The Season of Silver Linings (A Sweet Lake Novel Book 3)

by Christine Nolfi

  Straightening in her chair, she looked at him fully. “You do believe in family.” Something shifted in her eyes.

  “Family is everything. Don’t you agree?”

  “I do.”

  “All family,” she clarified, “not just parents. I never had the benefit of aunts or uncles—my parents were only children too. I have dim memories of my paternal grandmother, not many. She died before I started school.”

  “Sure,” he agreed slowly, unable to get a fix on what was upsetting her. “Kids benefit from the love they receive in an extended family. Look at Fancy. She’s had Daniel in her life from the very beginning. My parents too, even if they are in Texas. When they visit, they spend most of their time with the munchkin. I’m grateful she has grandparents.”

  Doubt creased Jada’s brow. Without warning, she rose. She walked to the edge of the deck, lowered her elbows to the wood railing. Confused, he nearly rose to join her.

  A change in the air warded him off.

  “We’re not going into this now,” she whispered, and he realized she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to herself, murmuring a vow to the shadows pooling in the yard. A pledge, a promise.

  A secret.

  One she believed he’d resist hearing. A truth too harsh for him to stomach.

  Unmoored, Philip rose on unsteady legs. “Jada.” He waited until she turned, her eyes unwilling to meet his. “Talk to me.”

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t.”

  A bad response. “You promised to hold something back from me?” The sense of foreboding falling across his shoulders seemed darker than the shadows draped across the yard. “Why? Don’t you trust me?”

  “You don’t understand. This isn’t about trust. I will tell you, once I’m sure.”

  “Too late. Whatever it is, tell me now.” He swallowed. “Please.”

  The soft plea dissolved the steel in her posture. He waited as she sank against the railing, her shoulders sagging, her hands suddenly alive with agitation, rubbing up and down her thighs as she marshaled her thoughts. She kept her attention planted on her feet, as if waiting for the strength she needed to arrive and carry her through.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  With harsh, chilling clarity, he understood. He wasn’t ready. Not even close.

  “I’m positive,” he said.

  And so, she began.

  Chapter 13

  “We need to discuss Millicent,” Jada said.

  “The historian staying at the inn?” She nodded, and Philip added, “I’ve met her.” When she paused to nervously lick her lips, he sat back down.

  Leaning against the deck’s railing, Jada searched for a safe route into a dangerous conversation. Philip deserved the facts. Unfortunately, there was nothing concrete to offer. Only supposition and theory, and the conviction that she understood the motivation that brought Millicent Earhardt to Sweet Lake. None of which mattered as Jada stiffened against the needling self-doubt.

  Hadn’t she assured Linnie and Cat that she wouldn’t discuss this with Philip? Why delve in before her theories were grounded in fact, before she knew with absolute certainty why Millicent was in town?

  Philip lowered his elbows to his knees, the gesture indicating his willingness to hear her out. He clasped his hands.

  The outward pose didn’t mask his unease, colliding with hers.

  “You’re giving Millicent baking lessons, right?” He tapped his foot, stopped.

  “Several times each week. First thing in the morning, before I begin my normal workday.”

  “She’s nice. She likes to stop by the work site, gauge our progress. We’ve shared a few words.”

  “She didn’t come to the Wayfair on vacation.”

  “Why is she here?”

  It seemed wise to start with the historian’s initial behavior when she arrived. “From the beginning, Millicent asked a lot of questions about me, the past—almost like she was rattling items off a list. Most of all, she seems interested in what happened in my life seven years ago.” Pausing, Jada regrouped. She didn’t want to leave him confused by the telling. “Philip, I’m sure Millicent is related to your late wife. I can’t prove it, not yet. But I’m positive.”

  The man deserved credit: he didn’t rush to disagree. He didn’t rise to his feet, to spout an objection. Weighing her words, Philip bowed his head. Somewhere in the darkness enveloping the backyard, an owl hooted.

