“Gramps, please.”
“Al, you know you have to. Think about what he did for her.”
Al shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make another one.” He held up his hands. “Arthritis is too bad.”
“Maybe Onyx could help,” suggested Jimmy.
I wasn’t sure what he was volunteering me for, but based on Al’s assessment of my repair job, I doubted he’d go for it.
Al’s eyes scrunched, and he studied me for what felt like several minutes but was probably less than sixty seconds.
“Come with me,” he finally said.
32
Blanca
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a decent writing streak—one that was more than a thousand words. That wasn’t exactly true. I’d written more than that, but they were all shit and I deleted them, so they didn’t count.
Every day, I’d sit down with my laptop, determined to start a new book. Within hours, I’d abandon it. There was one book I couldn’t let go of, though, and I’d tried.
I lost count of the number of times I’d dragged the story Montano and I started together to the computer’s trash, only to recover it seconds later in sheer panic that it was gone forever. The fact I had backups didn’t seem to assuage my fear that one day I’d open my laptop and it would somehow be gone.
It had been three weeks and two days since I laid eyes on Montano Yáñez. Twenty-three days since the best and worst time of my life ended. A little longer since I gave my heart to a man who would hold it forever, whether I ever saw him again or not.
I still didn’t understand why I couldn’t talk to him, unless, like I’d assumed before, he made the request that I didn’t.
It was especially hard on Christmas and New Year’s Day. It came and went in the same way they did every year for me, except this year, I spent most of the day thinking about Montano.
I told Sorcha that since my mother died, I hadn’t celebrated any holidays. She and Laird still insisted I come up to the main house to eat with them. On both occasions, the warmth and sheer size of their family overwhelmed me.
Still another three weeks passed with no word on how long I’d be here. When Doc, whose name I learned from Sorcha was Kade, and Merrigan were last at the ranch, they said it wouldn’t be much longer. However, they gave no indication of what that meant specifically.
They were also vague about when I might be able to talk to Montano. Maybe it was time I admitted to myself that he didn’t want anything to do with me and move on.
I had, finally, been able to access what Laird had told me was an iron-clad network in order to notify my editor that my next three books would be delayed, as well as log on to make sure the auto-payments on all my bills were going through okay.
Today, like most days, I sat at the kitchen table of the cottage the Butlers had so graciously ensconced me in, doing nothing more than stare at my blank computer screen and think about Montano.
At some point, Sorcha would stop in to see me, using the excuse that she needed to make sure the refrigerator was stocked with everything I needed. When she came by yesterday, she told me she’d have a special surprise for me today. I hoped it wasn’t food. My clothes were getting too tight as it was.
It was midafternoon and I had just finished deleting yet another book begun without meaning, when I heard her knock at my door. I almost wept when I saw Montano’s mother standing with her.
“Please come in,” I said, stepping out of the doorway. “Esmeralda, it’s so nice to see you.”
The woman pulled me into an embrace that felt like it lasted minutes. Truth be told, I never wanted her to let me go.
“Has something happened?” I asked, seeing tears stream down her cheeks.
“No, lass, everything is fine. She’s just happy to see you,” said Sorcha, patting my cheek. “We have some very good news, in fact.” Sorcha motioned toward the kitchen, the place where we sat whenever she stopped over to chat.
She checked to make sure the teakettle had water in it, lit the fire on the stove, and opened the refrigerator. “You didn’t eat last night, my dear?”
“I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was too late to eat.”
She shook her head. “You’ll waste away to nothing. I’ll bring more biscuits over later.”
Considering she’d plated a half dozen for the three of us and there were still that many left, I hoped she didn’t. It was a miracle that I’d been able to resist eating more of them yesterday.
Along with the flaky, buttery goodies, she brought butter and jam to the table.
“Sorcha, sit now,” said Esmeralda. “We want to tell Blanca the good news.”
“I’ll just get the tea.” When the kettle boiled, she added the steaming water to the teapot and sat down.
“I’ve heard from my Kade that you’ll soon be able to go home.”
I’m sure neither woman expected my reaction, given the look of horror on their faces when I burst into tears.
“I don’t think those are tears of happiness,” Sorcha said to Montano’s mother, who put her hand on my arm.
“I don’t think they are, either.”
“Sorry,” I said, getting up to wipe my face. “I’ve been so emotional lately.”
“Mm-hmm.” Both women looked skeptical.
“What will you do?” Esmeralda asked as I tried to keep more tears from falling and answer the one question I wasn’t prepared to.
I shrugged. “Like you said, go home, I guess.”
“Where is home, lass?”
“I’ve spent the last several years living in Italy.”
“Ah, but that is not the question she asked, is it?” said Montano’s mother.
“I don’t have any family in the States,” I half-heartedly explained. “I own property in New York State that I intend to sell.”
“Why not live there?”
“It’s a camp, err, cabin in the Adirondack Mountains.”
