have been so hard for her, taking out all these old ornaments and everything on her own.”

Sage’s compassion for her mother, despite everything, touched a chord deep inside him. There was a tight bond between the two of them. Had it always been there, or had their shared loss this year only heightened it?

He spied a cluster of photographs on the wall, dominated by one of Sage and Maura on a mountain trail somewhere, lit by perfect evening light amid the ghostly trunks of an aspen grove. They had their arms around each other, as well as a younger girl with purple highlights in her hair and a triple row of earrings.

“This must be Layla.”

Sage moved beside him and reached a hand out to touch the picture. “Yep. She was so pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Beautiful,” he murmured. All three females were lovely. They looked like a tight unit, and it was obvious even at a quick glance that they had all adored each other.

Maura had been divorced for a decade and had raised both girls on her own. How had she managed it? he wondered, then reminded himself it was none of his business. He was here only to establish a relationship with his newly discovered daughter, not to walk down memory lane with Maura McKnight, the girl who had once meant everything to him.

“Oh, look. Presents.” Sage’s eyes were as wide as a little kid’s as she looked at the prettily dressed packages under the tree. What had she been like as a big-eyed preschooler waiting for Santa to arrive? He would never know that. He’d missed all those Christmas Eves of putting out plates of cookies and tucking his little girl into bed.

“I guess I’d better head out to find a hotel. Are you sure you’re okay now?” He couldn’t see any evidence of the tears from earlier, but a guy never could tell.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just going to throw in a load of laundry and check my Facebook, then go to bed.”

“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night.”

He turned to head toward the door and had almost reached it when her voice stopped him.

“Wait!”

He paused, then was completely disconcerted when she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m really glad we found each other, Jack.”

On the way here, they had already had the awkward conversation about what she should call him. She didn’t feel right calling him Dad at this point in their relationship, so he had suggested Jack.

“I am too,” he said gruffly.

He meant the words, he thought, as he walked out into the snowy evening lit by stars and the Christmas lights of Maura’s neighbors. Despite everything, the realization that Sage was his daughter astonished and humbled him. And yes, delighted him—even though it meant returning to Hope’s Crossing after all these years and facing the past he thought he had left far behind.