“We had a tiny coat closet in the apartment. Very small, just big enough for a broom and a mop. We didn’t even put coats in it. I hid in there sometimes during the fights if I could get in there fast enough. Then I stayed until my father opened the door. I remember he would pat my head and send me away. Then he’d take out the broom and clean up whatever damage he’d done. In the morning I’d step into the kitchen and it was new again. Always new again.”
Rachel looked over A&P’s shoulder and again found the arrangement of family photos on the wall. She saw A&P with a man Rachel presumed was her husband; Rain and Malcolm on what must have been their wedding day; Malcolm and a baby; Malcolm, Rain, and a baby; A&P and Noah on what she guessed might have been his prom night; Samantha as a teenager in a nun’s costume standing with her father on a dark stage somewhere; and A&P with a cat on the Cooper’s backyard swing.
“People make mistakes,” she said, and A&P replied with a subtle nod. “Don’t they?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He made mistakes. He hit her—I saw it—but he always loved her after. Then he would hold me in his arms for a long time and apologize. But I don’t remember him ever hitting me, Anna Belle, I don’t.” Again she turned the other way and this time closed her eyes tight and hugged her legs ever tighter.
“People make mistakes, but they change. They change. He could have changed. He hit Mother—I know, I saw. He broke that broom on her head once and he stabbed her foot with the end, I remember. I saw it. He cursed her and stabbed at her feet while she screamed and ran around the kitchen. I saw it.”
Rachel gave way to tears that gathered into heavy sobs.
A&P slid close and put both arms around the broken young woman. She cradled her and whispered. “People make mistakes.”
Chapter 28
While Stephanie slept in medicated peace for twelve hours at Domus Jefferson, Samantha hunkered down all night in her Shenandoah County sheriff’s office doing research into Stephanie’s background. She scoured the Internet and the law enforcement databases for any unusual police reports from Kansas City, Missouri, around the time of the altercation, looking for any related wire stories.
There were no missing-person reports that came close to matching Stephanie’s account and no open case files that might sound alarms. She researched the neighborhood that Stephanie and her family had lived in and accessed a federal database of unsolved homicides in the area. There were many to peruse, but none matched the details she needed to connect any dots. She sat back and once again felt grateful she lived in a town and county where the serious crime statistics barely filled an index card.
When she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, she locked the door and dozed off on a couch in her office.
None of the other Coopers slept much either. Malcolm shared the story with Rain in full detail, careful not to embellish or exaggerate, but intent on fairly representing the horror the Kaplan family had lived through. When Malcolm finished, Rain called A&P and was assured Rachel was safe and comfortable.
Matthew spent much of the morning in his brother’s office at the Inn with the door closed. He exchanged e-mails and phone calls with three disgruntled clients in Boston who had questions about their portfolios. He booked an airline ticket for that evening and committed to spending the next week in the office, catching up. Before logging off Malcolm’s computer, he sent Monica an e-mail telling her the family said hello and hoped she was well. Then he wished her well, too.
Noah slept less than anyone. He’d received a text message from Rachel saying she was exhausted, he needn’t return for the night, and they would speak in the morning. He tossed from one side to another, flipping his pillow even more often than he usually did, and wishing Rachel would change her mind. At first light he went downstairs to fix his own breakfast. While he sat at the smaller table in the kitchen, he sent Rachel three texts but got no reply. He took his time eating, washed his own dishes as well as the dishes from the night before, and wiped down the counters before deciding he couldn’t wait any longer to check on her in person.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he walked out the back door of the Inn and saw Rachel walking across A&P’s property toward him.
Noah stopped at the swing and waited. He hadn’t often seen her dressed so casually, and he smiled at how beautiful she was, even in gray sweatpants and a tight-fitting T-shirt. Her arms were folded across her chest and she looked down with each step she took as if navigating a minefield.
“Morning,” Noah said and he hugged her. It was obvious she hadn’t slept much either, if at all. “Long night?”
“You could say that.”
“Me, too.”
With his arms still around her, Noah’s eyes caught a black sedan arriving and stopping in front of A&P’s front door.
Rachel let go of him and buried her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants. She forced herself to look up. “I love you, Noah.”
“I know you do, I—”
“Wait. Just let me have a minute. I really do love you. You know that’s true. And you know what happened last night doesn’t change that.”
“What is this, Rach?”
“I had this all figured out,” she stammered to herself. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind with a deep breath of morning air. Then she took his hands. “It’s just too much, Noah. It’s too much right now. It’s too fast. Last night, the wedding, my mother, the new job—all of it. It’s just . . . It’s just that I need some time. I just need to figure everything out, you know? I need time, Noah, time to myself.”
Noah let go of her hands and sat on the swing. He rubbed his eyes and tried to shake the scene. When he opened them again, she was standing in front of him taking his hand in hers and pressing the engagement ring into his palm. She closed his fingers around it. “I can’t,” she said.
Noah looked in her empty, tired eyes and would have cried, or begged her to stay, or torn the swing apart if only he hadn’t felt so numb.
