“You’re still his son,” Melanie said.
Logan didn’t answer, but he met her gaze with a resigned look. These were old wounds for him. She remembered him talking about it when they were teens. He’d been more like his father than he liked to admit—that shell of his was a whole lot like Harry’s. She’d experienced it when he cut her off a few months after he left for college. He’d told her it was over, and then just shut down. There was no discussion. No closure, no reason. A whole lot like Logan had probably felt when his dad did the same thing to him. Except for a little boy, it was more damaging. She’d gotten over it. He never had.
“So how are we going to track him down?” Melanie asked.
“The address my mom left was this one—the lake house. I did go to the house in town he used to live in yesterday, but a different family lives there. I tried looking him up in the White Pages from Denver, but his number isn’t listed.”
“Is he...” she hesitated “...still alive?”
Logan shrugged. “Far as I know. Mom updated her will only a couple of years before she died, but if she gave this address to locate him, maybe she wasn’t up-to-date on him, either.”
“Where should we start?” she asked.
“I’m thinking we can check the newspaper office and look through some obituaries, just to be sure. And I could see if I can find my half brother. For all I know, they all moved away.”
“It’s a start,” Melanie said. It felt good to have something else to focus on, someone else’s heartbreak. She was tired of her own. Besides, soon she was going to have to enroll in some classes and restart her life in earnest, and she was avoiding it. The only real interior decor she’d done had been for her and Adam—was she even any good? Did she want to find out? Back when she’d willingly abandoned her job to be the stay-at-home mom for Adam’s kids, she’d felt like a hero, but now it just felt stupid. She’d given up everything for Adam—her career, her ability to financially provide for herself... She wasn’t making that mistake again.
As if on cue, Melanie heard the rumble of a car engine, and she looked out the kitchen window. A little red sports car pulled up and parked haphazardly behind her own car. The engine turned off, the door opened, and Melanie’s heart stuttered.
“Tilly?” Melanie said aloud, and Logan came around the side of the counter and looked out the window beside her.
Tilly got out of the car, her sun-bleached hair pulled back in a messy bun, her makeup consisting of a bit of lip gloss. She’d grown up over the last few months. The last time Melanie had seen her stepdaughter was when Melanie came by the house to pick up some paperwork. It had been an awkward few minutes for Melanie while Tilly had virtually ignored her. Dad left that envelope for you. I’ve got stuff to do, so... That had stung, and she’d had to hide her emotions. But now, Tilly seemed older, more sure of herself. Tilly placed her sunglasses on her head and walked around to the back of her car where she popped the trunk. What was she doing here? She knew that Melanie had gotten the lake house in the divorce. In fact, Tilly had been rather vocal that she thought it was unfair, since it had been such an integral part of their childhood. Melanie, it seemed, had already been emotionally sliced out.
Tilly resented her stepmother. She hated this place, but she’d hated Melanie getting anything from their father more.
Melanie went to the door and pulled it open, watching as Tilly lifted out first one bag and then another. Then she struggled with a third—a large suitcase.
“Your stepdaughter?” Logan said from across the kitchen.
“That’s her,” she said grimly. Her heart sped up. She wasn’t the one who was supposed to be intimidated, but this girl had a way of making Melanie feel small. She’d honed it over the last few years. There was something about Tilly’s complete and unwavering belief in herself and her father.
“I’ll let you two catch up, then,” Logan said.
Melanie shot him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “It looks like she needs you.”
Did she? Melanie felt a knot forming in her stomach. Tilly had been the toughest to raise, and the angriest during the divorce. The girl was beautiful and statuesque. She was confident, smart and, with the help of her father’s money, she would go places. So why had she come here?
“I’ll let you know what I find out in the newspaper office.” Logan slipped past Melanie just as Tilly attempted to gather up her bags. She put one over her shoulder, and tried to stack the other on top of her suitcase, pulled the handle up. But the driveway was gravel, and those little airport wheels weren’t going to go far.
“You want a hand with that?” Logan asked, raising his voice.
“Yeah. Okay.” Tilly put down all of the bags, stepped back and pulled out her phone. Logan deposited the cardboard box onto the hood of his truck, then came back and picked up her bags, hoisting them easily enough. He carried them to the front door and put them down on the step. He shot Melanie a roguish smile.
“Have fun with her,” he said softly.
“Thanks.” Apparently, Tilly was planning to stay for a bit.
Logan turned and gave Tilly a nod, which Tilly didn’t seem to see since she was typing on her phone. He carried on past her.
“Tilly?” Melanie said, raising her voice.
“One sec.”
Melanie stood there, waiting while Tilly walked ever so slowly up toward the house. Finally, she tucked the phone away and looked up.
“Hi,” Melanie said.
Logan’s truck rumbled to life and started backing out of the drive. Part of Melanie wished he’d stay. Being alone with Tilly was more than intimidating right now, but Tilly wasn’t Logan’s problem. She wasn’t supposed to be Melanie’s anymore, either.
“I’m going to be here for a few weeks,” Tilly said.
“You do realize that this is my house,” Melanie said. “Right?”
