by Becky Wade
It sounded like Joe blamed her for sending Corbin into a depressive episode. Joe, who fathomed the bleakness and despair of a depressive episode with clarity. He understood what her actions had cost Corbin in ways that she couldn’t.
Until this moment, she’d been fixated on what Corbin’s actions had cost her. She’d felt justified in her decision to break up with him, and so long as she was justified, she hadn’t cared how the ramifications of her decision affected Corbin. Except to hope, vengefully, that the ramifications would be dire.
Based on what Joe was telling her, it appeared that she’d gotten her wish. The ramifications of their breakup had been dire for Corbin.
She experienced a wrench of regret.
“I don’t think anything good can come of a relationship between you and Corbin,” Joe said.
She wanted him to be wrong, yet she herself was half convinced he was right.
His knee began to bounce. “Corbin’s had a hard go of it lately, what with his shoulder and the end of football. On top of all that, I just . . . I can’t have him sad because of you.”
His eyes were as hard as caramel-colored marbles. In them, she could see the urgent truth of his statement. He was dying, and he could not stand for her to cause Corbin added grief.
He gestured to the barn. “We have a house to finish.” Confusion tweaked his expression. He appeared to be unsure as to whether he’d mentioned the house to her.
“I don’t want to cause Corbin sadness,” she said. It was true. The silver-tongued former quarterback with the multimillion-dollar skill had far more than his share of sadness coming for him as it was.
Joe grunted to indicate he’d heard. “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?”
“Yes, the Monday after Thanksgiving.” Two weeks.
“We don’t know each other well, but I have a request to make of you all the same.”
“Okay.”
“Could you . . . I don’t know . . .” He shifted uncomfortably. Color stained his cheeks. “Keep things from getting serious between you and Corbin?”
“I’ve been trying to keep things from getting serious. I’ll continue to try.”
“When you go, will you stay away?” he asked.
She hesitated, adjusting to the hurt his question brought. She tried to think. Just last night she’d told her sisters that she didn’t expect much from her dating relationship with Corbin after she went away. So why should she be reluctant to agree to Joe’s request? This was, after all, the request of a dying man.
“My family lives in Merryweather,” she said. “How long would you want me to stay away?”
“At least until I’m gone.” She saw desolation in Joe. “Will you stay away that long?”
She swallowed. The consequences of her actions and Corbin’s actions all those years ago were still cropping up. “Yes.” Her heart tripped painfully.
“And you won’t ask Corbin to come to you?”
“No.”
“You’ll end things?”
“I think my best play is to switch us into friend mode once I leave. If I were to end things completely when I go, I think he might be furious and suspicious.”
“I don’t want him to be suspicious,” Joe said.
“No,” she agreed.
“You won’t tell Corbin that I talked to you about this, will you? I don’t want him knowing I had anything to do with this.”
“I won’t tell him.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Good, then.” His craggy face revealed his relief. “Thank you—”
“Hey,” Corbin called.
The sound of Corbin’s voice went through Willow like a painful electrical current. She turned to watch him approach. “I saw your car through the window,” he said. He wore cargo pants and a Windbreaker. His stride communicated easy athleticism. Max and Duke trotted on either side of him. The light that had graced the leaves now graced him in a way that indicated that he was Michigan’s, Texas’s, football’s and sunshine’s favorite son.
He grinned at her, and she had to clench her muscles against a bolt of longing.
“What are you two doing out here?” he asked.
“Talking,” Willow answered. “Enjoying the view.”
“Well, good. It’s nice to see you two getting along.”
Joe stood. “I’ll be going in now. Good-bye, Willow.”
“See you, Joe.”
Once his dad had disappeared indoors, Corbin gathered her against him. “Was my dad nice to you?”
“He was.” In order to keep her promises to Joe, it occurred to her that she was going to have to lie to Corbin. How many lies was she going to have to tell? Quite a few, most likely. Just the idea of that made her nauseous.
Corbin’s attention swept slowly down her face, hesitated on her lips, then returned to her eyes. “I missed you.”
He often told her he’d missed her. It was a luxury, to be cared about so much that she was missed even after a short time apart. “You just saw me last night. Brownies, remember?”
He pulled a perplexed face and shook his head. “The chocolate chunk brownies that were so gooey I had to eat them with a fork?”
“The very same.”
“You must be mistaken. That can’t have been last night,” he whispered as his mouth neared hers. “I haven’t seen you for a month at least.” He kissed her. “Where have you been, Willow?” He kissed her again and again, a string of breathless, gentle kisses. “I’ve really missed you.”
Such a piquant mixture of joy and sorrow overcame her that she couldn’t locate a suitably flirtatious reply. Her fingers trembled as she interlaced them behind his neck. Was she being traitorous to Joe by interlacing her fingers behind Corbin’s neck? Was this “keeping things from getting serious”? Was Joe watching from inside the house?
Corbin swept his thumb along her chin. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Ready to go?”
