Coming Home

by Mariah Stewart

  “The New River? The one that runs along St. Dennis, then into the Bay?”

  He nodded. “And we went out to some island, then along a cove. To a nature preserve to see the migrating birds.”

  “Ah, you got the full tour.”

  “Only by water. After we docked, we went back to the police station and steamed the crabs we caught.” He took a sip of beer. “Don’t forget, you’re walking me around town on Sunday.”

  “I won’t forget.” She paused, then asked as casually as she could, “What time are you planning on leaving St. Dennis?”

  “I’d like to be on the road by around three.”

  “Are you catching a flight back to Montana?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m driving to Virginia, staying over, and doing a hike on Monday morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Bull Run Mountains. I heard it was a good climb. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “Oh,” she said again, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The waiters came in to serve dinner, and everyone sat at the table. More toasts were made again this night, and more tears shed. By the end of the evening, Vanessa’s head was pounding, mostly, she thought, from all the champagne she drank at the end of every toast. When she got up to leave, she wobbled.

  “Whoa, there.” Grady stood and took her elbow.

  “Sorry. Just a little unsteady. Sorry. I’m not used to this much champagne.”

  “I’ll walk you out to your car.” He was still holding on to her arm.

  “Actually, I walked to work this morning, so I’ll be walking home.” She leaned on the back of the chair to steady herself.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Hey, you try standing in these four-inch heels for…” She checked the wall clock. It was nine-thirty “… thirteen and a half hours.”

  He looked at her feet. “I don’t think they’d fit.”

  She peered down at his. “Well, the straps are adjustable.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know how that plum color would look with my white athletic socks.”

  “Oh, dear God, don’t put pictures like that in my head,” she groaned, and Grady laughed.

  “Come on,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.”

  “I need to say good night to everyone first.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  They made the rounds-hugs and kisses and see-you-in-the-mornings-then made their way out to Grady’s rental car.

  “You just go to the stop sign and take a left at the first street,” she told him as he opened the passenger-side door for her.

  “I remember.” He slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s side and got in. “Your house is almost to the end of the third block. Lots of pink and purple tulips in the front yard.”

  “Right.” She smiled to herself, pleased that he’d remembered, that he’d opened the car door for her, that he’d offered her a ride home. “Thanks for the ride, Grady.”

  “I couldn’t have you walking three blocks after”-he checked the clock on the dashboard-“fourteen hours in those shoes.”

  She was still smiling when he pulled into her driveway.

  “So what do you think of our little town?” she asked.

  “I like what I’ve seen of it, land and sea. I noticed a lot of old buildings-like, late 1700s, early 1800s-around the square. But I’m not going to ask about them now. I’m saving all that for my tour on Sunday.”

  “I wouldn’t think of spoiling it for you.” She unbuckled her seat belt. “But I will tell you, that’s the oldest part of town. Hal lives up in that area, right off the square. His great-grandfather built the house he lives in.”

  “He’s one really interesting guy. While we were out on the boat the other day, he was telling me about how when he was younger, he played with a minor-league baseball team. He might have had a shot at the majors if he hadn’t been sent to Nam.”

  Vanessa nodded. “All true. He has a scrapbook with all these press clippings in it. Pictures of him when he was a young man. He was quite the good-looking fellow in those days.”

  “I guess that’s around the time when your mother met him.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could respond, he said, “Sorry. Wrong thing to have said, apparently, judging from your reaction. I apologize.”

  “It’s not that. I just wouldn’t have expected him to bring her up. And yes, that’s when my mother met Hal, when he was a dashing, soon-to-be-professional ballplayer.”

  “He talked about her when we were out on the boat today.”

  “He did?” Vanessa was wide-eyed. “He never talks about her to me or to Beck. What did he say?”

  “Just pretty much what he said last night, that he’d always thought he’d have a family, but it didn’t work out for him the way he thought it would. That having Beck in his life, even if he hadn’t had him as a little boy, and having you, even as late as you came to him, made it all right, in the end.”

  “He said that?”

  Grady nodded. “He’s really proud of both of you.”

  She stared out the window. “I don’t know what I’d be doing, or where I’d be, if not for Hal. It’s really hard to explain what he means to me.”

  “The father you never had. I get it.”

  She shook her head. “That isn’t the half of it. I mean, yeah, it’s true that he filled that role, since I never had a father, but it isn’t the whole of it. Before I came here, no one had ever had any expectations of me, including me. I never figured to amount to very much.”

  “Why would you feel that way?”

  “I was the girl in high school who wore too much makeup and who dated guys who were way too old for me. The girl with the flighty mother who moved around a lot. I never asked much of myself because I didn’t know I could-or should. No one ever had. Hal was the first person in my life to believe in me, to make me understand that I could be more than what I was, but that I had to demand more from myself.” She shrugged. “I was late catching on.”

  “Hey, that’s a lesson that some people never learn.”

