by Kim Law
“I suppose I deserved that.” She finally got herself under control enough to speak, and when she lifted her head to peer at him, still sitting between her knees, he silently begged that she would love him back.
She pushed back to her elbows. “How many people do you suppose heard that?”
“I suspect more than heard me.”
He failed to put lightness in his tone, and Heather picked up on his shift in mood. The laughter faded from her eyes, and though she rose to a sitting position, he stayed on his knees.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing is wrong. I’m just wondering if I can ask you something.”
She nodded immediately. “Of course. Anything. What do you want to know?”
Waylon slid his hands along the back of her calves, his actions more that of hanging on than one of comfort. And he shared what was on his mind. “You’re so happy and full of life. You’re vibrant and beautiful, and you light up any space you occupy. And I have no doubt that anyone who meets you is better because of it. But I know that inside, you still hurt. That you ache over your losses. I’ve told you about my past. About my hurts.” He silently pleaded as he looked back at her. He’d hinted for this conversation over the last couple of weeks, but he’d never come right out and asked. “You never talk about yours, though. Will you talk to me about it now?”
She didn’t say anything at first, but Waylon held his ground. He needed her to be able to share this with him. If not . . . could she ever really love him enough?
“I do still carry hurts,” she finally said, and Waylon let out a relieved breath. “Because it was my father’s fault that my mother died.”
Heather looked beyond Waylon, her eyes on the doorknob she’d locked when they’d first come in, and she ignored the fact that she was sitting on his desk without a stitch of clothing on. She also didn’t let it faze her that Waylon remained crouched between her knees. She’d just said out loud the one thing she’d never uttered in her life.
Her father was the reason her mother had died.
Granted, her father had died in the same fire. And that loss was as great to Heather as losing her mother.
But Gene Lindsay had been a man who’d had only two speeds. All or nothing. He’d loved Heather’s mother with his all. He’d given to his students, to his daughter, his all. But he’d also handed over his all to his gambling addiction. He’d had a problem, and though he’d hidden it well, Heather had overheard one key conversation that had pieced it together for her.
“I heard him on the phone the night of the fire,” she told Waylon. “Pleading with someone. Begging for ‘just one more week.’ I’d been at a friend’s house, and it was already dark by the time I walked home. His conversation reached me before I made it to the house, and I realized he’d stepped out onto the porch to take the call. The tone in his voice terrified me. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I also didn’t want him to know I was there, so I hid in the bushes. But after the call ended, and before I could make it appear as if I’d just gotten home, Mom came outside with him.”
Waylon’s hands slid down to her ankles.
“They argued,” she said softly. She let herself picture that night. “I’d heard them argue before, but not often. And never like this. There was utter panic in my mother’s voice.”
“What’re they going to do this time?” Heather repeated her mom’s words. “The last time you ended up in the hospital.”
She looked at Waylon. “I didn’t know what they were talking about, but Dad had been in the hospital the year before. He’d claimed to have had a car wreck, and he was beat up pretty badly. Only, our car was fine.”
Waylon grimaced.
“He assured her that everything would be okay. That he’d take care of it.”
She laughed with no humor.
“He left the house, and I eventually ‘came home,’ and the next thing I know, I’m waking from a dead sleep to the sound of screams, both human and equine.” She let her eyes go unfocused. “I ran outside, only the entire barn was engulfed already. It was discovered later that Mom had gotten trapped under a beam. I don’t know if Dad died trying to help her escape or if he’d just stayed in there with her out of guilt. Or maybe love. Either way, he died along with her, and I was left on my own.”
Waylon rose to his feet. “How do you know he hadn’t gone into the barn first? Or that they didn’t go in together? You said before that your mom went—”
He stopped talking when she looked at him again.
“After I finally quit trying to run into the barn, I slumped against my dad’s car. It was parked near the barn that night. Which was unusual, on its own. But the even stranger thing was that the hood of the car was hot. At two o’clock in the morning. He’d clearly just gotten home.”
“And you noticed this yourself? In your distraught state?”
She gave him a sad smile. “I’ve tried hundreds of times to convince myself that wasn’t the case, so don’t even go there. It was hot. I noticed it. And even if I hadn’t, I overheard one of the police officers pointing it out to the fire captain. Dad had been out for hours. Probably trying to win back the money he owed.”
Waylon sucked in a breath. “Gambling?”
“That’s what it seems.”
“No wonder my past habits worry you so.” He gripped her hands. “Heather, I’m so sorry. I wish I could change that for you. I wish I could be . . . perfect.”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t know how.
When she continued to just sit there, he picked her shirt up from the floor. “What did he play?” he asked gently.
