Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  He was watching Quinn the way a torn regards a stray who's wandered through his territory. Without taking his eyes away from him, he said to Olivia, "Since when do you care?"

  He was right, of course. Olivia had never cared for him, not for as long as she could remember.

  When she was a little girl and he was still part-owner of the mill and their families were closer, Olivia used to sleep over occasionally. He always came into Alison's bedroom to kiss them both good night, and Olivia had never liked it. His mouth was too wet, and he often smelled of old beer. After a while, she began to insist that Alison come over to her house for sleepovers. But her uncle had nixed the idea, and that was that. She and Alison stopped having sleep-overs.

  But now, what had seemed like an irrational childish aversion to a grown-up suddenly took on another meaning altogether. Something deep inside of Olivia seemed to shift and move, like ice over a pond in the January thaw. She felt her cheeks turn hot and her heart take off on a sickening run.

  Quinn, still seated, broke the brutal silence. "I don't pretend to be here out of anything beyond self-interest," he said in a much more steely voice than he had used so far. "I've come back to Keepsake for one reason only: to prove my father's innocence."

  "If you want my blessing, you're in the wrong place," her uncle growled. "Go see Father Tom."

  "No," Quinn said coolly as he leaned into his forearms on the table. "It's the district attorney whose blessing I'll need. I'm here to say that the only way to clear my father's name—and yours—is for us to throw in our forces together."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I think you know."

  "Suppose you tell me."

  Olivia saw Quinn glance at Betty Bennett, who looked ready to burst into tears. She realized in a blinding flash that her uncle was banking on Quinn's natural reluctance to inflict pain on downtrodden women. It was a game of psychological poker, and Uncle Rupert was calling Quinn's bluff.

  The men remained locked in a standoff for a brutal moment, and then Quinn shrugged and said, "Okay. Since you want it spelled out. "

  Olivia held her breath. Her aunt gasped.

  "There are rumors around Keepsake that your relationship with your daughter was—''

  "No more than it should have been, goddammit!'' Rupert said, refusing to look at the cards that Quinn was about to lay out. He turned to his wife and said, "Leave us! This isn't for a woman to hear."

  Apparently Olivia didn't fall into the woman category. Either that, or she truly was invisible, because her uncle completely disregarded her as he waited for his wife to scurry up the stairs and out of earshot.

  Olivia watched him with a feeling of dismay that was rapidly imploding into one of disgust. Was it possible? Those vague and uncomfortable feelings that she'd had as a child ... the squirmy reluctance to be left, with Alison, in her uncle's care ... the sinking feeling when he walked into a room, any room, where she and Alison happened to be.

  Was it possible?

  She stared fiercely at his face, willing her memory to dredge up some clues, any clues, as to what kind of man he was behind that domineering sneer. But as hard as she tried, all she could see was a truly awful version of her father. A taller, lazier, more irresponsible version of her father, a man who preferred to wear plaid instead of pinstripes. The same instinct to control was present in both brothers, but her Uncle Rupert was lording it over a much smaller empire: one shy woman, to be exact.

  No. He might have been domineering and he might have been awkward—even repulsive—in social situations. But he was not the father of his unborn grandchild. Olivia was absolutely convinced of it.

  He had been leaning his weight on one leg, one shoulder higher than the other as he watched his wife leave the room. Now he swung around fully to face Quinn. It was the posture of confrontation. Olivia had a sudden urge to duck under the table.

  "I never touched her, not in that way," he said with a burning look. "She was my daughter, for God's sake."

  His face, so like her father's and yet so utterly unlike it, was contorted with emotions that Olivia couldn't begin to understand. Rage? Grief? Horror? Frustration? They went so far beyond Olivia's limited palette of experience that she found herself groping for terms to describe them. The one thing she recognized, the one thing she knew, was that he was telling the truth.

  She turned to Quinn to gauge his reaction. She was sure he'd look relieved; that he'd believe her uncle. But what she saw on Quinn's face was a look of surprise and, oddly, dismay. It left her completely bewildered.

