The Good Provider

by Debra Salonen

  She dug an aspirin out of her purse and took it with the last of her water. A Family Fairy, she thought, shaking her head. What child didn’t at some point in his or her life wish to trade in their parents? But what William didn’t seem to take into account was the fact that regardless of his parents’ failings, he’d turned out pretty damn special. He was kind, compassionate and successful. His parents couldn’t have been all bad, right?

  She pushed the question aside. William’s issues—whatever they were—belonged to him. She had enough to worry about, and she didn’t need any extra reminders that parents were fallible human beings whose actions left lasting impressions on their children.

  The remainder of the trip sped by with such clickety-clack speed that Daria halfway wondered if fate was finally on her side. Within an hour of landing, William’s rented van was pulling into her grandfather’s driveway.

  “Look, girls, isn’t Great-Grandpa’s garden pretty in winter?” she asked, sitting forward eagerly.

  “It looks straight out of a storybook,” Miranda said. “No wonder Great-Grandpa didn’t want to come to California for Christmas.”

  Daria was pleased to hear such an upbeat observation from her daughter. Her improved attitude was probably helped in part due to Daria’s promise that Miranda could go online and check her social networking page once they were settled at Cal’s.

  “Can we build a snowman, Mommy? And a snow dog, too?”

  Daria and William both laughed. She liked the way he laughed—as if mildly surprised and a wee bit embarrassed about expressing his feelings so blatantly. She had a feeling he regretted his candid disclosures about his childhood, too. She didn’t plan to discuss his father’s health in front of the girls, but she did want him to know that she wasn’t judging him—whatever he decided about visiting his family was William’s decision alone.

  “Seeing the smoke coming from Cal’s chimney is like having a load of bricks lifted from my shoulders. I truly can’t thank you enough, William. For everything.”

  The words sounded trite and superficial, but she meant them. How did you thank a person for saving your life—or at least, for helping you to save yourself?

  He shifted into park and undid his seat belt. “Last one in the snowbank is a hard-boiled egg.”

  Miranda and Hailey looked at each other and burst out laughing. “You’re so silly, William,” Hailey said.

  “What?” he deadpanned, eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “It’s rotten egg,” Miranda said. “And you are so it,” she added with a little shriek as she opened the door and dashed away.

  Hailey had a bit more trouble with her seat belt, but a moment later she was on the run as well. William followed, pelting them with loose, hastily packed snowballs.

  Daria watched through the windshield, frozen by regret and missed opportunities. This was the sort of spontaneous fun she’d always wished for her children. How had she managed to find the exact opposite? Had she been blinded by promises of a story that, in hindsight, was too perfect to be real?

  A rapping sound startled her out of her reverie. “Grandpa,” she cried, opening her door to the gnomelike man in the heavy down parka and Cossack hat waiting to hug her.

  “Hello, dear heart,” Cal said, squeezing her with more strength than she’d expected. “I’m so happy you’re here. Come in, come in.”

  Daria pulled back to look at him. Her stomach flip-flopped. She couldn’t point to one single sign, but Grandpa Cal had aged since she’d last seen him.

  Which made sense. He’d lost the dear woman he’d loved with all his heart. And I wasn’t here for the funeral. I wasn’t here for him.

  For a moment, hatred twisted like a flaming dagger in her belly as she remembered the fight she’d had with Bruce. “Daria, she’s not your real grandmother, and I need you here,” he’d argued. “I’ve had this trip to Alaska planned forever, and I promised Devon you’d handle the phones in my place. Come on, Daria. We agreed to this, remember?”

  Devon. A junior member of Congress facing a tough re-election bid. The old one-hand-washes-the-other sort of payback Bruce was famous for. She couldn’t remember ever agreeing to campaign for the man she could barely stand, but Bruce had nagged and hounded her until she couldn’t think. She’d given in, but two days after he’d left on his trip, she’d wound up in the hospital. And she’d contacted a lawyer the following week to set the wheels of this cumbrous process in motion.

