Unforgiven

by Anne Calhoun

  The words, spoken in a tone as thin and soft as a coiled whip, cracked into the air, and Keith startled. “I didn’t send you any fucking picture,” he bluffed.

  “They traced the e-mail to your office IP address.” Adam rattled it off, then widened his eyes mockingly. “So your dad sent it? Wow. Awkward. Sorry, man. I’ll ask him at the reception.”

  Keith didn’t look pale, or red anymore. He wore a greenish tinge that signaled near vomiting. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

  He didn’t even have to think about it, just let twelve years in the Corps, five deployments, let the dragon inside push against his skin. “And then you asked me to be your best man.”

  It was the perfect cover. No one would ever consider the possibility of Delaney and Keith cheating behind Adam’s back if Keith asked him to be his best man. They’d fucked around on him, and then used him to cover up the infidelity.

  “You fucking said yes! I thought you never got it!”

  Laughter barked from Adam’s chest. “You knew I got it.”

  “It took you a month to break up with her.”

  “I was trying to figure out if I could forgive her. When I decided I couldn’t, I broke it off.”

  “She was planning your wedding!”

  “And fucking you at the same time.”

  Keith colored. “Stop saying that.”

  “Were you making love with her in that hotel room? Is that what you whispered when you took off her clothes and spread her legs, that it wasn’t screwing around, but making love?”

  The mockingly snarled words put Keith on the offensive. “You weren’t right for her. You were never right for her, not before you joined the Corps, not even after you came home wearing glory and honor like a suit of armor. You never knew what she wanted, what she dreamed about. All she wanted was to have a family. A quiet life. You promised for years and years that you’d come home, marry her, settle down. You broke your promise again and again.”

  “I was serving my country,” Adam bit off.

  “That’s an excuse. Delaney was one, too, and eventually she figured that out. You didn’t love her. You needed her and you used her, but you didn’t love her.”

  “Don’t you fucking tell me how I felt about Delaney.”

  They spat words at each other like bullets, Keith carefully staying out of arm’s reach but using his best weapon, twisting words and arguments to his advantage. “If you loved her you would have given her what she wanted. Fought for her. That’s what I did. I fought for her,” he snarled, color high on his cheekbones. “I’ve loved her since high school. When she looked unhappy, I went after her.”

  “Why didn’t you fight for her when I was sending packages and calling and writing her in college?”

  Keith broke eye contact at that. “Like I could compete with the uniform,” he said.

  “If she loves you, the uniform’s no competition. If she doesn’t, then the uniform doesn’t matter.” This seemed patently obvious to Adam, but Keith just glared at him. “You waited until she was weak, alone. You waited until I was six months into what I’d promised would be my last deployment before I started grad school.”

  “I waited until the second time you promised that, asshole. I put her first. You made her wait and wait, while all her other friends got married, had babies, grew the fuck up! Playing soldier at eighteen’s one thing. Who makes a fucking career of that?”

  Adam would not hit him. He would not pound this pussy motherfucker’s perfect teeth down his throat and ruin Delaney’s wedding. Because while Keith’s tactics were street-fight dirty, his analysis was dead-on. He’d promised he’d be out two years ago. Instead he’d volunteered to take another Marine’s place in a rifle platoon destined for Afghanistan.

  Because, like Marissa and Brookhaven, he had no idea who he was without the Corps.

  “You e-mailed a picture of her, naked and unfaithful, to her fiancé. How is that putting her first?”

  “Do you love her?” Keith challenged.

  Training compelled him to meet Keith’s gaze while oxygen evaporated from his lungs like in a vacuum. “Until I saw that picture, I did.”

  “I do. I’ve loved her since I was fifteen years old. I’m going to give her the only life she’s ever wanted. Starting today.”

  “Why did you ask me to be your best man?”

  The mask finally broke, a high-pitched victory on Keith’s face. “So you’d know I won. You’d have to watch me marry her and know I’d beaten you.”