Rachel put her hands on his face and leaned into him. “Good-bye,” she said with a kiss on his cheek.
Noah felt like a shot soldier. In shock he watched her walk back across the wet, grassy field. When she reached A&P’s, she said something to the driver of the sedan and reentered the house. A minute later she returned with her overnight bag. When the driver saw her coming he started to get out but Rachel put her hand on his door and pushed it shut. Then she opened her own door, got in, and left.
Noah sat motionless on the swing and watched the car reverse, turn around, and roll down the driveway. He kept staring into the space Rachel should have been in until the dust cloud from the gravel and dirt settled back to the ground. He opened his hand and realized he’d been holding the ring so tightly that it had left deep, red lines in his skin. He balanced the ring on his leg and let the breeze ease the swing forward and back.
His mind saw spring again and the beginning of the greatest summer of his life. His hands held a degree from the university he loved. His eyes fell in love with the most fascinating, captivating smile he’d ever known. The sketchpads in his apartment were filled with images of that smile and the face it belonged to.
He’d been spending his most important summer drawing the perfect life for himself and a future that couldn’t fade or be erased with time or pain. But as the swing came to a subtle, silent stop, pain was all he felt.
He looked again at the ring balancing on his leg.
His mother found him there an hour later.
Chapter 29
Noah swam through the next few days more than he lived or survived them. After a night of unloading years of baggage and heartache with A&P, Rachel convinced herself she needed time alone to sort through the pain and lies.
A&P neither encouraged nor discouraged her to cancel the wedding and return to the city alone. She did exactly what she’d promised: she listened. When the sun rose and it was clear Rachel’s decision was set, A&P offered to drive her home or let her borrow her ca
r. Rachel again refused the help and said she’d prefer to take a cab or a bus and quietly escape the valley.
A&P ignored her, called a car service she’d used before and left Rachel no option.
Noah chose to remain at the Inn. He wasn’t sure he could face his apartment in the city and the task of re-sketching his future. While still at home he sat around the table with his mother and A&P to begin the process of un-planning a wedding. The to-do list seemed longer than ever. Several hundred people had been invited. They lived down the street; they lived across the valley. They lived in all orders of the Commonwealth of Virginia and as far away as Sacramento. Some would have to be called, some could be e-mailed, others would simply receive an un-invitation in the mail. Rain and A&P offered to do most of the work and apologized repeatedly that Noah was experiencing what no one should have to live through.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Please stop apologizing.”
As they sat and planned out their strategy, Malcolm walked in and out of the room offering assistance and suggestions. Mostly he just wanted to keep Noah’s mind and mood occupied. It was difficult; all Noah wanted to do was lock himself in the cottage he’d grown up in and come out some time around the holidays.
Noah sent text messages to Rachel and received short, simple replies. She’d returned safely to the city and was taking some time at home to sort through her new reality. Noah was anxious to see her again and offered that then, more than ever, she needed someone to help her get through this tough time.
Malcolm and Rain drove Stephanie to the airport and wished her well. They also made her promise to stay in touch as the days unfolded.
Three days after Rachel returned the ring, A&P walked in to the bed-and-breakfast carrying a leather-bound binder with Noah and Rachel engraved on the front.
“Where’s Noah?” she asked Rain.
“He’s gone into town with his dad. I think Malcolm is trying to get some of the catering deposit back.”
“About that.” A&P began flipping through the laminated pages. “I know it’s supposed to be bad luck for Noah to read his Wedding Letters before the actual wedding, but given that there isn’t going to be one, at least not right now, I’m going to let him. Reindeer, there are some special notes here. I mean you never really know what people think or have experienced until you see it in writing. So why not? Right?”
“I’ll leave that completely up to you, Anna Belle. This is your project.”
“There’s more.”
“Should I be worried?” Rain tried to force out a laugh for the first time in days, but it was so awkward and unnatural that both women wished she hadn’t tried.
“No, not worried, but you might want to call your husband and have him stand down.”
“All right. I’m listening.”
“Rachel is suffering right now, and heaven and the desert know her mother is suffering, too. I can’t imagine their grief, and I’ve survived plenty of my own. That girl wept her way through the night until I thought there wasn’t another teardrop left in the clouds. Then she found another. . . . Sweetheart, I love Noah, he’s my family like the rest of you are, and it pains me to know he’s hurting. But he’s a strong young man—you’ve raised him so well, but that’s not news to you, of course—and he’s going to get through this like everyone else who’s had a heart broken. And Rachel may well come back when she figures all this out.”
Rain knew A&P was right. Noah was well-grounded and the Coopers had enough experience with family drama to know that even the most painful family wounds can be healed with time and patience. “I hope you’re right,” Rain said.
“And even if I’m not, even if they drift apart, he’s still going to survive and thrive and find someone else. But the Inn . . . now that’s a different story. It’s ending is written, right?”
“Why do I know where this is going?”
A&P grinned and raised her eyebrows up and down. “Because you know it’s a great idea.”