“This is the family lake house.” Tilly didn’t look up. “I grew up here.”
Seven summers constituted a rather large part of a girl’s childhood, but it was still a stretch.
“This is my home now,” Melanie said.
“Dad always said he’d give it to me, you know,” Tilly said.
Were they really going to stand here and argue about the legality of the divorce agreement? Melanie tried to calm the rising anger. Tilly had a way about her—archly demanding that reality bend toward her wishes.
“Tilly, call your father,” Melanie said with a sigh. Let Adam argue with his daughter.
“Dad said you wouldn’t mind.”
Did he now? Tilly picked up the two smaller bags and carried them past Melanie into the house. She put them down in the living room, then came back to muscle the large suitcase inside.
Melanie shut the door and looked across the room at her stepdaughter. Tilly wore a mask of indifference—the same one she’d been using the past several years. Logan’s and Harry’s defensive shells were as thin as bubbles compared to this girl. But she was here—and she wouldn’t have come for nothing.
“Why are you here, Tilly?” Melanie asked.
“I needed somewhere to go,” she retorted. “So, who’s that guy? Your boyfriend?”
“Not that it’s your business, but he’s a friend of mine.” Her father had had enough romantic partners—and a new steady girlfriend had materialized pretty quickly after the separation. Tilly should be up-to-date on how adults moved on.
“He seemed pretty comfortable here,” Tilly countered.
“I’m just that good of a hostess.” Melanie crossed her arms.
“Because it’s tacky to start hooking up like a week after you’re single,” Tilly said tartly. “It makes you look slutty.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just saying.”
Melanie wouldn’t be baited. Tilly w
anted a fight, but Melanie was no longer legally obliged to provide her with one.
“He’s just someone I used to know.”
Tilly rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You’re single and all.”
“So how come you’re here and not with your father?” Melanie asked.
“Because Dad’s in Japan,” Tilly said, rolling her eyes. “On business.”
Melanie had always been the go-to childcare for the last fifteen years. She’d wondered how Adam would balance things on his own with his last child still at home.
“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend now?” Melanie asked.
“Exactly.”
That didn’t explain a lot. “And he said I wouldn’t mind you being here?”
“Yeah.” Tilly huffed out a breath. “I need to just...unwind. I’m not some kid anymore, okay? I figure you owe me this much.” She looked around the kitchen. “I’m hungry.”
Apparently, she hadn’t noticed the irony of both being terribly grown-up and expecting the adult in the room to feed her.
“What do you want to eat?” Melanie asked.
“I want, like, something sweet, but like, not.”
Melanie suppressed an eye roll of her own. You could either fight with Tilly or give in. And until she could send the girl off to her father, she’d at least have to feed her. “I’ll make you a BLT.”
Tilly sank onto the couch, her focus on her phone. Who was she texting so fervently? Melanie eyed her for a moment.
“You know you can’t stay here, Tilly,” she said. “Just for the record. I’m not your crash pad while you party.”
Tilly didn’t answer, and Melanie dropped some bread into the toaster. It felt too much like old times. She’d raised Tilly since she was a toddler, but there had come a point when Tilly had just...disconnected from her. Whatever warm relationship they’d shared had been over, and they’d never gotten it back.
“God, he’s such an idiot!” Tilly burst out, dropping her phone into her lap.
“Who?” Melanie asked.
“No one. I’ll leave soon. I just have to figure a few things out.”
So...not a few weeks, then?
“What do you need to sort out?” Melanie asked.
“Like where I’m going!” Tilly snapped back, but tears rose in her eyes. “Okay? I’m not just going to drive off into the sunset. I need somewhere to go.”
There was something deeper going on here—very likely something to do with whomever she was texting. Tilly wasn’t the type to be without a boyfriend for long, but she was only seventeen. If she was entangled with some older guy taking advantage, Melanie did have the adult responsibility to inform her father.
“Who’s the idiot?” Melanie asked. “Humor me.”
“Simon.”
Her on-again, off-again boyfriend. At least that wasn’t an alarming update.
“Tell you what,” Melanie said, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m going to call your father for you.”
She was no longer Tilly’s stepmother, and if Tilly needed some advice, her father was the one to give her guidance. She dialed Adam’s cell phone and it went directly to voice mail. Melanie sighed and opted for a text instead.
Tilly is here at the lake house. She needs her father.
Tilly had always needed her father, and Adam had always been too busy. Except now, after a painful divorce from Tilly’s dad, that dysfunctional family dynamic was no longer Melanie’s responsibility to try to balance out. Their marriage was over, and Adam was going to have to step up and be the dad his daughter needed.
CHAPTER THREE
LOGAN PARKED HIS truck out in front of the old brick building, his gaze drawn to the faded Mountain Springs Journal sign. It had been a long time since he’d been back in Mountain Springs, and somehow, he’d expected more to change around here, but the old newspaper office was exactly the same—just a little more worn.
When he was about twelve, Logan used to work as a delivery boy for the journal, and his mom, Elise, used to drive him down to this very office so he could pick up his papers at four thirty every Saturday morning.