  Adam held his gaze for a beat, then another while some vitally important truth struggled up from the depths of his subconsciousness, not quite pushing to the surface. What did bubble up, however, was that Keith’s idea of victory was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “Delaney was never about winning or losing,” he said quietly.

  “It’s always about winning and losing.”

  The silence stretched taut, then the string quartet went silent. The minister opened the door and peered into the small room. “The maid of honor ripped the hem out of her dress getting out of the car, but they’re finally ready,” he said, then looked from Adam to Keith. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” Adam said. “We’ll be out in a minute.” The minister prudently withdrew and closed the door.

  Keith looked at him, defiance and shame staining his high cheekbones. “Are you going to tell her?”

  The air in the vestry was hot and close, tinged with flop sweat and anger, and the smell coupled with the emotions made him slightly sick to his stomach. The whole situation was so fucked up he couldn’t tell right from wrong anymore. Tell Delaney, ruin her wedding day, and taint the rest of her life? Tell her and take the chance she already knew? She’d made her choice, made it badly, but she’d made it. Betrayal, anger, revenge, seduction, cheating, deception, malicious intent . . . it was the complete opposite of the life he’d intended to create for himself, and the man he’d wanted to be.

  He looked at Keith, and shook his head. “No. She knows what she’s done, and she wants this anyway. It’s one fucked-up, sorry way to begin a marriage, but this is her dream day. I’m going to give her what she wants.”

  Keith said nothing. As the muted, gentle prelude to Canon in D finally began, their cue to emerge from the vestry and take up position on the chancel steps, Adam opened the door for Keith. When his former best friend reached the door frame, Adam blocked the door with his outstretched arm. Keith flinched.

  “It’s Marine, motherfucker. Not soldier. Marine. Get it really fucking straight in your head, because if I hear one more bullshit rumor circulating about Ris, I’ll drive the forty minutes from Brookings and use your face to teach you the difference.” Adam let his arm drop. “Move.”

  The rustling and shifting of bodies cued him to look up from his position behind and one step down from Keith. Delaney appeared in the open double doors leading into the sanctuary, her arm resting gently on her father’s, her bouquet of white roses clasped in her left hand. Her hair was smoothed back from her face, and she radiated joy, simple, sheer joy, as if it made no difference that her marriage began in infidelity.

  Delaney and Mr. Walker stopped at the steps leading to the altar. Her father lifted her veil and kissed her cheek, then she stepped up beside Keith and smiled up at him. The minister cleared his throat and began the service with an earnest prayer for the families and with that, Adam stood and watched his former best friend and his ex-fiancée marry.

  He’d thought about this moment, imagined it in order to determine if he could follow through with Keith’s outrageous request. It was supposed to be simple, returning home to clear out boxes and stand up for Keith and Delaney, knowing who and what they were as he did it. Instead of emptiness or righteous anger, all he could think about was Marissa. The dress she wanted for her next wedding, the finished wall at Brookhaven, what the wedding ended and the completed house began. The light in her eyes when she took the wheel from Nate, the completely different yet equally intense glow emanating fr
om her skin when she took Adam inside her.

  He’d come home to slam the door on his past, and walk away. Instead his past held hopes for his future, hopes he intended to share with Marissa tonight.

  20

  SHE FELT LIKE a virgin on her wedding night, all a-tremble with nerves and excitement.

  Marissa stood by the flung-wide double doors, ready to welcome the cream of eastern South Dakota’s high society: doctors, lawyers, bankers, real estate agents, teachers, guidance counselors from the surrounding counties. The bride and groom greeted the wedding guests by releasing them from the pews, eliminating the traditional receiving line so the guests arrived at Brookhaven before the newly married couple. Car after car pulled under the awning the wedding planner’s staff hastily erected at noon to protect guests from the relentless rain. Stacey waved her magic wand and produced rugs to minimize the dirt tracked onto Marissa’s shining hardwood floors.

