Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I hope so. I better go. My parents are probably ready to call hotel security to go look for me. Uh, thank you for the tea. And the conversation. They both helped.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime. And I mean that.”

  She blinked a little, then gave him a tentative smile that seemed to arrow straight to his damaged heart. “Okay. Thanks. I might take you up on that.”

  He rose, grateful his almost seventy-year-old bones hadn’t creaked too loudly, and walked her to the elevator, wishing he knew how to protect this vulnerable, wounded child and take away the pain he knew was coming.

  “If you want me to, I can kick Sawyer Danforth out of his room right this minute and bar him and his snooty parents from ever staying at my lodge.”

  Her jaw dropped and her eyes filled with horror. “How did you… I never said it was Sawyer.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said about good genes? You’re not the only smart one in this family, missy. I know what’s going on in my own hotel.”

  He regretted saying anything when her shoulders went tight again and she gazed in panic at the elevator and then back at him. “You can’t say anything. Please!” she begged. “He said he was going to tell Genevieve himself when the time is right. If word gets out to her before he has the chance, he’s going to be so pissed.”

  It would serve the little prick right for not keeping his business in his pants. He didn’t care about hurting Danforth, but he didn’t want to cause his granddaughter any more distress. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he promised. That didn’t mean he couldn’t drop a hint in his housekeeper’s ear about putting the scratchiest sheets on his bed and substituting his shampoo for itching powder.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “In return, you can do something for me.”

  She instantly looked wary. “What?”

  “I invited your parents and you to dinner at my house on Sunday. I doubt either of them is inclined to accept that invitation. You can make sure they do.”

  “The rumors are true, then. You are a crazy old man. How am I supposed to do that when Jack hates you and you’re not on my mom’s list of favorite people either?”

  “You’re a smart girl,” he repeated as the elevator doors opened. “Lange genes, remember? I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  She shook her head in exasperation, but to his eternal shock, she stepped out of the elevator and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thanks for the tea and sympathy,” she said, then slid back inside just as the doors closed behind her.

  He stood for a long time gazing at the elevator with a finger pressed against the skin she had kissed, feeling foolish that he thought he could still pick up the scent of her in the air, of lemons and tears.

  His granddaughter needed him, damn it. And her parents did too, for that matter. He had become very good at subterfuge this past year. Now what could he do to help the three of them?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “YOU’RE GOING WHERE?”

  Maura sighed and straightened a line of books on a shelf in the home-improvement section, aware of Mary Ella’s horror-stricken expression beside her. “Yes. You heard me correctly. As much as I would vastly prefer taking you up on your offer to catch a movie tonight, I have plans. We’ve been invited to Harry’s for dinner. I tried desperately to get out of it. I mean, who wouldn’t? But Sage pulled the poor, pitiful I just want to get to know my grandfather card, and now I’m stuck.”

  “I don’t care what card she pulled. I would have sliced off two or three fingers if it meant I didn’t have to share a meal with That Man.”

  Despite her own internal struggle over the impending evening, Maura had to smile at her mother’s dramatics. “But, Mom, you have so much in common. You both love art and music and books, and now you even share a grandchild!”

  “Oh, thank you very much for that reminder.”

  “Seriously, why do you hate Harry so much? You’re nice to everyone else in town, even grouchy Frances Redmond, but you treat Harry like he ran over your dog or something. What did he ever do to deserve this gargantuan grudge you hold against him?”

  Mary Ella leaned back against the bookshelf, pensive. “You can thank Jack for it.”

  “Jack?”

  “He was one of my favorite students. Oh, I know all about how teachers are supposed to see the good in all our students and not pick favorites, but that is sometimes easier said than done when you’re teaching literature and composition to moody teenagers. I’ve taught hundreds of young people. Maybe into the thousands. But something about Jack just…touched me. He was so wounded and he tried desperately not to show it. I knew what his childhood must have been like, growing up with an…unstable mother like Bethany Lange.”

