She took a step forward then, enough so that he could see her face, her still-golden hair, recognize the smile that sliced through him, telling him that this, this is what he’d been missing with Mary.
This, this is what he’d hoped for his children.
“Nathan.”
Her voice was as he’d remembered as well, despite the decades they’d been apart.
Without being aware of his feet moving, he was suddenly in front of her, and then her arms were around him and his around her, and their lips met as if the intervening years had simply been an extended holiday and not a chasm of loneliness.
“Pansy.” He touched her hair, still long and glossy, full of sunshine, then kissed her again. The sensations were like coming home, like finding himself again, awakening after a long sleep he’d fallen into accidentally and couldn’t figure out how to wake up from.
Then she pushed away. She cleared her throat and took a step back.
“I’m so sorry, Nate,” she said, putting her hand to her lips. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
He had to resist reaching for her, the loss worse now for the sudden reminder of what he’d been missing. But he couldn’t process her remarkable reappearance. If not for him, then why was she here?
If not for him, how would he bear her nearness?
“No.” He cleared his throat, then crossed his arms. “Of course not. So, what brings you back to Cherry Lake?”
She tilted her head and gave him a look of such tenderness, such sadness, that his knees nearly gave way. If the grief he’d felt when she left so abruptly all those years ago had had a face, this would be it.
“How’s Mary?” she asked softly.
The air left his lungs in a sudden whoosh, leaving him lightheaded.
She didn’t know.
He took her elbow and led her through the back door of the machine shed, to a small bench under a shade tree.
There was much to say.
Chapter Nine
‡
The length of his silence was enough to answer her question.
“Cancer,” said Nate. “Same kind that took her father. She was so young. Some days, it feels like yesterday. Other days, it seems I’ve been alone my whole life.”
Nate spoke quietly, his words a calm recitation of fact that broke her heart.
Pansy was glad she was sitting down. She’d returned only to see if this might be a place where she could settle down. She’d made peace with the fact of Nate’s marriage and had determined in her soul that she’d only stay if the spark between them was gone.
It had never occurred to her that Nate might no longer be married.
She hated that this tragedy had befallen him. She hated even more that Mary’s death might open the way for them to be together again and that the possibility sent a bolt of sheer joy through her.
She’d always liked Mary well enough; circumstances had hurt them all, though it had appeared for a time that Mary had come out the winner.
But Mary hadn’t lived to see her children settled. Would never know her grandchildren, should they arrive. No matter what, that went against nature’s law.
“Oh Nate,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. What a loss.”
“Grief visits everyone at some point,” he said. “Life goes on.”
He looked at her, smiling crookedly, his clear eyes bracketed with lines, his skin burnished from the sun. Still as handsome as ever.
“Did you… do you have children?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of her letter. Perhaps that was best left for another time. Or never. Maybe not everything had to be talked about.
Nate smiled wider then, but still crookedly, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the question.
“Two sons, Robert my oldest and Hal the baby. And twin daughters, Jane and Cathy in between.”
A life, she thought. Nate had had a whole life without her. With Mary, he’d created four entirely new lives.
A bittersweet pang wriggled somewhere under her heart, tucked away like a faded but still-cherished love letter she couldn’t quite bring herself to discard.
What would their child have looked like, she wondered?
She cleared her throat. “You must be so proud.”
He nodded. “I am.”
He fell silent, and she wondered what he wasn’t telling her. She wondered if she’d been right to stay away so long, to resist the urge to write him a letter, or to even visit.
But that would have been selfish. He’d married Mary, as she’d known he would, once she was gone. Her presence would only have created strife, confusion and ultimately destroyed whatever good memories he might have of her.
“I’m sorry I left the way I did,” she said presently. “I hope you understand.”
Nate gave a quick exhale that might have been a laugh and bumped his shoulder against hers. “Oh, Pansy,” he said. “How I hated you for that.”
But he stayed where he was, keeping that light, casual contact between them. It felt so right, so comfortable that Pansy wanted to lean into him and never sit up. She’d missed him so much.
“Did you get all the adventure you hoped for?” he asked.
Suddenly they slipped back into easy conversation, as if their time apart had been merely a moment and the years had expanded and contracted accordion-style to adjust for it.
She told him of the trails she’d hiked in Peru, the children she’d fed and cared for in the African orphanages, the marches she went on in Washington, so many things she’d done and learned over the decades, so many experiences.
He listened attentively, asking questions, nodding at all the right times. Laughing at her stories of getting spit at by camels and peed on by baby orangutans.
Heartbreak had followed her around like a lost puppy that first year away, but she didn’t tell him that. He needed to hate her for how she’d ended things; she understood that. There was already so much regret.
What use would it be to add to it?
They fell into a companionable silence.
“You never married?” he asked, presently.
She shook her head. “Had some lovers, and don’t go all prudish on me for that, Nathan Jackson.”
He laughed and jostled her again. “How could I, seeing as how I was one of them, once.”
It was the first reference to the intimacy they’d shared and instantly, tension rose between them, shocking her with its intensity. They were middle-aged adults now, for heaven’s sake, not hormone-addled teens. At best, she’d been expecting to find him happily married, their youthful passion gone, possibly transmogrified into a kind of friendship.
