Provenance

by Carla Laureano

  That seemed to snap Julie back to the present. “Of course. You want your usual, Gabe?”

  “Yes, please. Thanks, Julie.”

  She looked between them again, as if she couldn’t quite make out what was going on. “Go ahead and look over the menus, and I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”

  Kendall watched Julie go, unsettled. Did everyone in this town know her name and her history? Because if they did, they knew a heck of a lot more than she did. She looked at Gabe, not sure if she really wanted to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “What did she mean by ‘until’? What happened that Julie suddenly didn’t look up to her?” She had a sinking suspicion that she knew.

  Gabe cleared his throat, but he looked her straight in the eye. “She got pregnant her senior year of high school.”

  “With me,” Kendall said, her voice choking.

  “Yes. She was forced to leave school. It’s my understanding that she had to get her GED instead.”

  Kendall arched her brow, irritated on behalf of a woman she’d always both longed for and hated. “That’s terribly 1950s of them.”

  “It was thirty years ago. They thought that being seen condoning unwed pregnancy would encourage other girls to . . .”

  “. . . have sex?” Kendall snorted. “I’ve got news for them. No one plans to get pregnant in high school, but it doesn’t stop anyone from doing what they want. What else? How do they all know my name?”

  Gabe hesitated again. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”

  “Now that I know the entire town knows more about me than I do, absolutely.” Until now, it hadn’t really dawned on her that she had a history. If the houses were in Los Angeles or Denver, she would probably be dealing with a lawyer and a real estate agent, both strangers. Her past would have been erased, lost to everyone except the people involved, just how Kendall wanted it. It had taken her three years to tell Sophie about her abandonment and upbringing in foster care. But here . . . just introducing herself brought up her entire bio in the town’s collective memory.

  “Okay then.” Gabe spread his fingers out on the table, palms flat against the sticky resin finish. “I don’t know the whole story, and while my grandfather might know pieces of it, he wasn’t close to Connie like Oma was. As I understand it, Caroline gave birth to her baby—you—and for a while, it looked like she was going to stick around town. But she got in a big argument with Connie and either left or was kicked out of the house. There was apparently plenty of speculation on that at the time.”

  Kendall kept her expression impassive, unable to interpret the myriad feelings jolting around inside of her. “Same end result. What happened then?”

  Gabe spread his hands wide. “That’s all we know. Caroline left when you were less than a year old, and no one ever saw the two of you again. There were rumors of course. Some people thought she moved to Los Angeles to try to be a movie star. I hear she was beautiful.” He smiled slightly, a hint of humor in his eyes. “Given that everyone says you look just like her, I’d have to agree.”

  “That was a backhanded compliment,” Kendall said, but she still smiled, feeling a tiny flush of pleasure. Then something else occurred to her. “What about my . . . Carrie’s boyfriend?” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word father, figured she could already guess the situation. But somehow, up until this point, she’d never really thought about the man who had made his contribution to her existence.

  “That I can’t tell you. At least I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. Towns have a long memory, but they do move on.”

  Julie came back before Kendall could answer, which was good, because there was no adequate response to what she’d just been told. It sounded like her mother left town with her when she was only a baby. Had it taken four more years for Caroline to decide raising a child alone was just too hard? If she didn’t want Kendall, why hadn’t she just left her with her grandmother?

  Unless that’s why Connie had kicked Caroline out of the house. Because she didn’t want to deal with a baby. That put a far uglier cast on the situation. Kendall’s stomach gave a little flip, and she took a reflexive drink of her Coke to settle her queasiness.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  “Oh.” Kendall looked at her menu, which she hadn’t even opened. “I’m sorry. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “May I?” Gabe asked.

  Kendall nodded mutely.

  “We’ll take the Pine View Feast.” Gabe collected her menu with his own and handed them back to Julie, a friendly look on his face, but a definite dismissal in his tone.

  “I’ll put that right in,” Julie said with a smile and then walked back to the kitchen. Kendall didn’t miss the glance she threw back over her shoulder, though.

  “It’s killing her not to know what we’re saying, isn’t it?” Kendall asked.

  “Can you blame her? Wouldn’t you be curious if a classmate’s long-lost kid showed up in town again?”

  “Not really. But I wasn’t very close to any classmates.”

  “Why? Did you move around a lot?” Gabe halted. “Sorry. Maybe that was an insensitive question. I thought because—”

  “Because I was a foster kid, I got shuffled around? Yeah, I did, when I was younger. But I landed with one family and stayed with them until I graduated high school.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” Gabe said slowly. “Are you still in touch with them?”

  Kendall unwrapped a straw and plunked it in her glass. “Why would I be?”

  He shook his head in answer. “Anyway. I thought maybe we could go to my office early tomorrow, have you fill out the paperwork, and then we can go to the courthouse in Georgetown to file it.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’ve got a rental. I can drive myself.”

  “It’s no trouble. I’m familiar with the roads and the courthouse. It will just make things easier.”

