It had been their men, their soldiers, who’d brought them together. Sam had needed witnesses for his wedding, and friends for his friendless bride. They’d become close friends, all six of them. Over time, Helen and Winifred had lost their beloved husbands. Now Gram had lost hers. Elizabeth had no doubt that Gram’s friends were reaching out to her as Gram and Granddad had reached out to them when Sam and Richard had died.
But Gram had to miss Granddad, deeply and desperately, every day.
That was how Elizabeth felt about losing Granddad, too.
Elizabeth wished Gram could be happy about her wedding, wished it’d given her something hopeful to look forward to.
It worried Elizabeth more than she’d been willing to admit—until this very moment—that it hadn’t.
This very moment coincided with her arrival at Matthew’s.
The silver Accord parked in his driveway was unexpected. And familiar. Its vanity plate confirmed its owner to be Matthew’s executive assistant, Janine—the same Janine who’d been Matthew’s date at the New Year’s Eve gala at the Carlton Club where Matthew and Elizabeth had met.
Elizabeth had been home for the holidays, accompanying her parents to the social events of the season. Matthew had called her the following day, and by the time Elizabeth returned to L.A., she and Matthew were making plans for a future.
It was during a weekend visit in March that Elizabeth had seen Janine’s Accord. She’d arrived at Matthew’s just as Janine, who’d dropped off some financial statements Matthew needed to review, was leaving. She’d also learned from her mother that there’d been a “dreadful” few months when Matthew’s parents had lived in “perpetual fear” that Matthew might marry Janine. Like Elizabeth, Matthew was an only child—and sole heir to a substantial fortune.
Matthew had told Elizabeth that rumors of his possible engagement to Janine were greatly exaggerated. She’d been a lover. That was all. He’d said it dismissively, as if the assistant who drove the Accord wasn’t “wife material.” When Elizabeth called him on what sounded like elitism, he’d apologized right away.
Elizabeth hadn’t known Janine would be traveling with Matthew to New York. They must have rendezvoused early Tuesday at his home, where his Jaguar was parked in the garage, and shared a limo to SFO.
Must have, she reiterated silently as she parked the car.
So why hadn’t she grabbed an invitation before heading toward the mail slot in his door? And why was she veering away from that door toward the master-bedroom side of Matthew’s house?
Matthew never pulled the bedroom blinds. The neighbors’ windows faced the other way, and it would take a slender voyeur indeed to traverse the narrow path. And a tall one to peer inside.
Elizabeth was slender, and tall. In the seconds before she witnessed the scene within, she knew what she’d see. And, in those seconds, the prosecutor known for her ability to distill seemingly random details into a coherent story distilled what she was about to witness into a single word.
Lies.
Elizabeth had never cast herself in such a drama. It would have been an idle exercise—and the attorney who hadn’t spent a carefree summer since age eighteen was rarely idle. Besides, she’d met enough criminals and their victims to know that imagined reactions to hypothetical situations didn’t necessarily forecast what would happen when the situation was real.
At the moment, the reality was excruciating. A glimpse through the window was all she needed.
And her reaction to the betrayal?
She felt detached.
And purposeful.
She returned to her car, opened the trunk and extracted one of the just-minted invitations—already of historical interest.
She toyed with writing “canceled” across the gold engraving. Or, and this was more appealing, drawing a circle with a slash through it.
That had a certain eloquence, succinct yet clear.
Less, however, was more.
After emptying an envelope of its invitation, she dropped her engagement ring inside and sealed the flap.
Very haiku, she thought as she slipped the envelope through the slot in the door.
Then, numbly but decisively, she began the seven-and-a half-hour drive to her grandmother’s home.
Two
Sarah’s Orchard
Friday, July 7, 8:00 p.m.
Nick paused at the foot of the steep driveway he knew so well. It was a reverent pause; it was also a chance to assert mind over matter.
His legs hurt, an acute pain on top of the smoldering discomfort that was always there. He’d been pushing hard the past three weeks, determined to complete the Tolliver Farm remodel today—so he could get going on the summer’s project for Clara in the morning.
His legs weren’t happy. But he was. And the Tollivers were.
He’d almost driven the mile from his home to Clara’s. A concession to the throbbing in his legs. But the walk was good for his soul. Especially this final climb.
He’d made it countless times since his return to Sarah’s Orchard. As he made the ascent now, he recalled the evening, three Aprils earlier, when he’d first knocked on the MacKenzies’ teal-colored door.
He’d been in Sarah’s Orchard for six weeks by then, his decision to come back an easy one to make. Sarah’s Orchard was the only place he’d ever lived where he’d choose to live again.
There wasn’t anything wrong with the other towns he’d lived in with his mother and Dennis, and Marianne’s next boyfriend, and the next and the next—until, when he was seventeen, they’d gone their separate ways. Marianne had been ready to move. Again. He’d wanted to finish school. He’d never searched for her. Nor, he supposed, had she looked for him.
The towns had been pleasant. The memories weren’t.
Nick hoped to live a quiet life for the rest of his life, and a useful one. As a soldier, he’d volunteered for impossible missions—and proved them possible, after all.
