Chapter Fourteen
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“THANKS FOR coming,” Gwynn said softly a while later, walking Cash to the front door as the Davisons retreated into the kitchen. She handed him his coat from the coat tree with a tight smile. “I’m sorry we dredged up painful memories for you.”
Conversations had changed to lighter topics after she returned to the dining room, but although they’d joked through a round of Canasta, Gwynn couldn’t shake Cash’s account of that night .
“It’s all right, Gwynn.” He shrugged into his coat. “No, it’s not my favorite topic for discussion, but talking about it is part of the healing process.”
“I don’t imagine a child ever fully heals from losing a parent too soon.”
“Maybe not this side of heaven. But it’s true what the Bible says—for everything there is a season. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. I’ve done my share of mourning. I’m ready for a new season.” He gently took her hand and drew her closer. “One that I hope involves getting your phone number. I’d like to stay in touch with you.”
“Why?” She blinked up at him. “Given what you shared tonight, how can you stand to be around me when my face reminds you of … her ?” The monster.
Cash toyed with her fingers, and heat spiraled in her belly. “You asked earlier why I’m attracted to you. We haven’t known each other long, but from what I’ve seen, you have a compassionate heart, a quick wit, an adorable habit of speaking your thoughts aloud, my dog likes you—”
“Dogs like everyone.”
“—And you love the Lord.” His thumb moved over the back of her hand. “I think that’s my favorite character trait.”
She bit her lip. “You’re making Boston look less appealing by the minute.”
“Good. Though I hear the Freedom Trail is pretty cool.” He grinned. “I could use a tour guide when I come out to visit.”
“ When you come?” That would be heavenly. And horrible.
His focus dipped to her mouth, and he nodded, sliding a finger under the cuff of her sleeve. Shivers of pleasure tiptoed up her arm. “What do you say? Is it a date?” A funny expression stole over his features then. He glanced at their hands as he drew lazy circles along the inside of her palm.
Gwynn froze. Her left palm. The one with the raised scar running across the base of her thumb. A scar she’d seen every day for the last thirteen years so that it no longer registered—yet was a complete giveaway.
She began to pull her hand back, but Cash’s fingers tightened, and he nudged aside her sleeve cuff to reveal more of the scar.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“I-it’s nothing. A childhood injury.”
His gaze raked over her in accusation, the memory—oh, yes, she knew exactly what he was thinking—playing out across his face. Her body went cold then hot like earlier in the kitchen, and she gave another tug on her hand.
The muscles popped in his jaw. “I’m going to ask you this one time, and as God is our witness, I want the truth. Are you Hadley Jacobs?”
She wet her lips but looked him in the eye. “My name is Gwynn Sadler. I’m not that girl you once knew.” That girl had died at her own insistence one late spring day. Gwynn pulled against his grip. “I told you, this is from a childhood injury.”
“What kind of injury?”
“Please let me go.”
“Did it happen when you went fishing, perhaps?”
“Let. Go.”
Face hardening to granite, Cash released her, and she yanked her cuff over the scar.
He stood at the door, his breathing heavy, scrutinizing her like he might scrutinize a plank of wood to use for a project. Was she worth keeping … or did he throw her in the scrap bin?
“When were you adopted?” His words shot like nails from a nail gun.
She retreated a step. “Excuse me?”
“You said you weren’t a baby when the Sadlers adopted you, Gwynn , so how old were you? This is not a difficult question.”
“It’s also none of your business.”
His nostrils flared, and his eyes pinched with … hurt? Anger? Confusion? Denial? All of the above?
Lord—
She stopped, her heart clunking inside her chest. This was her mess. She had deliberately taken advantage of every minute Cash hadn’t recognized her. She’d known it would end—had to end—but she’d intended to be long gone when it did.
Just because those hopes now curdled like DIY chalk paint gone awry, she couldn’t ask God to pluck her from the wreckage.
“Your facial features resemble a dead girl,” Cash growled low. “You wear bright green contacts to mask your real eye color—hazel, perhaps? You’ve a freckle on your right cheekbone. Like her . Your dark eyebrows don’t match your blonde hair. I noticed at dinner that you eat left-handed, and now I find you have a familiar scar on that very hand. Heck, you even use peppermint shampoo. Purely for the holiday season, I reckon, like she did. This explains a lot, actually.”
