Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Don’t you think it’s wrong to use books as props?”

  It suddenly struck him as a pretty sad commentary on the state of his life that he hadn’t had time to look at any of his own books yet—and that he had to pay someone else to create a home for him in the first place.

  “I prefer to think of them as carefully chosen design elements. Who knows, I might leaf through them at some point.”

  “You should. You’ve got some great titles here. What is Sage up to in the kitchen?”

  “Making hot cocoa. The old-fashioned way, apparently.”

  “That’s how she prefers it when she has the chance.”

  “She’s handy in the kitchen, isn’t she?” More than a month since meeting Sage, he still felt as if he knew so little about her.

  “She’s always loved to cook. Cleaning up, now, that’s another story, but she loves creating new dishes. She and Layla used to come up with the most amazing Sunday-morning breakfasts, all while I slept in. Let me tell you, it’s a little disconcerting to wake up to delectable smells filling your house when you have no idea where they’re coming from.”

  She paused, a soft smile playing at her mouth. “I would stumble into the kitchen and find the two of them in there laughing and giggling and having a great time together.”

  “It sounds like they were close.”

  “Yes. They hardly noticed the four-year age difference between them. Layla missed Sage so much when she went to college.”

  He was sorry again for the grief both of them had endured at the loss of someone they had loved. Before he could say anything, Maura quickly changed the subject.

  “What about you? Spend much time in the kitchen these days?”

  “Hardly any,” he admitted, after a pause. If she didn’t want to talk about her daughter, he wouldn’t pry. “I make the occasional soup and omelet, but I usually hire a meal service.”

  “I must tell you, Jack, I’m a little surprised you’re not married. A wife seems like an even more handy accessory than a pile of coffee-table books.”

  “Last I checked, you can’t buy one of those on SkyMall, though.”

  “That is an inconvenience. Can’t you find a service to help you with that too?”

  He was silent before he confessed to what he considered his second biggest mistake, after leaving Maura alone and pregnant here in Hope’s Crossing. “I was married once for about five minutes, before she decided she wanted a little more out of a marriage than an empty chair at the dining room table.”

  He thought of Kari, elegant and lovely and completely the wrong woman for him at a time when he had been totally focused on building his business.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Our divorce was amicable and easy. And almost completely my fault, as you probably already assumed.”

  “I don’t believe I said anything of the sort.”

  He had chosen poorly to begin with, but he hadn’t handled their difficulties at all well. “You don’t have to say it. I’ve said it enough myself. I was a lousy husband. Selfish and thoughtless and focused only on my ambitions.”

  “Rather like your father?”

  He stared at her, caught completely off guard by the comparison. He wasn’t at all like Harry. His father had been a stone-cold bastard.

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “I always knew your dreams were bigger than Hope’s Crossing. Even if not for your feud with your father, I think I knew you still would have needed to leave in order to reach them. I’m happy for you, Jack. It’s inspiring to see someone who nurtured a dream as a young man and worked and struggled and fought to make it happen. You must be pleased.”

  Gut-check time. He sat back in his chair. Was he pleased at his success? Yes, he enjoyed the awards and the recognition, but when was the last time he remembered feeling excited about one of his projects? Whenever he started a new project, when all the possibilities lay ahead of him, he welcomed the challenge but he always wanted more.

  Before he could figure out how to answer her, Sage came in holding two thermoses. “Okay, the cocoa is finally ready. I made two kinds, cinnamon and regular. Cinnamon’s my favorite, FYI.”

  “Good to know.” Maybe he had passed that particular gene to her. He was a sucker for cinnamon drops and cinnamon cookies. He even liked cinnamon schnapps.

  As he helped the women into their coats, he reflected on his conversation with Maura. What would she say if he told her this project in Silver Strike Canyon, where he had once built so many ideas in his head, was the first thing in a long time to stir his blood and spark his creativity?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MAURA FOUND IT FASCINATING to watch Jack work. Watching Sage take in everything Jack did with big eyes and an eager expression was even more so. Sage followed him like Puck followed her at home, writing down measurements and snapping pictures where he directed her.

  Her mother used to talk about how, when her older twin sisters were learning to talk, they shared a language between them that only they seemed to understand. By the time Maura came along a few years later, her sisters had mostly outgrown it, but she could still remember they called juice juba for a long time and couldn’t eat a pancake for years without calling it cakee.

  As she watched Jack and Sage discuss the site, she imagined this was how her mother had felt watching her toddler daughters play—a little on the outside of their private communication and not quite sure how she fit in.

  “Where is the north boundary?” Sage asked.

  “Just there at the ridgeline, but beyond that it’s abutted by Forest Service land,” he answered. “With proper covenants and usage permits, we could possibly utilize that for a network of trails.”

  They were so alike, it was almost painful to watch them together, especially knowing she had kept them apart all these years.

  “How big is the original property?” Sage asked.

  “Three hundred acres, give or take an acre or two. It runs from the streambed on the west to that fence line on the east, then from the road to the ridgeline.”

