“I’m sorry he had to fly Scooter to Duluth,” Josie said. “If that hadn’t happened, Forrest wouldn’t have been at the hangar and you two wouldn’t have been kidnapped.”
Glancing up at her sister, Twyla said, “But if that hadn’t happened, Forrest and I would never have found those printing plates. They were what Ludwig was after. That’s the only reason he tried kidnapping us. He never got a chance. Forrest hit him over the head with a rim tool—that’s what you use to take off tires—before he could actually kidnap us. Then we stole his car, and the chase was on.”
Twyla folded up her legs and twisted, about to tell her sister more. “That was amazing, Josie. I jumped in the driver’s side and Forrest jumped in the passenger side.” Excitement raced through her veins, this time from enthusiasm instead of fear. “I asked Forrest if he wanted to drive, and he asked me if I knew how to shoot a gun. I said no, so he said I had to drive. And I did! I had that car going as fast as it could, and bullets were flying at us, Forrest was shooting back.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “If I live for another hundred years, I’ll never forget it.”
“And the only time you were scared was when you jumped in the lake?” Josie asked.
“Yeah,” Twyla said, meaning it. “Sure, I was nervous, especially driving, but that was because I didn’t want to crash the car. We both could have been hurt or worse. As it was, I knew we’d make it out alive. Forrest was with me.” Propping one elbow on the bench, she rested her cheek in her palm. “I knew he wouldn’t let me get hurt. Even when my legs cramped while swimming, he just took hold of me and swam to shore.”
Josie was once again staring out of the window, and Twyla felt a bit guilty, going on about her adventure while Josie was so clearly upset. She let her gaze wander around the room. The walls were painted white, Josie’s choice, to match the furniture, curtains, and bed coverings. The only color in the room came from the pictures of flowers on the walls and a few knickknacks on the shelves.
“What’s your favorite color, Josie?” Twyla asked, just to put the focus on her sister.
“I don’t have one. I like all colors.”
“But if you had to choose, what would it be?”
“I don’t know if I could choose just one.” Softly, Josie added, “They all have a purpose.”
Twyla let her gaze land on her sister again. Josie was dressed as usual, in blue cotton trousers and a white blouse. The only time she put on a dress was for the evening parties, so up until a couple of weeks ago, she’d rarely worn dresses or skirts. She claimed to like the comfort of pants and that they were easier to work in. Besides now helping in the office, Josie still cleaned rooms on a daily basis, a chore Twyla had readily given up when Norma Rose asked for help. Josie, though, didn’t seem to mind.
“You heard about Ginger, didn’t you?” Twyla asked.
“Yes. I figured that would happen.”
“Me, too,” Twyla said. “Still, it’s rather amazing. Ginger married. Norma Rose getting married.”
“You getting married.”
Twyla’s heart nearly stopped dead. “Me?”
Josie nodded. “Don’t act surprised. You’ve been in love with Forrest since we were kids. All that’s left now is to tie the knot.”
“That will never happen,” Twyla muttered.
“Yes, it will. That’s the reason you and Norma Rose never got along,” Josie said, then added, “until she fell in love with Ty.”
Twyla couldn’t deny the truth of that, even if she hadn’t realized it until this very moment. Letting out a sigh, she said, “Forrest doesn’t love me back.”
Josie sighed, too, loudly. “I just pointed out that’s why Norma Rose was always so grumpy. She knew Forrest liked you more than her years ago. She was always afraid you’d be the one marrying him, living in his big house with all that money while she remained poor.” Josie turned back to the window. “Forrest loves you, he just doesn’t want to.”
Although what her sister said made sense, Twyla couldn’t quite believe it, or understand. “Why?”
Josie sighed again. “Forrest couldn’t love you years ago because you were too young, and he was too old. Not to mention that he was rich and we were poor. Now, when age doesn’t matter, he can’t love you because you’re rich and he’s poor. It’s obvious.”
“I don’t care if he’s poor,” Twyla said.
“Since when? You love money more than Norma Rose.”
Irked that her sister knew her so well—too well—and that she didn’t have an answer for that, Twyla chose to stare at the ceiling. “Forrest will leave again. Start his airmail service.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Not up to arguing that point, Twyla said, “Fine, smarty-pants, if you’re so smart, why did you get arrested?”
Josie didn’t answer. Twyla didn’t glance her way, but said, “I’ve known for a long time that there is more to your Ladies Aid meetings than meets the eye. You have cases of rubbers in your closet. So what happened?”
“I can’t tell you,” Josie said. “I can’t tell anyone.”
Rabid dogs couldn’t get a secret out of Josie. “You were right about Galen Reynolds,” Twyla said. “He was buying and selling girls. Nasty Nick Ludwig babbled on like a baby just learning to talk.”
“Norma Rose told me that.”
“Were you scared when you were arrested?”
“Partly.”