She nodded, and he wove his fingers with hers as they walked toward his car. Just before they reached the driveway, a Volvo XC90 came into view, driving in their direction.
An attractive thirty-something brunette brought the car to a stop and rolled her window down. The woman’s smile sagged a few degrees as she took in the sight of the two of them holding hands.
Another of Corbin’s groupies. Willow freed her fingers from his.
“Sorry to disturb you guys. It looks like you’re on your way out,” the brunette said. “Corbin, I made a pot of white chicken chili earlier for the kids, and I thought you and your dad might like some. I just dropped by to deliver it.”
Corbin introduced Willow to the visitor, whose name was Macy. Both Willow and Macy reacted to the other with obligatory and patently false enthusiasm.
“How did you know that my dad and I love white chicken chili?” Corbin asked Macy.
“I must have ESP.” She laughed.
Answering dimples marked the planes of Corbin’s cheeks and Willow knew—knew exactly—the effect that those dimples were having on Macy.
Willow’s field of vision tinted red. She did not want Corbin giving those dimples away so easily to other women. Until this moment she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of the ferocious possessiveness that submerged her. She’d just finished promising Joe that she’d leave and not come back! Yet she wanted to tell Macy in no uncertain terms that Corbin was hers.
My boyfriend. My husband. My children’s father. My soul mate.
Not yours, Macy of the white chicken chili.
Macy walked around the hood of her car and lifted a Crock-Pot from her passenger seat. She passed it to Corbin with what seemed like an inordinate amount of hand contact as control of the handles passed from her to him.
“Thank you,” Corbin said. “I’ll clean this out and return it to you tomorrow.”
“Perfect! Have a nice day.”
“You too,” Willow said. You can have your Crock-Pot
back, but you cannot have Corbin.
Would Joe find Macy suitable for his son? Probably so, seeing as how she’d apparently been finding her way into the guys’ hearts in the tried-and-true fashion—through their stomachs.
Willow waited inside Corbin’s car while he ferried the chili to the kitchen. She chewed the inside of her bottom lip, annoyed and so jealous she felt cross-eyed with it. Compulsively, she pulled out her phone, surfed to Nordstrom.com, and scrolled through housewares.
When Corbin returned, he twisted to look over his shoulder to reverse the SUV from the driveway.
“Nice food delivery service you have there.” Willow had firmly decided to say nothing about Macy. The statement had slipped out without her permission.
“Yeah. Macy’s crush on me has worked out really well for my diet.”
“It would seem so.”
“Are you jealous?” he asked hopefully, shooting her a glance as he paused to shift the car into drive.
“No.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“No.” Oh, the lies. Lies upon lies.
“You should be a little bit jealous, Willow, because a lot of women like me. Almost all women, actually.”
She crinkled her nose. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be jealous of the fact that a lot of women like you. It’s who you like that matters. I’m supposed to be jealous of the women who you like more than me.”
“Spoilsport. Because in that case, I don’t have a hope of making you jealous.” He reached for her hand. She provided it, and he kissed one of her knuckles as they drove. “There are no women I like more than you.”
Willow had been to plenty of concerts. Professional, expensive, impressive concerts. But none of them had charmed her half so much as the off-key, amateur concert before her now.
She and Corbin sat next to each other inside Shore Pine Middle School’s auditorium. The structure boasted quintessential 1980s architecture, and the air held the faint tang of a bygone spaghetti lunch.
They’d come in support of Charlotte and her fellow seventh and eighth grade orchestra members. The Dixon family flanked Willow and Corbin on both sides, including Charlotte’s two brothers, who looked like they’d rather be tarred and feathered than sit through another minute of the recital.
It was Wednesday evening. Three days had passed since Joe had asked Willow to keep her relationship with Corbin light and not to come back once she left. She’d been telling herself that the promises she’d made to Joe hadn’t changed much of anything.
However, ever since she’d made the promises, her circumstance felt fully different. The roadblocks preventing her from falling in love with Corbin weren’t solely ones she’d built herself. Some of them had now been built by Joe.
Corbin was well and truly off-limits.
And perversely, that fact bothered her.
Now that she couldn’t have him, his good qualities were glaringly obvious. He made her laugh. He lightened her sometimes too-serious side. He seemed to be under the impression that she’d hung the moon. His treatment of his father had proved him to be more responsible and sacrificial than she’d understood him to be four years before.
Corbin’s shoulder nudged hers. He leaned his mouth near her ear. “Is the dark-haired kid in the bow tie playing the violin or is he having a seizure?”
Her lips twitched. “Hard to tell.”
“I may call an ambulance. If paramedics arrive, they could not only help the kid but put a stop to this early.”
“I don’t want them to put a stop to this. I’m loving it.”
“What?”
“It’s adorable to watch the kids play.”
“Kittens are adorable. Rookie pre-teen musicians aren’t.”
“Yes, they are.”
“You’re a softie.”
“For some things?” Anything that had to do with kids and families? “Yes.”
