5. Mike
MIKE
L uke and Sylvia’s child.
My worst suspicions were all true.
Sylvia was seeing Luke the same time as me. She was sleeping with him. I thought I was being unfair, but it was all true . She must have spent that night with him, which I didn’t even believe when I made the accusation.
Sometimes, it bites the wall to have your worst fears proven right.
That prom night, I had plans. Romantic plans. But Sylvia kept wanting to leave the party. I accused her of preferring to be with Luke because I wanted her to argue with me. I wanted her to tell me that I was being stupidly jealous and wrong.
But instead, she left.
With him.
And now what? It’s been years. It should be ancient history. But Luke bought the diner and Sylvia came back to Empire to work in the restaurant there. Did she come back to be with him? They have a daughter. All the pieces fit together. I should be glad that Luke is acting like an adult.
But I’m not.
I’m devastated.
How can Sylvia still have the ability to rip out my guts and shred them right in front of me? I hope I don’t see Luke on Queen Street or we might have the fight we should have had years ago.
I open the passenger door and dump the box of produce onto the bench seat of my truck, unable to believe how brutal Merrie MacRae was about our tomatoes. They’re good tomatoes! I slam the door shut.
On the other hand, I suspect her reaction might not have been about the tomatoes. She knows Sylvia, and maybe understood that Sylvia is angry with me, so is doing a sisterly solidarity thing. I march around to the driver’s side, not feeling better despite the explanation.
The girl is sitting on the hood of my truck, swinging her feet.
Luke’s daughter.
Sierra .
It’s like I conjured her up, because I didn’t see her approach at all. I stop to eye her.
“Cheers,” she says, giving me a fingertip wave. She has a confident audacity that is Luke all over. Insouciance would be a good word.
I am not in the mood.
Close up, she looks even more like him. She’s also cocky and smug, a combination that makes me simmer.
I was betrayed .
And the worst part is that there’s a little glow in my heart that Sylvia is back in town even though she’s never going to talk to me again. It’s irrational and unreasonable and completely fecking stupid, but there it is.
I definitely need sleep.
It’s not this girl’s fault that she exists, but I still don’t want to know her. Luke’s paternity is unmistakable. The purple streaks in her hair. The multiple piercings in her ears. No doubt she’s already started on her tattoo collection.
Her attitude .
“You’d better get off the truck,” I say, practically growling. I am as amiable as a grizzly bear roused from hibernation. I know it and I don’t care.
“You won’t drive off while I’m here.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“I could get hurt.”
“Your choice.”
She eyes me, her gaze assessing, and I know that she’s every bit as perceptive as Sylvia.
Look at that eyeliner. It must be a quarter of an inch wide, black as kohl, with a little flick at the outer corner of the eye.
And black lipstick. I think she might have made her face paler, too.
She looks like a vampire, roused from its natural habitat and forced into the sunlight.
One with those Cavendish blue eyes.
“No.” Sierra is sure of her conclusion. “You’re the responsible type and doing that might result in injury to my person. You wouldn’t do it, no matter how mad you are.”
Her confidence in my intentions is more than annoying – mostly because she’s right.
“Trust me. You could change my mind.” I pull out my keys and reach for the door to give her a bit of foreshadowing.
She raises a finger. “Or you could participate in my special survey, then I would voluntarily get off your truck. You could drive away with complete confidence of my well-being.”
“What survey?” I hear the suspicion in my own voice.
“It’s simple. Just two questions. But you have to tell the truth.”
“I always tell the truth. ”
“Then it’ll be easy.”
I decide I’ll bite.
I lean against the door of the truck and fold my arms across my chest. “What’s the first question?”
“I thought people in Empire were supposed to be friendly.”
“Guess I missed my allotment.”
She bites back a smile, which makes her look both mischievous and unexpectedly cute. “Okay, question one. Are you a Cavendish?”
“Yes. I’m Mike Cavendish.” So far, this is easy and I’m halfway home.