  A Cadillac pulled under the awning. Clarence Emmitt, the driver, stooped and balding, emerged from the car as one of the valet-parking staff helped his wife from the passenger seat. Lucille was ninety-five if she was a day, and despite the line of cars extending down the drive and onto the road, she hurried for no one. “My goodness gracious, Marissa,” she said as a smiling cloakroom attendant helped her shed her sapphire blue coat. “Brookhaven looks just like it did when your grandfather was alive. I remember dancing in this room when I was a girl. Your grandfather used to have the most wonderful parties here.”

  She was so astonished it took a moment for the words to register. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Helen,” Lucille said, turning to the next guest arriving. Helen Lamont’s husband, sons, and grandsons farmed fourteen-hundred acres just west of Walkers Ford. “Do you remember the parties when we were girls? Helen met her husband here at Brookhaven,” she confided to Marissa.

  “Oh, yes,” Helen said, staring wide-eyed at the tin ceiling and wall sconces. Fires sparked and popped in the great room’s two fireplaces, casting flickering shadows into the rapidly darkening room. “I met a few young men here before him, too. The parties lasted for days.”

  The house filled gradually, the laughter and chatter brightening the great room as much as the light from the candles on the tables. Wait staff circulated with appetizers and drinks as guests headed not for tables draped in linen table cloths and decorated with white roses, but instead admired the gleaming paneling, the smooth plaster, the windows casting muted sunset colors over the great room.

  “Good thing we blocked off the staircase,” Stacey said. The wedding planner adjusted the discreet earpiece tucked under her carefully styled hair, then nodded at the velvet rope strung between the oak newel posts. A brass sign clipped to the rope read Private. “You’d be rousting guests from the bedrooms all night.”

  She’d done that before, when high school parties got out of hand. Marissa just smiled and basked in the delight infusing the great room.

  Brookhaven, newly restored and polished to gleaming, had stolen the show from Delaney Walker-Herndon’s wedding.

  “I did it, Dad,” she whispered. “I did it.” Savor the atmosphere, the mood, the sheer happiness suffusing the room. She’d done it. She’d taken the broken-down, hopeless ruin of a house and restored it to glory.

  Tucking her silk wrap more securely in her elbows, she moved through the great room as it filled, listening as older folks reminisced, explaining the house’s history to people too young to remember anything but a tumble-down shell. She listened to the rain pelt the windows, sputtering and gurgling onto the terrace, and tried to remember Chicago. Sunshine. Wind. Michigan Avenue. The Art Institute. Coffee and scones and a down-filled comforter. A shower built like a seraglio.

  “That’s a beautiful wrap,” Stacey offered.

  “Thank you,” Marissa said. She wore it with the gray side in, the shadings from light gray to dark blue facing out. For something so thin and insubstantial, it warded off the damp, chilly air quite effectively.

  Stacey eyed it covetously. “Where did you get it?”

  “Banana Republic in Chicago,” Marissa said. With Adam, because he cared enough to give her silk and dreams.

  Adam. Somehow, despite her best efforts, Adam was entangled in her life, her dreams. She closed her eyes. Bright sunshine danced behind her lids. The wedding was nearly over. The rain would end. Winter would come, and Adam Collins would move on.

  As if thinking of him conjured him out of the rain, he appeared on the terrace. Raindrops dotted the broad shoulders and arms of his tuxedo jacket, clung to his close-cropped hair and the line of his jaw. Moving easily and without self-consciousness, he skimmed his hand over his hair and jaw, then flung the collected water to the side as he crossed the stone terrace. Lightning cracked through her, and her heart stopped.

  “He’s the best man, right?” Stacey asked absently.

  “He is,” Marissa agreed.

  They watched Adam walk three more strides, then Stacey started. “That means Mrs. Herndon’s here!” Barking orders into the headset she wore, she hustled off to the front door, where Keith’s Jeep Cherokee was scheduled to drop off the newly married couple, leaving Marissa to open the French doors to the terrace and let Adam in.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked.

  “I parked in the barn,” he said. His gaze skimmed her body like a physical touch, but lingered on her face. He slipped two fingers between her arm and the wrap, and tugged the silk across her shoulders, leaving her in the same outfit she’d worn the day he came home: a black knee-length skirt and the gray satin halter. Her hair tumbled down her back in loose, shining waves. She wore mascara and lip gloss, and Adam’s gift.