The musical piece came to an end, and the audience applauded. “I bet you played an instrument when you were in the seventh grade,” Corbin said to her over the din.
“I did.”
“Let me guess. The flute?”
“No. I was a percussionist.” At his look of astonishment she said, “For a fleeting moment in middle school I imagined that I might like to play drums in a girl band.”
He laughed.
“Did you play an instrument?” she asked.
“Do I look like I played an instrument?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
He chuckled. “I’m going to kiss you senseless for that later.”
At the performance’s end, Charlotte’s brothers burst from their chairs like rockets. Willow and Corbin chatted with the Dixon family in the school’s foyer until Charlotte joined them. When she did, Corbin handed her the bouquet of roses he’d brought.
Charlotte’s cheeks turned pink with delight.
Don’t fall in love with him, Willow! You can’t. Quit it!
Once Charlotte had put in time visiting with her cheering section, Corbin and Willow bundled her into Corbin’s car and set off for The Pie Emporium.
Earlier in the day, Nora had contacted Willow to let her know that she’d found and printed out some articles concerning Josephine’s case. Willow had swung by and picked up the stack of pages. Now she, Corbin, and Charlotte were off to celebrate Charlotte’s recital with pie while combing through Nora’s papers.
The Pie Emporium was one of more than a dozen buildings located within Merryweather Historical Village. Warmth greeted them as they passed from the misty night into the clapboard building’s cozy interior.
Willow ordered a slice of pecan pie crowned by a dollop of whipped cream. Corbin ordered apple a la mode. Charlotte went with chocolate cream.
Charlotte set the wooden box containing Josephine paraphernalia on one of the shop’s round tables. “I decided to bring the box after my mom told me you had new articles and stuff to put inside it,” Charlotte said to Willow.
“Nice to see you again, box.” Corbin gave it an affectionate pat. “You’re looking good.”
Willow divided Nora’s research evenly between them.
“You know, Willow,” Charlotte said, “if you want to take the box home with you until the next meeting, I’ll let you.”
“You will?” Charlotte’s offer was akin to a teacher offering to let a student take home the prized class hamster for the weekend.
“Yes.”
“Then sure. I’d love to.”
“What about me? Can I take the box home?” Corbin asked.
“Um . . .” Charlotte giggled. “Probably not.”
Corbin gave the twelve-year-old a look of mock outrage, which goaded her into fresh giggles.
An assortment of decorative pie plates and signs bearing quotes about pie looked down at them from the walls as they ate and read the articles one by one.
“Here’s something,” Corbin said after a time.
Willow and Charlotte instantly raised their faces.
“This is from an interview with a television actor that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1979. The reporter asked the actor if he finds time to relax with his busy shooting schedule. The actor answered,” Corbin began to read, “‘I do find time, yes. In fact, I just came back from a week at Senator Foster Holt’s cabin on the Fraser River.’” He met Willow’s gaze. “It sounds like the senator may have had one more vacation property we didn’t know about.”
“Where’s the Fraser River?” Charlotte asked.
Corbin went to work on his phone. Within a few seconds, he showed them a map that revealed the Fraser River snaking through British Columbia.
“When I asked Nora to search for the senator’s properties, she searched for properties here in America,” Willow said.
“How far away is this river by car from where Senator Holt lives in Redmond?” Corbin asked.
“Some points along that river are probably less tha
n a three-hour drive from Redmond,” Willow answered.
“Then of the three vacation properties the senator owned in the late ’70s, this cabin would have been the closest, distance-wise, to his house,” Corbin said.
“Yes.”
“Which would have been convenient for him if he’d needed to get someone out of the way quicker than the way he did with Vickie Goff.”
Charlotte clicked her pen over and over in rapid succession. “Are you thinking we should ask to have Josephine’s age-progression portrait put up near the Senator’s cabin?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Corbin answered.
“It looks like the Fraser River is, um, pretty long,” Charlotte said. “How are we supposed to figure out where his cabin is? Or was? It’s probably not still there, right? Because it’s super old?”
“I don’t know how to find out where the cabin was located,” Willow said. “But now that we know what we’re looking for and have a general idea of where to look, I’ll bet you a K-pop T-shirt that my sister Nora will know what to do.”
“No deal.” Charlotte’s smile glinted with metal braces. “I can’t risk any of my K-pop T-shirts.”
Corbin’s eyes met Willow’s. The smokiness in their depths informed her of two things.
He’d come to care about her. A lot.
He’d promised earlier to kiss her senseless.
Note left by Josephine’s husband, Alan, on their kitchen table, April 22, 1977, ten days after Josephine’s disappearance:
I have to return to work today. If you come home and find this, drive immediately to Shore Pine High to find me. I love you, sweetheart. I’ve been out of my mind with worry and grief and nightmares.
Every day, I’ve waited for you to walk in the door. Now that I’m about to walk out that same door to go to work, I’m sick with the thought that you’ll come home and find the house empty.
If you do, come to me. I’m desperate for you.
Chapter