She nods and holds up two fingers. “Question two. Are you my father?”
I blink. She’s not joking. She’s watching me, her manner expectant. “Luke Jones is your father.”
She shakes her head, her purple hair flying. She also makes a beeping sound, like the penalty buzzer at a hockey game. “I’m sorry, that answer is incorrect, Mike Cavendish. Would you like to play again?”
Incorrect? What’s she talking about? My annoyance returns, bringing impatience with it. “Of course, he is. Anyone can see it.”
She shakes her head. “He’s not.”
I’m tempted to ask how she can be so sure. “But you were just talking to him.”
She rolls her eyes. “If everyone I talked to was my biological parent, I’d have some kind of epic family instead of just my mom and grandmother.”
There is that.
“You look like him,” I say, leaving out the other evidence I remember.
“I look like a Cavendish,” she replies. “That’s what everyone in this town has told me. So, it follows logically that my father must be a Cavendish, since my mom and I don’t look much like each other. If it wasn’t you, maybe you can help me out with a list of candidates and some introductions.”
“How do you know your father isn’t Luke?”
“Because Mom told me so.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, really, who else would know better?”
I have to cede that, although I wonder. Sylvia, I know, can be fiercely protective of anyone she loves. (I’m not going to regret being kicked out of that company, not here, not in front of this watchful kid.)
Said kid swings her feet. If her heels hit the front quarter panel of my truck, she might lose her trust in my amiable good nature. “But you’re not crazy in making that conclusion.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Even Luke thought he was my dad when we met.”
“When was that?”
“When we got to Empire, two weeks ago.”
So, Sylvia hasn’t been with Luke all this time.
If Luke didn’t know, that can only be because Sylvia was being protective of Sierra. It would be one thing for her to conceive a child with Luke, a long time ago, and raise that daughter alone.
It would be another to acknowledge Luke as Sierra’s father. He has made a fortune with his band and could even challenge her custody of their daughter. I have to believe that Sylvia would do anything to avoid that eventuality.
Maybe even lie.
And I can’t blame her, because Luke has always been trouble.
He’s unreliable. He’s irresponsible. He was behind every mischievous scheme when we were kids, challenging every rule.
He even spent some time in jail back in the day.
There’s something about him, his very aura, that sends the clear message to fathers everywhere: lock up your daughters.
His band is called Mad, Bad & Dangerous 2 Know , like it’s his personal warning label.
He’s exactly the kind of person I would want to ensure my fifteen-year-old daughter never even knew existed.
If Sylvia needs someone to defend her interests, I’ll be first in line.
“So, you see,” Sierra continues, nodding wisely in the face of my doubts. “Since Luke is my non -dad, it stands to reason that someone else is my dad.” She offers me a bright smile.
“Excuse me?”
“We talked about it. He said—” Sierra averts her gaze, obviously making an effort to recall Luke’s words “—he said he’s the one person who knows how much it sucks to look like a Cavendish but not be acknowledged as a Cavendish in Empire, and that he wanted to have my back. Something like that.”
I feel something writhe in my gut, because I know Luke didn’t have it easy. Even though we were all pretty sure he deserved what he got, I still feel guilty about whatever part I played.
“He said he could be an uncle.” Sierra makes a face. “But that sounded creepy.”
She’s right in that.
“And I can’t be friends with an old man.” I fight a smile. I doubt he’d appreciate being called old. “We agreed he could be a non-dad.” She sighs and shakes her head sadly. “Although he refuses to teach me to ride his motorcycle.”
That’s a surprise and a good one.
“Then he’s grown some sense,” I say gruffly.
“He’s teaching me to play guitar, though,” she informs me with pride.
That’s not a bad thing for Luke to do. But why would he? Maybe he plans for her to join his band. I stomp down on my response to that. I have no right to be protective of Sylvia’s daughter.
Even though I already am.