“Sounds like a lovely place to live,” said Sorcha. “Esmeralda, do you know our Blanca is a writer?”
I’d shared that information with Sorcha but no details about the types of books I wrote.
“Are you working on a book now?” Montano’s mother asked.
“I am, and it happens to be set in the same place my camp is.”
“What kind of book is it?”
“Um, romance.”
Sorcha raised her eyebrows, and the two women smiled.
“Then, you must go back there and finish it.”
“I don’t need to. I often write stories in locations where I haven’t been in a while. It isn’t necessary for me to be in a particular place when I write.”
“In this case, it is, lass.”
I studied Sorcha, whose gaze remained on mine. She spoke with such certainty. How was it a woman who’d known me such a short amount of time could have such a strong opinion?
“You said your sister passed. Were the two of you close?”
Again, I was on the brink of tears. “Not at all, and the one thing I had—”
“What?” both women asked.
“It’s silly.”
Sorcha squeezed my hand. “I doubt anything that affects you in such a way is silly.”
“Near the place where my family spent summers, there was an amusement park we used to go to. It had a carousel—” A sob tore through my chest, and both Sorcha’s and Esmeralda’s eyes filled with tears.
“Go on, lass.”
I got up again, blew my nose, and sat back down. “It was my favorite ride. Anyway, for Christmas one year, my twin sister gave me a music box that looked just like the horse I always rode when we were kids.”
“What happened to it, dear?” Esmeralda asked.
“It broke, and now it’s gone, and it was the only thing I had to remind me my sister loved me. At least at one time in our lives.”
Montano’s mother sat back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. “As I told you when you were with our fa
mily for Thanksgiving, I understand your feelings more than most.”
“Aye, you and Lucia are twins,” said Sorcha.
“When we were young girls, no one fought as hard together as we did, but I always knew she loved me.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
“You can, dear. It doesn’t matter whether you no longer have the gift itself. It’s the memory of it that matters most. That, you will always have.”
“She speaks the truth, lass.”
“You’re so young. How did your sister die?” Esmeralda asked.
“She was in a plane crash.”
A look passed between her and Sorcha that I didn’t understand.
“What?”
Sorcha used the pie server to put a biscuit on a plate and then added butter and jam to the side. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “You need to eat.”
I was hungry after skipping dinner last night and not eating anything this morning, so I didn’t argue.
“What do you think, Esmeralda? When she leaves should she return to Italy or the…what did you call it?”
“A camp. It’s a cabin, but that’s what they call them in that area.”
“She must return to the camp. There is no question.”
“Why? I mean, that chapter of my life is over. I don’t see what good could come of it. I’ve made Italy my home.”
Esmeralda leaned forward and looked into my eyes. “Nothing is over, Blanca. It’s only just begun. Close the door, dear child, but open the window.”
The two women left a short while later. Esmeralda promised to come back soon, while Sorcha said she’d see me the next day.
For the rest of that afternoon and evening, Montano’s mother’s words echoed in my head. Why would she say something had only just begun?
It was after seven when I picked up my laptop, sat on the bed, and wrote. Twelve hours later, I was still at it. I wasn’t working on a new book. Instead, I was determined to finish the one Montano and I had started together.
33
Onyx
What I thought might be as simple as fixing Blanca’s broken music box, or purchasing a new one, turned into one of the most difficult projects I’d ever undertaken.
Who knew carousel horses were carved by hand? Or that they started out as miniature replicas of what the full-size horse would be?
According to Al, the market for new carousels was nonexistent and had been since he was a young man. In order to generate an income, he’d started making music boxes from the prototypes.
Another thing I learned was there were cheaper versions to be had. Al had sold the rights to the designs shortly before he retired. However, those music boxes were not hand-carved like Blanca’s was.
My hands bore the evidence of the scrapes and cuts resulting from learning how to work with Al’s carving tools.
He and I usually worked first thing in the morning, and by ten or so, Al would be ready to call it a day, reminding me often that he was, after all, retired.
Since that left me with nothing to do for the majority of my time, I’d started work on Blanca’s camp. It had been at Ranger’s suggestion, buoyed by his brother, Jimmy, that I undertook the project of winterizing it for her.
Maisie had reopened Sherman’s dance hall for a special event on New Year’s Eve, and since it was so well-attended, they now had live music every Friday and Saturday night as well as Sunday afternoons. Each week, she pleaded with Jimmy and me to go with her and Ranger, but we consistently turned her down.
My friendship with Jimmy had continued to grow to the point where I hung out with him more than his brother. It helped that we were both single, though I doubt he wanted to be any more than I did.
“What are we working on today?” he asked this morning like most when he’d see me come back from Al’s place. Sometimes we opted for ice fishing, which we referred to as working for our dinner.
“You know next month is Blanca’s birthday, right?” he said when I joined him out on the porch with a cup of coffee. Al abstained, saying he’d quit because of his high blood pressure. Maybe he was hinting I should do the same, but I loved the stuff.