  “You know, if he and Beck had just been friendly and cordial to me when I first came here, I’d have gone back to where I came from, or gone somewhere else and had the same kind of life I had before, because I didn’t know any better. But they took me in, right away, made me family, never asked a damn thing of me, gave me a place, but even more than that, they made room for me in their lives. And because of them, now I do know better. And I will never go back and I will never settle for less.”

  She cleared her throat, surprised that she’d said so much, revealed so much. “Too much information, right?”

  “Not by a long shot.” He shook his head. “Not enough.”

  “Well, maybe enough for tonight. Right now I have several dozen unglazed cookies waiting for me and I have an early day tomorrow. I appreciate the ride home.”

  “It was my pleasure. But I could help out with those cookies, you know.”

  “Thanks, but I can handle it.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I am.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the car door and stepped out onto the drive. She turned to say, “See you tomorrow,” when she realized he’d gotten out of the car, too.

  “I’ll walk you to your door,” he told her.

  She smiled to herself. Does the cowboy think he’s about to get lucky?

  He took her arm, but when the space between her fence and the car narrowed, his hand slid down her arm to her hand, and they walked single file to the sidewalk. He began to say something, when Vanessa stopped cold in her tracks.

  “Oh my God. What the hell…?” She stood openmouthed at the foot of the path leading to her front door.

  He followed her gaze to the ground, where here and there, tulips lay scattered, bent and broken.

  She could barely believe her eyes. “It looks like a tornado went through here.”

&nb
sp; “How do you suppose this happened?”

  “I don’t know. Cujo, maybe.”

  “Cujo?”

  “The Kleins’ dog. They live behind me and over a couple of properties. They have this dog that gets out every chance he gets. He always runs through my yard on the way to the park.”

  Grady squatted and picked up a broken stem. “How much does this dog weigh?”

  “Probably forty or fifty pounds. Why?”

  “Because whatever flattened this flower had some heft behind it. I’m guessing more than forty or fifty pounds’ worth.” He picked one up and held it for her to see. “Any kids in the neighborhood who might be prone to a little vandalism now and then?”

  “The Carr boys from around the corner get into trouble once in a while.” Vanessa began to pick up the flowers that lay on the ground, gathering the ones with stems intact into a bouquet.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Eggs behind the car tires and toilet paper in the trees on mischief night. That sort of thing. Nothing serious. But I wouldn’t want to accuse them. I’ve never had a problem with any of them myself.” She held the flowers in one hand. “If you knew how long it took me to plant these bulbs… damn. I was so proud of my little garden.”

  “Why don’t we just clean this up right now,” he suggested.

  “There isn’t enough light out here,” she said. “I think it’s going to have to wait until the morning.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “I picked up the ones I could see in the porch light, but if I start raking up the broken ones and the leaves, I may end up making an even bigger mess. I planted different varieties so they’d bloom at different times. I figure I have another few weeks of blooms to go yet. If I try to clean up in the dark, I’m likely to break some of the ones still in bud.”

  “I’m sorry you had to come home to this. I can see it’s upset you.”

  “Well, like I said, more will bloom over the next few weeks, and of course, they will bloom again next year.” She smiled wistfully. “Maybe by then the Kleins will have decided to fence their yard.”

  She held the bunch of tulips in her arm while she searched her bag for her keys.

  “Well, anyway, thanks for driving me home. I’ll see you tomorrow at the wedding.” She brightened at the thought of the wedding. “Wait till you see your sister. She’s going to be the most glorious bride ever.”

  She located her keys and went up the porch steps to the door. As she did, the flowers slipped in her arms and the keys clattered to the ground.

  “Let me do that.” Grady came up behind her and placed one hand on the small of her back while he picked up her keys with the other. He fitted the key into the lock and started to push the door open, then stopped. He stood behind her, one step lower, so that when she turned around to thank him, there was barely breathing room between them.

  Later, she tried to decide who had moved first. She thought it might have been him, but she wasn’t sure, because at that moment, the urge to kiss him had been overwhelming. All she knew for certain was that one minute she was looking down, watching those sure fingers unlock her front door, and the next minute, her mouth was locked with his. She hadn’t been expecting it, but by the time she realized that she was kissing him back, the kiss was over and those lips that had been pressed to hers were whispering, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Right.” She’d managed to nod. “See you tomorrow.”

  He’d started down the sidewalk, walking backward the way he’d done on Thursday. “Go on in, now,” he’d said. “You know I can’t leave until I know you’re safely inside your house.”

  “What do you think could happen between now and the time you get into your car?”

  “Old habits die hard,” he’d told her, and she’d gone in and locked the door behind her.

  From the dining room window, Vanessa watched him get into his car and back out of the drive, then onto Cherry. She watched until the tail lights disappeared halfway into the next block. She listened to a few voice-mail messages-Nan reminding her that she would be leaving the shop early on Saturday, so she hoped Vanessa had found someone to lock up-and Steffie thanking her again for the deep discount on the dress she’d be wearing to the wedding because “I realized just how hot I look in that dress and I saw Wade MacGregor this afternoon when he hit town, and if I ever needed to look spectacular, tomorrow would be it. To celebrate, I named a flavor after you… which Mountain Man sampled when he stopped by, you should know. Just sayin’…” There were two hang-ups then, and she checked the caller ID, but both calls were from private numbers.