  Maura looked at the dimension of the lot, set perfectly in the trees and with a stirring view of the ski resort, farther up the canyon. “And Harry’s just giving it to the town?”

  “As far as I understand. But don’t believe for a moment he’s doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He doesn’t have one, remember? I’m sure he’s looking for some kind of tax break.”

  “Still. This is a prime building lot, don’t you think? Whatever tax break he might receive, he could probably make twenty times that by building condominiums here.”

  “No doubt he has a hundred tangled ulterior motives. If memory serves, he always did. Harry’s reasons don’t really matter to me, frankly. My job, if I win the contract, is to design a recreation center that meets the myriad needs of the community.”

  From what little she had seen, especially that look of naked longing she had spied in the old man’s eyes just before Harry fell in the bookstore, she couldn’t help wondering if most of Harry Lange’s motivations had to do with the man standing in front of her.

  “Now that you’ve had a good look at the site, you’re welcome to wait in the warm car. No need to freeze your feet off out here in the mud while we finish surveying.” Jack must have clued in that she was feeling a little excluded by all the lingo he and Sage were throwing back and forth.

  The idea of a heater was not without merit, but she could see a freshly groomed snowmobile trail that snaked off through the trees. Suddenly the idea of stretching her legs a little seemed extraordinarily appealing.

  “Since you’re busy here, I think I’ll take a little walk to gain a different perspective of the site.” She gestured to the trail, clean and enticing in the pale afternoon sunlight. “I should have a good view back this way. Don’t worry. I won’t go far.”

  Jack gave her an absent nod as he and Sage set up another measurement. Neither of them seemed to pay much mind to her. She sighe
d a little, reminded strongly of how Sage and Layla used to collude together in the kitchen over spinach-mushroom quiche or sugar-drizzled pear cake.

  She walked through the trees in a quiet hush broken only by the river down below and the occasional throb of an engine on the roadway beyond that. A few fresh inches of snow covered the packed snowmobile trail, but she wore sturdy winter boots with good tread.

  The sunshine filtered through the trees in lacy patterns, and she was struck by the beauty of the bare, spindly red branches of the dogwoods against the starkness of new snow. A few pine siskins flitted among the currant bushes in search of any leftover berries, and she watched them for a moment before continuing on her way.

  She needed to get out more. Maybe she ought to ask Evie if she could tag along on one of her cross-country ski excursions into the backcountry. Every time she walked outside, she was reminded of her glorious surroundings and her connection to Mother Earth.

  The trail gained a little in elevation, making the way a little more strenuous. She decided to walk only as far as an interesting-shaped pine tree ahead, which made a V where two saplings had grown next to each other but sprawled out to seek sunlight in opposite directions.

  Much to her chagrin, she had to pause at the top to catch her breath, even though the hill wasn’t very steep. Wow. She was really out of shape. When was the last time she had gone to the gym? Before Christmas. Probably even before Thanksgiving and the onset of the holiday rush. Apparently she needed a new recreation center in town worse than anyone else.

  She leaned against one of the angled trees—only for a moment, she told herself—and gazed down at the silvery river trickling through mounds of snow. Past it, she could see the roadway gleaming black in the sun.

  A blue SUV came around the corner much too fast, but the driver managed to regain control and speed on down his merry way. She watched it for a moment, shaking her head at the heedless idiot.

  When she turned back, her breath caught. Though it was probably a few hundred yards away at a downward angle, she saw something she should have noticed immediately.

  A huge Douglas fir grew alone perhaps four feet off the roadway and had been turned into a makeshift memorial. Purple-and-pink plastic ribbons fluttered in the breeze. Around the base of the tree—just below a pale portion of the tree trunk where the bark had been scraped away ten months earlier—she could see stuffed animals, plastic flowers, a white cross, all protected from the snow by a small awning someone had erected.

  Blood rushed from her face and she braced against the bent tree here to keep her balance. She hadn’t realized the recreation center site was so close to the accident scene, down the canyon only a few hundred yards. She had been here, of course. After the accident, she had asked Mary Ella to drive her here, and the two of them had held each other and wept.

  She drew in a breath now, unable to take her eyes away from that benign-looking tree. Her brother Riley, who had studied the accident report in great depth, had given her his solemn vow that Layla died immediately upon being thrown from the vehicle, that she didn’t suffer. It was a comfort of sorts, but she couldn’t help wondering if Layla had known even an instant’s fear as the vehicle rolled out of control.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there in the ankle-deep snow, gazing across the road at the place where her world changed forever. She couldn’t seem to make her feet move back down the little hill toward Jack and Sage, and so she stood listening to the resilient song of the pine siskins and the wind in the trees and the endless trickle of the river.

  “Everything okay?”

  She jerked her head around at the words and was shocked to see Jack standing only a few feet away. Her feet were cold, she realized. Her face was too.

  “Yes. Fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You seemed lost in your own thoughts. I called out twice.”