Cash lifted his hat from the coat tree, his eyes freezing into shards of ice. “Did you ever feel like a disciple on the road to Emmaus, walking and talking with a loved one whom you were shielded from recognizing?” He set his hat atop his dark waves and reached for the doorknob. “Me, neither. Until now.” He jerked open the door. “Excuse me. God and I are about to have some words.”
* * *
Gwynn sank onto the bottom tread of the staircase as Cash’s truck roared to life and peeled away. She rubbed her thumb along her puckered scar, glaring at it through watery vision.
She’d been eleven, Cash thirteen, when they’d gone fishing one summer afternoon in the stream behind her house. She’d slipped on a slimy rock and landed with a shriek in the stream bed, cutting her hand on a jagged edge.
An intense stinging burned her palm, and she shrieked again, staring at the blood pooling in a gash along the base of her thumb.
“ Jiminy Cricket, what’s the matter with you?” Cash splashed up behind her and plucked the fishing pole from her other hand.
“I’m gonna die!” Blood trickled down her wet arm and dripped from her elbow to swirl in the water around her. Bile crept at the back of her throat. “I fell and ripped my hand open and now I’m gonna die.” She glared at Cash, who peered at the wound. “Why’d we come fishing, anyway?”
“’Cause you like to fish, silly.” He grimaced and poked her skin.
She jerked away. “Don’t do that!”
“It looks bad.”
“Duh!” She grasped her wrist, and her eyes stung along with her hand. “I’m dying.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. You’re not dying. We’ll take you home and—”
“I don’t want to die!” So. Much. Blood! Her breath came in pants. “I’m only eleven! I haven’t done anything with my life. I haven’t been anywhere . What about going to Europe and becoming a world-famous painter and getting married and having lots of kids? I haven’t even been kissed yet!”
Cash rolled his eyes, leaned in, and planted his lips on hers. “There. You’ve been kissed. Now will you shut up? My mom can fix your hand. For now, we’ll wrap it in something. You really want to leave this great fishin ’?”
“Cash Cooper, you big jerk!” She shoved his skinny bare chest with her good hand, and he stumbled backward, nearly toppling into the waters himself.
“Hey! What was that for?” he yelled as she stomped toward the embankment, cradling her hand.
She kicked water in his direction. “Next time you go kissing a girl, ask her permission first.”
Later, Cash would claim he’d taken her advice, though the next girl he’d kissed had been a lab partner from his eighth-grade science class. But after Hadley entered high school as a freshman, Cash—then a junior—had pulled her into the shadows behind Gramps’ kiosk during the Christmas Jam and asked her permission. She’d given it, and they’d exchanged a kiss sweeter than the chocolate fudge his parents had bought them earlier.
They dated until she’d staged that kiss with Prospect’s star soccer player, Travis Phillips, at the Valentine’s Day dance a year later.
“And now I’ve hurt him all over again,” Gwynn whispered.
… He can’t stand cheating. But how else could I prove that he’s wrong to waste his emotions on someone like me? In time, he’ll see it’s better we go our separate ways.
The lines from a long-ago letter floated in her mind’s eye, and Gwynn rubbed her temples. To whom had she written those words?
Gramps. She had snuck, unnoticed, into his barn workshop one evening about a week after the dance and slid the letter into his Santa mailbox. The last nod she’d given to “Santa Claus.”
She’d had but one Christmas wish that year, and he hadn’t answered it. Why not? Gramps loved Cash like the grandson he’d never had. Wouldn’t he have wanted to see Cash happy with a girl worthy of his affections?
“Well?”
Gwynn peeked around the balustrade. Brisket scampered down the central hallway toward her on his short legs as Aunt Maude stood in the kitchen doorway. She wiped her hands on a towel, eyebrows raised in expectation. “How did it go?”
“About as well as my worst fears.” Gwynn fisted her left hand. Ignoring Brisket’s pleas for attention, she pushed to her feet and climbed the stairs to start packing. “I knew I should’ve stuck to my original plan.”