“Sure.” Jesse waved and went through the open door, and Stef followed long enough to be hospitable.
“That was nice of Jesse to stop in,” she said when she came back inside and closed the door behind her.
“His timing could have been a little better,” Wade said as he walked to her and wrapped his arms around her.
Steffie looked into his eyes and asked, “Wade, who was Austin’s mother?”
The silence was so complete that they could have heard a pin dropping on the second floor.
Wade sighed. He’d planned for this. He’d even rehearsed it, but now all he could say was, “Her name was Robin Kennedy.”
“That’s a good start,” Steffie told him. “I’m assuming there’s more?”
“The main reason I came by tonight was to tell you about her. Well, that and to bring the ladder.” He cleared his throat. “Mostly, I wanted you to know about her. It’s a long, complicated story, Stef.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded, and with his heart in his throat, he took a seat on the hall stairs. He wanted Stef to know everything, but it wasn’t an easy story to tell.
“Wait one second.” Stef disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with their water bottles. She handed one to him and said, “Okay, now you can start.”
“Robin was the first person I met when I arrived on campus my freshman year. We were in the same dorm. She was pretty and lively and just so smart and so much fun.” He smiled at the memory. “Did you ever meet someone you had an instant connection with?”
Steffie nodded.
“Well, that was how it was with Robin. We were best friends. All four years. We shared an apartment for three of those years.” He glanced down at her and thought he saw her flinch. “It was never a romantic relationship, Stef. When I say we were best friends, that’s exactly what I mean.”
He took the top off the water and took a sip. Talking about it was so hard.
“When Robin was a senior in high school, her parents were involved in an auto accident with some big country-music star who was driving drunk. Both Robin’s parents were killed. There was a huge insurance settlement—eight figures. Robin was an only child.”
“So the entire settlement went to her.”
Wade nodded. “So four years later, senior year, it’s getting close to college graduation, and neither of us knows what we want to do. We talked about going into business together, and to make a long story short, we decided we were going to make beer. Of course, neither of us had a clue about how to go about it, so we had a lot to learn. But we both studied up and we talked to other people who’d started their own breweries, and KenneMac Brews was born.”
He began to peel the label from the water bottle.
“But your company did well, right? I heard your beer won awards and was written up in magazines.”
“Yeah, we did. We made a great product, we made a profit, and we were having one hell of a good time.”
“So what happened?”
“Robin had been dating this guy toward the end of senior year. He seemed nice enough.” Wade picked at another strip of paper from the label. “But after graduation, he just sort of disappeared. Then about three years ago, he popped up. Said he’d been in the navy. Anyway, he and Robin started dating again; the next thing I know, she’s madly in love and asking me if I have any objections to bringing him into the company.” Wade shrugged. “He said his degree was in business management, so it seemed like a good fit. I was spending more and more time actually brewing beer and Robin was doing the marketing and selling, so it seemed like the right time to bring in someone who could keep the books and pay the taxes. Besides, who was I to stand in the way of her happiness? And she was happy, Stef. She really loved this guy. She was talking about marrying him. Even asked me if I’d give her away at the wedding.”
Stef turned all the way around to look up at him. “I’m sensing something really bad coming right about now. Tell me he didn’t—”
“He did. Sucked the company dry. He’d even talked her into letting him ‘invest’ some of her personal money.”
“I’m guessing the only thing he invested in was himself.”
Wade nodded.
“That bastard. Poor Robin.” Stef frowned. “Damn. That just sucks.”
“It gets worse. A few weeks after she realized he’d embezzled from the company and had taken off with a good-size chunk of her personal funds, Robin found out she was pregnant.”
“Austin.”
“Yes, Austin. Right from the start, she wanted to keep her baby, but she was bothered about what to put on the birth certificate. She didn’t want to put the real father’s name on it. She didn’t want this guy to ever know that he’d fathered her child. But at the same time, she didn’t want to put ‘unknown’ on it either. So we decided that she’d put my name down as Austin’s father.”
“So you’re on Austin’s birth certificate as his father?” She seemed to mull that over. “Wade, that’s really huge.”
“She was my best friend,” he reminded her, as if that explained everything. To his mind, it did. “Our plan back then was to regroup and restart the business. We figured we’d made a go of it once, we could do it again. And then, when Robin was eight months pregnant, she found out that she had a really rare, aggressive cancer. The doctors wanted to put her into the hospital and begin treating her that day, but when they told her that the treatments would kill her child, she refused. They’d told her the treatments would only buy her an extra couple of months—maybe a year—and she didn’t think her baby’s entire life was worth a few months of hers.”
“Dear God.” Steffie shook her head. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to make that kind of choice. Did she get any treatment after Austin was born?”
He nodded. “She hung in there for as long as she could, but it was pretty clear to everyone that it was too little too late. She went down pretty fast.”
Wade’s throat hurt from the strain of trying to maintain control, but he’d gone this far, he might as well tell her everything.