Logan had asked his dad if he’d help with his newspaper delivery job, but Harry had said no.
“It’s too early, Logan,” Harry had said. “Why don’t you sleep in on your weekend?”
As if Harry knew what his son did on a regular day. Later, Harry took his seven-year-old son, Junior, to early-morning soccer practices and drove him around to all sorts of out-of-town games. So it hadn’t been about the hour. It was about which son had asked. That was a sting that never quite went away. He was a second-class kid for Harry Wilde—an inconvenience more than anything. Logan hadn’t even gotten his father’s last name—Harry hadn’t fought for that. He was Elise’s son.
So, Elise had gotten up early every Saturday morning, and she’d driven him to the newspaper office to pick up his stack of papers, and then she’d driven him out to his route. She’d sit in the car reading while he finished up, and then they’d head home together for a pancake breakfast. Even when she was sick with a cold or flu. She’d just fling a winter coat over her pajamas, and while he delivered his papers, she’d sleep in the car with her box of tissues, a hot water bottle and the emergency blanket they always kept in the car. Mom had been the one Logan could count on, and eventually he stopped asking Harry for anything. Harry didn’t seem to notice.
The problem was, he never did thank his mom for the way she stepped up no matter how hard it was on her. Even as an adult, his mother used to chastise him. You take a lot for granted, Logan. A thank-you wouldn’t kill you. He did try to pay his mother back by driving her around to her appointments and picking up some groceries for her every week or two. He might act like he had no feelings but he did have them.
Logan got out of the truck. Main Street in Mountain Springs was warm and smelled of the bakery down the road. This wasn’t the tourist hub; it was the regular part of town where no business bothered pretending to be a chalet or a log cabin. Trees were planted along the sidewalk, offering some dappled shade, and in front of the journal’s glass door were two large planters with an abundance of pink and white flowers flowing over the side.
Logan hadn’t submitted an obituary to the Mountain Springs Journal when his mom had passed away, even though she’d lived in this town for thirty years. He’d figured the people who cared had kept up with her.
And there was a significant angry part of him that hadn’t wanted to tell his father about Elise’s death. Harry hadn’t deserved to know. He used to think about his father’s negligent parenting, but his mother had suffered from it, too. She never got a break. She seldom got financial help. He couldn’t remember her buying herself new clothes, although she must have from time to time—for the most part, the money had all gone to other necessities. Harry had moved on with his marriage to Dot and the kids that resulted, and he hadn’t looked back.
Thinking about his mother’s passing now, it might have been wiser to just post the obituary, because now Logan had to break the news to his father himself...and maybe he could see what Caroline had been talking about in those diaries, after all. He was stubborn, jaded and difficult.
Would an obituary have killed him?
Logan pulled open the front door of the newspaper office, and a chime sounded as he came inside. There were some new faux leather visitor chairs, and it looked like the bullpen had been updated a bit. Two local journalists sat at desks facing the wall—one on the phone jotting down information, and the other glued to a game of solitaire on the computer screen. The receptionist was a middle-aged woman with ash-blond hair, and she smiled as he came in.
“Hello,” she called cheerily. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Hi,” Logan said as he came up to her desk. “I’m wondering how I might be able to get a look at your obituaries for the last few years. I checked online, an
d I couldn’t find anything.”
“If we posted everything online, there’d be no reason for the newspaper,” she replied meaningfully.
“Right...” He squinted at her. “So, obituaries. How would I check the old ones?”
“We used to have most of them backed up on the computer,” she replied. “But we had a virus and we lost a lot. But we do have the old microfiches. You can go back to the fifties on those. Old technology sometimes lasts longer, you know?”
“Yeah...” He smiled faintly. “It can be that way.”
“But I do have some more recent obituaries on our new system that I can check, if you want. They go back three years.”
“That would be great,” he said.
“What’s the name?” she asked.
“Harold Eugene Wilde. It might also be under Harry Wilde. That’s Wilde with an e.”
While the receptionist checked her system, Logan sucked in a deep breath. It felt wrong to be standing here, checking if his father was even alive. This seemed like information a son shouldn’t have to sleuth out. His dad might not have been much of a father in his life, but he’d still been his father. If he were dead—
“Nothing under either of those names for the deceased, but his name does come up as a survivor to another person who passed,” she said, glancing up. “His wife, it says. A Mrs. Dorothy Eleanor Wilde.”
Dot—the stepmother with the distracted smile and limited patience. Logan hadn’t known her well—but he’d resented her a whole lot as a kid. She always had new clothes, and she had a way of saying his father’s name that sounded halfway between an exasperated sigh and a question.
“When was that?” Logan asked.
“November last year,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks...” Logan licked his lips. “Can I see it?”
“Sure.” She turned her screen so he could read the write up. It had the regular information—where she was born, where she went to school, who she left behind... Along with Harry, their children were listed as having survived her. Logan’s half brother was listed as Dr. H. Eugene Wilde Jr. Apparently, he was doing pretty well for himself.
Their Mountain Reunion (The Second Chance Club Book 1) Page 4