  "Agree to the DNA testing, then," Quinn said, ignoring her as thoroughly as her uncle was doing. "I'll pay for the attorneys, I'll pay for the test. The results won't tell anyone who the father is. But at least they'll tell everyone who he isn't."

  Her uncle bent his head and squeezed his temples with the fingers of one hand as he tried to come up with a response to that. When he looked up, his eyes were glazed over with tears. Olivia gaped at him, astonished at the display of emotion.

  His answer was choked, halting. "I went to the D.A. I wanted them to do something. I wanted them to go after your father, go after someone. I got nothing. A cup of coffee, a pat on the back. They seemed perfectly happy to have your father on the loose and the murder unsolved. Christ, where was the justice? Where was the law? I hired a P.I. He didn't do shit."

  He dropped his chin to his chest. "Ah, damn it to hell. The rumors won't end ... they'll never end. Keepsake is obsessed with them. My God. My great-grandfather built this town up from a general store and a post office. Keepsake wouldn't exist if it weren't for the mill, if it weren't for the Bennetts."

  He shook his head and sighed heavily. He looked resigned, even defeated, as he said, "Go ahead. Do whatever you have to do. Tell me what I need to sign. But leave me alone until then, do you hear? Both of you."

  He turned away from them and left the room, his own private demons nipping at his heels with every step.

  Olivia stood respectful and silent until she knew that he was well up the stairs, then turned to Quinn and murmured, "I think we're on our own as far as finding the door."

  Quinn's face had a stony expression that left her feeling desperately uneasy. It didn't make sense; he should be happy that they were finally on the way to clearing the air. He couldn't be angry that she'd shown up despite his warning not to. It would be far too small-minded a response for someone like him.

  "All's well that ends well—right?" she ventured with a tentative smile as they left the kitchen together.

  His look stayed grim. "It's barely begun."

  Chapter 20

  "All Wools, Forty Percent Off."

  Olivia placed the small sign, done in a calligrapher's exquisite hand, on a pretty brass stand and positioned it in a puddle of blue worsted spilling from its bolt in the window of Miracourt. Advertising a winter sale in her York Street shop didn't take much more than that. Her clientele was strictly local, and they knew that come January, all wools would be forty percent off.

  The customers who flocked to her mill outlet from all over the region, however, were another matter. Olivia was targeting her Run of the Mill audience with a big, flashy flyer about to be included in a weekly newspaper that served the whole county.

  Giant winter sale! over one million yards of fabric! Designer wools at fifty percent off list and more! Clearance on all cords, wools, and velvets! sheers, laces, linings, holiday prints and trimmings, seventy-five percent off! Supplies limited! Hurry for best selection! Doors open 6 am! Free 9 ft. garland to first 100 customers!

  The asterisk warned in small print that the designer wools were seconds, that the sale could not be combined with any other offer, that all sales were final, that previous mark-downs were not applicable, and that the sale ended February tenth.

  Olivia proofread the ad with a certain amount of distaste. She hated having to grab people's attention by shouting at their eyes. But her father was right—this was how it was done in the outlet
trade. Still, she found the flyer embarrassing. The thing was not only tacky, but sounded paranoid. How much nicer it was to know her customers personally, and to take back the fabric if they changed their minds, and to ask them how their kids were doing at hockey this season.

  I'm a village shopkeeper, not an outlet entrepreneur; that's all there is to it.

  It was an ongoing revelation to her, this softer, gentler side of herself. Was it because she had fallen in love? And if that was true, then why wasn't the same thing happening to Quinn? She wanted to believe that he had fallen as hard for her as she had for him, and yet every time they were together lately, he seemed a little more edgy, a little more ... remote.

  That was it: remote. She didn't like even to think the word, and yet there was no other way to describe the look that she now saw routinely on his face. He would be with her, talking and listening, and yet ... somehow ... not with her at all.

  And I can pinpoint exactly when and where he began to act that way: New Year's Day, after Ray Buffitt's football bash.