  “Hi, Cal, good to see you again,” William said, sauntering up to where Daria and Cal were standing, heedless of the poorly thrown snowballs whizzing past him.

  “Girls, that’s enough. Come give your great-grandfather a hug and tell Mr. William goodbye.”

  The general chaos of kids and bags and snow made the leaving process easier than she’d expected. She felt a definite tenderness toward William stemming from the great favor he’d done them, but he wouldn’t let her try to convey her gratitude. “I was happy to help,” he said, getting into the van after sharing a quick, mostly impersonal hug. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check on those scones, but I’ll give you a ring in the morning before I leave. Take care, now.”

  She was a little piqued that he seemed to brush aside the magnitude of his gift so casually, but her hurt feelings didn’t last long because it soon became obvious that she had much bigger worries to consider.

  Within minutes of unpacking, Miranda demanded access to Cal’s computer. “You promised, Mom,” she reminded Daria.

  Unfortunately, Cal’s computer turned out to be an ancient hand-me-down that was too slow to allow her access to any of her sites. This necessitated a trip into Sentinel Pass to use the computers the producers of Sentinel Passtime had donated to the citizens of the town.

  Daria went in with Miranda and used another computer to contact her attorney. Using instant messaging, the two were able to converse without Miranda being privy, but what her lawyer had to say left Daria even further on edge.

  Apparently, Bruce had called the woman that morning and threatened to have her disbarred. Not only had he cancelled their meeting, he’d sent their divorce papers back by courier—shredded like confetti. “Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe,” her attorney wrote. “This man has anger management issues. I’d testify to that in court.”

  Safe. Back at her grandfather’s, the word lingered in the back of her mind as she ate a bowl of Cal’s hearty beef stew and saw to Hailey’s bath. Later, the four of them played a somewhat subdued game of Monopoly until it was time for bed.

  Finally, when both girls were asleep, she was able to talk to her grandfather. “I’m so sorry about all this, Grandpa.”

  “Now, now, I told you before, I couldn’t sleep at night knowing you were living under that man’s thumb. I’m so glad you made your move. But, Daria,” he said gravely, “as much as I hate to do this, I need to show you something.”

  She followed him to the built-in desk area in the kitchen where his phone and a small, older-model answering machine rested. “I know you’re tired and probably emotionally exhausted, but you need to listen to this.”

  The somberness of his tone made her heart plummet. “Bruce?”

  “He started calling yesterday afternoon. I stopped picking up after the first few times. He left a dozen or so messages. The last one was so bad, I unplugged the phone and the machine.” Her grandfather’s hand shook as he pressed the play button. “William’s right. Nobody should have to listen to this sort of filth.”

  Even with the volume as low as it would go, Bruce’s fury echoed off the walls of her grandfather’s little home. “You tell that f-ing wife of mine that she is going to rot in hell for this. Does ‘until death do us part’ ring a bell? She’s damn well going to find out. Sooner rather than later, if I have anything to say about it.”

  She hit Stop. “Oh, Grandpa. I wish you hadn’t heard that.”

  Cal made a pooh-poohing motion. “Don’t you fret about my feelings. What I want to know is how we’
re going to keep that man from killing you.”

  Taken at face value, Bruce’s words were ugly and intimidating, and Daria knew she should be scared. But the thinking part of her head recognized the gift she’d been given. Leverage. In the court of public opinion, this tape was gold.

  “Would you mind if I left for a few minutes, Grandpa? I’d like to take this to William for safekeeping. I’ve been telling everybody that Bruce is a bully, not a killer, but in case I’m wrong, I’d like to know the proof of his threats could be used against him. And maybe knowing the tape is in the hands of an agent with big-time Hollywood connections might get Bruce to back off.”

  Cal’s eyes opened wide with surprise and he let out a low whistle. “Releasing that tape on one of those celebrity talk shows wouldn’t do his political career much good, would it?”