“The week before Beck’s wedding, they decided to stop her treatments. As sick as she was, all she could think about was her son. There was no question that Austin would stay with me, but she became obsessed with the idea that somehow the guy who fathered him would find out and come for him and take him away. She was literally terrified that Austin might have to live with this creep someday. So I told her I’d marry her so they’d both have my name and there’d never be any reason for anyone to think that he wasn’t my son. This was the week after I got back from St. Dennis. The day after we got married, she began to slip away for good.”
Steffie got up and went into the kitchen. When she came back, she was wiping her eyes with a tissue and carrying the box under her arm. “That’s the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“Stef, Robin was dying and she needed to be able to die in peace. She’d made a huge sacrifice so that Austin could be born. She needed to know that I’d always take care of him.”
“That’s a hell of a commitment for a single guy to take on.” She blew her nose. “One hell of a sacrifice.”
“I’d been taking care of Austin since he was born, so it wasn’t any big change. And, Stef, the one thing you need to know is that I really do love him. As far as I’m concerned, he is my son. There’s no sacrifice here.”
“This other guy, where’s he now?”
“I have no idea, and frankly, I don’t care. I don’t believe in looking for trouble.”
“He never knew about Austin?”
“No. The shit hit the fan when she realized he’d cleaned out the company. I don’t know who she was angrier with—him for his duplicity, or herself for making it so easy for him. By the time she found out she was pregnant, he was gone.”
“But you reported it to the police, right?”
“Yes, but Robin was running out of steam fast. We gave the police all the infor
mation we had, but since this guy hadn’t used his real name, they weren’t able to track him. I’ll probably never know who he really was. Everything he’d told us about himself was a lie, all fabricated so he could get close to Robin.”
“Why?” she asked, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, duh. Robin was the beneficiary of a very large insurance settlement. I’m guessing that because of the high profile of the driver of the car, the whole thing made the news.”
“Right.”
“So all along he’d been setting her up. That son of a bitch.” Steffie’s hands fisted. “To think he could just walk away like that. Damn.”
“Yeah. By the time the police came back and told us they’d hit a wall, Robin had no interest in looking for the guy. Actually, she was praying they’d never find him.”
“Because of the baby.”
Wade nodded. “At that point, she didn’t care about the money or the company. All she cared about was keeping Austin safe.”
“So he got off scot-free, and Robin died.” Stef frowned, her anger apparent.
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“You lost your company and everything because of this creep?”
“We sold all our equipment to one of our competitors so that we could pay the taxes that he’d never paid. Robin insisted on liquidating so that there wouldn’t be any medical bills left for me to deal with.”
“That just stinks, Wade. Sometimes I just can’t believe that there are people in this world who are so horrible. Who just go through life destroying other people and not giving a damn.”
They sat on the steps without talking, Steffie’s arm still resting on his knee.
“Anyway, that’s why I had to leave Beck’s wedding reception so abruptly,” Wade told her. “Our upstairs neighbor had been taking care of Robin and Austin that weekend, and she called me around eleven that night to ask me to come back.”
“I remember you had a call.”
“I didn’t want to leave, because …”
She looked up at him. “Because …?”
“Because being with you that night … you were so beautiful and so …” He tried to find the right word to describe what she’d been to him that night. Finally, he had to settle for, “Steffie.”
She smiled. “So is ‘Steffie’ an adjective now?”
“You were just so you. Fun and lighthearted and so beautiful … did I say ‘beautiful’?”
“You did, but it’s okay if you repeat yourself.”
“Well, you were. I felt as if I’d been transported to another planet that night. Music and dancing and a beautiful woman to share them with.” He bit his lower lip. “I hated to leave, Stef, but I had to get back to Robin. I felt guilty enough for having left her, and I felt guilty for having such a terrific time with you when she was suffering so much.”
“I bet Robin would have been very happy to know that you had a good time, even for just those few hours,” Stef said.
“Yeah, but still …” His voice trailed off.
“I’ll bet if she were here, she’d be really pissed at you for thinking so little of her.” She moved up a step to sit next to him. “I’ll bet she understood how much you’d sacrificed for her even more than you did.”
“It never felt like a sacrifice, Stef.”
“I wonder whatever happened to the Wade MacGregor I knew when I was a kid,” she mused. “You know, the one who almost got kicked out school about five times every year from elementary school right through twelfth grade? The one who used to race his aunt’s Mercedes on the road to Ballard in the middle of the night? The one who broke more hearts in St. Dennis than—”
“All right. Enough.” Wade laughed in spite of himself.
“It was a wonderful thing you did for your friend.” She paused. “What you’re still doing for her.”
“Stef, can you please keep this to yourself? It isn’t something that I want out there. Dallas and Berry know, of course, but no one else.”
“Grant?”
He nodded. “Right. Grant knows, but Dallas has threatened him with all manner of terrible things if he tells anyone.”