  When his eyes returned to hers, she understood his silence. Never in their long association had he known her to display poor judgment. She was too practical.

  He was willing to hear her out.

  “I’m also certain I’ve heard Millicent’s name before,” Jada said, despising the truth—despising the way the halting, stilted conversation hollowed out his gaze. “I can’t remember when Bodi mentioned her. So many years have passed and my memory is hazy. But I’m positive she did. I walked in while they were talking on the phone, or right after they hung up.”

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked, clearly hoping she wasn’t.

  She nodded. “I asked Bodi who she was talking to . . . or I heard her say Millicent’s name while they were talking.” She crossed her arms, frustrated with her inability to recall the specifics. “I’ve spent weeks trying to dredge up the exact conversation. I can’t. At the time, it didn’t seem important. We all knew Bodi hated discussing her life before she came to Sweet Lake.”

  Philip grunted. “She refused to discuss the past. Believe me, I tried to get her to talk, especially after we were married.”

  “Like everyone else, I assumed her parents were abusive, and had kicked her out of the house right after she finished high school. Reason enough to avoid the discussion.”

  “That’s pretty much what she implied.” His eyes dulled with unease. “Millicent is in her sixties. You’re saying she’s Bodi’s grandmother?”

  “Well, step-grandmother. I’m sure she’s married to Bodi’s grandfather.”

  Jada paused again, her mind turning. It occurred to her that Millicent never mentioned her husband directly. She offered nebulous threads about her marriage and the therapy sessions her spouse continued to need.

  Dismissing the observation, she got back on track. “Millicent’s husband—Bodi’s grandfather—was seriously injured in a car accident. I have the impression the accident happened around the same time Bodi came to Sweet Lake. He’s in a wheelchair. I believe Millicent came to Sweet Lake alone because it’s difficult for him to travel.”

  “Assuming I buy any of this—where are Bodi’s parents?”

  “I’m not sure about her father. From what Millicent has described, Bodi’s mother is bipolar.”

  Philip unclasped his hands. “When I found out Bodi was pregnant, and convinced her we should marry”—he fell back in his chair, his face pale—“Frances showed up at my apartment. Penelope was with her. It was pretty late, around ten o’clock.”

  Neither of the women were night owls. “What did they want?”

  “To lend advice about Bodi, since they knew I intended to go through with the marriage. They felt she needed counseling. She’d been in town for several months by then, long enough for most of the Sirens to have witnessed her temper tantrums and mood swings. Frances offered to pay for therapy, if I could get Bodi on board with the idea. I couldn’t.”

  Drawn by the sorrow etching his features, Jada returned to her chair. “They thought Bodi was bipolar,” she guessed. Frances understood a great deal about mental health issues. Her sister—Cat’s mother-in-law—suffered from depression. Julia D’Angelo lived with Frances, and continued to meet with a therapist to help her through the lows.

  Philip said, “Some mental health disorders run in families. If Bodi’s mother was bipolar . . .” His voice drifted away.

  Quickly, Jada said, “While it’s true many traits are inherited, not everyone in a family inherits the gene. You don’t have to worry about Fancy. She’s a perfectly well-adjusted child. Yes
, she bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Bodi, even if she hasn’t noticed yet. She will, once she’s older and becomes more interested in studying the few photos of Bodi you have. Still, she’s got a lot of you in her.”

  “What about Bodi’s grandfather?” he asked, unwilling to accept the reassurance she offered. “Does he have mental health issues?”

  “I don’t know. Millicent rarely talks about him. She’s more interested in gleaning the details of my life. Like she’s trying to find traces of Bodi in the story.”

  “Which makes sense. Bodi never brought up her parents, and I assumed they didn’t give a damn about her. That’s certainly the impression she gave. She always said she didn’t have a family.”

  “She did.”

  “Well, maybe she did have grandparents who cared about her. And if she talked to them from time to time, she’d mention you. She sure as hell wouldn’t mention me. We were practically strangers. I was the latest of her one-night stands, the dumb guy who knocked her up.”