  She had no intention of doing that. Her daughters would suffer the most if Daria and Bruce took this war public, but she could make threats, too. She’d learned from a pro.

  Cal patted her shoulder. “You’re a pretty smart girl. Especially since you wised up and decided to leave that SOB.” He grabbed a key ring from a hook near the door. “Take my car. And lock up when you get back. No sense taking chances.”

  She agreed wholeheartedly.

  But if that were true, then what was she doing going out in the middle of the night to see William, a man who interested her in a way that was anything but safe?

  CHAPTER SIX

  WILLIAM STOOD at the large picture window of Libby’s living room a moment longer, then sighed and resumed pacing. He was restless, antsy and on edge. He didn’t know why. He’d crossed every to-do note off his list, including calling Lucas.

  “Strep throat, not mono,” his copilot had told him moments earlier. “I’m catching a ride home with some friends in the morning, man. Sorry I had to bail on you like that.”

  William had assured him he’d call the next time he needed a copilot and they’d hung up.

  Good news. All was right with the world.

  Or not.

  He stopped beside the large oak rocking chair he’d been sitting in earlier. His phone sat on a small round table beside the chair, charger plugged into the wall. “Just get it over with and ring, damn it,” he muttered under his breath.

  He’d left a message on Notty’s service explaining why he wasn’t coming to England anytime soon. “Business,” William had claimed as an excuse. “But I appreciate you keeping me in the loop, as they say. Until later, then.”

  William knew full well his uncle would call, with no regard to the time difference. In fact, William suspected that Notty enjoyed waking William out of a deep, sound sleep.

  Not that such a sleep was likely tonight.

  William felt guilty. The way he had as a young boy when he’d broken a window in the carriage house at Byron Manor, his family’s country estate. With neither of his parents present, he figured he’d get away with the small transgression. Who would know or hold him accountable?

  He hadn’t counted on his conscience betraying him. After a sleepless night that followed a wildly unlikely dream where an innocent child was convicted of the crime and died at the hands of a cruel jailor, William had marched into the kitchen to confess all to Bea, their live-in housekeeper, who was busy making breakfast.

  She’d opened her pudgy arms to comfort him. But, wisely, she hadn’t swept the matter aside, as his parents might have. She made him work with the handyman she hired to clean up the mess and pay for the new glass with money from his piggy bank.

  “Practical absolution,” Bea had called her philosophy.

  A simple woman who never traveled beyond the shores of her beloved homeland, Bea had lost her one true love in the Great War and never married. In a way, she’d provided William with his most tangible sense of family. Sadly, she’d passed away from a bout of influenza the following year. From that point on, his world had consisted of boarding school schedules punctuated by visits to his parents, either in London or wherever his mother was volunteering at the time.

  He found it ironic that while his parents had provided him a broad, enviable worldview, they’d been unable to give him the one thing he’d craved most—a real home. The lands around Byron Manor, so-named for a supposed visit the famous poet made to the place, had been sold off to finance political campaigns and missions to various war-torn countries.

  The house itself still belonged to the family, but until a few days ago it was rarely occupied for longer than a weekend or two. Now, apparently, both of William’s parents were in residence. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but figured he’d find out soon enough when Notty called.

  To kill time and keep his mind off Daria and her family—Was she okay? Had she heard from her thick-skulled ex-husband? Were the girls happily settled at Cal’s?—he walked to the liquor cabinet where he knew Cooper stocked a fine Irish whiskey and poured himself a glass. The first sip burned all the way down, the second not so much. He was about to take a third when his phone rang.

  “Hullo, Notty.”

  “William. You’ve read my e-mail, I assume.”

  “I did. Father in the country? That came as a bit of a surprise. Is this the only way to keep him from his work?”

  “Quite the contrary. He resigned last week. Didn’t you hear? Made quite a splash in the press over here. Someone leaked news of his cancer and…well, it seemed the most political way to handle things. Forgive the pun.”

