11
Lake Moonshine spread out like a sparkling blue blanket in the lap of the Appalachian foothills; a quiet, two-hundred-acre park with campsites, picnic pavilions, and hiking trails that meandered through a rugged, wooded valley.
Dalton surveyed the beauty before him, struck by the feelings of serenity it evoked. He’d seen most of the United States and a good portion of Europe. The landscape before him was as impressive as any he’d experienced, and he was glad he’d decided to join them.
After the church service they’d stopped at a local deli and picked up a rotisserie chicken and cartons of potato salad and coleslaw.
Nicky and Finley went off on a hike. Clara napped in a lawn chair in the shade. Harper was wading at the water’s edge.
Dalton dove off the pier and out into the clear, blue lake. He cut through the icy water in smooth, even strokes. It felt good to exert himself, to concentrate on the push and pull of the water as his body sliced through it. It was a welcome distraction from the thoughts that now tumbled around in his head like clothes in a washing machine. The image of Harper with the sun in her hair, and the dimple that appeared in her cheek whenever she smiled at him, and how magnificent and how powerless her smile made him feel.
In a flash of memory, he saw another pair of lips, another smile, and his heart wrenched in his chest.
You’re my cup of tea, baby.
You are such a dweeb.
But I’m your dweeb and you love me.
Ahh, you can count on it, baby. Foreva and eva.
He plunged beneath the water, furiously propelling himself forward, washing the image from his memory. Finally spent, he rolled onto his back and floated, looking up at the cloudless sky. In the vacuum another troubling image presented itself. Narrowed eyes and words hurled from lips twisted with fury.
It’s enough when I say it’s enough!
Babe Wayland. What was her deal?
The woman was self-obsessed. That was obvious to anyone. Beyond that, he knew only that she was Harper’s best friend’s mother. To Dalton’s way of thinking, that hardly put her in a position to be making threats. Was she holding something over Harper’s head? If so, what?
Did you come here to look into us?
After the night Harper accused him, he’d used his connections to make some light inquiries into her background and come up with nothing. So, what did Babe Wayland know that he didn’t?
When he returned to the pier thirty minutes later, Harper was gone. She’d left him a towel, and he dried himself off and returned to the picnic area.
“There you are, dear,” Clara said. “We were about to send out the National Guard to look for you. We’ll be going home shortly.”
He grinned. “I think you mean the Coast Guard.”
“Exactly. Here. Have another slice of pie.”
“Your phone rang a couple of times while you were swimming,” Harper told him.
Dalton accepted the thick slice of apple pie Clara offered. That missed call would be from Ben Abrams.
“I should use the little girls’ room before we leave,” Clara said. She glanced around uncertainly. “Where are the bathrooms again?”
“I’ll go with you,” Harper said.
As Harper and Clara set off across the park, he retrieved his phone, pulled in a breath, and listened to the voice mail.
D, I need to talk to you right away. It’s about your father…
His father.
This morning Pastor Roberts had talked about a father’s unconditional love. Dalton didn’t have the first idea what that felt like. His father had loved him only for what he wanted him to be, an extension of himself. Gordon Kingston had looked at Dalton for his entire life and had never once seen him. He had only seen the fulfillment of his own hopes and dreams. And always, his mother stood by Gordon’s side, cold and unyielding, never once taking Dalton’s side. It seemed to Dalton that once Constance had fulfilled her duty of producing Gordon’s heir, she saw her work as done. The truth was he’d only ever been unconditionally loved by one person. And he’d betrayed her. Another memory pushed its way to the surface. This time, he let it in.
So, what do I have to do?
Tell the jury everything you just told me. That’s all.
That sounds easy enough…
He hadn’t known what to expect that day, the first day he met with Tasha Hendricks, an herbalist who owned Tea for Two, a trendy downtown shop. He’d been representing a young woman accused of homicide in a purse snatching gone horribly awry. According to the investigating officer, Tasha had witnessed the crime. Dalton was counting on her testimony to earn his client an acquittal.