  Based on the heat in his eyes, she might as well have been naked.

  “You look amazing,” he said, then bent to kiss her.

  “Thank you,” she said. The chaste brush of his warm lips left her mouth tingling.

  “Better than amazing,” he whispered, then kissed her again. His tongue gently touched hers, and she shivered. He stepped back and carefully arranged the wrap around her shoulders, then pulled her hair free. “Can’t have you getting cold,” he said.

  Stacey reappeared carrying a battery pack and a lapel microphone. “Here’s your microphone,” she said, and held it out.

  Adam just stared at it. “What’s that for?”

  “Your speech.”

  That explained the speakers in the corners opposite the heaters. Marissa shook her head.

  “You’re serious,” Adam said.

  At Stacey’s nod, Adam took the battery pack and ear piece from her. Stacey faded into the crowd. He handed them to Marissa, then opened the two buttons on his jacket and held the fabric away from his side while she clipped the battery pack to his waistband, the heat of his body radiating against her fingers, then attached the small microphone to his lapel. “The word circus comes to mind.”

  Marissa shrugged and left her hand on his chest. Adam turned on the battery pack. She patted the microphone and the muffled reverberations echoed through the room. He switched it off again.

  “Dreams come in all shapes and sizes. Some women dream their whole lives of their wedding day,” she said.

  “Did you?” he asked.

  “No, but . . . if I could do it again, I’d choose a ceremony on the beach at sunset. Something simple,” she said. A round of applause signaled the bride and groom’s arrival, but Adam’s gaze never left hers. “A day of sailing was enough. You don’t have to marry me in the Caribbean to make that dream come true.”

  She’d been teasing him, but he went still, his gaze searching hers. “I take marriage too seriously to make it simple wish-fulfillment,” he said.

  She blinked. “Where did that come from?”

  He looked over her shoulder to where Delaney stood in the center of the room, surrounded by friends and family, glowing with happiness. Her pavé-diamond wedding band caught the weak light pushing through the rain, tinging her wedding dress and
the white linens with gray, as if they were washed at the Laundromat with cheap soap in a load of dirty socks.

  Stacey wove through the crowded room. “We’re ready to begin serving supper,” she said.

  “I’ll find you later,” Adam murmured to her.

  “I’ll make it easy on you. I’ll be in the kitchen,” she replied.

  More compliments slowed her progress to the kitchen. Everyone in the room either remembered Brookhaven at its height or had heard stories from family members. Don Lemmox was engrossed in taking pictures of the paneling, and had to be shooed from his position near the newly paneled wall. Marissa remembered his daughter was recently engaged, which explained the interest in the house and Stacey’s careful arrangements. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The point of hosting Delaney’s wedding was to show off the house, not to start a second business.

  In the kitchen she settled onto a stool and watched the caterer somehow manage to be in four places at once, overseeing the wine and champagne and trays of delicacies on their way out the door while checking on the prime rib and potatoes keeping warm in the ovens. Food flowed out to the tables, and Marissa did her job of staying out of the way. After the meal Stacey’s efficient servers cleared the tables, then circulated with glasses of champagne, the cue for Adam to give his speech. Marissa moved to the door between the kitchen and the great room. At a nod from Stacey, Adam got to his feet, and even at this distance his straight back and squared shoulders marked him as different from the rest of the guests. Men slumped or slouched or pulled at their collars and cummerbunds. He reached into his jacket and turned on the microphone clipped to his lapel.

  Marissa could have heard a pin drop in the enormous room. Without preamble or clearing his throat, hands loose and relaxed at his sides, he began.

  “The Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said ‘Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.’ Everyone in this room has known Keith since the Herndons moved to Walkers Ford nearly twenty years ago, and Delaney since she the day she was born. One quality characterizes this newly wedded couple; it’s their fidelity to each other, to their families, and to the community.