  William was momentarily speechless. His father’s work had been the most important thing in his life—including his son.

  “Your mother thought the clean air would be good for his breathing,” Notty said. “They’re getting on jolly well, William. You could see for yourself if you weren’t a complete and utter toad, too wrapped up in your own affairs to take the proffered olive branch and come home.”

  A toad? What am I? Eight? “I haven’t said I won’t return, Notty. I simply can’t give you a date. I’m in the Black Hills at the moment, which is set in the middle of the continent and not a particularly convenient hopping off point to cross the pond.”

  Notty made a skeptical sound. “Are you or are you not a pilot with his own jet?”

  William’s face heated the way it always did when he was caught in a lie. “I am one-third owner of a plane,” he said stiffly. “My partners are expecting me back in L.A. tomorrow.”

  Shane and Cooper would understand if William parked the plane and booked a commercial flight to London, but he wasn’t ready to do that. He wasn’t sure why. Stubbornness? Maybe. He’d been told many times—usually by his father—that he’d inherited his mother’s rigid sense of right and wrong.

  “There’s never any gray area where your mother is concerned,” Father liked to say. “She would have made an excellent Knight of the Round Table.”

  “How bad is it, Notty? Honestly. Is Father going to die in the next few days?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” Notty answered, his voice raspier than usual. “But the doctors aren’t optimistic about his chances of beating this. And I honestly don’t know how long he’ll keep trying. It’s very difficult to stay positive when you’re puking your guts up.”

  That same sense of guilt from his childhood swept over him. But a thought suddenly struck him—the only reason he’d broken that window in the first place was because he’d been angry at his father. Father had promised to help William with a science project that weekend, but instead, had canceled his trip home—as he did more often than not—choosing to devote his attention to some legislation he felt deserved his time more than his son.

  “Do you know if he got the flowers I sent? And that book I ordered for him about coping with cancer?”

  Notty sighed heavily. “Yes. James got them both and was pathetically delighted because he had tangible proof of what a caring son he had,” he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

  “I will come, Notty.”

  “So you keep saying, but the proof is in the puddin
g as my old mum used to say. Not that she knew the first thing about cooking, mind you, but she did like a good custard.”

  William smiled. He was about to ask whether or not his own mother had had any luck finding a clinical trial for his father to join, but the lights of a car pulling into the driveway distracted him. “Someone’s here, Notty. I have to go. Tell Father I’ll call tomorrow. Bye for now.”

  He ended the call and plugged his phone back in seconds before the doorbell rang. He hurried to answer it, his mind racing through a very short list of possible visitors—beginning and ending with Daria Fontina.

  And there she was, shivering in the cold on the front porch. “Daria. Is everything okay?”

  “Hi,” she said, shifting her feet nervously on the freshly shoveled stoop. William had shoveled until he was dripping with sweat. Not his favorite thing to do, but the exercise had helped keep his mind off Daria. “I…is this a bad… Why didn’t I call?”

  She smacked her head with the heel of her gloved hand. “I guess I just reacted. Are you busy? Can we talk?”

  “Yes. No. Um…what was the question?”

  Her nose wrinkled in the cutest way. “Have you been drinking? Is there any left?”

  “Whiskey. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, definitely. Probably better for me than a sleeping pill, and at this point I’ll never get to sleep tonight without some help.”

  He stepped aside to let her enter. “Something has happened with your ex-husband.”

  She kicked off her boots and removed her coat and gloves before fishing a small black plastic box out of the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. “Bruce has snapped. He’s always had a temper, but he’s enough of a politician to make sure nothing damaging ever gets on tape. Until now.”

  He took the compact answering machine from her icy cold fingers and ushered her into the living room while she told him about Bruce’s vitriolic diatribes aimed first at Cal, then at her. “He said things no politician in their right mind would say on the record and…hello, these messages are time stamped and dated.”