by Nancy Gideon
Wishing for Bess to make her regular appearance so he could purge his heart of its relentless pain.
She hadn't shown by the time he finished his first or his second cup. To make the restless time pass faster, he opened his dad's ledger and began to read.
Times, dates, places, names all blurred together in his father's heavy scrawl. Occasional notes were penciled in the margins, reminders to place a bet on the first race, to pick up the truck from police impound, court dates, his anniversary. That made Zach pause, that hint of his father's sentimental side. Until he realized it wasn't his parents' anniversary date. Scowling he flipped through more pages of rambling notations.
Until one date, one fare, one destination brought his whole future crashing down upon him.
* * *
Bess didn't stop at the kitchen. By mid-morning, she had drop cloths on the dining room floor and was wrestling the bigger pieces of furniture away from the walls. Geraniums. It came to her during her fitful attempts at sleep. Salmon-colored paint and a border strip of colorful geraniums. Out with the dark, heavy antiques. In with rattan and brass. Off with the funeral parlor drapes. Up with miniblinds and cheery swags. A room filled with light. A house filled with life. A new life for Bess Carrey.
Freedom.
The means to deal in a circumspect way with her mother's betrayal.
She was up at five taking down curtains and washing woodwork. By the time Faith stumbled down at seven, she'd taken all the ugly china out of her mother's monstrous cabinet. Gordon Lake at the interstate antique store had once offered her mother six hundred dollars for the set. That would nest egg her renovations. The china, the heavy silver she was never allowed to use except on holidays, the dreary cabinet and sideboard crowding into a room already filled beyond comfortable capacity by a huge somber table and tapestried chairs; all of it up for bid. They weren't her. Never had been. They were reminders of silent meals consumed with perfect manners. Treasures to be hoarded but never enjoyed. The same way her mother had meant for her to spend her years.
No more.
Faith stared at her, not quite knowing what to make of this bustling woman who used to be her demure aunt. Bess gave her a chiding smile.
"Well, you're the one who suggested I change."
"I didn't expect it to be from PeeWee Herman to Arnold Schwarzenegger!"
"You don't approve?"
The teenager grinned. "Heck, yeah! Wait till I tell Mom. She'll accuse me of corrupting you."
"Grab a corner and help me drag this hideous beast away from the wall."
Between the two of them, they pushed the massive oak cabinet to allow walking space behind it, then leaned back rubbing sore muscles.
"Geez, this thing weighs a ton. I bet you didn't dust behind here very often," Faith complained, wincing as she rotated her shoulder.
"Okay, lightweight. If you're not going to help move furniture, pedal down to Peterson's and pick up that border strip we measured for yesterday. And have them mix paint to match. Al knows how much I need."
Grumbling about the waning days of her vacation, Faith shuffled out to the garage which had never held an automobile, to wheel out the mountain bike Bess had bought her that spring. She paused to wave before coasting down the driveway. Bess took the last sip of her tepid coffee and paid closer scrutiny to the cabinet.
It was in fine shape, a mammoth piece of workmanship made to last for several lifetimes. Using a cloth to wipe the cobwebbing from the back, she wondered how much Gordon would give for it, providing they could get the monster out of the house.
"Oh, great," she muttered as the cloth snagged on a loose tack causing part of the thin wood backing to crack. There went a percentage of the profit.
As she tried to salvage the situation by tacking the section back into place, her palm bumped a solid spot in the otherwise hollow space. Something was behind the thin veneer.
What would her mother have hidden behind her bulky china cupboard?
Curiosity became sudden clarity.
Something she didn't want easily found.
Without hesitation, Bess ripped the wood away, moving quickly to catch the shirt box that tumbled free. A box from a department store that had gone out of business ten years ago. Something shifted inside. Something heavy.
Bess hurried into the kitchen, holding the box away from her as if it held a ticking time bomb.
Perhaps it did.
She grabbed up a paring knife and began slicing through the heavily applied packing tape that sealed the top and bottom of the box together. As she slit the final side to free the lid, she hesitated. She knew what she thought the box contained but she couldn't be sure until she looked. And once she saw inside, nothing would ever be the same again. All her past perceptions would prove a lie.
Taking a breath, she jerked off the lid, letting it out in a sob as the morning sunlight dazzled though the triangular prisms. The pendulum weight nested in a bed of loose pages filled with the broken type from her mother's old manual machine.
Her mother killed Sam Crandall. The evidence shot rainbows of revelation across the newly papered walls and ceiling. And over the shadow of a man that suddenly appeared, large and unexpected, at her back door.
With an anxious start, she slammed the lid back over the box and stuffed it out of sight under the sink. Her hands shook. Her breathing rattled like a badly timed window fan.
A knock, crisp and precise.
Zach.
She yanked open the door, her anxiousness spilling her words out almost incoherently.
"Oh, Zach. I found it. You won't believe it where it was. I wasn't even looking, and it was right there the whole time. Come in and see—"
She'd grasped his forearm but didn't realize something was wrong until he pulled free with a sharp jerk.
"I didn't come here to talk about that." His voice rang flat and factual. Not his professional tone. This was something very different.