Twyla stood and squeezed herself onto the bench near Josie’s drawn-up legs. She took Josie’s hands, holding them tightly between her own. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Josie shook her head and closed her eyes.
“Are you scared now?” Twyla asked.
Josie nodded and a single tear slipped out beneath one closed lid.
Twyla let go of Josie’s hands to wrap her arms around her sister’s shoulders. She couldn’t think of the right words, so she went with what was in her heart. “I wish someone like Forrest had been with you, Josie, someone who can erase fears even when you’re being shot at.”
Chapter Fourteen
Forrest paced the well-worn painted floor in the hovel his mother called an apartment. Over the years he’d lived in many places, but few could compare to this. Yet she refused to leave it.
“You heard the authorities, Mother,” he said. Two days with little to no sleep was enough to make him testy, but she was making him angry. “There is no reason for us to remain here. The evidence the authorities now have will put Galen in federal prison for life, with no chance of parole.”
“I have to talk to him one last time,” she insisted from where she sat on a lumpy and tattered sofa. “In person.”
“Why?” Forrest demanded. “You tried today, he refused. He’s going to go on refusing just to keep you here.” Running both hands through his hair, Forrest tried to calm his temper. “It makes no sense, Mother. I don’t understand—” Taking a breath, he said, “I’ve never understood the control Galen has over you.”
She bowed her head.
“Mother,” he said, then stopped, having no idea what to say next. He’d tried everything.
She looked up at him then, her brown eyes welling with tears that slowly escaped. “Your father’s not dead.”
“Galen’s not my—”
“Not Galen,” she said. “Your real father.”
So taken aback that his lungs locked, Forrest had to force out the air. “What?”
He couldn’t help but notice how gray her blond hair had become as she hooked it behind both ears. Then she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and sniffed. “I lied to you.” She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose again. “I’ve been lying to you for twenty-seven years.”
Forrest sat down beside her and tugged her head onto his shoulder, giving her and himself a mo
ment to collect their thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Forrest, very sorry.”
A twinge of guilt flared inside him for not being as upset as she thought he should be. “Well,” he said, “why don’t you start over? Tell me the truth this time, from the beginning.”
She nodded and sat up, but still leaned against him. “I was young, and fell in love with your father so swiftly. I’d gone to New York to attend finishing school. Back then there weren’t colleges like there are now. It was more of a prep school to prepare a girl for marriage. A well-to-do marriage. Which is what my father, your grandfather, wanted. It was the same school where Aunt Shirley met Uncle Silas. A few of us girls snuck out one night to attend a party at the home of one of the local girls. Her family was extremely wealthy and there was an enormous number of people there. I got scared that I might get caught, or... I don’t know— But I left the party.”
She sat forward and wiped her eyes with both hands. “There was another girl with me, from the school, and your father was one of the young men parking coaches. There were very few cars back then. Anyway, he offered us a ride home. It was a long walk, and dark, so we agreed, but we gave him false names and an address a block away from the school. A couple of weeks later, quite by accident, I bumped into him again.”
Pushing off the couch, she rose and walked to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water. “All the minor details aren’t important,” she said. “Suffice to say, I snuck out to meet him several times, but never once told him my real name or where I lived. He was very poor, and I knew my father would never approve of him.”
“So what happened?” Forrest asked, feeling more than a bit detached. Or maybe he wanted to be detached because he remembered his mother telling him many times as a young man that money didn’t matter when it came to love, yet she’d always acted as if it did.
“When the school discovered I was pregnant, they sent me home, and my father demanded they find the boy responsible.”
She crossed the room and sat back down beside him. The couch was the only piece of furniture in the apartment, aside from the kitchen table—which had no chairs with it—and a bed in the one other room.
“Galen arrived.” She shook her head. “The school had contacted the gang Galen was affiliated with back in New York to try to find your father, maybe alongside the police, I don’t know. But Galen convinced your grandfather I was pregnant with his child. I denied it and refused to marry him, but in the end, I had no choice.”
His grandfather forcing her to marry Galen must have been what Jacob had referred to. The thing his grandfather had wished he hadn’t done. “Why didn’t you try to contact my real father?” Forrest asked.
“I did. I still am.”
“You still are?”
“Yes, I’ve been trying for years. I even used Rose Nightingale’s name to search for him, knowing Galen would intercept any mail sent to me. In the beginning, Galen promised to help me find your father, said he’d grant me a divorce when it happened. I soon learned he was lying. You see, your father knew I’d given him a false name, and he gave me one, too, as a joke.” She laughed slightly. “We called each other crazy, silly names, but never our real names. Galen, however, knows your father’s real name. Over the years he’s shown me pictures of him. Real pictures. I know it’s him.”
“That’s why you want to stay here?” Forrest asked. “So Galen will reveal where my father is? What makes you think he will after all these years?”
“Because I was the one who buried the printing plates under your fuel tank.”