She allowed him to tug the material down over her head. “Horses, I think. Which is ironic, isn’t it? Mom loved to ride, but Dad just liked to watch them run.” She put on her bra before Waylon could direct her arms into her shirtsleeves. “And likely, it was only horses because that’s what was easily accessible. He went to Selma on a regular basis. He and Mom always claimed he was teaching a class down there, but there were also the handful of times a year he and his college buddies would fly out to Vegas. Boys’ weekend.” She cut her eyes up at him. “I never actually met any of his friends, so I have no idea if he went on his own or with others. But those trips became the thing that brought Mom and I closer. I always thought of it as girls’ weekends since Dad was off doing his thing, but looking back, I think it was just Mom’s way of coping. She’d make the days special for us. We’d go riding, get our nails done, work together in the greenhouse all day. Anything really, just so we weren’t sitting in the house waiting for Dad to come home. She was likely stressed to her breaking point, worrying whether he’d return having won money or if he’d owe more instead, so I’m sure anything we did helped take her mind off it.”
She hopped off the desk, wishing there was a bathroom in the office but unwilling to walk bare-bottomed out into the barn to get to one. So she stepped into her panties.
“I didn’t put the phone call from that night together with the fire at first,” she told him as she searched for her jeans. She found them under the desk. “I was too shell-shocked from everything else. But Aunt Blu set me up with a counselor, and while waiting for one of my sessions to start, I overheard another patient standing out in the hall. He was talking on his phone. Just give me another week. I’ll get you your money.”
She stepped into her jeans and tugged on her ankle boots.
“It was like dominoes falling into place,” she went on. “Dad’s trips to Selma—where I knew there was horse racing. And I know this because Mom and Dad took me there once. I was only seven or eight, but I was taken aback at how much Dad got into the races. I did think it was funny, though. I’d never seen him that animated over anything but my mom. Add in his Vegas trips, their occasional whispered arguments that more often than not seemed to center around money or her pleading for him to quit”—she lifted her shoulders—“something. I couldn’t figure out at the time what that something was, she’d just plead fo
r him to quit. But I did once hear her call Dad an addict. Dad denied it.”
Waylon looked pained. “I am not an addict,” he reminded her. “I swear to you.”
“Okay.”
“Heather.” He cupped her cheek. “You can believe me. I don’t have issues. This spring was one time, and I won’t do it again. I promise you. If I have to take a second job to fight for Rose, I will. If Dad needs to take a second job with me, he’s assured me that he will. But I won’t mess up again. Never at the cost of my daughter.”
“Okay.” Heather nodded. She wished he’d stop. She didn’t want to talk about that. “I believe you.”
But she didn’t know if she really did. She just knew that she wanted to believe him.
Waylon sighed, his frustration at her response evident. But he went back to her story. “How did the fire start? Do you remember?”
“The fire captain said faulty wiring.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
She shook her head. The idea that the death of her family had been due to her dad had never set well with her, but even that night, in the middle of all the madness, she’d known something was off. The entire evening had been too wrong.
“The barn had been built only three years before,” she explained. “And it wasn’t a do-it-yourself project. Dad must have won a lot that summer because suddenly we got a barn. So no, I don’t think it was faulty wiring. At least not the unintentional kind. Also, there was the van parked in front of our house that night.”
Waylon reared back. “A van?”
She nodded. “Right out on the road. I saw it before I went to bed. I couldn’t tell who was in it, but there were at least two people. I kept an eye on it for an hour, peeking out my window, but it never moved. Nor did whoever sat inside ever seem to look away from our house.”
He gaped at her. “Did you tell this to anyone? To the police?”
“No.”
“Heather . . . why not? They might have been able to find who’d done it.”
“But I still wouldn’t have had my parents back, would I?” She felt hollow. “And what if my fear turned out to be right? What if my dad was the cause of it? I didn’t want the whole town knowing he’d killed the woman he claimed to love.”
Her voice caught on the last word, and she looked down at her hands. She pressed her lips together, trying to hold in her tears.
“You know he loved her.” Waylon wrapped her in his arms. “You’ve told me so.”
“But it couldn’t have been like I always thought.” She spoke into his shirt, her voice muffled. “How could their love be so perfect when his gambling was what made her sad? Why she’d sit alone and sing to our horses?” She shook her head back and forth, her face rubbing against his chest. “And if he didn’t love her as much as he’d always said he did, does that mean he didn’t love me as much, either?”
“Oh, baby.” Waylon tilted her face up. “I never met the man, but I’m positive he loved you. I don’t know how anyone could know you and not love you.”
Heather only looked at him, trying to decipher what he’d just said. Was he only talking about her dad loving her? Or was there more behind his words?
She stepped from his embrace, needing distance to think, and she unlocked his office door. Waylon followed her out, but when she got to the main doors, she stopped. They stood open, and she could see Jill’s backyard spread out down below. She, Jill, and Trenton would film a final scene there the following day, but her crew had finished the work on it that morning. And it was exactly as she’d intended.
She leaned against Waylon when he stopped at her side, her gaze trailing over the spaces filled with so many plants her mother had once loved. “For their fifteenth wedding anniversary, they’d planned to redo their vows. Mom wanted to hold the ceremony in our backyard, and I was helping her design it. It was another thing we were doing together. She never got to see the finished product, so I’m giving it to her now. She would have loved what I’ve done here.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Real friends are forever, no matter where their paths may lead.”