  It would make sure that she actually did it, he meant. Like she would forget or blow it off given what was at stake here. Still, he seemed like he was genuinely trying to help, and she could potentially use his assistance while she was here—not to mention the fact that she was staying at his grandfather’s B and B—so she nodded. “Thanks. That’s fine with me.”

  “Okay, good.”

  Before the topic could go back to her inheritance or her past, she folded her hands in front of her and fixed her gaze on him. “So. Tell me what you do when you’re not busy mayoring.”

  “Mayoring?” He grinned. “A little bit of this and that. You know.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. Is it embarrassing or something? Are you secretly the only male member of the Jasper Lake Water Ballet troupe? A foot model for flip-flops? Or maybe your thing is more like microscopic taxidermy.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Microscopic taxidermy? Is that even a thing?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s nothing so interesting as microscopic taxidermy. I like music. I like books.”

  Kendall sat back against her seat. “Now that is interesting. A man who reads. What do you read exactly?”

  “Oh, a bit of everything. Bestsellers. Thrillers. Spy novels.” He lowered his voice. “Even the odd romance.”

  “Oooh, Mayor Gabe likes bodice rippers?”

  “Shh, lower your voice. I have a reputation to uphold.” But he really didn’t look that embarrassed or that serious about the statement, so she had no idea whether he meant the romance thing or he was just yanking her chain.

  “Okay, then. What’s the last book you read?”

  He thought. “Art and Architecture in Colorado, 1850–1950.”

  “No. Seriously?”

  “Seriously. It was interesting. Always looking for things to help the town, you know.”

  She sighed. So they were back to this topic. She was about to tell him that work-related reading didn’t count when Julie returned with a giant platter heaped with food and ca
refully set it down in the center of the table. Kendall’s eyes widened.

  “Thanks, Julie. Can we get a couple extra sides of barbecue sauce?”

  “Coming right up.”

  Kendall stared at the food. It was barbecue of every conceivable type: brisket, ribs, chicken, pulled pork, what looked like several different types of sausage. Gabe pointed to each of them. “Wild boar, elk, and buffalo.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. Locally made. It’s pretty incredible. I bet you’ve never had any of the three.”

  “You are absolutely right on that count.”

  Julie dropped off the sauce with instructions to call her if they needed anything, and then Kendall started heaping meat on her plate. As if the meat weren’t enough, there were also sides of beans, coleslaw, and fresh-made corn bread, the kind that was baked in a skillet and then cut out in wedges. She took her first bite and gave a sigh of happiness. “This is amazing.”

  “It is pretty good,” Gabe admitted, transferring food to his own plate. “Julie’s parents own the place, but they’re getting up in years, so she runs it. They smoke all their own meats in the back lot. Everything comes from local farms. So you can’t get much more Colorado than this.”

  “I am not complaining. I just got back from Europe, and I missed good old-fashioned American barbecue.”

  “They don’t have it there?”

  “Not unless you go to an American chain, and then it’s rarely as good.” Kendall slathered her corn bread with butter and took a bite. Maybe it was the fresh air, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted anything quite so delicious.

  When they’d decimated more than half of the platter and Gabe asked for a to-go box, Kendall studied him carefully. It had to be the full stomach, but she was suddenly feeling warmer toward him. “Tell me about these alternatives.”

  “The what?”

  “You said that you were hoping I’d stick around and explore the alternatives. So what are the alternatives? Besides the one we’ve already discussed, renting out the houses.”

  Gabe fell back against the plastic back of the booth. “Honestly? I have no idea. I feel like I’ve exhausted every option.”

  “You could just push hard for them to turn down the zoning request by the developer.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why? What’s the point in being mayor if you can’t throw your weight around a little?”

  “It’s a small town, Kendall. Everyone has alliances. Half of the council would go along with the developer because their families have known each other for generations. Half of them are afraid to see our way of life destroyed, and they’d rather sacrifice the character of the town than see it disappear altogether.”

  “And you?”

  It was as if the question stumped Gabe, because after casting around for an answer, he finally said, “It doesn’t matter what I think. It only matters what I can convince the council of.”

  “Of course it matters what you think. If you don’t have the passion of your convictions to fall back on, how are you ever going to convince the council to see things your way?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?” Kendall folded her hands on top of the table and leaned over them. “You’re so worried about the future of the town, you’d let them cave and do something you’re adamantly against. That’s a terrible reason to do anything. If you believe there’s another way, convince them of that. I have no doubt you can be very convincing.”

  Something glinted in Gabe’s eyes that she couldn’t quite define. It could have been amusement or doubt . . . or hope? “You know me that well after a single day, do you?”

  “I know enough.” And she did. As long as she silenced the niggling part of her brain reminding her that sometimes you couldn’t will people to change their minds, that sometimes no matter how hard you wished for something, you still came up short. But Gabe didn’t need that right now. He needed a pep talk that would give him the strength to go find a solution to his problem, one that did not involve demolishing historic homes or Kendall losing her Pasadena property. “Now, if I recall, someone said something about dessert?”

