Hide in Plain Sight

by Marta Perry

  Well, that wish was going to be disappointed, because a quick glance told him the garage was empty. She and Katherine hadn’t returned from their visit to Rachel.

  But someone else was around the place, judging by the late-model compact that sat on the verge of the drive. Frowning, he quickened his steps. Probably nothing, but with all the odd things happening lately, it didn’t do to take anything for granted.

  His muscles tightened. A woman was on the side porch, shading her eyes as she peered through the glass in the door. He shot forward.

  “What are you doing?”

  He reached the bottom of the steps as she spun around, her mouth forming a silent O of surprise.

  “I—you startled me.” She grasped the railing. “I’m looking for Andrea Hampton. I knocked, but no one answered.”

  “She’s out just now.” The adrenaline ebbed, leaving him feeling he’d been too aggressive. She was younger than he’d thought at first glance, probably no more than twenty-two or three. Blond hair in a stylish, layered cut, a trim suit that looked too dressy for a Sunday afternoon in Churchville, a pair of big brown eyes that fixed on him as if asking for help. “Can I do anything for you?”

  She came down the three steps so that they stood facing one another, looking up at him as if he could solve all her problems. “Is she going to be back soon? Ms. Hampton, I mean.” Then, seeming to feel something else was called for, she added, “I’m Julie Michaels, her assistant.”

  He couldn’t help the way his eyebrows lifted. So Andrea’s office was following her here. “Cal Burke.” He wasn’t sure what to do with the woman. Telling her to go away certainly wasn’t an option, though the urge to do so was strong. “I’m not sure when—”

  The sound of tires on gravel took the decision out of his hands. “Here she is now.”

  At the sight of them, Andrea pulled to a stop in front of the woman’s car. She slid out, frowning a little.

  He reached Katherine’s door and opened it, his gaze on Andrea as she came around the car. “I spotted her looking in the window. Is she really your assistant?”

  “She is.” There was a note in her voice he couldn’t quite define.

  Then she walked quickly toward the young woman. “Julie. I’m surprised to see you here.”

  Surprised and not particularly welcoming, if he read her correctly. Now what was that about? None of his business, of course, but still…He helped Katherine out and closed the door.

  “I stopped by to pick up the report.”

  Andrea’s brows lifted. “I said I’d e-mail it in tomorrow. There was no need for you to come all this way.”

  “I was in the area anyway,” she said. “I just thought it would be helpful. I didn’t mean to be in the way.” Her tone suggested a puppy that had received a swat instead of a pat.

  “That was very thoughtful.” Katherine stepped forward, holding out her hand. “I’m Andrea’s grandmother, Katherine Unger.” The glance she shot Andrea said that she was disappointed in her manners.

  He was probably the only one who saw Andrea’s lips tighten. “I’ll get the file for you.” She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving the three of them standing awkwardly.

  Julie turned toward the patio, her hurt feelings, if that’s what it had been, disappearing in a smile. “What a lovely place. You must be a wonderful gardener, Ms. Unger.”

  “I have a great deal of help. Come onto the patio where you can see the flowers.”

  He could go back to his workshop, but some instinct made him trail along behind them. Andrea hadn’t expected this visit, and she didn’t like it. Why?

  “I’m sure Andrea must be a big help to you. It’s great that she could take time off when you need her.” Julie bent to touch the petals of a yellow rose that had just begun to open.

  “Yes, yes, it is.” Katherine’s smile wavered a bit. “I don’t know what I’d do without her at this time, with her sister in the hospital.”

  “I heard about the accident. I’m so sorry.” The woman’s words sounded sympathetic, but there was something watchful in those big eyes. “How long do you think you’ll need to have Andrea stay?”

  That seemed to be his cue. He spoke just as Katherine opened her mouth to respond. “Is that a Japanese beetle on the rosebush?”

  Katherine turned away from the woman instantly, bending over to peer anxiously at the small leaves, brushing them with her fingers. “I don’t see anything. Are you sure, Cal?”

  He guided her a few steps away, keeping her focused on the flowers. “It was over here. I just caught a glimpse.”

  Knowing Katherine’s devotion to her flowers, that should keep her occupied for a few minutes. And off the subject of Andrea’s departure. That hadn’t been a casual query, and the idea of the woman trying to pump Katherine raised his hackles.

  The back door swung open. Andrea strode toward them, a manila folder in her hand. She held it out to Julie.

  “Here you are. Please ask Mr. Walker to call me if he has any questions.”

  “I will.” She tucked the folder under her arm. “You have such a lovely home here, Ms. Unger. Thank you for letting me see your garden.” She glanced wistfully toward the house.

  He took Katherine’s arm before she could issue an invitation to a tour. “Let me give you a hand up the steps. Emma sent one of the grandkids over to mention potato salad and cold ham for a late supper if you came home hungry.”

  “She spoils me.” Katherine took his arm, leaning on it a bit more heavily than usual. “I guess I will go in, now. Goodbye, Ms. Michaels.”

  He shepherded her into the house and saw her settled in her favorite chair. When he got back outside, the Michaels woman was pulling out of the drive. Andrea sat on the stone wall at the edge of the patio, frowning.