—Blu Johnson, life lesson #71
“And, that’s a wrap!”
Heather hugged her best friends, unable to hold back her smile. She’d done it. Jill and Cal’s backyard was stunning. The wedding would be held in four days, the forecast was for perfection, and final wedding décor would be put into place Saturday morning before the wedding.
“You did good,” Jill told her. “Not that I ever had any doubt.”
“I did good,” Heather agreed.
An intern removed the mic packs from the three of them and headed for her next assignment, but Heather, Jill, and Trenton hung back. This was the last scene they would film, just the three of them, and they weren’t ready to let it go.
Aunt Blu also stood off to the side. When she’d arrived, Jill had explained that she’d asked her to come, and Heather had understood that Jill was also seeing this moment as a culmination of sorts. Blu had quietly watched the scene unfolding before her, her gaze on the three of them and her own emotions on full display with the satisfaction she wore on her face, but Heather had also caught her glancing toward the barn a time or two.
Charlie was at the barn. And he’d also sent a handful of looks their way.
There’d been no additional mention of Blu and Charlie being together over the last few weeks, and because of that, neither she, Jill, nor Trenton had brought up the subject with Aunt Blu. But the longer Blu had watched them laughing together that morning, the more Heather had sensed her loneliness.
Maybe this moment wasn’t just a culmination for them.
When the last camera had been packed up and taken away, and no microphones were listening in, Jill waved Aunt Blu over. “Can we all sit in my new she-shed for a minute?”
With only days before the wedding, Heather suspected this might be their last quiet moment alone. The four of them made their way to the eight-sided structure, and one by one, each entered the small building. But no one sat.
“I have something for all of us.” Jill clasped her hands together in front of her. “A friendship gift, I suppose. It’s not a lot, but so much is changing . . . has already changed”—unheard-of tears suddenly filled her eyes, and Heather lifted a hand, as if to reach out—“so I wanted to commemorate ‘us’ in some way.”
“You make it sound like we aren’t going to be us anymore,” Trenton objected.
“You’ll always be bonded,” Aunt Blu stated knowingly, and no one dared dispute her. “You’ll always be an ‘us’.”
“We will be,” Jill agreed. “We’ve gone through too much together for that not to be the case. And all of it started with you, Aunt Blu.” She pulled their foster mother in for a hard hug, and Heather watched as Blu’s arms squeezed tightly around Jill. “We wouldn’t exist without you,” Jill whispered, “and I know that matters to you the same as it does to us. That’s why I wanted you here today as well. Because you are a part of us.”
Jill retrieved four small gift bags that had been tucked into one of the storage benches, and after passing one to Trenton and another to Heather, she settled on the bench with the last two in her lap. Heather, Aunt Blu, and Trenton each lowered to a seat as well.
“We’re changing,” Jill stated without further hesitation. She forced a smile, but Heather could also see her nerves inching higher. “I see it the minute I open my eyes every day. We’re not the same as we were before all this started. And that hurts a little. But at the same time, I can’t wait to see how we all evolve.”
Heather didn’t say anything for a moment. She only concentrated on the feel of her heart beating. If she spoke too soon, she’d end up all teary like Jill, and she already suspected that whatever lay in the bags was going to do that anyway.
But she also couldn’t deny Jill’s words. They were changing. In so many ways.
“Possibly we’ve already changed even more than you know.” She pushed the wor
ds out, and the others turned to her.
“How so?” Trenton asked.
Heather kept her bag clasped tightly between her fingers, and she averted her gaze to take in the pond and the hardscaped areas outside. Her breathing picked up. She’d been thinking about this even more since talking with Waylon the day before. Telling him about her parents, about the knowledge she’d sat on for years, had finally made her see other things she’d been avoiding. Like allowing herself to explore what she really loved to do.
She was like her parents. Far more than she’d ever given herself credit for. And it was time to admit that out loud.
“I’ve loved doing this,” she began. She brought her gaze back to her friends. “More than I ever thought I would. And I’m so glad that you, Jill, have finally landed in your true calling.”
Jill had wanted to be an actress her whole life, and now she had both TV and construction. The best of both worlds.
“But I’m not sure what I’m going to do next.”
All three of them looked perplexed. “If you love this,” Trenton began, “then why not do this?”
“How many projects of this size do you see happening around here?”
“Maybe more than you think once the new show takes off.”
“Possibly.” But that could be years down the road.
“But you need it to be yours,” Jill guessed without Heather having to attempt to explain any further, and with those few words, Heather finally understood what she’d been unable to figure out on her own. She needed her future to be hers. She wanted a “hers” and not just an “ours.”
“I love ‘us,’” she told them. She took each of their hands one by one, leaving hers in Aunt Blu’s when she finished. “You all know I do, just as I know you love us, too. But yeah, I think I need something that’s truly mine. I don’t want to just be on standby for large projects for Jill and Cal, and I don’t want to get sucked into smaller, more routine jobs, either. I like creating. I like bringing beauty to life.”
“So, then what are you going to do?” Trenton asked. “Start your own company?”