  She kicked off her shoes near the bottom of the steps and left them there, then went into the kitchen. She checked the glaze on the cookies and found it had hardened to an acceptable degree.

  She ran upstairs and changed her clothes, then came back down and slipped on her apron. She looked amid the clutter on her kitchen counters for the lemon-glaze recipe. She found it, but before she started to gather the ingredients, she flipped through a box of CDs. She wanted something she could sing along with, something with a little bit of beat. She decided on Keith Urban, slipped the disc into the little Bose system she kept in the kitchen on one of the wide windowsills, turned up the volumn, and began to sing.

  Tomorrow, before she went to the Inn, she would box the cookies and tie them up with the pink grosgrain ribbon Mia had picked out, then load them up and drive them to the Inn, where they’d be placed on the table with the guests’ name cards.

  It was almost two by the time she’d glazed every last one of the cookies and turned out the light on her bedside table. She lay back against her pillow, closed her eyes, and raised her fingers to her lips to touch the place where Grady’s lips had been. Judging by that one kiss, she’d have to rate him pretty high on the kissing scale. It had been, she’d decided, a pretty damned fine kiss. She tried to remember the last time she’d really, really wanted to be kissed, and realized that she couldn’t. She fell asleep wondering whether she’d get the chance to kiss him again.

  Diary—

  Daniel has been beside himself getting the Inn ready for Saturday’s wedding and reception. I’ve been telling him for the past year that he needs to hire an event coordinator, but he says he just hasn’t gotten around to it. I say he isn’t willing to hand over control of anything connected to the Inn to anyone else. For example, I said that he could ask his sister to come home and do her wedding-planning thing right here at the Inn, but no. “Lucy will come back when she’s ready, and apparently she isn’t ready yet.” Says he. Hmmph, says I.

  Anyway-earlier this evening I just happened to be on the balcony off my suite enjoying my after-dinner coffee when the bridal party arrived to rehearse! Mia looked so tiny walking up the aisle between her two brothers-Hal said their father died last year, so it’s nice that she has them to accompany her. I just happened to be in the flower shop today when the flowers for the wedding arrived-such glorious colors! Oh, the shades of pink! The peonies! The roses! The hydrangeas! I can’t wait to see what magic Olivia performs with those blooms!

  I daresay this will be a wedding everyone will be talking about for a long time to come!

  – Grace

  Chapter 9

  NOW, just you calm down there, honey.” Hal stood in Vanessa’s foyer watching her run around to gather everything she needed before they left for the Inn. “We’ve got plenty of time. I promise the wedding won’t start without us.”

  “I need to get there a little early.” She ran past him on her way upstairs for the third time since he arrived. “I have all these favors to take with me so they can be put out on the table with the place cards, and I have to run back upstairs for my dress and I can’t find my shoes.”

  “Take a deep breath, slow down, and put one foot in front of the other.” Hal looked amused, and in spite of herself, the sight of the older man in his tux, a silly smile on his face and the box of prettily wrapped cookie boxes in his arms, made
Vanessa smile, too. “I swear, even Beck didn’t seem to be as excited as you this morning.”

  “Beck doesn’t have an appointment to get his hair and makeup done in fifteen minutes,” she called down the steps as she ran up them.

  “Well, it would be a first if he did.”

  “What?” she asked as she flew down the steps, the dress over one arm, shoes in her hand, and a tote over her shoulder.

  “I said, Beck didn’t mention having made an appointment to have his hair and makeup done this morning.”

  “Oh, you…” She swatted at him with her free hand. “I think I have everything.” Mentally she went through her checklist.

  “Does this mean we can leave? This box is getting heavy.”

  “Oh, you could have set that down, but yes, I’m ready. Let me just find my keys. You go on out, I’ll be right with you.”

  Hal went out through the front while Vanessa searched her bag for her keys with her free hand. She found them in the pocket of her jeans where she’d stashed them while looking for her shoes. When she joined Hal outside, he was in the middle of the yard, looking over the debris that had been her carefully planted tulip bulbs.

  “What the heck happened here?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think Cujo might have gotten out last night and gone on a tear.” She locked the door and dropped the keys into her bag. “It was like this when I got back from Lola’s. I picked the ones that had a stem and a flower still attached to it and brought them inside and put them in a vase, so at least they’ve gone to good use. First thing this morning I gathered up the loose leaves and petals that were scattered around and trashed them. It actually looks better than it did.”

  “Jason is going to have to do something about that dog.” Hal frowned. “I know he isn’t vicious, but he’s fast, and he could hurt someone, or at the least, give someone one hell of a scare if he bowled them over. You should say something to them.”

  “I really don’t want to do that.” She shook her head as she walked to Hal’s car. “For one thing, they’re good neighbors except for their dog occasionally taking a shortcut through my yard. For another, I don’t know for sure that the dog caused the damage. It could have been some kids up to mischief.”