Only then did she look up and really see him. Her mouth closed with a snap. Nothing moved in Zach's expression. Nothing. His eyes were pale glaciers, cold, lifeless, devoid of any sign of warmth. Fear stabbed through her, fear and a truth she wasn't ready to recognize.
"Zach, what's wrong?"
"You tell me, Bess." Again, the slow, deadly calm, the clipped pronouncement of each syllable through fiercely clenched teeth. "Tell me something you should have told me a long, long time ago."
Panic immobilized her. Her mind refused to work, her body to respond. She could only stare up at him, lost in the savage sea of blue his eyes had become.
"Oh, Zach, I'm—"
He sucked a breath, and the wall of his composure crumbled. "Don't you dare say that you're sorry. Sorry won't even come close to—" He gripped his lips together until they paled from the pressure. His eyes strobed pale fire, then grew frighteningly opaque. "How could you talk about trust and not tell me about our baby?"
Light-headed, she groped behind her for the edge of the table. He knew. How, didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was her keeping it from him. And why. She had to make him understand.
"I was seventeen years old. I hadn't even graduated from high school. I didn't know what else to do, Zach."
"You could have told me." Blunt, unarguable words.
"I was afraid."
"Of what? That I might want to keep a baby we made between us? That I might want the chance to prove I could support a family? That I might turn out to be a better father than mine was to me?"
"Zach—"
"But you never gave me the chance, Bess. You never gave me a choice. Damn you! Didn't you think I had the right?"
She flinched beneath his harsh condemnation, deserving his anger and the cut of outrage slashing through his words. But his pain was more than she'd prepared for. Anguish ripped through his voice in a hard pulse of betrayal, a sorrow so raw she wept in ceaseless shame. No forgiveness could ever come from so deep a wound.
Even as grief worked upon his taut features
, his glare grew colder. When he spoke again, bitterness speared through the racking misery in a direct thrust to her heart.
"Or wasn't I good enough to be the father of your child?"
"No, Zach," she cried, desperate to reach him before he withdrew completely behind the impenetrable wall of blame. "It wasn't that. It was never that. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. My mother—"
"Your mother." He spat that out like the vilest curse. Shaking hands shoved back through his short hair making fists behind his head as he fought for a thread of control. "I would have stood by you, Bess. I would have moved heaven and earth for you. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you trust me to do the right thing? You let me go without ever giving me the chance to prove how much I loved you."
His back to her, he expelled his breath in a noisy rattle, head hanging, hands moving in fierce clenches. Sobbing into her hands, Bess watched him gather strength, saw him dredge up the control it took to force down sentiment as he squared his shoulders on a deep inhalation. When he turned, the terrifying blankness masked his expression once again.
He dropped his father's ledger at her feet.
"It's all in there. How your mother took you to see a Dr. Boyd about seventeen years ago. Look in there and tell me you didn't abort my baby!"
She lost a precious second to shock. Then Zach continued, his fury freezing to the bone.
"Your damned reputation. Well, you don't need to worry about me soiling it anymore. Keep your secrets. Wallpaper over it and pretend it never happened. Hang on to the vanity of being Saint Joan Carrey's daughter. You earned it, and my family and I paid the price for it."
He yanked open the door, then turned briefly, impervious to her tears, to deliver one final blow.
"Your mother would be so proud."
The door slammed behind him, glass rattling as Bess dissolved in nerveless shivers. She'd lost him to her weakness, her fear. She'd failed to trust in the goodness she knew he possessed, as a teen, as a man. Instead of facing the truth, she'd buried it, just as her mother had buried her sins in a box and allowed another to pay the consequences with her lies. Bess made Zach pay with her silence.
And now, after all she'd done to him, after all her family had done to his, he was willing to sacrifice the vindication truth would bring to spare her its shame.
How much more plainly could he say he loved her still?
She heard the crunch of Faith's bicycle in the driveway and dashed away her tears with a purposeful swipe. Time to act, not cower. Time for some belated bravery, even though it was too little, too late.
Bess gave Faith no chance to express her alarm upon seeing her ravaged expression. She pushed a small sack into the girl's hands.
"Take that to Zach. Give it to him and tell him … tell him to do the right thing."
* * *
Zach dropped into his desk chair, grabbing desperately for composure. A satisfying yet hollow thud sounded as his father's bank statements met the bottom of his wastebasket.
That was the end of it.
The past was behind him, with all its secrets, all its shame. He wasn't that same confused kid, teetering on the edge of right and wrong. He'd made his choices. He'd stood firm upon them and wouldn't waver now even though every wounded corner of his heart cried out for him to cut and run. Run far and fast, away from reminders that would never cease to torture with what might have been. Away from scars he couldn't erase, from a stigma he couldn't escape. Run back to what he'd been, to where he'd come from. To what he'd worked so diligently to rise above—a sense of worthlessness, the inheritance his father left him.
An inheritance he'd refused to accept.
He scrubbed unsteady palms over his face, clamping down on the runaway emotions that spiraled him back into helplessness and despair. He wouldn't go there again.