  The heat seeping into her cheeks was almost painful against the cold. “Sorry. I was, uh, sort of meditating.” A wind had risen while she stood on the hillside, and it knuckled its way under her coat. “Are you and Sage finished?”

  “We wrapped things up a few minutes ago. Sage headed back to the SUV to get warm and I…came looking for you.”

  “You didn’t need to do that. I was just about to turn back.” Maybe. If she could have managed to wrench her gaze away from that makeshift shrine.

  “No big deal. I needed to stretch my legs anyway.” He looked over her shoulder, his gaze following the direction she had been facing. “What were you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” She tried to distract him by starting to head back down the trail, but Jack was no fool. Unfortunately for her.

  “That’s where your daughter was killed.”

  She sighed. At least her face probably wasn’t blotchy and red and tearstained. She had cried so much these past months, she figured she had worn out her tear ducts. “Yes. I hadn’t realized how close it was to the building site until I reached this spot. I…didn’t come looking for it out of some morbid obsession, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  His blue eyes seemed softer, somehow. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. Even if you had come for that reason, I would find it perfectly understandable.”

  “Is it?” She paused. “I keep thinking I’m making progress, you know, putting my life back together. But I still feel like I’m paralyzed. Like my feet have been frozen in the snow for months and everyone else just keeps moving on around me.”

  He reached a hand out and briefly brushed her fingers, then dropped his hand again as if he wasn’t sure whether he had the right to offer comfort. She wanted to grab his arm and hold on to the warmth as tightly as she could. “I can’t even imagine the depth of your pain and what you’ve been through this last year.”

  For once, she felt comforted by someone’s compassion instead of asphyxiated. “It sucks, if you want the truth. It really, really sucks. I keep expecting the pain to ease a little bit. I don’t want it to, you understand, everybody has just been telling me it will. Once in a while I’ll have a day that almost feels normal, you know? I’ll find myself looking forward to something, and then I have to stop and remind myself Layla isn’t here and I shouldn’t be looking forward to anything. How terrible is that? Sometimes I have to remind myself.”

  He was silent and the cold wind ruffled the edges of his hair a little. “Call me crazy, but I can’t imagine that a daughter who got up early with her sister to surprise you with breakfast would have wanted you to feel guilty for trudging forward with your life.”

  Okay, she was wrong. Her tear ducts still worked, apparently. She could feel a hot tear trickle out and she quickly brushed it away with the finger of her glove.

  “Intellectually, I know you’re right. Layla was life and laughter and joy. If she could see me like this, she would have dumped a handful of snow down my back and told me to get over myself. Either that, or she would have dragged me down beside her on the couch with a pen and paper and made me sit there until we came up with ten or twenty nice things we could do for someone else to shake me out of my funk.”

  “She sounds wonderful. I’m sorry I didn’t know her.”

  “You would have liked her. Everyone did. She probably would have asked you where the hell you’ve been all these years and how you could possibly think you were good enough to be Sage’s father, but eventually I think she would have liked you too.”

  She offered him a smile—shaky and a little lopsided, but it was the best she could manage without bursting into sobs. He gazed at her for a moment and then he muttered an oath. Before she realized what he intended, he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, tugging her against him.

  She should probably resist. The thought penetrated somewhere in the recesses of her brain but, quite simply, she didn’t want to. Unlikely though it might be, Jack offered warmth and strength and comfort and she wanted to soak up every drop.

  She nestled her head under his chin, her arms around his waist, and he did nothing el
se but hold her.

  Twenty years ago, she had turned to Jack for safety and comfort as well, during that crazy time after her father had walked out. He had been grieving after his poor mother had committed suicide and they had turned to each other, two lost souls looking for a little peace together. She had shared everything with him and had trusted him with her deepest pain.

  The years since had taught her to be much more wary with that trust.

  Though she wanted to stay right here soaking up the comfort of his embrace, she forced her arms from around his waist and took a step back, and then another. “I think I’m okay now. Thank you.”

  He studied her, those blue eyes intense and unreadable. “You’re a strong woman, Maura,” he finally said.

  Strong? Ha. “I don’t feel like it most of the time, but thank you for saying it and for allowing me to vent. Apparently I needed it. But we should probably head back to Sage.”

  He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he finally nodded and led the way back down the trail toward where he had parked. The wind now whistled a mournful cry through the trees and blew some of the powdery snow in cold crystals against her face.

  “Did you find what you needed at the site?” she asked when the silence between them began to feel awkward.

  “I think so. My brain is already spinning with ideas. There are definitely a few challenges to contend with, but that’s one of the things I love most about what I do—figuring out how to work around all the obstacles to attain the vision the client and I would like for the site.”

  “What are some of the challenges?” she asked, mostly to hear more of his passion for his work.

  He seemed only too willing to talk about it and, as they walked through the trees, he talked to her about drainage problems and the unwieldy grade of the site.

  “How will you address the issues?” she asked.

  “No idea,” he admitted. “But I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”

  “Of course you will,” she said, earning a look of surprised gratification from him.