Heartbreak, Tennessee (15 page)

“My
father
?!”

Seeing the shock and
confusion on Mac’s face ought to have given her a shred of satisfaction, Amber
thought, but instead it felt like just another weight on her shoulders,
dragging her down, down, down.

“Forget I said that,”
she said, suddenly exhausted. “Let’s just my mother wasn’t the only one who
carried secrets to her death.”

With that she turned
and made her way down the path.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mac absently swirled
the contents of the tumbler as he stared at the photo above the mantle, Amber’s
words echoing in his mind.

It’s too bad you never had a
chance to ask your father
.

He had no idea what
she meant by that. No idea what mysteries his father had kept hidden, if any. No
idea what went through the mind of the somber man who had been his father.

The night Amber came
to him and begged him to pack a few things, pick her up in and drive away. Some
place far away where they would begin their life together.

“Your father,” she had
cried, her voice trembling as he held her ice-cold hands in his own. “He s-said
he won’t let us be together.”

“But Amber, we’ve
always known they didn’t approve,” Mac said. “We’ve never let that stop us.”

“But n-now it’s
different. We have to go. We can’t stay here.”

“What happened
tonight?”

“Nothing—”

“Did you go to see my
father?”

“No...yes—it
doesn’t matter. Please, Mac, just come with me.”

“What did he say?” The
force of his demand caused her eyes to open wide and she stared at him a
moment.

“He said he’d ruin our
lives unless I agreed never to see you again. He said he’d fix it so my mother
couldn’t get any more work.”

“He’d never do that.” Mac
shook his head, incredulous.

“He
said
it, Mac.”

“He was bluffing.”

The pain in her eyes
burned into him as she shook her head violently. “He means it. I’m telling you.”

“No, it’s just like at
work—with his suppliers, he’s always pulling that crap. It’s the only way
he knows to get his way. I know he’d never...Dad’s a son of a bitch sometimes,
Amber, but he would never do anything to...hurt me. Hurt
us
.”

“He doesn’t give a
damn about
us
.” The bitterness in her
voice chilled him, and he put out a hand to caress her face, still her
trembling.

She pushed it away.

“Come with me now.” The
urgency in her voice was raw and powerful. “With us gone, he won’t have any
reason to hurt her.”

“Hurt...your mother? She
doesn’t have anything to do with this! Besides, it’s all about
my
mother, I know she put him up to
this.”

“She doesn’t matter.” Amber’s
voice was dull.

“Look Amber...we don’t
care what they think, remember? Look. This will blow over. Trust me. Dad—he’ll
come around.”

Amber’s hand shot out
and grabbed his wrist with surprising force.

“I’m begging you,” she
whispered. “Please, please, Mac. I love you more than anything in the world. Come
with me.”

The silence was long,
her grip on him relaxing only when he finally shook his head.

“I can’t,” he
whispered.

He would never forget
the anguish in her eyes as she begged, her limbs shivering against him.

Or how it deepened
when she understood he wasn’t coming, how she slowly drew away from him, tears
streaking down her face, how she gave him one last look before tearing from his
arms and running, running out of his life.

He hadn’t known then it
was forever.

And now she was
telling him the secret lay with his father.

In the days after
Amber left, Pete wasn’t his usual self, it was true. He muttered a few words of
comfort as Mac stood in the cramped kitchen, staring out the window long after
his coffee grew cold. “You’re hurtin’ now, son,” he’d said. “But this will all
pass. It’s for the best.”

And they’d never
spoken of it again. Like so many things, it became part of the silent fabric of
their relationship. Years went by and the son, now a man, worked side by side
with his father. Two men who loved each other awkwardly, revealing little,
asking even less.

But no one could
accuse Mac of not trying to understand him, in those final days, when his
father’s life was ebbing away. Mac had made a last effort to get to know his
father.

It had been an effort
a long time coming. His father was the one constant, an eternal, silent,
brooding presence who was always there.

Mac remembered a set
of tools, cut small for a child’s hand, that his father gave him when he was
barely old enough to see up on the work benches. He remembered how his father
took him to the shop after school, on weekends. He certainly wasn’t wanted at
home; his mother’s bridge club and garden club and ladies’ auxiliary left
little time for him.

But that was okay. What
could be better than a crisp fall day, the smell of burnt leaves in the air,
riding down to the job with the windows cranked open in the old truck, steam
rising off the Styrofoam coffee cup his Dad held loosely in his free hand while
he drove? Or walking out the door at the end of the day, heavy boots crunching
on the gravel, matching steps with his father as they headed home for a meal of
thick bacon and home fries?

True, Pete had been a
man of few words. But it never occurred to Mac to wish for more until it was
too late, until the cancer had triumphed and stolen his voice.

Almost
too late, anyway. At the end, desperate to
hang on to some part of his father, Mac
had
asked. Tried, anyway. Trouble is, there’s no easy place to begin when you’ve
spent thirty years in companionable silence. Were you happy? What did life
teach you? What do you regret? These were the questions Mac struggled to get
out.

But he failed. He
murmured soothing words, inane words of solace that neither of them believed. Nothing
was revealed. No secrets passed on.

And in the end, his
father just took one last breath, seemed to savor it for a minute, and exhaled.

And then he died,
closing the books on a silent life full of hard knocks and simple rewards.

Now Amber was stirring
it all up again.

Amber gave the greens
in the plastic container a half-hearted stir with her plastic fork. A few
shreds of carrot and some stale croutons were all that broke up the monotony of
iceberg lettuce.