  “She was more than unstable, Mom. She suffered from schizophrenia.”

  “Yes. You should have known her before her mental illness started to manifest itself. She was just one of those beautiful spirits, you know? Everyone loved her.”

  She seemed wistful here, and Maura let the silence continue until her curiosity swelled. “Your feud with Harry?” she finally prompted.

  “Oh. Right. Well, I had Jack in my English class that terrible spring when Bethany committed suicide. I tried to go easy on him with assignments, but he insisted on filling every one. My heart was just breaking for him. Do you know, he only missed one day of class, to go to her funeral.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Something soft and tender fluttered in her chest as she pictured him lost and grieving for his mother but determined to focus on his goals.

  “In one of our last assignments, I allowed the students to write an essay about anything they chose. Jack wrote this really heartbreaking piece about watching a beautiful bird trapped in a thicket of thorns, trying desperately to free itself, beating its wings bloody in the effort. He had tried to help but the bird had pecked and pecked at him and refused to let him close—obviously a metaphor for his relationship with his mother. He seemed so troubled that I decided—foolishly now, I can see that—to show it to Harry. I thought maybe he would, I don’t know, make sure Jack received grief counseling or something to assure him Bethany’s suicide wasn’t his fault.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t respond well.”

  Mary Ella scoffed. “He laughed. Can you believe that? The essay fairly dripped with his son’s pain and sadness, and that bastard laughed. He said it was a good thing Jack didn’t fancy himself a writer and had an architecture scholarship instead, because it was a bunch of sentimental garbage. The bird was weak and would never have survived anyway, even if Jack could have figured out a way to help it.”

  And Maura had to sit across the dinner table from the man. She fought anger and revulsion. “And you’ve hated him ever since.”

  “Jack was a kindhearted boy. He took after Bethany in that respect. It broke my heart, the way Harry treated him. Everyone in town knew that, to build his ski resort, he shamefully used her mental illness to break the land trust she had set up for Jack.”

  “Why didn’t anyone do anything about it?”

  “Without Jack here to fight for himself, what could we do? He walked away from the whole situation, and nobody else had any legal standing to reinstate the trust. And if you want the truth, most everyone took the cowardly way and let Harry and William Beaumont do what they wanted. Hope’s Crossing was dying, our young people leaving, and people were eager for any way to keep that from happening. Like it or not, Harry offered salvation of a sort.”

  At what cost, though? Good or bad, Hope’s Crossing had been forever changed by the ski resort and the resulting growth and development.

  Before she could answer her mother, Mary Ella’s expression sharpened on someone who had just entered the store at Maura’s back.

  Maura turned at the sudden puzzlement in her gaze, and tension suddenly coiled inside her. Laura Beaumont, Genevieve’s mother, was stalking toward them and she did not look like she was shopping for the latest bestseller.
Her usually perfect hair was sticking out in strange directions, and she was missing the immaculate makeup that was as much a part of her as her own skin.

  As she drew closer, she seemed to wobble a little, and Maura picked up the definite odor of eau de liquor.

  She drew in a breath. She had no fight with Laura, she reminded herself. For months after the accident, she had hated the whole Beaumont family, but after Charlie’s sentencing hearing, when the whole twisted truth about the accident had emerged, most of her fury had abated. She tried to tolerate Laura during their brief social interactions, mostly by not dwelling on the fact that Laura had wanted her son to completely escape punishment for his impaired driving, which had caused Layla’s death and Taryn’s severe injuries.

  “Hi, Laura. Can I help you find something?”

  “Yes. Where’s the little tramp?” she demanded loudly, her words slurred at the edges.

  Beside her, Maura could feel Mary Ella tense, and any hope she might have stupidly held that she could avoid a confrontation with the Beaumonts flew out the window. This was going to be a scene, and probably an ugly one.

