by Marta Perry
“A year later? Sarah, make sense.”
“I have to try.” She frowned at him. “Maybe you can ignore it. I can’t.”
“Ignore it?” That almost made him laugh. “How can I possibly ignore it? I see reminders every day.” He shuffled through the stack of papers on his desk, found what he sought and tossed it at her. “Like that.”
Sarah’s face whitened as she read the ugly anonymous letter, vilifying Lynette, that had come in the day’s mail. He was suddenly ashamed that he had given in to the impulse. She didn’t deserve that from him.
“I’m sorry.” He snatched the paper, ripped it in two, and threw it in the wastebasket. His fingers still felt dirty.
She took a step toward him, her eyes dark with concern. “Do you get those often?”
He shrugged. “They used to come in droves. Now once in a while, when something stirs up the anonymous letter writers.”
She winced. “Like my being here, you mean.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I’m used to it.”
“Nobody gets used to that.” The passion was back in her voice. “You’re just lying to yourself.”
He turned away from that passion. He didn’t want to see it, didn’t want it to touch him. “It’s how I cope.”
“You’re not coping at all.” She grasped his arm, tugging at him as if she’d force him to face her. “Melissa’s not coping. I’m not coping. We’re just going through the motions.”
“That’s enough for me.” Why wouldn’t she leave him alone?
“No. It’s not.” The sorrow in her voice made him look at her. Her green eyes swam with tears. “The past isn’t buried, Trent. It can’t be, until we know the truth.”
He wanted to rail at her—wanted to deny her, ignore her, do anything but agree with her. But he couldn’t. She was right.
He turned away, staring down at the desk, cluttered with the work he should be doing. It was yet another thing he used to armor himself against the past.
Why, Lord? Why can’t Sarah leave it alone? Why can’t I?
“All right,” he said heavily. “All right. Let’s go.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll take you to Beaufort. If there’s something to be found there, we’ll find it together.”
It had taken an hour to get the car, drive across to the mainland and take the back roads to Beaufort. That was plenty of time to think twice about this expedition of Sarah’s.
Still, no matter how much he might argue with himself, the bottom line was that Sarah was right. The past wouldn’t stay buried, no matter how hard he tried.
Beaufort’s quaint, narrow main street was choked with camera-laden tourists. Sunshine sparkled on the waters of the sound. But Sarah’s face was drawn, her eyes shadowed with questions to which she probably dreaded hearing the answers.
“Horse-and-carriage tours,” he pointed. “The drivers have a line of patter about Beaufort’s checkered past.”
She nodded, obviously not interested in the tourist attractions she’d once wanted to see.
He and Lynette had taken Melissa on a carriage ride, long ago. The charming old town had seen plenty of grief and tragedy and had come through it with grace intact. What was his and Sarah’s tragedy but another drop of blood in its history?
He spotted the sign and turned onto a narrow street lined with live oaks and magnolias. Bayberry Inn was about halfway down the block, a typical Low Country building with its long, white-columned second-floor porch. Twin stairways curved up to it, black wrought-iron railings glistening.
He stopped in the shade of a live oak whose heavy branches, draped with gray-green moss, almost touched the ground. Romantic, he thought sourly. A lovely spot for a rendezvous.
“Why don’t you let me go in and ask the questions?” He knew when he said it Sarah wouldn’t agree, but he had to try.
“I’ll be fine.” The tension in her face belied the words, but she opened the door. “Let’s go.”
He walked beside her up the stairs. Ironic, that he was here with Sarah where, presumably, Miles and Lynette had been.
Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Miles was here with someone else. Maybe—But none of that seemed to lead anywhere.
Sarah’s hand trailed along the black railing, as if she dreaded this as much as he did. It was probably harder for her. After all, he’d already known that Lynette had had an affair. He’d gotten through it.
Or had he? Did you ever get through that bone-deep betrayal?
He paused at the top of the stairs, facing the shiny black door. He touched her arm, stopping her. “You were right, you know. The past won’t stay buried.”
Her gaze met his evenly. “So we have to do this.”
“Right.” He took a breath, trying to calm his churning stomach. “Let’s do it.” He opened the door and stepped inside.
The entry hall was cool and quiet, with no one other than the desk clerk to hear their inquiries. Sarah marched forward like a soldier, shoulders stiff, but Trent knew only her indomitable will kept her moving.
She didn’t wait for him to broach the subject, but plunged right in with the desk clerk, a sandy-haired kid who looked as if he should be sitting in an algebra class instead of manning the desk.
“I’d like to ask you about someone who stayed here last spring.” She planted the receipt on the counter.
The kid took a step back, skittish, staring at the receipt as if it were a snake. “I—I don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not?” There was an edge to Sarah’s voice that told Trent she couldn’t take much more.
“We’ll see the manager.” Trent slid his card across the counter. “Give him that.”
The boy snatched the card and fled through the office door.
“You scared him,” he said.
“Me?” She looked ready to argue, but a man emerged, his sandy, thinning hair an older version of the boy’s.