  Obviously that was where he had heard the rumor about Rupert Bennett being the father of his daughter's child. Armed with that knowledge, Quinn had taken a huge gamble with Olivia's uncle, and it had paid off. With Rupert Bennett's cooperation, Quinn would now be able to clear his father's name and—something Olivia hadn't even known was necessary—clear her uncle's in the bargain.

  Hooray. Three cheers. Shouldn't they be drinking champagne?

  "Beth, I'm going out," Olivia said to her assistant as she e-mailed her approval of the sale flyer. "I should be back in an hour. If I'm not, just close up here, would you?"

  "Sure thing."

  "Thanks. You're a doll." She grabbed her coat and blew Beth a kiss on her way out of the shop, then got back in her car to head back up the hill to her parents' house, aware that she had got absolutely nothing done all day.

  This couldn't go on. Being in love and walking around with your head in a cloud was one thing, but this wasn't that kind of cloud. This one was filled with rain and fog and, worse, the occasional thunderbolt. All things considered, Olivia preferred to do her strolling in rose-tinted sunglasses.

  She drove in deepening twilight through deserted streets toward her parents' estate, clinging psychologically to the thin streak of orange that slashed the cloud bank above the dropping sun. A cold front was pushing through, which meant that tomorrow would be bright and sunny. But the day would still be cold and short; so who cared, really, whether the sun came out or not?

  I do, she decided. Anything to banish the sense of gloom that was plaguing her lately.

  At that hour, she expected to find her father home from the mill, but finding Rand at her parents' house was an unexpected bonus. He was sitting in his Lexus parked under the portico. Was he coming or going? Going, apparently. He waved a hello-good-bye to her and started to drive off, but Olivia flagged him down. She wanted him to stay. For one thing, her mother was much more likely to let go of her anger at Olivia if he were around. And with Rand there, Olivia would be able to grill all of them at the same time about the appalling rumors concerning her Uncle Rupert. That way, they wouldn't have a chance to coordinate their stories.

  By now Olivia was reasonably sure that she had been the only one among them who had lived so happily clueless for seventeen years. It pained her to think that her family had conspired to keep her in the dark like some rainforest flower that would wilt and die if put out in the sun. Damn it! Why was she always the odd one out in the family?

  Rand buzzed his window down and said, "Run while you can. She's in one hell of a mood." He gave Olivia his trademark bemused smile, the one that always left women's hearts aflutter, and said, "That's the last time I offer to drop off Eileen's leftover borscht."

  "Did Mom say what was bothering her?"

  "Nope. She just took one look at me and burst into tears. I said, 'What'd I do now?' and she shook her head and moaned, 'Not you, not you.' That was good enough for me. As soon as I could, I cut and ran."

  Still angry! "Uh-oh."

  Rand gave her a sharp look and said, "So you're the 'you' she was talking about? Oh, great. Is this about Quinn?"

  "It's more complicated than that, Rand."

  She hurried around to the passenger side of the Lexus and dropped into the leather bucket seat, then brought her brother quickly up to date on the hair-raising showdown earlier in the day between Quinn and their Uncle Rupert.

  Her brother's reaction was concise. "Oh, shit."

  "You knew all along, didn't you, Rand? You knew that people suspected Uncle Rupert," she said, convinced of it now. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

  "Why bother?" he asked, staring straight ahead. "There's no truth to it."

  "Still! It concerns us all."

  He turned and challenged her in a sneering voice. "What would you have done if you did know?"

  "Well ... for one thing, I wouldn't have fought the idea of DNA testing when Quinn first suggested it. On the contrary, I would have pushed for it. I don't know why Uncle Rupert didn't do that himself when the rumors first surfaced."

  "The test wasn't around?"

  "Oh. Right. Well, then Uncle Rupert should have just ... I don't know, issued a statement of some kind."

  "Oh, there's a plan. Send a letter to the local editor saying, 'Just so you know, I'm not the one who knocked up my daughter.' Olivia, do you have any idea how rumors work? Don't you see how counterproductive it is even to bring them up? You're the Shakespeare expert. Do the words 'Me thinks he doth protest too much' mean anything to you?"