  “The brilliant Charlie Chaplin silent movie?” she asked in a bright voice, deliberately misunderstanding. “I don’t carry it. I’m sorry. Our DVD section is pretty small. Perhaps you can find it online. Just so you know, it’s actually called The Tramp, not The Little Tramp, though many people get confused.”

  Mrs. Beaumont blinked at her, trying to process that. “I’m not looking for a movie, you idiot. I want to talk to your whore of a daughter. She’s ruined everything!”

  And there went her temper. Maura dug her nails into her palms to keep from smacking the other woman and tossing her out into the rainy afternoon. “Okay, this is the part where you’re going to apologize for calling my daughter ugly names, and then leave my store.”

  “I won’t! Where is she? I hope she’s proud of herself. Three weeks. Three more weeks and my Genevieve would have been Mrs. Sawyer Danforth of the Denver Danforths. Do you know how long we’ve been planning this damn wedding?”

  Apparently Sawyer had found the stones to tell Genevieve about his indiscretion. And apparently Gen had found the even bigger stones to either postpone the wedding—again—or back out of it altogether.

  For Genevieve’s sake, Maura hoped she had broken it off completely and sent Sawyer “Keep It In Your Pants” Danforth on his merry way. She understood indiscretion and that people made mistakes, but if a man couldn’t be faithful during an engagement—when he was supposed to be completely enamored with his chosen bride to the exclusion of all else—what were the chances he would remain faithful after the vows were exchanged?

  “Wait. The wedding’s off?” Mary Ella asked, her expression wholly befuddled.

  “Yes, it’s off! How could she go through with marrying him after she found out he supposedly got the stupid little bitch pregnant?”

  Mary Ella’s jaw sagged, and Maura felt a twinge of guilt for not having told her, but she hadn’t felt it was her secret to share yet. Not even with her mother.

  “Last I heard,” she said coolly, “he was claiming he couldn’t be the father and that Sage must have slept with dozens of men at college.”

  She didn’t add that, when Sage had reported that part of their conversation, Jack had wanted to climb the stairs at the lodge and rip his head off. It had taken both of them to talk him down.

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Laura Beaumont snarled. “But the fact that he might be the father was apparently enough for Gen to call off the wedding. Where is she? I want to ask her what the hell she was thinking to ruin my daughter’s life! She knew he was engaged, the sneaky little bitch. I bet she slept with him on purpose, didn’t she, and probably poked holes in the condom too. She recognized a money train when she saw it, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass who she might hurt in the process.”

  So much for the gracious society matron, doling out her patronage around town like freaking Queen Elizabeth. Apparently Laura was a mean drunk. Who knew?

  As Maura saw it, she had a couple of choices. She could take the other woman on right now—and probably chew her up and spit her out. Or she could try to deflect Laura’s anger and in the process protect her child.

  Sage was the important one here. She wouldn’t put it past Laura to track Sage down at their house or, worse, at one of her friends’ houses for a confrontation, and that was the last thing Maura wanted. Better to nip this in the bud now by using the power card—the only person Laura Beaumont and her husband feared.

  “Sage isn’t here right now. I’m sorry. She’s probably at home dressing for the dinner we’re having shortly with her grandfather. You know Harry. He’s so impatient. He wouldn’t want us to be late.”

  She blinked like a big, crazy-haired owl. “Harry?”

  She deserved to be struck by lightning for shamelessly using Harry this way, but just now she would do anything necessary to protect her child. “Harry Lange. Oh, I just assumed everyone in town knew. Harry’s son, Jackson, is Sage’s father. They’ve recently reestablished their relationship. It’s really been heartwarming to see.”

  Beside her, Mary Ella cleared her throat, and Maura prayed she wouldn’t say anything.

  As for Laura, she stared at the two of them, brow furrowed as if she had just stumbled onto a stage and discovered she was the star of a play she’d never rehearsed. “Uh, really? I…hadn’t heard.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s not something we’ve necessarily been trying to keep a secret, but we haven’t exactly put an ad in the paper or anything. Harry and Sage are becoming quite close.” This was a blatant lie, though Sage had told her and Jack about going to his penthouse apartment the other night at the lodge. If this would protect her daughter, she didn’t care how many lies she had to tell.