The military had been a good place for Nick until a spray of bullets fractured his legs and shattered his pelvis. He would’ve continued to serve if he could. But his recovery, though surprising to the doctors, was incomplete. His strength wasn’t what it had been, nor was he as agile as he needed to be.
The military didn’t compel Lieutenant Commander Nicholas Lawton to leave. Quite the contrary. Any number of high-level noncombat positions were his for the taking.
But Nick couldn’t send soldiers into battle unless he was with them, leading them in—and leading them out.
He knew that emotional guidance was especially important for those unaccustomed to battle. No matter how well trained they were, how prepared they believed themselves to be, the first death, the first killing, was a shock.
No preparation was adequate for the sights and sounds of friends dying. Or enemies dying—young men who, in another world, might have been friends. Men who, like them, dreamed of playing with their children, caring for their elderly parents, making love to their brides.
Emotions were kept at bay during the fighting itself. Adrenaline and training saw the soldiers through. But until the aftermath, no soldier knew how he’d respond to what he’d experienced. Some were able to articulate their feelings. Nick listened to what they needed to say.
Others, like Nick himself had been, held everything inside. Nick was there for them, too, listening to their silence and speaking words that might have been of comfort had someone spoken them to him.
Nick had left the military, honorably and with fanfare he hadn’t wanted. What lay ahead, after months of rehab, was a mission as challenging as any he’d ever known…and in which he was likely to fail.
Finding contentment, finding peace, might very well be impossible. Even in the only town he’d ever wanted to live in.
He’d chalked it up to morbid curiosity when he’d driven by the house on Center Street. He remembered it as dilapidated and menacing—where the danger to a seven-year-old boy was far greater than freezing to death on a winter night
. The real peril had been to his heart and soul.
The house, with its For Rent sign, had remained an eyesore, a blemish in a neighborhood of charming homes. But it looked sad, not menacing, in need of care. The current owners, who lived in Medford, were waiting for the Sarah’s Orchard housing market to appreciate enough that even their run-down property would sell. Their new tenant was welcome to make improvements, if he liked, at his own expense, assuming the structure wasn’t devalued as a result.
It wasn’t, and Nick’s neighbors were thrilled. By the time he began knocking on doors—for that was how introductions were made in Sarah’s Orchard—they’d spread the word that the new handyman in town was handy indeed.
Nick’s reconciliation with his Center Street memories helped his quest for peace. As did seeing the orchards again, one orchard in particular.
But it wasn’t enough. He needed to see the MacKenzies again. The kind eyes. He wouldn’t introduce himself as “the boy who’d saved Elizabeth,” of course. Much less as “Elizabeth’s hero.”
“Hero” had been as foreign to him on that long-ago December night as “son” had been. He’d clung to “son,” treasured it, but even at age seven he’d believed “hero” was wrong. He’d only done what anyone would’ve done had they spotted the sobbing little girl.
He’d been called a hero many times in the intervening years. It continued to sound wrong. In combat as in life, he only did what he believed anyone would do.
Nick had intended to tell Charles and Clara the same thing he’d told the other townspeople who’d opened their doors to him. He was willing and able to do a range of repairs.
The orchard was in blossom on the April evening the soldier with splintered bones climbed the steep drive the small boy had ascended, carrying a giggling toddler, so many Decembers past.
In blossom, and magical. Those trees, he felt, wanted him to sing to them, the way he sang “Amazing Grace,” when that was what the wounded needed to hear. Or “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Or “God Bless America.” Or any song that would make an injured soldier smile.
It was Clara who’d opened the door to his knock. Nick had been only a sentence into his introduction when she’d tilted her head and widened her eyes.
“You’re him, aren’t you?”
“Him?”
“Our boy. Elizabeth’s hero. Don’t deny it. I know you are. Charles! Guess who’s here? At last.”
Nick hadn’t denied it. Nor, by the time Charles appeared, had he confirmed it. He’d been speechless in those moments, stunned that Clara had known.
The man he’d become bore no resemblance to the scrawny boy he’d been. True, Clara had promised she’d never forget his bright blue eyes.
But he didn’t have bright blue eyes, not as a boy—and most certainly not as a man. Oh, there was a tincture of blue in the gray, a patch of sky amid the clouds. But in all his years, only Clara MacKenzie had remarked on it.
What she’d seen had been an illusion, the play of red Christmas lights on the hint of blue. Or maybe the entire illusion had been in the sparkling eyes of the beholder.
Others had made comments about Nick’s eyes. Other women. Bedroom eyes, some concluded. Only wilder. As if a bed was too tame for his tastes. And that was before he went to war.
No, Nick didn’t have bright blue eyes. Never had. And the hair that had been blondish when Clara had last seen him had turned brown when he reached his teens.
But Clara had known who he was.
Because of his expression, she’d eventually informed him. It was identical, she said, to the hopeful way he’d looked when she and Charles had promised to be there for him—always. Hopeful yet skeptical, she’d added. Hope against hope.
Charles and Clara MacKenzie had kept their promise, welcoming him into their lives when he’d needed them most. Charles and Clara had needed Nick, too. Both of them. And, in the seven months since Charles’s death, and to the extent she’d permit it, he’d shared with Clara her enormous loss.