“Mr. Donner.” He extended his hand eagerly, eyes alight at the thought of gaining Trent’s business. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. What can we do for you at the Bayberry Inn?”
Sarah probably didn’t care to be ignored, but being who he was would get answers. It would also open him to some nasty gossip, but that couldn’t be helped.
“You have a charming place here, Mr.—?”
“Milton, sir. James Milton.”
“Well, Mr. Milton, you can help me with some inquiries. I’m looking for anything you can tell me about this.”
He slid the receipt to the man, watched him assess it, recall the year-old scandal and add up two and two to make sixteen, at least.
“Of course, of course.” Milton turned to the computer, keying in the information quickly. “Ah, here we are. Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright checked in at around eight that evening.”
Sarah jerked as if she’d been shot at the casual words. She yanked a photo from her bag. “Is this the man?”
He nodded. “Yes, I remember him. An associate of yours, I think, Mr. Donner.”
He nodded. It was true, then. But they’d already known there couldn’t be another answer. “When did they leave?”
The man frowned at the screen. “That I can’t tell you.” He sounded apologetic. “Guests can just leave their keys in the box on the desk. We had a group tour coming in that next day, and I’d have been run off my feet.”
“Do you remember the woman?” He had to ask.
Milton flushed, obviously torn between his deserve to help a wealthy potential client and his discretion. “I can’t say I ever got a good look at her. She stayed just outside the door.” He obviously considered that suspicious now, if he hadn’t then.
An anonymous woman—but it must have been Lynette.
“You remember anything else?” He slid the receipt back in his pocket.
He shook his head regretfully.
Sarah seemed to sag, as if she couldn’t go on standing there much longer. He tightened his grasp.
“Thank y
ou. I appreciate your help.” He turned Sarah toward the door, and she moved like a puppet in his grasp.
It wasn’t that easy, of course. Milton walked them to the door, voluble in his eagerness. Trent cut him off with a vague suggestion that Donner Enterprises might be interested in holding a meeting at the Bayberry Inn and hurried Sarah out of the door.
By the time they reached the walk, he was practically supporting her. “Easy,” he muttered. “At least we know.”
She looked up at him, her eyes darkened with shock. “Maybe he was just telling you what he thought you wanted to hear.”
The control he thought he had snapped. “We know that Miles came here with another woman, don’t we? What else do we need?”
She stared at him, face twisting with grief and pain. He had enough time to call himself a few names before her tears spilled over.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be all right,” he said. Stupid. Nothing was all right. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m sorry.”
By the time Sarah emerged enough from a haze of misery to think straight, she was seated across from Trent in a padded booth. The small restaurant, perched on pilings over the water, was empty in midafternoon. Trent had guided her inside, ordered for them, nagged her into eating a bowl of she crab soup, saying she needed it. He’d been right. The warmth seeped into her, and she no longer felt like bursting into tears.
“Better now?” He studied her, concern deepening the lines around his eyes.
“Much, thank you.” She put down the spoon. “I’m sorry I fell apart on you. I just—” Her voice began to choke.
“You were entitled.” He frowned. “Look, we won’t talk about it until you’re ready, okay?”
She nodded, relieved. Of course they’d have to talk, but not until she’d come to grips with one ugly fact. She’d have staked her life on Miles’s integrity, and she’d been wrong.
Trent pushed a plate toward her. “Taste the sweet-potato fries. Genuine Gullah cooking. Tastes like home.”
That surprised her. “I thought you were from Chicago.”
“Everyone thinks that. My mother lived in Chicago, but my grandparents lived here, on an island too small for you to have heard of. When I was lucky enough, I got to stay with them.”
Something in his voice told her that had meant more to him than a casual vacation. “You loved being with them.”
“They kept me sane.” He gave a wry smile at her startled look. “Sound like an overstatement? I’ll tell you something that never appears in the business magazine articles about Trent Donner. They always repeat the line that I came from a working-class background in Chicago. They don’t mention that my mother really deserved the term, ‘working girl.’”
“Your mother—” She stopped. She’d imagined, whenever she’d read a bio of Trent, that his parents had been factory workers, proud of their brilliant son.
He shrugged. “She was an alcoholic and an addict. The wonder is that neither Derek nor I inherited the tendency.”
“I’m sorry.” That was inadequate, but she didn’t know what else to say. “Your father?”
“I have a couple of pictures of him—proud in his marine uniform. He married my mother right before he shipped out to Vietnam. I never saw him.”
It didn’t make sense to repeat that she was sorry, but she was. Maybe that background explained something about Trent’s toughness. He’d had to be tough to survive.
“Derek had a different father, then.”
He nodded. “He never knew who his father was. I don’t know what saved Derek from the hell on earth she created. What saved me was getting sent down here, to my father’s parents.”
The bitterness he felt toward his mother showed so clearly. She’d betrayed him in the most fundamental way. “Alcoholism is a disease. That doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but—”
“What a nice, professional way of putting it, Sarah.” His tone was faintly mocking. “You’re right, but that didn’t help when we were her victims. All I could do was try to protect Derek when she was drunk or high.”
That explained the strong bond between them. No wonder Derek would do anything for his older brother.