  “Philip—”

  He lifted his hand, silencing her. “Let me get this out.”

  Anger creased his face. Pain followed. The emotion was stark, tangible, and she winced.

  Miraculously, Philip reined in the emotion. “I didn’t intend to go into this until we were further in our relationship,” he explained, his voice flat. “Heck, I was hoping never to bring it up. I need to explain now. Once I do, you’ll understand my decision.” He dragged tense fingers through his hair. “At least I hope you will.”

  On the small table between them, she noticed her forgotten wine. “Go on.” She drank the rest.

  Following suit, Philip drained his glass. “After I married Bodi, I knew I had to step up my game on the work front.” He set the glass down with a bang. “New wife, baby on the way—I had such a crappy work history, I had to turn things around. I took every odd job I could find, worked crazy hours.”

  “I remember.” He wouldn’t establish his own landscaping company until after Bodi’s death, but Jada recalled how he cobbled together a series of part-time jobs. “Isn’t that when you took the delivery job with the trucking company, the one outside Cincinnati?”

  “Part-time, second shift. Short hauls between Cincinnati and small towns in southern Ohio. Usually I got home around one a.m. The apartment always looked like a tornado had blown through, and I’d find Bodi conked out. Most days, I’d leave for my next part-time job before she woke up.”

  “You were avoiding her.”

  “We were avoiding each other. Jada, we’d only had that one night together. Six weeks later, she was back on my doorstep—pregnant.”

  The past accosted Philip. The memories carried him back to the day he sent his life into a tailspin.

  With brutal clarity, he recalled the rattrap he’d rented on the north end of town after dropping out of college yet again. Unlike Daniel, with his impressive GPA and focus on law school, Philip never settled his feet on solid ground. His parents grew tired of his aimless pursuits, the partying and the dead-end jobs, the sleeping in late and the series of short-term girlfriends. If he’d had anything in common with Bodi—and Philip shuddered at the prospect they’d shared any traits—physical attractiveness was their common blessing.

  It was also their shared curse.

  Throughout his youth, Philip came to rely on his raw sexuality. At an age when other young men cultivated their minds, he learned to maneuver through schoolwork by convincing the smartest girls to help him with his studies. He steered into the emotional center of his girlfriends’ lives with his long-limbed, animal grace. There seemed nothing he couldn’t get for free if he sauntered into a room with his thousand-watt smile.

  Why his parents put up with his behavior for so long was impossible to tell. After his twenty-fourth birthday came and went, they announced he should get his own place. The threat was meant to scare him back into finishing his studies at Ohio State.

  A poor gamble. Cocky and proud, he moved out the same week.

  He was only living in the apartment for a few months when Bodi found him on the front stoop one evening, working through a bottle of cheap whiskey. The rent was late again. Philip needed groceries, but his car insurance was also due. The search for a second job wasn’t going well. Most of the shop owners in town knew about his reputation as a party animal and a slacker on the job. All of which seemed reason enough to stop by the liquor store to drown his worries in booze.

  Without seeking permission, Bodi took the whiskey from his fist and sat down beside him.

  The anger Philip wore like a coat of armor to hide his self-doubt—misdirected fury at his parents for throwing him out, but also rage at himself for screwing up with frustrating consistency—all the negative emotions sabotaged him. Bodi tipped her head back to take a long swig from the bottle, and heat pooled in his thighs. The soft skin of her neck was riveting. Her lemon-colored hair whipped around her arresting face like a lure. When she caught his blunt appraisal, she lowered the bottle. Holding his gaze like a challenge, she glided the tip of her tongue across her lower lip.

  He should’ve backed off. A more responsible man would’ve understood how frustration could morph into desire. Then again, a more responsible man wouldn’t have dug his life into a hole in the first place.