He shook his head, knowing it was useless to explain how that implied she knew everything that had transpired. “They’ve been found, Mother. It’ll make no difference to him to know who buried them.”
“He knows I buried them,” she said. “He knows I have other evidence, too, that I’ll take to the authorities if he doesn’t tell me what I want to know.”
“They don’t need any more evidence,” Forrest said.
“They might.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. “I know where the banker is buried. Galen killed him.”
Forrest stood and walked across the room and wished there was more than water to drink. Letting that bit of new, yet not surprising, information settle, he said, “So for twenty-seven years, he’s been holding out on you, and you’ve been gathering evidence on him. Battling.”
“Yes.” She looked at him as if he didn’t understand. “I loved your father, Forrest. I still do. I won’t ever stop looking for him.”
“Isn’t twenty-seven years long enough for you to understand Galen is never going to tell you?”
“I just want to know where the pictures are. Then I’ll have the clues to find him myself.”
Forrest shook his head, until another question sprung to his mind. One that Nasty Nick’s arrest hadn’t answered. He realized he now knew the answer and voiced it. “You paid someone to break into the Plantation, to search for those pictures.”
Without demonstrating a hint of regret, she answered, “Yes, but they didn’t find anything. I told them they could take whatever they wanted. Thought the idea of things being stolen might make Galen reveal his hiding spot. It didn’t, of course. Nothing I’ve tried has worked.”
There was another question rambling around in Forrest’s head. “If you’ve been searching for a lost love all these years, why did you tell me to leave Norma Rose alone? To not dredge up the past.”
“Because you never loved Norma Rose,” she said.
That couldn’t be denied. “Maybe not, but—”
“Roger Nightingale would have killed Galen, given the opportunity, and then I’d never—” She leaped to her feet. “That’s the phone.”
It wasn’t until she opened the door that he heard a faint and faraway ringing.
He’d seen the pay phone upon entering the building, two flights down, in a small booth in the narrow entranceway.
Her running footfalls had barely stopped, when his mother shouted up the stairwell, “Forrest, it’s for you.”
No one had this number except Jacob. Forrest’s heart skipped several beats as he ran for the door. Please, don’t let Twyla have taken a turn for the worse. Please, he prayed while running down the stairs.
Forrest met his mother halfway up the stairs. She was smiling brightly, which confused him. Minutes ago she’d still been crying. Crying over a love twenty-seven years old.
He entered the booth and picked up the phone dangling by its cord. There was no room to sit, so he leaned back against the wall for support. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
Warmth and relief raced through his system. Leaning his head back, he grinned at the heavens far above the ratty old building. “How did you get this number?”
“Well, let’s see.” Twyla’s voice came through the line with as much charm as ever. “On this piece of paper next to the model airplane on your desk, it says, ‘Mother’ and this number is printed right beside it. You have nice penmanship.”
His grin grew so wide it pulled on his cheeks. “My desk?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes, imagining her sitting there. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Josie being arrested?”
Forrest laughed. “That explains the phone call.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked again.
“Because it wasn’t for me to tell. Scooter asked for a ride to Duluth and I gave him one.”
“But you knew he was going up there to get Josie out of jail?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “He told me that was the reason.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
He sighed. “No, I didn’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because that was—is—Josie’s business,” he said. “Now, on the other hand, if that had been you...”
“If that had been me, you wouldn’t have had to tell me because I’d already have known.”
He was too tired for any more twisted tales. “Twyla.”
“Yes.”
“You are the only Nightingale girl I care about.”
Her silence made him question if he should have admitted that or not.
“I am?” she finally asked quietly.
“You are,” he answered. “Now please tell me you didn’t drive to the Plantation this late at night by yourself.”
“Father wouldn’t let me. Bronco drove me.”
“That’s the first good news I’ve had all day.”
“It is?” she asked. “What’s happened with Galen?”
“There will be a new trial,” he said, “but this one against him is for the actual counterfeiting. The officials say he’ll never get out.” Once his mother told the officials where they’d find the banker’s body, that would be even more of a certainty. Forrest would see that happened.
“How’s your mother?” Twyla asked softly.
Forrest closed his mouth before the word fine could exit. “She’s doing all right,” he said. “I’m trying to convince her to come home with me.”
“That’s nice,” she said, after a lengthy pause. “You’ll like having her home. When might that be?”
There was an undertone to her voice, and a double meaning there somewhere, he just couldn’t grasp it right now. Probably due to lack of sleep, among other things. “I don’t know yet,” he said. Not wanting to wear her out, he added, “I’d better hang up now, and you’d better get on home.” Recalling the thank-you she’d slept through, he added, “And Twyla, thank you. If not for you finding that suitcase, Galen would be getting out.”
“You’re welcome, but if not for Josie getting arrested, we wouldn’t have found the suitcase.”
The Rebel Daughter (Daughters Of The Roaring Twenties Book 2) Page 21