  "That's not the actual quote," Olivia couldn't help saying. "The actual quote is, 'The lady doth pro—' "

  "Stuff it!" Rand said, out of patience with her. "The point is, after seventeen years, people's minds are set. The best thing is to let those opinions stay sunk in the mire where they belong. Why dredge everything back up? Why foul the air?"

  "The point is to clear the air, Rand, once and for all. Maybe you can't do that without making a stink first."

  "How easy for you to say."

  "But it would be so much better if this were all resolved," she said, pleading with him to rally around to her view. "The truth is always better. Always. I agree with Quinn completely on that one. And I'm not just promoting that agenda for my sake."

  Her brother let out a short, bitter laugh, but his voice turned almost wistful as he said, "You honestly believe that, Livvy? That you don't have an agenda in all this?"

  "Well ... yes."

  When they were young, Rand had a little thing he did when he wanted to make a point: He would give her earlobe a gentle yank and say, "Listen up, little twin."

  With a sad, sweet smile, he gave her left ear that gentle yank. But he didn't have to tell her to listen now; she was rapt with attention.

  "Walk inside that house. Take a good, long look at our mother right now. Then come back out," he said softly, "and tell me that you believe this is all for the best."

  Olivia shook her head. "That's not fair, Rand. Mom has always been an extremely emotional woman. She overreacts to everything."

  "You say that about most women."

  "Maybe most women overreact."

  He sighed. "You're the brains of the family, Olivia. As by now we all know. But I wonder if you have the emotional smarts to back up all that theorizing."

  This was new. "Meaning what?" she said testily.

  "Meaning sometimes you have to hide the truth from someone you love because you love them."

  "But then your whole relationship is based on a lie. No, I can't buy into that, Rand," she said, shaking her head emphatically. "I've never done that in a relationship, and I never will."

  He shrugged and said, "You don't have relationships."

  The point was offhandedly made, and yet it practically blasted Olivia out of the seat of his car. You don't have relationships. Is that how her family viewed her? As an uninvolved, ambitious, hard-driving witch?

  "I do have relationships,
" she said, devastated by his remark.

  "None that matter, Liv."

  "I have Quinn Leary," she insisted, near tears now.

  "Quinn? How do you figure you have Quinn? Are you married? The mother of his child? How do you have him? Where's the commitment?"

  She bowed her head. "Quinn matters to me," was all she could say.

  "Assume that he does," Rand allowed. "Would you lie to spare him pain?"

  "Never!" she said with a fierce look at her brother. "Quinn wouldn't want that. And neither would I. And he knows it," she insisted. "We tell each other everything!"

  But even as she said it, she could hear the Bard whispering in her ear. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

  Letting his head fall back on the headrest, Rand stared at the folded-up visor before him. "Yeah, well, you two have an unusual relationship. To say the least."

  "It's true," she murmured, leaning back and staring in the mirror of her own visor, which had been flipped down; but she looked and sounded as if she was trying to convince herself now. Quinn was so obviously not being truthful with her. The only question was, was he simply holding something back, or was he out-and-out lying to her?

  Sighing heavily, Olivia rolled her head in Rand's direction and said, "I assume Mom and Dad are both aware that some people think Uncle Rupert had an incestuous relationship with Alison?"

  She watched him close his eyes and mutter an oath. "We haven't chatted about it specifically," he said without opening his eyes. "But, yes, you can assume they've heard the worst."

  "Then why did Mom get so upset after I told her that I was going to help Quinn persuade Uncle Rupert to agree to an exhumation? You would think she'd be happy to have the scandal cleared up."

  She saw her brother's brow furrow, as if he'd been hit with a sudden, blinding headache. For a moment he was silent. Then, "Resolving the issue of paternity doesn't do much about the rumor that Uncle Rupert murdered Alison."

  "Oh, but it does!" Olivia said. She sat up straight and turned to her brother. She was bursting with theories, some of them years old, some of them hours old.