Still, even a takeout
meal from the grocery store salad bar was better than another diner meal. For
one thing, she was going to have to watch it or the hearty fare that Sheryn had
been insisting on would put a few inches on her waist.

And for another, if
she ate in her room, she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew.

It had been a long
afternoon. After her lurching retreat down the trail, picking up a few painful
scratches on her legs from the overgrown brush, she returned in time to freshen
up a bit before meeting with Gray.

“This is her craziest
notion yet,” he’d muttered in lieu of greeting when he opened their motel room
door. Pushing his reading glasses wearily up on his nose and waving a stack of
papers, he thankfully didn’t seem to notice the redness in her eyes or the
wrinkles in her dress, wrinkles she would ordinarily never allow.

“Speaking of
Sheryn...is she joining us?”

“Naw.” Gray sighed,
and glanced at Amber over the top of his glasses. “She found a native arts shop
somewhere and now she’s off looking for something for the house. Quilts,
weaving, that sort of thing.”

“Ah...maybe it’s just
as well.”

“You said it, not me. Maybe
we’ll be able to get something done around here if she’s found something to
keep her busy. You’re right about these folks, Amber. They’ve zoned themselves
up tight as a drum. You’d think they were trying to preserve the Notre Dame
rather than a few dusty old buildings and a couple of stoplights.”

For several hours they
went over the myriad details of the early stages of a huge development:
feasibility studies they would need to commission, the negotiations for real
estate, the local labor pool.

Amber had trouble
staying focused. The image of Mac coming up the ridge played over and over in
her mind. His sandy hair lifting a little in the sultry breeze, the creases
around his eyes as he squinted in the sun.

When he had sat down
next to her, leaning back on his elbows so close to her she could smell his
clean, soapy scent, it would have been so easy to just close her eyes...and
pretend. Pretend that those years hadn’t passed and left their love behind.

Pretend that Mac would
open the old hamper and take out a couple of frosty bottles of Coke, sandwiches
wrapped in waxed paper. And an old radio. And as the sun settled in for its
evening descent, they would make love on a grassy bed, serenaded by the birds
and bugs and the gentle wind that blew up here like nowhere else.

Yes, it would have
been easy to do that. But Amber was a strong woman, strong enough to keep her
eyes wide open in the present.

Wasn’t she?

“Amber? Did you hear
me?”

Startled out of her
reverie by Gray’s tired voice, Amber rubbed her eyes vigorously. “I’m sorry, I’m
just having a little trouble digesting all that information.”

“No matter.” Gray set
down the papers on the Formica table and pushed back his orange-upholstered
chair. “I think anyone would have trouble concentrating in this place. Makes
you miss the old homestead, eh?”

More than you could possibly know
. The polished-mahogany table in the conference
room at the Sawyers’ house seemed like it was a million miles away.

“I’d be glad to try
again after dinner, if you like,” Amber said gamely.

“Actually...” Amber
glanced up to see Gray’s features turn a burnished red, and a sheepish grin
spread slowly across his face. “To tell you the truth, I think Sheryn’s picking
up a few things for dinner. Trying to hook me on the local fare, I guess. She
said we’d have us a picnic right here in the room.”

“Oh.” Amber matched
Gray’s blush with one of her own. No doubt about it, Sheryn was planning one of
her grand seductions. Any time she and Gray were separated for a few days, she
liked to do something out of the ordinary in the way of a reunion.

“It’s just as well. I
think I’d like to turn in early,” Amber said, quickly gathering her things. No
need to let Gray know that she’d probably spend the evening staring at the
walls and thinking about Mac. Dean hadn’t called again, so Amber assumed that
he’d realized she’d been right; it was crazy for him to come all that way just
to talk when she’d be home in a few days.

“Um, Amber?”

“Yes?” Amber paused,
sliding her things into her briefcase.

“I was wondering. I
have some documents I’d like to have the mayor review before the city council
meeting. Now you know I’d be glad to take care of this myself but I was thinking
it might be easier...”

Amber didn’t miss the
crafty twinkle in Gray’s eye. Honestly, the man was impossible. If only he knew
how hopeless the situation was.

But that would mean
telling him more than she wanted to, right now. A lot more. And besides, this
was her job. There hadn’t been a day since she began with the Sawyers when she
didn’t conduct herself as a professional. And she wasn’t about to start now.

“I’d be glad to drop
them off,” she said lightly, accepting the thin sheaf. “I’ll swing by there in
the morning. The city council doesn’t convene until one p.m. so he’ll have
several hours to look them through.”

“Oh. You don’t want to
take them over tonight?” Gray said, thinly-veiled disappointment in his voice.

Amber flashed him a
grin. He was sweet, if misguided. “No, I have a takeout meal and a stack of
pillows waiting. I’m beat.”

True to her word, a
couple of hours later she was stabbing a few leaves of lettuce and watching a
re-run of a crime show. The papers sat untouched in her briefcase. Even if it
was depressing as hell, at least the evening’s entertainment was low-calorie.

“Trust me, you’re not
going to find a Twinkie at this hour,” Amber grumbled. “The whole town practically
shuts down at six o’clock.” Shaking her limbs to get the sluggishness out of
them, she had to run a few steps to catch up with Sheryn.

“I saw a vending
machine outside the fire station,” Sheryn answered stubbornly, striding with
impossible speed in her glittery sneakers and pink shorts and matching top. “I
tell you, there’s nothing for the appetite like a little romp in the old love
nest. I could eat a horse!”