  Another wave of pain rolled through his expression, and Jada pressed her hand to his thigh. “I wish . . .” She stopped, and her heart clenched. That Bodi had never scarred his life? That he’d fathered his daughter from a distance, and had never married?

  Reading her expression, he sighed. “Jada, I really meant what I said,” he confided. “I never regretted marrying Bodi. If I hadn’t talked her into it, she would’ve had an abortion. She only went through with the pregnancy because I promised to take care of the baby.”

  The disclosure threatened to halt the steady beat of her heart. Bodi would’ve aborted Fancy? Despair welled up so quickly, Jada pressed her fist to her mouth.

  In response, he took her fingers and held them in a painful grip. “Don’t,” he said gruffly. Bitter tears gleamed in his eyes. “Let me get this out. If you fall apart, I will too. Let me finish.”

  She gave a shaky nod.

  “One night, on the second-shift job, I was on a route near Sweet Lake. I was really under the weather, running a fever. After I made the delivery, I figured I’d head home, grab an hour of sleep before making the drive back to Cincinnati.” He let her hand go, pressed his palms to his knees. “I got into the apartment around ten o’clock that night.”

  The ragged breath he took made her skin clammy. He looked beaten, a man whose dignity lay in tatters. Jada squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Bodi was almost five months pregnant,” he continued in a low, monotone voice. “She was really pissed off because the pregnancy was beginning to show—she’d been in one of her dark moods for over a week. I walked in and found her with a guy she’d picked up in a bar somewhere outside town. I’d never seen him before. They were in my bed, going at it, totally into what they were doing. Seeing them . . . I was shell-shocked. Really stunned. I don’t know how long I stood in the doorway before they noticed me.”

  “Philip, I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t want your pity.” He stood suddenly, walked to the railing. Facing the night, he added, “Jada, I’m telling you because you need to understand. Everything Bodi did to me? It’s in the past. It’s over. Everything I went through was worth it, because I have Fancy. I never forget to thank God for giving her to me. Every morning, first thing. My first prayer of the day. She’s healthy, and perfect, and beautiful.”

  “What do you want me to understand?”

  Pivoting, he regarded her.

  “I buried Fancy’s mother a long time ago. She stays buried—her family does too. Lie to Millicent if you must. Pretend you’ve never heard of Bodi. I forbid you to tell her that Bodi married and had a child.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I will protect my daughter. Fancy will never meet a relative from the wro
ng side of her family.”

  Chapter 14

  Reaching the lobby at a buoyant stride, Millicent caught the tantalizing scent in the air.

  Cinnamon. Warm and sweet, wafting from the kitchen.

  Apparently Jada was at work earlier than usual, crafting a new batch of confections for the inn’s guests. A good sign, Millicent decided. She smoothed her fingers across the recipe card tucked in the pocket of her sweater. The recipe Penelope had suggested she bake with Jada.

  The strategy was simple. As they set about measuring sugar and sifting flour, Millicent would pose the questions she’d been hungering to ask. No longer would she delay.

  Expectancy quickened her stride. After more than seven years, she’d finally have answers. The quest would reveal a phone number, or a street address. With the information Jada provided, she’d repair her shattered family at last.

  Activity hummed in the spacious kitchen. The chef and his assistant were setting out a bowl of eggs and a platter of breakfast meats. They conversed in low tones in front of the built-in griddle abutting the six-burner stove. Behind them, three waitresses shared coffee and murmured conversation in preparation for their shifts in the Sunshine Room. At the opposite end of the kitchen, away from the others, Jada drizzled icing over a sheet of freshly baked cinnamon buns. Bent over her task, she appeared lost in concentration.

  Hope carried Millicent across the room.

  Pausing in her task, Jada padded cautious fingers around the burn at the base of her thumb. On the smooth curve of brown skin, the red welt throbbed as she affixed a bandage. The injury would hinder progress with yeast breads that required kneading and cakes waiting to be iced. Yet another reason why she ought to throw in the towel and return home for more rest.