He pulled up to the tea shop, half expecting to encounter some sort of fortune teller, complete with a crystal ball and potions. What he hadn’t expected was the Jamaican beauty with the olive-colored skin and the glossy black ringlets, the way that both her voice and the cup of tea she served him soothed his senses. She smelled like herbs and sunshine, and by the end of the hour?long interview, he was irretrievably in love. But the beginning of his love affair with Tasha had been the end of his relationship with his parents. The daughter of a poor, Jamaican immigrant, Tasha had the wrong pedigree, the wrong occupation, the wrong skin color.
You’d better hear me well and truly, boy. No son of mine is going to take up with some…some witch doctor!
She is not a witch doctor, Dad. She’s an herbalist. It’s hardly the same thing. You’re judging her based on your own set of inaccurate, preconceived biases. As usual…
He and Tasha married a year later in a small ceremony that Gordon and Constance did not attend. Unused to his son’s defiance, Gordon essentially disowned Dalton, but stopped short of removing him from the partnership. And Constance stood by, a silent stranger.
No son of mine…
He’d sworn he’d stand against his father, stand against the very gates of hell to protect the love he and Tasha shared. He’d promised the same before God the day they got married. And he’d failed. What kind of fool was he to even consider taking a chance on love again?
Later that evening, as daylight turned to dusk, Dalton sat in the gazebo, still trying to sort out his thoughts. With no more putting it off, he took out his phone and returned Ben Abrams’ call.
“Dalton, thank heavens. We were beginning to wonder whether you were even still alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“A couple of hours south of Columbus.”
“About four hours from here, then.”
“About that.”
Ben sighed. “D, your father won’t make it.”
Though he knew his father was on borrowed time and had been for months, the words cut through him.
“Look, I know things haven’t been good between you and Gordon and I get it. Completely. But if you think you might want to make peace with him, you should probably do it now.”
“How’s my mother holding up?”
“Hard to tell.”
He pictured his mother; cold, detached, emotionless.
“That being said, we have some decisions to make about the partnership, Dalton,” Ben said. “We really need you to come home for a while.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’ll be there later tonight.”
He took down his tent and packed up his clothes and his sleeping bag and carried it all to the patio. He was trying to decide what to tell Harper when she came out the back door, carrying a tall glass of lemonade.
“I thought you might like…” Her words died away as her glance swept over the pile of his belongings. “You’re leaving?”
“I was just coming to find you. That phone call I got earlier…I’ve got to run up to Cleveland for a few days.”
“Is everything all right?”
He paused. “I have some family business to take care of.”
“Oh.” She hesitated, still holding the glass. “Are you coming back?”
“Of course.”
In the growing shadows, he saw doubt reflected in her eyes.
“Harper, of course I’m coming back. I’ve got to finish painting Clara’s gazebo and hang the flower boxes, and then we have to get started on the ballerina’s nursery, remember?”
Tears stood in her eyes, and when she smiled, they spilled down her face.
“Hey.” He gently thumbed her tears away.
“I’m sorry. I’m being silly.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It looked as though you were leaving , leaving. I thought…I guess I’ve been hoping…”
“I have, too.”
She lifted her incredible green eyes to meet his. “You have?”
His hand fell away from her face. “Things are a mess right now, Harper, and I don’t begin to know how to sort them all out. And I don’t have any idea where to go from here. But I know that for the first time in a long time, I feel something . For you. Clara and Nicky. The baby. I only know I want to be here to see how it all plays out. If you want me to.”
“I want you to,” she said softly, without hesitation.
The words followed him into the night, down Interstate 71 and all the way to Cleveland’s city limits.
~*~
Dalton had been gone for four long days and his absence left a deeply lonely feeling in Harper’s heart and home. She couldn’t imagine there was a time, not so long ago, that she hadn’t wanted him around. Her nightly phone calls with him meant everything to her. And though she tried to hold back the feelings she could no longer deny, she knew she’d never been so thoroughly swept away by a man before.