  By the time they left the Pine View Cantina, Kendall was so stuffed she could barely move. As good as the barbecue had been—and it had been exceptional—his grandfather’s pastries were even better. She’d finished her slice of cake and still managed to steal a couple bites of Gabe’s brownie à la mode. The fact that he hadn’t protested made her like him even more.

  When they stepped out onto the sidewalk, full night had fallen, and the temperature with it. Kendall’s breath puffed out in front of her, and she zipped her coat up and arranged her scarf so it didn’t let any trickle of air in down her neck. Even with the sparse lights of the town around them, the sky overhead was spread with a dizzying array of stars. She stopped on the sidewalk and tipped her head back, her mouth open. “I’ve never seen so many stars. I’m always in the city. There’s too much light.”

  “That’s one thing we have an abundance of.” Gabe stopped beside her and tilted his head back as well. “Stars, I mean. Not light.”

  She threw him a smile and started walking again. “You love this place, don’t you?”

  “I do. I mean, it’s beautiful, but there aren’t that many small towns left, not the kind where everyone knows and cares about everyone else. Of course, when I came here, I thought it was the worst place in the world.” He cast her a wry glance. “Thirteen and taken away from all my bad influences? Yeah. I made my grandparents absolutely crazy for a while.”

  “You? Bad influences? That seems hard to believe.”

  “Let’s just say I went through a rebellious stage. I was angry and looking for ways to get back at the world. Fell in with some kids who were dealing drugs, and before long, they’d roped me into being their lookout. And then their delivery boy. When my mom found out, naturally she freaked.”

  “Naturally.”

  “So she sent me up here. Nothing to do. In fact, my grandmother homeschooled me for the rest of the year, just so she could keep an eye on me.”

  “I bet that went over big,” Kendall said. When she was nine, she’d been fostered with a homeschool family, but she’d been so disruptive, they’d sent her back before three months were up. She still refused to take the blame for that one. She’d just been yanked out of a two-year placement where she’d had friends, had some semblance of normalcy, in order to sit at a kitchen table with five-year-old triplets all day. To say that she rebelled would have been an understatement.

  Gabe gave a soft laugh at her assessment. “About as well as you’re imagining. But Oma was patient to a fault. Even when she had to get tough with me. And that pretty much went for everyone else in the town, including your grandmother.”

  “I’m glad someone got to spend time with my grandmother.”

  Gabe slowed. “Kendall, I don’t know what happened and how you ended up . . . where you did, but your mother loved you. Connie used to say that and Oma used to say that. Whatever the reason, I’m sure your mom thought you were better off without her.”

  “A child is never better off without her parents, no matter how bad they are.” Kendall shook her head as if she could shake off the dark thoughts. “It doesn’t matter now anyway. I’m grown. And I’ve done a pretty good job of taking care of myself.”

  Gabe didn’t reply, but whether it was because he disagreed with her assessment or he didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t tell. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the bed-and-breakfast, where Gabe escorted her into the foyer. “Your car should be okay on Main Street overnight, but I can drive it over for you if you want me to.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll get it in the morning. Are we meeting at your office?”

  “No, here. I wouldn’t miss whatever Opa is making for your breakfast. When he gets that glint in his eye, it means he’s got big plans.”

  Kendall laugh
ed. “In that case, I wouldn’t miss it either. Thanks for dinner, Gabe. And thanks for driving me tomorrow.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you later.” He gave her a smile and a little wave, then let himself out the front door. Reflexively, Kendall flipped the dead bolt behind him. Then she climbed the stairs to her room, which she had forgotten to lock before she left. Not that it mattered or that she’d brought much of value with her.

  She toed off her boots with a sigh of relief and unwound her scarf, then plopped into one of the armchairs in front of the window. It had been a good day, all things considered. She’d found out she’d inherited a virtual town block and she’d spent a day with a pleasant, good-looking guy.

  Which was why it made absolutely no sense that she started to cry and couldn’t stop, even after she climbed into bed and turned off the lights.

  Chapter Eight

  GABE CLIMBED INTO HIS TRUCK and sat with the key in the ignition and the headlights off. The day had undoubtedly been more trying for Kendall than him, but he still felt exhausted.

  Kendall confounded him. He would have thought she’d be floored by the revelations about herself and her past, but she brushed them off like they meant absolutely nothing to her. She challenged his passion and his vision for the town. She joked around with him like they were best friends and yet closed off the minute they touched on anything too personal. Maybe that was her defense mechanism, and it would make sense given her upbringing: Don’t get too close, because you’ll eventually have to leave. Normally he would think that was a sad, disconnected way to live, but right now he wondered if she was onto something. Because tonight he could sorely use a defense mechanism of his own.

  She held the town’s future in her hands, and that alone should make him keep his distance, not want to learn more. But besides being beautiful, Kendall was funny and corny, free with her laughter and her opinions. She had no problem putting away a massive amount of barbecue and dessert in front of him, which he found inexplicably sexy—he couldn’t stand when he took a woman out and she only ate a salad, as if he were weighing and judging her food intake.