  “I…see.”

  Laura visibly withered, all her bluff and bluster trickling away. For one brief, preposterous second, she actually felt a little sorry for the mayor’s wife, used to pushing her weight around town and making everyone accede to her wishes. Harry was the only person she couldn’t afford to offend.

  Though she had little reason to be compassionate to the other woman, she decided perhaps a little sympathy was called for in this situation. She called these little impulses toward unsolicited goodness her What Would Claire Do? moments. Her new sister-in-law was the most sincerely generous person she knew, almost to a fault.

  Maura always figured she couldn’t go wrong if she tried to guess how Claire would behave in a given situation and then attempted to emulate that. Right now, she figured Claire would dig deeply for a little kindness, no matter how difficult.

  After an awkward moment, she reached forward and squeezed Laura’s fingers. “I’m very sorry about the wedding. I know how much effort you and Genevieve have put into making it perfect. From everything I’ve heard, it was going to be exquisite. Perhaps she and Sawyer can still work things out.”

  Laura closed her eyes, her chin trying its Botox-tight best to wobble a little. “I doubt it. She’s so livid with him. I’ve never seen her like this. Her father and I talked to her until three in the morning, and she just won’t listen to reason. She said she won’t marry a man she can’t trust, and she’s convinced she’ll never be able to trust Sawyer now.”

  Good for Gen, she wanted to say, but she didn’t think Laura would appreciate the sentiment. She thought of the few times she had seen the happy couple over the past few months, and the random vibe she thought she had picked up that perhaps Genevieve Beaumont wasn’t as thrilled about her upcoming nuptials as everyone else.

  Maybe Gen had been looking for an excuse to derail the wedding crazy train. Sage had given her that, in spades.

  “We have to let our children make their own decisions, don’t we?” Mary Ella said softly. She stepped forward to pull Laura into an embrace that was much more genuine than anything Maura could have provided right then. “As much as we might wish we can hold their hand and guide everything th
ey do, a good mother knows her job is to arm her children with the courage and the capability to make the tough choices for their own lives, even if we don’t think they’re the best ones for them.”

  “It’s so hard,” Laura wailed.

  “I know, my dear. I know. Did you drive here? Why don’t you let me give you a ride home. Once you’ve had time to rest and talk to William, I’m sure things won’t seem so dark.”

  “I s’pose that would be okay.”

  “Sure it will. Come on.”

  “Thank you,” Maura mouthed to her mother.

  “Oh, you’re going to make it up to me,” Mary Ella murmured in a voice that likely didn’t carry to Laura. “Apparently you left a few juicy tidbits of information out of our conversation earlier. I expect a full report after dinner tonight. You can even text me during dinner if anybody starts throwing knives.”

  “What knives?” Laura asked in confusion.

  “Nothing, my dear,” Mary Ella said, as she tucked her arm around Mrs. Beaumont and walked her to the door of the bookstore. “Let’s get you home. There’s a girl.”

  After her mother and the mayor’s wife left the store, Maura stood for a moment, watching them walk to Mary Ella’s car, wondering whatever had happened to her quiet life.

  * * *

  WHY WAS SHE ALWAYS late?

  She heard on the radio once that a person who was perpetually tardy was trying in a passive-aggressive way to control everyone around him or her. She didn’t care about controlling anybody. She just figured she had too blasted much to do in a day.

  After Laura’s little scene at the bookstore, Maura had to scramble to catch up with the rest of her day, and she finally managed to leave the store about twenty minutes past the time she should have in order to get ready for Harry’s dinner.

  She drove home just a little faster than strictly legal and pulled into the driveway with fifteen minutes to spare before Jack was due to pick them up.

  “I’m home,” she called out when she raced inside, and dumped her bag and her keys on the hall table. “Just give me a second and I’ll be ready.”