Jimmy rarely brought Blanca or her late sister up in our conversations. Maybe his brother had warned him not to. Obviously, today was different.
“Yep, I sure do,” I said, wishing I could forget how the only birthday I’d celebrated with Sofia was a huge letdown for her when all I’d planned was a nice dinner out.
“There was only one thing Blanca ever told me she wanted, not that I or anyone else could give it to her.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “What was that?”
“A low-country swing. I guess they had one at their home in South Carolina that her father had built for her mother. The closest I ever got was hanging a hammock up for her that I think she slept in once.”
I surveyed the porch, wondering where a swing would’ve fit if she’d ever gotten her wish.
“I hung the hammock over there,” said Jimmy, pointing to the left side of the small space. He stood and looked up at the roof that had been extended from the main part of the camp when Blanca’s father screened this part in. “In order for it to hold something as heavy as the swing, the roof would have to be shored up.”
I shook my head. “Shoring it up wouldn’t be enough, son. It would have to be reinforced with heavier supports and bigger beams.”
“Right.” He walked in the opposite direction, out the screen door, and around the front of the camp where the warm weather had melted the snow and made the ground muddy. “Looks like it wouldn’t be that hard to do.”
“When are you time traveling back to your teenage years to build her one?”
He came back inside, sat in the chair next to me, and rested his elbows on his knees. “You aren’t the first person who wanted to preserve this place for Blanca.”
“Look, I get that you were her knight in shining armor, but save it, son. I’m not interested in hearing about it.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t me. It was Sofia.”
Fuck if I wasn’t finished with this conversation. Except Jimmy had said just enough to pique my curiosity. “What are you going on about?”
“Things got pretty rough for their family when Blanca’s mom got sick. It was the summer before that when I hung the hammock for her. When we later heard that her mom had cancer, I got why she never asked her dad to build the swing.
“Anyway, it was her mother who’d inherited the camp from her family, and while they owned it free and clear, they almost lost it due to nonpayment of back taxes. I know my parents and some of the other lake residents tried to help, but Blanca’s father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“You gonna tell me the rest of the story?” I asked after Jimmy didn’t say anything more for several minutes.
“I never knew how much they owed, only that my parents heard Sofia worked three jobs over that summer to try to get the taxes caught up enough that the county wouldn’t foreclose on them.”
“She saved it for herself, not Blanca,” I muttered.
“You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.”
“How do you know?”
Jimmy sat up and sighed as heavily as I had a few minutes ago. “Something happened between Sofia and me. I’d rather not get into the particulars of it, but it ended in a big argument between us.”
“Ranger told me she made a play for you.”
Jimmy laughed. “That’s one way to put it. Anyway, about a year later, I ran into her coming out of the county building not far from here, in Johnstown, where I was living at the time. I went in the opposite direction, hoping she hadn’t seen me, but she called out to me.”
When I got up and went inside, Jimmy followed.
“The conversation that day started off with her bad-mouthing Blanca, as you’d might expect, but when I went off on her about how she’d never be half the person her sister was—in my eyes or anyone else’s—she broke down. I was mortified, to be honest with
you. There we were, standing in front of the county building, and she was crying like I’d just broken up with her or something. I finally convinced her to go someplace more private where we could talk. That’s when the rest of the truth came out.”
I pulled a beer out of the fridge and held it out to him. When he took it, I knew this conversation was as hard on him as it was on me.
He twisted the cap off and took a swig. “She said she’d never liked coming to the lake, not like Blanca had. That’s also when I found out Blanca wanted to be a writer. Sofia tried to play it off like her sister would be the happiest spending the rest of her life living with their parents, writing her ‘stupid’ books, while she had plans to make enough money to travel the world. She told me she’d enlisted in the Air Force and would one day be a pilot.”
“That wasn’t what Blanca wanted at all. She couldn’t wait to get away from her family, especially after her mom died. She was the one who traveled the world.” I suppose Sofia had too, but not in the same way. Sofia did it on the Air Force’s dime—or United Russia’s—while Blanca made her way in the world all on her own. But was almost losing the camp the reason Sofia was so obsessed with money?
“I asked her outright if the rumors were true, if she was the one who’d paid the back taxes. I could tell she didn’t want to admit it, but she finally did. I asked her why her dad didn’t just sell it. She told me he wanted to keep it for Blanca.”
“Shit. That was harsh.”
“No kidding. I asked how she felt about that, and her response was that she wanted her sister to have it too. She got up and walked away then, and I never saw either girl again.”
“I don’t think Blanca knows any of this.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
I thought back to when I’d hoped that when we found what Sofia left behind, it would turn out to be something just for Blanca. No evidence. No so-called insurance policy. Just something that would assure Blanca her twin loved her.
“She needs to know.”
Onyx (K19 Security Solutions Book 10) Page 17