In the daytime, her doubts crept in and told her he would never return, and that thought caused an aching in her heart that was physically painful. But in the evening the sound of his voice chased those fears away. She was pinning her hopes for the future on a man she barely knew, and it terrified her. Even so, each night she carried her cell phone out to the gazebo, waited for his call, and allowed herself to dream of how beautiful life would be with Dalton at her side.
On Thursday evening, with Aunt Clara and Nicky watching Clara’s favorite reruns on TV, she slipped out the back door and headed across the lawn. Four long days. So far Dalton had been vague about his family business in Cleveland. She had respected his privacy, but she hoped tonight he would give her a little more information.
“You sound as if you have a cold,” he said, when she picked up his call.
“Just a little congestion. I read that it’s common in the second trimester. I picked up some saline nasal spray. It helps a little.”
“Ahh, the ballerina’s giving you trouble this week, is she?”
“Well, she is nineteen now. Weeks, that is.”
He laughed softly.
“But she’s the easy one, compared to Aunt Clara’s dog.”
“Uh oh, what did Toby do now?”
“Somehow, he got off his chain today. As you can imagine, Clara was frantic. She loves that dog like a son. We drove around town for two hours, and when we got home, he was hiding under the food truck, of all places. He was probably there the whole time.”
“I bet that was pretty stressful. I wish I’d been there to help you look for him.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m sure Clara was relieved.”
“After we found him, Aunt Clara went to bed with a headache and didn’t get back up until dinner time.”
“Uh-oh. Is she OK?”
“I think she’ll be fine. It’s her way of coping when she feels overwhelmed. How about you? Are you getting things all figured out?”
“Yeah, mostly. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”
She was about to press for a bit more information, to ask how much longer he would be away, but like a specter in the shadows, Babe Wayland was coming toward her across the lawn. She carried a shopping bag. Why would Babe show up at this time of night?
“What on earth?” she murmured.
“What’s wrong?”
“Babe’s here.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure I’m about to find out. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
She ended the call as Babe stepped into the gazebo.
“Nicky said you were out here. Goodness, why would you want to sit here in the gloom?”
“It’s been kind of a long day. I like the peace and quiet,” she said pointedly.
“Hmmm.” Her gaze moved to Harper’s phone.
“Is there something you needed, Babe?”
“No, there’s something you needed. Potters on the Plaza was having an amazing sale and Jerry gave me his credit card and no spending limit. I found some fabulous deals. I thought you could use a pick me up too.” She thrust the shopping bag in Harper’s hands. “I thought this would bring out the color in your eyes. I hope it fits.”
The bag contained a silk tunic in sage green and creamy white. Harper’s breath caught as she held up the garment. She had to admit that Babe had impeccable taste when it came to fashion.
“It’s beautiful, Babe. Thank you so much.”
“How are you feeling this week? Are you following the diet I emailed you?”
“I’m a little congested, but other than that I feel fine. And yes, I’m trying to eat more fruits and raw vegetables.”
Babe’s glance flicked over the gazebo. “This will look nice. How long before it’s finished?”
“It’ll be a while yet. Dalton had to go out of town for a few days on some family business.”
“Well, I’m not a bit surprised. I’m sure he has a lot of things to sort out right now.” The small, sad grimace, meant to convey sympathy, did just the opposite. Her tone was too breezy, too casual, too Babe .
“What makes you think so?”
“To be honest, I didn’t just come to bring you the dress, Harper. I have something I need to tell you. I’m afraid it won’t be easy to hear.”
A current of negative energy seemed to flow toward Harper, causing a knot of uneasiness to tighten in her stomach. What was Babe up to now? “What is it?”
“I’m so sorry to have to do this,” she said, not looking sorry at all. “But like Pastor Roberts says, wounds from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy.”
“Babe, I really don’t have the energy for this tonight. If you have something to say, please just say it plainly.”
“I did a little bit of investigating.” She paused, every bit the drama queen.
“And?”
She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to Harper.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the web address to Tasha Kingston’s blog, Tea for Two. Pull it up sometime. I’m afraid you’ll find it all there in black and white.”
She felt herself grow numb. “Find what?”
“The truth about your new boyfriend. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, honey, but Dalton Kingston is married.”