At worst, she feared he might harbor resentment against her for her abrupt disappearance, her cowardly letter.
She hadn’t even been sure he would speak to her.
To discover this sense of companionship was blessing enough.
Passion? Surely not.
“No children either, then, I take it,” said Nathan.
She opened her mouth to give a glib answer, but he put his hand on hers. She looked up. His eyes were glistening. Her breath caught in her throat.
“No,” she whispered brokenly. “No children.”
“I’m so sorry, Pansy,” he said, pulling her close. “I didn’t know. I only found the letter after Mary passed away. By then, well, I didn’t even know where you were. It killed me to think of you going through that all alone. Thinking I didn’t care.”
And the last lingering crack of a wound she’d thought long healed over finally smoothed over, the balm of forgiveness and understanding, of shared grief, knitting her heart together once more.
*
Spring, 2006
Jackson Cherry Orchard
Dawn rose over the orchard, casting first a thin grey light, then pink, then gold over the sleeping forms on the ground. Some of the kids had gone home, a few were still awake, murmuring to each other softly, huddling together for warmth.
“Wakey-wakey,” sa
id Pansy, nudging Tony Caputo with her foot, possibly more assertively than strictly necessary. She’d be watching this one.
He burped wetly, clearly having had more than his share of beer.
“Let me help, Aunt Pan,” said Carrie. The girl walked over, rubbing her eyes.
“Did you have a good time, honey?” said Pansy.
Carrie nodded, then yawned widely. “When did you get here? It’s awfully early, isn’t it?”
Pansy snorted and shoved a garbage bag at her. “Old people are up at all hours. The morning after the night before is one of my favorite times, you know. Especially when someone else has the hangover.”
“No one’s hung over, Aunt Pansy,” said Will, looking sideways at Tony. “Okay, a few people are hung over. Don’t tell Grandfather, okay?”
“Don’t tell Grandfather what?” said Nate. He carried a huge box of donuts and a party-sized thermos of coffee. Within moments, bleary-eyed kids with rumpled clothes appeared around him, like rats around the Pied Piper.
Pansy laughed at their sweet, deluded belief that somehow, Nathan Jackson was ignorant of the goings-on at their party or anything that touched the orchard. But she wasn’t about to enlighten them. If they suffered a little anxiety over it, so much the better.
Little by little, with the help of the kids and a few parents that showed up, they got the lawn chairs and sleeping bags put away, the trash cleaned up, the fire-pit raked over, until the little patch of orchard was back to normal.
Nathan watched the last car drive off with his hands on his hips.
“Tired, old man?” she asked.
“Who you calling old, woman?” he countered.
She walked up to him and put her arms around his waist, leaning into his still-firm body. “You did good tonight, Grandpa.”
“We did good, you mean.”
They stood in the orchard for a few minutes as they always did, sharing the wonder of everything they’d found, after so many years of loss. She had a family here in Cherry Lake. So it was Nathan’s family; she thought of them all as hers, too. And in an alternate universe, they might have been. Perhaps the spirit of the child they’d lost was still here, watching them from the trees, looking at them from the eyes of the children that danced around the fire.
“We’re so very blessed, aren’t we, Nate? Things might not have turned out quite how we imagined, but look at all we’ve got.”
“Yes, yes.” He sighed. “I know I should have stopped years ago, but I’m going to ask you once more. Are you going to marry me, or what?”
Her heart sang at his predictably irritable words.
“Nathan Jackson, you are one stubborn man. And so conventional. You got lucky, way back when because God knows, I was never marriage material. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. So quit asking, already.”
He grabbed her and buzzed her throat with his morning beard. “You’re probably right,” he said over her shrieks. “You’d be a terrible wife.”
“Terrible wife, Nathan Jackson,” she said, planting a big kiss on his cheek, “but excellent lover.”
“Pansy Oppenheimer.” He shook his head at her. Then a grin like morning sunshine spread over his face. “You are shameless.”
If you enjoyed Small Town Secrets, you’ll love the other Secrets of Cherry Lake stories!
The Secrets of Cherry Lake Series
Small Town Secrets by Roxanne Snopek
The Secret Son by Joan Kilby
Her Secret Love by Paula Altenburg
Her Secret Protector by Roxanne Snopek
The Secret Bride by Jeannie Watt
About the Author
Born under a Scorpio moon, raised in a little house on the prairie, Roxanne Snopek said “as you wish” to her Alpha Farm Boy and followed him to the mountain air and ocean breezes of British Columbia. There, while healing creatures great and small and raising three warrior-princesses, they found their real-life happily-ever-after. After also establishing a successful freelance and non-fiction career, Roxanne began writing what she most loved to read: romance. Her small-town stories quickly became fan favorites; print editions of her latest series were recently launched in France.
Roxanne’s personal heroine’s journey contains many on-going but basic lessons: introversion isn’t fatal; creativity is essential; and you always get lost coming out of the Vancouver airport. Accept it. Oh, and never, ever leave home without a book.
*
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