He sat, breathing deeply, drawing upon a discipline of mind and body. Using both to combat an inconsistency of heart, a weakness of soul. And as those perceptions struck a manageable balance, a detached logic began to sort and shift through the panicked disarray of the past few hours so he could look at them again.
Shock and surprise finally ebbed, leaving spirit-bruising sorrow but also a degree of reason. Looking back, he could understand what had happened and why. He could empathize with a young and vulnerable teen faced with an overwhelming decision, one so frightening, so life altering she allowed herself to heed the wrong counsel. But who was he to say that what smacked of wrong to him wasn't right for her? Because he hadn't put himself in her place. And he hadn't asked the most important question.
Had she made her decision before or after he told her of his plan to leave?
Had his abandonment forced her to make a soul-shattering choice? Had she seen the years ahead, alone, as too threatening to consider?
Had he known, had he stayed, would things have worked out for the better? Would he have been capable of reaching out of the wild, unstable place he'd been in to establish a firm foundation for a wife and child? Or would the situation have fed off his immaturity, twisting his intentions, frustrating his desires until he was warped into a man just like his father?
He had no answer, and she'd had no certainty when she was forced to choose.
There was no right or wrong, just what was. And he could accept it and move on, or he could let it eat away at him like an emotional cancer until there was nothing left but bitterness.
He'd been there.
It was time to move on.
Time to step back and heal. Then he could look at things again, then he could think about Bess again. But not now. Not while the hurt was so new, so impossibly huge.
Bess's lack of faith wounded, but it wasn't a killing pain. He could get past it if he tried, if he wanted it badly enough.
If he wanted her badly enough.
Oh, God, what a mess.
He couldn't forget what Bess had done, but knowing her reasons, understanding her fear, he could give the one thing he'd wanted so badly to receive when he'd returned to Sweetheart.
Forgiveness, and the right to begin again.
"Zach?"
He glanced up blindly, fighting his way out of his consuming thoughts to acknowledge the girl beside his desk. He stared at the sack she placed on his blotter.
"Aunt Bess said you were to take this and do the right thing. Whatever that means."
With a wary reluctance, he opened the bag then poured the heavy glass bauble out onto his desktop.
The sins of the past. Trusted into his care by the woman he loved, at this moment, more than pride.
Fractures of light brightened, dazzling him until he blinked away the blur of emotion. After all he'd put her through with his damning recriminations, she'd placed her future in his hands, just as she'd done so subtly since his return every time she encouraged him to find the truth, a truth that would expose her deeds and leave her at his mercy.
The significance had him trembling.
He looked up at the anxious teen, seeing concern etched into her pretty face. Looking again. Seeing for the first time with crystal clarity beyond her vivacious youth to eyes as uniquely blue as his own.
Awareness shot through him, a lightning bolt of realization.
Faith was his daughter. His and Bess's.
The product of a past infatuation. The evidence of an enduring love.
An inarticulate sound escaped him. He clamped his hand over his jaw suppressing any further outbursts while shock had the advantage.
His daughter.
He swiveled his chair away from her, breathing fast, mentally scrambling to overcome the surprise. The joy! Because Faith obviously didn't know, just as he hadn't known, the secret Bess had shared with the one person she could count on for unconditional support. Her sister, Julie.
He swallowed hard, commanding his pulse to slow its frenzied spasms, ordering his brain back on line before the girl thought he was having some kind of attack and called 911.
He risked another glance at her, choki
ng on unfamiliar swells of pride and possessiveness. Fighting down the fatherly need to hold his own child.
"Zach, are you all right? What do you want me to tell Aunt B?"
Vision skewed by emotion, he said, "Tell her to trust me."
* * *
Chapter 19
« ^ »
Drained by the encounter with Zach, Bess carried the box of old papers out onto the porch. She sat, rocking, staring at the faded type, waiting for the numbness to wear off, for the pain of loss to set in. She waited, but it didn't come. No swelling tide of sorrow. No twisting misery of past recriminations. No heartbroken sighs over what had slipped away.
Instead, as she moved the glider to and fro in the same soothing rhythm two young lovers had enjoyed so long ago, something else began to build, layer upon layer. Something she didn't recognize for what it was until she identified the tandem emotion. Anger.
She would not give up Zach Crandall without one hellacious fight.
Determination steadied her, strengthened her. Instead of falling back upon past failures, wallowing in their familiar comfort, she looked back dispassionately, seeing that time for what it was, her mother for what she was.
Then Zach had happened into her life, dangerous, dark, disreputable, one of the Crandalls. And when she should have been properly horrified, she'd let herself be swept away by every evil her mother had warned her to watch out for. Sensation, sin, sex, hot, unbridled experimentation. Love. Desperate love between two fragile souls. A love that created the most perfect result imaginable.
She was through feeling ashamed of that fact. And through feeling guilty for doing the only thing she could under the circumstances.
She and Zach shared a wonderful bond, one fate had denied them for far too long.
And she'd let the need to please others rule her life for the last time. She had a second chance to claim the only man she would ever love.
She wasn't going to lose him.
Not over her mother's machinations to save a reputation that meant less to her than love. Not to preserve a lie, to hide a crime, to uphold a legacy that made her a prisoner within her own heart.