  “That wasn’t exactly a disinterested call, was it?” He sat down next to her.

  She glanced at him, eyebrows lifting. “What do you mean?”

  “While you were inside, your assistant tried to pump your grandmother about how long you’d be away from work.”

  “I should have expected that.” Her lips tightened. “Did she succeed?”

  “I headed her off. How long has she been trying to look just like you?”

  For an instant she stared at him, and then her face relaxed in a slight smile. “You don’t miss much. Believe it or not, when I hired her, Julie was just out of college, with brown hair halfway down her back, glasses and a wardrobe that consisted of discount store polyester suits.”

  “She found a role model in you. I guess that’s natural enough.”

  “At first it was flattering. It took me a while to realize that she didn’t just want to emulate my style of clothing. She wants my job. And she sees my absence from the office as her golden opportunity to step right into my shoes.”

  “Your boss wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?”

  She shrugged, eyes worried. “The more days I’m gone, the easier it will be for her. If I stay too long, he may just decide he can do without me altogether.” Her fingers clenched on her knees. “I can’t let that happen. I can’t lose everything I’ve worked for.”

  Something twisted inside him. She’d go, just like that. It was what he’d thought all along, but knowing he’d been right about her didn’t make him feel any better.

  “So that’s it. Is your job really more important to you than your family?”

  She swung toward him, anger sweeping the anxiety from her face. “I don’t think you have the right to ask me that.”

  Matching anger rose. “Why? Because I’m an interfering outsider?”

  “No.” Green eyes darkened. “Because you expect me to spill my feelings and share my decisions when you’re not willing to tell me a single thing about you.”

  TEN

  She shouldn’t have said that. Andrea wanted to refute the words, to deny that she cared in the least about his secrets. But it was already too late. Whatever she did or said now, Cal would know that the imbalance
in their relationship mattered to her.

  She could feel the tension in him through the inches that separated them, could sense the pressure to shoot to his feet and walk away.

  But he didn’t. He sat, staring down at the edging stones along the patio, where the setting sun cast wavering shadows from the branches above. His profile was stern, the planes of his face looking as if they’d been carved from one of the planks of wood he used.

  Doubt assailed her. Whatever it was that made him look that way—did she really want to know? She sensed that if he told her, that truth could change their relationship in incalculable ways.

  He moved slightly, not looking at her—just the slightest shrug, as if he tried to ease the tension from his shoulders.

  “You told me once I had too much of a corporate mind-set to be just a carpenter. Remember that?”

  “Yes.” I don’t want to know. But she did. She did.

  “I was a lawyer.” He grimaced slightly. “Guess I still am, in a way, but I’ll never practice again.”

  That was her cue to ask why, but she wasn’t ready for that. She settled for an easier question. “Where? Not around here.”

  “Seattle.” He leaned back, bracing his hands on the wall. The pose could have looked relaxed, but it didn’t. “You wouldn’t know the firm, but it’s one of the big guns there.”

  “Prestigious.” Her mind grappled to reconcile the informal country carpenter with a big-city lawyer. Difficult, but she’d always known there was something.

  “You could say that. When I landed the position, I knew I had it made. Straight to the big leagues—not bad for an ordinary middle-class kid who didn’t even know which fork to use.” A thread of bitterness ran through the words. He shot her a sideways glance that questioned. “Can you understand how overwhelming that could be?”

  “I think so.” Cal had been young, ambitious, intelligent, and he’d gotten the break that ensured his future. She of all people knew what that felt like. “But something went wrong.”

  His hands clenched against the stone, the knuckles whitening. “Not for a long time. I threw everything into the job, and it paid off. I was on the fast track to partnership, and nothing else mattered.”

  He was circling the thing that caused him pain, getting closer and closer. She sensed it, and wanted, like a coward, to close her ears, but she couldn’t.

  “The senior partner called me in. Assigned me to the case of my career. One of our biggest clients was involved in a child custody dispute with his ex-wife. I was just the sort of aggressive bulldog he wanted to represent him. Win, and opportunities would open to me that I couldn’t have imagined.”

  “You accepted.” Of course he had. He wouldn’t have evaded that challenge, any more than she would.

  “Sure. I threw myself into the case, determined to do the best job any attorney could.” He looked at her then, his brown eyes very dark. “I trusted the client. You have to believe that.”

  She nodded, throat tight. She thought she saw where this was going now, and already his tension infected her, so that her hands pressed tight against the stone, too.

  He shrugged, mouth twisting. “I did a great job. Lived up to everyone’s expectations. Demolished the opposition and won the case.” He was silent for a moment, as if he had to steel himself to say the next thing. “Then I found out that my client had been lying. He really was molesting his six-year-old daughter.”

  She’d been prepared for it, she’d thought, but it still hit her like a blow to the heart. “The little girl—”

  Dear Lord, could anything be worse?

  “Yes. The child I gave back to her father.”

  “It wasn’t just you,” she said quickly. “It was a judge’s decision, surely. And the mother must have had legal representation.”