“Quit stalling,” Rain teased. “Let’s hear it.”
“Malcolm’s building a gorgeous gazebo that belongs in a magazine. You have a caterer and a photographer. The tents are rented. You’ve invited a million people who have cleared their schedules. Some of them have bought airfare, booked rooms in town, taken vacation days, all that. And it’s not like the wedding is—was—a year away. It’s in thirty-five days.”
“You counted?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” she sighed.
“Rain, let’s take that invite list and double it. Let’s invite everyone who’s ever stayed at the Inn. Let’s invite the new owners, whatever their names are—”
“The Van Dams.”
“The Van Dams, yes, and anyone else who wants to come. We’ll celebrate the Inn, the history, Jack and Laurel, the friendships, and we will bid farewell to this place in the way it deserves.” A&P finished with a flourish.
“A celebration,” Rain mused.
“A celebration.”
“A party in place of a cancelled wedding,” Rain added.
“A celebration,” A&P repeated. “And I’ll cover whatever added expense there might be, since it’s my idea. I’ll re-invite, I’ll re-mail, I’ll re-do it all.”
Before Rain could answer, A&P slid the open book across the table. “Read this.”
• • •
Noah and Rachel,
I am honored to be requested to write letter for your grand wedding. We have good memories of our visit to the bed-and-breakfast of your family. When we visit in 1997 Noah drew picture of my wife on the porch in a rocker chair. Do you remember this?
We stay three days with you on the trip to America. We visit five states and stay almost one month. We stay in diamond hotels and resorts. We make many memories.
On the wall in Tokyo in our home we have one memory from the trip that is the most happy of all. It is the drawing of my wife on your porch. It remind my family what we love about America and what we love most about our trip.
We want to return, but my business is bad now. Someday we try, but until that day we have very best memories. We have you.
My family will pray for God to bless you and your wedding.
Yee-Quon Lee
• • •
“I remember them,” Rain said, still holding and studying the letter.
“And they remember you. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“That it is.”
“And there are others like it. The Inn has been so important to so many people. And I know it’s presumptuous, Reindeer, but we owe it a good-bye.”
Rain read another letter, then another. She removed one from its sheet protector to admire up close. She held it up against the light and wondered how much A&P had spent on the customized, embossed stationery. “You’re too much,” she said, sliding the letter back into its home.
A letter from Layne Birch reminded Rain that a life had ended in the Inn. She retold A&P how young Cameron, a Civil War buff and cancer patient, had stepped from this world to the next in an upstairs bedroom when Jack and Laurel still ran Domus Jefferson.
“Trust me, if you go ahead with the plans and we honor the Inn and the people who’ve stayed here through all these years, I promise you’ll see more guests and friends than you can imagine. But there will also be others here you won’t see.”
Rain closed the binder. “I love you, Anna Belle. And you had me at celebration.”
Chapter 30
A&P and Rain made the same pitch to Noah and Malcolm later that afternoon in the living room. Malcolm was an easier sell; Noah needed convincing.
“Why do I want to be reminded that the wedding is off?”
“Don’t think of it that way,” his mother said. “If you’d decided to get married next spring, or next year, or never at all, we might have decided to do this anyway.”
“And Rachel’s still welcome to come; we’d love that,” A&P added.
“Son, this is your call. Maybe it shou
ldn’t be, I don’t know, but I’m making it so. This was your wedding, your day. If you’d rather not go ahead with this, or if you’d rather do something on a smaller scale, we’ll support that. And hey, you’ll be saving your mom and me some money, right?”
“Good point, Corn Pops.”
Rain removed and threw a hairclip at him.
“What?”
“Noah, can I show you something?” A&P produced the couple’s Wedding Letter binder from her bag and set it on his lap.
“I don’t know, A&P—”
“Don’t say no yet. . . . This is just some of them, Noah. I have others at the house and more I haven’t even opened yet. I bet I have thirty letters yet to read, and we’re not even in September yet. Who knows how many we’ll end up with.”
“But what’s the point?”
A&P shooed Malcolm down the couch and plopped between father and son. “I know it seems useless to keep these right now, what with the wedding off and everything else—trust me, I know—but the advice and the stories are still meaningful. You’ve got to keep this anyway.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’m not keeping a book of letters about a wedding that isn’t happening.”
“So let your mother keep them. Or I’ll keep them in my home and you can read them whenever you want. The point is these people love you and your family regardless. And some of the letters are from Rachel’s side, too. You can’t just throw all that away.”
Noah opened the binder and scanned the letters. Though he tried to imagine them being about some other couple and some other wedding, each letter felt like he was holding a torn sketch of his lost summer.
• • •
Dear Noah and Rachel,
Every parent dreams of their child’s wedding day, right? Every parent hopes and prays that their child will find someone special who will treat them as the most important gift in life. I do hope that you will be that person for each other.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was in your parents’ shoes watching Angela walk down the aisle. With her permission I’d like to share with you some of what I wrote in my wedding letter to her.
The Wedding Letters Page 14