“You’ve come a long way. How did you manage?” She thought of the advantages she’d taken for granted and was ashamed.
“My grandparents.” A faint smile touched his lips. “They didn’t have much, but what they had they gave with open hands. I was their only son’s only son. When I was with them, I felt like the most important person in the world. That was a good antidote to being treated like unwelcome trash.”
“They must have been wonderful people.”
He nodded. He paused in the act of sliding money from his wallet and pulled out a faded photograph. “There we are, the summer I was twelve. She let me stay with them the whole summer, and I was in heaven. I didn’t ask anything more than to go out fishing every day with Grandpa and come home to the smell of my gramma’s Low Country boil.”
She held the photo. A skinny kid in faded shorts and a T-shirt stood with his arms around two people. The man had Trent’s height and a lean, weathered face. The woman, short, softly rounded, looked at the boy with an expression of such love that it put a lump in Sarah’s throat.
“Melissa looks like her—your grandmother, I mean.”
He nodded. “She was a lovely woman all the way through. Strong, determined, a woman of faith. Never let me get away with a thing, though. If I tried any street language on her, she washed my mouth out with a bar of laundry soap. Whatever good I have in me, I owe to them.”
“That’s a beautiful tribute.” She wanted to put her hand over his, but touching him would be dangerous with her emotions already high. “They must have been proud of your success.”
“Not the money.” He smiled ruefully. “I remember their reaction when I tried to give them money. ‘Use that money to do good for someone who needs it,’ Gramma said. ‘We just need to see you turning into a fine man like your daddy was.’”
It was hard to speak when her throat seemed to be closing. “And did you use it for someone else?”
“Derek.” His fingers tightened on the pen he held. “We’d been out of touch for a while by then. I managed to find them. Got Derek away, made sure he had an education. He was bright enough to make the best of it.”
“And your mother?” She said it softly, wondering if that was one question too many.
“She died in a treatment facility.”
She didn’t need to ask who had provided that treatment for his mother. He might think he hated her for what she’d been, but he’d still tried to take care of her, because that’s the kind of man he was.
He pushed his empty soup bowl back, dropped the restaurant bill on the table, and rose, seeming to signal that the confidences were over. She wasn’t surprised. A private man like Trent didn’t let down his guard often.
They reached the wooden walkway outside the restaurant and he paused, as if not ready to go back to Land’s End and all that waited for them there. She stopped, too, hands on the railing, looking out at the gulls that swooped and soared, probably hoping for handouts from the restaurant.
“So then you became rich and famous,” she said lightly.
He planted his hands next to hers on the wooden railing. “I worked hard, made some lucky guesses, surrounded myself with the right people—and here I am. Successful.” The mocking undertone wasn’t for her. Now it was for himself.
“I’ve always believed—” She stopped, unsure.
“What?” He focused on her, his fingers closing over hers.
Her heart stumbled over a beat. “I’ve always believed that God had a path marked out for me.” She nodded toward the smooth beach. Sandpipers darted through wet sand of the ebbing tide. “Sometimes it’s a walk on a pleasant beach. Other times—”
“Other times it’s being in a small boat in a big storm.” He finished the thought for her. “The waves over us seem pretty high right now.”
“We’ll get
through.” That probably sounded as if she bracketed herself with him, but she couldn’t help that. They were tied together in this particular storm, at least.
“Will we? I wish I had your optimism, Sarah. It doesn’t seem to me that we’re much closer to a safe harbor after what we found out today.”
She took a breath, hoping her voice wouldn’t shake. “If we don’t learn anything else about them, if we never understand why the affair happened, at least we know this much. I hope—” Her voice petered out.
“What do you hope?” His tone was intense, as if he wanted more from her.
“I guess I hope they loved each other.” Her throat was thick with tears she was determined not to shed. “If they had to die together, I hope at least they had that.”
His hand froze. He swung to face her, grasping her arms and pulling her closer. “How can you say that?” Anger pulsed in his words. “How can you find a way to forgive them?”
His face was dark with fury. Then, quite suddenly, something else flared in his eyes. With a sharp movement he pulled her against him, and his mouth covered hers.
The boardwalk rocked under her feet, and then all she could think or feel was Trent, his arms hard around her, his heart pounding. Or was that hers? She wasn’t sure.
The kiss ended as suddenly as it had begun. He drew back, looking at her with a kind of baffled anger.
“I guess that’s why,” she managed to say. “I guess that’s how I can begin to understand them.”
His face closed, rejecting her words. Rejecting her. “I can’t.” He turned and stalked toward the car.
FOURTEEN
Any rational person would accept what they’d learned the previous day as the final answer. Sarah brooded over her second cup of coffee in the breakfast room, wondering if rationality had escaped her entirely. She couldn’t quite vanquish the little voice of doubt in the back of her mind.
That anonymous woman who’d stood outside the door at the hotel—every grain of common sense said it was Lynette. Trent certainly believed that.
She winced, because if she thought of him, she had to think of that kiss. And remembering that made her feel as bruised and battered as if she’d been in a fight.