  “I told myself that. All the arguments—that it wasn’t just my responsibility, that I had a duty to represent my client, that our legal system is adversarial and everyone deserves representation. It didn’t change anything. The bottom line was still the same.”

  “What did you do?” He’d have done something. She knew that about him.

  “Went to the senior partner. He told me to forget it. I’d done my job, and it was out of my hands.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “No. Couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t go to the mother without putting the whole firm in jeopardy. So I did the only thing open to me. I went to the client and told him either he relinquished custody to his ex-wife, or I blew the whistle on him. It would have meant disbarment or worse, but I’d do it.”

  He took a deep breath, and she had the sense he hadn’t breathed in a long time. She hadn’t, either.

  “Did it work?”

  He nodded. “Guess I was convincing enough, especially when I resigned from the firm.” His voice roughened. “I saw the child back into her mother’s care, but God alone knows how much damage was done to her in the meantime.”

  That was the guilt he carried, then. That was why he lived the way he did.

  “Cal, you did everything you could. He was the criminal, not you.”

  He grimaced. “Nice of you to defend me. I spent months trying to tell myself that, until finally God forced me to face the truth. I’d been so ambitious, so determined to succeed, that I’d let myself get sucked into a life that didn’t take into account any of the important things, like faith, honesty, other human beings. I had to stop making excuses before I could repent and begin again.”

  That’s what he was doing here, then. Starting over. Looking for peace in this quiet place where values still applied.

  “You did the right thing.” Maybe her opinion didn’t matter, but she had to say it. She met his gaze. “You couldn’t have done anything else.”

  Something in his eyes acknowledged her words. He didn’t speak. They didn’t touch. But they were closer than if they’d been in each other’s arms. She seemed to be aware of everything about him—of every cell in his body, of the blood coursing through his veins.

  She took a breath, letting the realization crystallize in her mind. She cared about him, far more than she’d known. She admired him more than she could say.

  But what he’d just told her had shut out any possibility of a relationship between them, because the life she longed to keep was the very one he’d never go back to.

  Emma, going up the attic steps ahead of Andrea, pushed the door open, letting a shaft of sunlight fall on the rough wooden stairs. Rough, but not dusty, Andrea noticed. Obviously Emma’s cleaning fanaticism extended even to the attics of the old house.

  “All of the quilts are packed away in trunks,” Emma said. “It is good that they’ll be useful again.”

  “I just hope they’re still in decent shape after being in storage for so long.” She emerged into the attic, which stretched out into the shadowy distance, marked by the looming shapes of discarded furniture.

  Lots and lots of furniture. Cal had said the place was packed to the rafters, and he was right. Her unpracticed eye identified a dining room set that surely wasn’t genuine Duncan Phyfe, was it?

  Emma, weaving her way through odd pieces of furniture, let out an audible sniff. “I put them away proper. They’ll just need a bit of airing, that’s all.”

  If Emma had done it, of course it would have been done properly. She was the one who’d suggested the quilts when Andrea and Grams had been debating about drapes and bedcovers for the guest rooms.

  “The English will like having Amish-made quilts in the rooms,” she’d said matter-of-factly.

  She was right. Their guests would come to Lancaster County to see the Amish, who ironically only wanted to be left alone, and they would be thrilled at the idea. So she and Emma were on a hunting expedition in the attic for quilts and anything else that would give the guest rooms a unique touch.

  Concentrating on the decorating just might keep her mind from straying back, again and again, to that conversation with Cal the previous day. On second thought, nothing was
strong enough to do that.

  Cal. He’d wrung her heart with his story, and in the dark silence of the night, she’d found herself filling in all the things he hadn’t said.

  He’d given up everything—his career, his future, his friends—because it was the right thing to do. Plenty of people would have rationalized away their responsibility in the situation, but not Cal. He’d taken on even more than his share, and now seemed content that it was what God expected of him.

  She approached that thought cautiously. Somehow it had never occurred to her, even when she was attending church regularly, that God might have a claim on one’s business life. That God might require sacrifice, on occasion. That was an uncomfortable idea, but once planted, it didn’t seem amenable to being dismissed.

  Emma knelt in front of a carved wooden dower chest, one of several lined up near the window. Andrea hurried to join her, thinking that her jeans were more appropriate to kneeling on the wide-planked floor than Emma’s dress.

  Concentrate on the task at hand. The practical one was to choose the quilts for the bedrooms. The unspoken one was to use this opportunity to talk to Emma about Levi, to try and get a sense of whether he might have been the dark figure she’d seen the night of the storm.

  Leave the theological considerations for later. And any thought of her feelings for Cal for later still.

  Emma lifted the chest lid, exposing bundles wrapped in muslin sheets. She took out the first one, unwrapping it. Andrea grasped the sheet and spread it out so that the quilt wouldn’t touch the floor.

  “Squares in Bars,” Emma said, naming the pattern as she unfolded it. “My mother made many quilts for your grandmother. This was one of hers.”

  Andrea’s breath caught as the colors, rich and saturated, glowed like jewels in the sun streaming in the many-paned attic window. The quilt was bordered in a deep forest-green, with the squares done in the blues, maroons, pinks, purples and mauves of Amish clothing.