Beginning tomorrow, he’d be with Clara all summer.
He’d find a way to help her, and the lovely eyes that had once seen colors and emotions no one else could see.
Three
“Oh, Clara,” he said when she opened the door and he saw her tears.
“You miss him, too.”
“I do,” Nick said. “All day, every day. Charles was the finest man I’ve ever known.”
Clara nodded and wiped her eyes. “Are you dropping by for dinner?”
“Just dropping by.” Nick smiled. “But I wouldn’t turn down food.”
“Then come on in.”
They’d both known she’d ask, and that he’d accept the offer. He’d shown up often—at suppertime—since Charles’s death. And at dawn, when her curtains signaled she’d awakened for the day. And midmorning for coffee, and in the afternoon for tea.
Both knew he was checking up on her, and why he never called in advance. She’d tell him what she told everyone else who worried about her. You don’t need to come over. I’m fine!
She’d made such assertions to Nick in the beginning.
You can’t possibly be fine, he’d tell her when he appeared despite her protestations. He’d arrive within fifteen minutes of his phone call, and she always seemed relieved when he did. And even if you’re fine, Clara, I’m not.
Nick didn’t care about the food she inevitably served him. He could cook his own meals. But if he permitted Clara to feed him, she’d end up nibbling on something, too.
It was past her usual suppertime. But Nick had the feeling she might have forgotten to eat. His impression was confirmed when they reached the kitchen.
On the table where her dinner might have been, four round boxes sat instead. Glossy boxes, he noted, each in a different shade of yellow.
“Hatboxes?” Nick prompted.
“They contain the letters Charles wrote me during the war. I haven’t read them since his return. I didn’t need to. I had him. And,” Clara said, “I knew every one by heart.”
“I’ll bet you still do.”
“I don’t know. Getting them down from the attic is as far as I’ve gotten.”
“The attic? Clara—”
“I’m perfectly ambulatory, Nick! And the railings a certain dear friend of ours added to all our walls and staircases make climbing up and down a breeze.” Clara smiled at the dear friend who, following Charles’s stroke, had made it easy for him to spend the remaining year of his life with the woman he loved in the farmhouse he’d always known. “Elizabeth painted these boxes for me.”
“Oh?” Nick asked, moving closer.
The varying shades of yellow were background. On each lid was an apple tree. One for every season. The style was primitive and bold, painted by a girl who couldn’t draw any better than she could sing.
The boxes weren’t works of art. But they were works of love. And passion, Nick thought. An exuberant affection for the trees, be they barren for winter, blossom-laden during spring, bountiful with summer fruit or brilliant with the leaves of autumn.
Elizabeth’s wintertime tree wasn’t entirely barren. Oblong splashes of red dangled from its outermost reaches. Christmas lights—like the ones that had illuminated a sobbing little girl.
“When did she paint these?”
“The first year she spent the entire summer here. She was eight, and we had such fun. On rainy days, we poked around in the attic, trying on old clothes, looking at old photographs, playing with the mah-jongg set Charles inherited from his father. Charles’s letters didn’t pique her interest. But she could tell how important they were to me. She wondered if they needed brighter homes than the white hatboxes I’d stored them in. They definitely did, I told her, and asked if she’d be willing to decorate them for me.”
“Did you suggest what she should draw? The seasons of the orchard?”
“I made no suggestions whatsoever. But, being Elizabeth, she shared her every thought. The boxes had to be yellow, she said, beca
use I’d painted the house yellow to welcome Charles home from the war.”
“She didn’t go with the same yellow.”
“No. She felt it would be all right—if I agreed—to pick four brighter shades. You remember her affinity for the bright and shiny.”
“I do,” Nick said softly. “And the apple trees? Why did she choose to paint them?”
“Because she loves them. She’s always viewed them as the living things they are—as friends.” Clara touched an apple blossom on Elizabeth’s springtime tree. “When she was finished, Charles lacquered each box inside and out, sealing the cardboard and, or so we hoped, preserving her vivid paintings. But they’ve faded, haven’t they?”
Not at all, Nick thought. He felt quite sure they were as bright as the day eight-year-old Elizabeth had dabbed her final drop of paint. But Clara couldn’t see it. It was the worry he would find a way to address. Beginning tomorrow.
Tonight, he broached the worry that was foremost on Clara’s mind. “Have you heard from Elizabeth?”
“Not since Monday night. I don’t expect to hear from her, Nick. Not on that topic. She’s not mad at me because of what I said about Matthew. Sad, maybe. Disappointed. But not mad.” She sighed. “If anyone owes anyone a follow-up phone call, it’s me who should call her.”
“But you haven’t.”
“It wouldn’t be fair unless I was calling to tell her I’d decided my instincts were wrong and he was perfect for her after all.”
“You haven’t decided that.”
“Not even close. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become. It’s better just to let some time pass.”
“Is Elizabeth still coming for a visit at the end of the month?”
“We didn’t discuss it Monday night, but I’m sure she will. She’s not going to hold my concerns about Matthew against me. And she is going to marry him. I wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
Hearts Divided Page 19