“He wouldn’t tell,” she said softly. “Your secret is safe, Wade.”
“I know. I wanted you to know what really happened, but I don’t want it to get around.”
“Got it.” She pretended to zip her lips.
She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said simply. “For telling me about Robin. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her. I think I would have liked her.”
He nodded. “She would have liked you, too.”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know about you, but I feel as if I’ve had my guts ripped out. How do you walk around with all that inside you? It must hurt like hell.”
“It’s what is,” he said simply.
“Thank you.” She leaned over, kissed him softly on one side of his mouth. “Thank you for trusting me.”
They sat with her head on his shoulder for a few long moments, Wade too wrung out to say much more. Finally, she said, “I just heard the church bells from St. Mary’s. They ring out the hour. It’s eleven, and I have a very early morning.”
“I’ll help you close up the house,” he told her, but made no attempt to move.
“That’s not necessary, I can—”
“I’m not going to leave you here alone. You never know who’s going to be passing by and see the lights on …”
“That didn’t bother you, that Jesse stopped by …?” She stood and brushed the dust off the seat of her jeans.
“Nah.” He dismissed the thought.
She smiled as if she knew it for the lie that it was.
They gathered up the pieces of wallpaper that had been stripped and filled several large plastic bags. Wade waited in the front hall while she turned off the kitchen and dining-room lights.
“All set?” she asked when she came back into the foyer, and he nodded.
They walked out together and he waited while she locked the front door. At the end of the walk, he pushed open the gate and it creaked loudly, as if it were complaining.
“I’ll do something about that,” he told her. “It sounds like it’s screaming in pain.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
He saw her to her car, and kissed her before she got in. He stood at his own driver’s-side door and watched her drive away, her hand emerging from the window to give a little wave. He sat behind the steering wheel in the Jeep and felt raw inside. He wondered if there would ever come a time when thinking about Robin didn’t make him feel sick.
He’d said her name aloud tonight, which was something he almost never did anymore. It felt as if he were invoking the dead, and after all Robin had been through, he wanted nothing more than for her to rest in peace.
His mind went back to that moment when his lips brushed against Steffie’s. He’d felt a spark, he could swear he had, a quick little charge that had gone right through him. He reminded himself that kissing her had not been part of the game plan for the night. Talking—explaining—that had been the plan. But once he’d found himself that close to her, there hadn’t been any conscious thought or any decision. He’d just been drawn to her, and while his brain may have been thinking I want to talk to you about Austin’s mother, his mouth had been thinking kiss.
Moth to flame …
He turned the key in the ignition and drove back to Berry’s on all side roads, meandering around town because he needed a little time alone. He sensed that he’d taken a step in his relationship with Steffie that night on more than one level. He just wasn’t sure he knew where they were heading. In another week, he’d be off to Connecticut. So where, he asked himself, did that leave her?
SO how’d it go last night?” Vanessa knocked once on Scoop’s back door before letting herself in and making herself at home.
“How’d what go?” Steffie frowned, her concentration broken. “He
re. Taste this and tell me what you think. Too much vanilla? Not enough?”
She handed Vanessa a spoonful of ice cream the color of buttermilk.
“Oh, yum!” Vanessa’s eyes widened. “What is this?”
“You like it?”
“Love it. What’s in it?”
“Honey and lavender. I’ve been having a devil of a time balancing the flavors.” She picked up a spoon and swiped a bit for herself. “I’ve been experimenting with different flavors of honey and different strains of lavender, and I don’t know which I like best.”
She tasted again.
“Still not right,” she mumbled.
“Lavender? As in the herb? The flower?” Vanessa asked.
“Right.”
“No wonder it smells so good.”
“I’m more concerned with the way it tastes.”
“It’s delicious, Stef. It’s not like anything I’ve ever had before. You’re not going through all this for the ice cream for Saturday’s run, are you?”
“Nah. That’s strictly a vanilla and chocolate day. If I tried to do something too complicated for that many people, I’d have a breakdown. It’s been stressful enough trying to come up with this.” She held up her plastic spoon and took one last lick before tossing it into the trash.
“Well, what’s this for? Flavor of the month?”
“Dallas’s birthday. Grant asked me to make a special ice-cream flavor just for her. What do you give the woman who has everything if not her own ice-cream flavor?”
“How romantic is that?” Vanessa leaned on the end of the counter and sighed. “And you just invented this, just like that?”
“Not really invented. I found a ton of recipes on the Internet. What I’m doing is modifying what I found.” Stef grinned. “Perfecting, if you will.”
“And I will.” Vanessa picked up a clean spoon and took another swipe at the container. “It’s a beautiful idea—not to mention an extremely tasty one.”
“Well, I hope she likes it. It took me forever to come up with the concept. I mean, when you look at Dallas, what do you notice first?”
Vanessa mulled over the question for a moment, then began to nod her head. “Her eyes. Lavender eyes. Lavender ice cream.” She grinned broadly. “Genius!”
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