Maybe he knows Sylvia isn’t being honest about Sierra’s parentage.
Meanwhile, Sierra bares her teeth, indicating her eye tooth. It’s twisted, but I wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t pointed it out. “I’m working on getting him to pay for orthodontics.”
“Good luck.” She misses my sarcasm, remarkably, and takes the response at face value.
“Thanks.”
“Are non-dads on the hook for that?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t hurt to try.” She peers at me. “Are you sure you’re not my dad? Because Mom looked like she’d seen a ghost when you walked into the café.”
“I’m sure,” I say with heat, and she nods before turning away.
“Okay. I’ve got to get to work. It’s my first day.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks!” Her smile is brilliant and transforms her, making it impossible to ignore how pretty she is.
“Thanks for playing today, Mike Cavendish.” She dances across the street, spinning to face me from the opposite curb.
“If you can think of any other candidates for Name That Dad, let me know. I’ll be around – but only on weekends until the summer. ”
I stare after her for a long time, wondering. Because, you know, I’m not positive. Sylvia and I were together a couple of times. I thought it was love. I thought we’d get married and be happy together.
But if Sierra was my kid, surely Sylvia would have told me?
Absolutely. She would have.
But if not me, and if not Luke, then who could it be?
This is not a question that reassures me. How many of my brothers and half-brothers did Sylvia know, in the Biblical sense?
Could she have betrayed me repeatedly – and I had no clue at the time?
No. No, no, no. Not Sylvia. There was only Luke.
I saw her go with him that night with my own eyes.
I saw him leave Una’s the next morning. And the only reason Sylvia would have left town would have been to go with Luke, because she was in love with him – and she stayed away because she had his child.
She came back because he bought the diner to bring her and Merrie to Empire, to reunite his family.
Luke is the inescapable variable, the detail that ensures the whole story make sense.
I wish he wasn’t, with all my battered heart.
I get in the truck and turn the key, but I don’t drive back to Cavendish Enterprises. I head the opposite way, taking Erie Street toward Port Cavendish. On a whim, I take a right, turning onto the small two-lane road that runs along the north shore of the lake, the one that heads west.
My stepmother calls it the road to oblivion, and maybe that’s why I like it.
There’s seldom anyone else on the road and the houses are spaced out because of the farmland.
It’s a good drive for thinking. You catch glimpses of the lake and a whole lot of sky, and as I drive, I feel the tension start to ease out of my shoulders.
I’m wondering how far I’ll go – how much time I have to just be – and immediately start thinking about tomatoes needing to be picked.
The truth is that I know where I’m going to go.
It’s been a couple of years since I met Rupert van Nuys, since I stopped at his fruit stand impulsively and admired his greenhouse.
The sight of it took me back, just the way it does today.
His farm looks the way my dad’s farm looked when we were kids.
It wasn’t like I needed any tomatoes that day. Still don’t .
The fruit stand at the side of the road is just a wood frame with an aluminum roof.
Behind it is a greenhouse built the way ours used to be, only about twenty feet tall and with a patina from the weather.
There’s a house at the end of the lane and the fields have been tilled.
I don’t need to ask anyone to know that those are rows of tomato plants in the fields and still more of them under glass.
I sit and stare at property for a minute, then an older man comes out of the greenhouse and heads toward the stand. He lifts a hand to wave in recognition and I wave back, then get out of the truck.
Rupert looks older than the last time I was here but his smile of welcome is just as sincere.
He gives me a hug before inviting me into the greenhouse, just like always.
He’s talking a blue streak and I just listen.
He’s experimenting with some new hybrids of heritage varieties and wants to tell me all about them.
I’m also looking around and making mental notes. I’ll fix that ladder before I go and take care of the hinge on this door. Little things I can fix to help him out. Little things that won’t hurt his pride.
I’m struck all over again how Rupert’s place feels more like home than where I actually live. Maybe that’s what keeps bringing me back to his farm.