Just Say Maybe: A Thistle Bend Novel (13 page)

Bryce clenched his jaw. “Sounds like a wise woman.”

“But there was very little credit and way too much blame,” she said. “Everywhere my grandparents went, they heard about what was going wrong. Both of them had lived here all their lives. They were liked and respected, active in the community—loved being involved in everything from bake sales to rooting for baseball teams that the bank sponsored. But it got to the point that they dreaded going into town.”

Bryce shook his head, hoping he wasn’t getting a glimpse of his own future. “What did they do?”

“Grandpa retired. That way he could just stay on the farm more. Grandma had been a teacher at Thistle Bend Community School, but she had a heart attack not long before Adam Evanston arrived on the scene—bypass surgery and all. She never went back to work after that. Her health was too fragile, and the doctors warned her to manage her stress, or she’d risk another heart attack.” Holly’s voice wavered. She bowed her head and stared into her coffee mug, her lips pressed together tightly.

Bryce could tell where this was going, and his heart ached for her. He remembered how painful it had been when he’d lost James, which probably paled in comparison to her losing her grandmother, who’d loved her all her life. Bryce pulled her close, draping his arm around her. She nestled against him, and he kissed the top of her head.

“They liked to garden together,” she said. “Grandpa got even more into it after he retired. Grandma would work out there when she could—it was good exercise. She loved to plant those seeds every year and nurture them into fruits and vegetables. But those times became fewer and further between. The stress of the years had worn on her—the stories of all the people who got cheated or lost their jobs or what have you. She internalized them all, took them on herself.”

Holly’s shoulders lifted as she drew in a deep breath and seemed to hold it. “She had another heart attack not long after the bank foreclosed on the lodge—and that one took her. If she could’ve just held on while things settled…” She shook her head slowly. “The lodge was the basis of so much of her stress. That’s why everyone in my family gets tense whenever anyone even mentions the place. The chatter has died down over the last few years, but now…” She sighed, as if she might be relieved to have gotten the story out without breaking down.

I’ve come along and stirred up all their memories. All their emotions.

Guilt weighed heavily on him. He took her hand, still warm from holding the coffee mug, and laced his chilly fingers between hers. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed her gently.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Me too.”

Bryce shook his head. “I had no idea,” he said honestly, but that wasn’t the full truth. “I mean, I had heard some of the horror stories, but only as if they were headlines, like the ones circled in those newspapers. But nothing as personal and painful as what you and your family have gone through.” His chest tightened with both sympathy and rage. How could his father have done this to Holly and her family—and others—and walk away without remorse?

“It’s awful because my grandma and I were really close,” she said. “It would be heart-wrenching regardless, but having known her so well makes it worse.” She released his hand and took off the narrow silver cuff bracelet she wore and handed it to him. “That was my thirteenth birthday present from her.”

The bracelet appeared even smaller and more delicate in his hand. He smoothed his thumb across the cool silver, the patina still bright. “It’s beautiful.”

She sat up straighter and set her gaze on him, her eyes glistening. “Look inside.”

Bryce tipped the bracelet at an angle, revealing a tiny inscription. Drawing it closer, he squinted and read…

Always love.

His heart melted. What a sweet grandma thing—getting the sentiment backward. “Did she mean
love always
?”

Holly smiled, yet sorrow still filled her eyes. “I asked her that, too. But she told me she liked it better this way. Always love. So that’s what I try to do, in honor of her, and because it makes life a whole lot happier. I rarely take off the bracelet, so that reminds me—of her…of how to treat people.”

Lost for words, Bryce nodded and blinked back a surge of emotion. He’d wondered how he might get Holly to open up, or
if
he could. Now that he knew her gut-wrenching story, he understood why she hadn’t been eager to tell it. Yet instead of crying victim and being bitter—for which he couldn’t blame her if she was—she’d found a positive way to deal with it that gripped his heart.

Always love.

Whichever word came first or last, it worked. And it told him so much about the amazing woman who was sitting next to him on the swing. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve a chance to win Holly’s heart, yet he was determined to do it.

“Grandpa built a huge greenhouse in her memory,” Holly said. “He cultivates the whole garden with her in mind. That’s why he’s so dedicated to it. He spends his winters studying and revising garden plans, planning plant rotation, reading seed catalogs cover to cover, and buying new seeds for the next season. Having the greenhouse allows him to get the seedlings started so they’re ready to go after the last frost.” Holly became more animated as she talked about the garden. “Then we plant them and everyone hopes for the best.”

“Everyone?”

She smiled, and Bryce was happy to see it reach her eyes. “Pretty much the entire town. Grandpa is the Santa Claus of produce in Thistle Bend, only his is a summer gig. As soon as the fruits and vegetables start coming in, he leaves baskets of whatever’s fresh on people’s front porches. He keeps the local restaurants stocked, too. People love those goody baskets—and my grandpa.”

Clearly there’d been some changes for the good since the lodge drama had died down, and that was welcome news to Bryce. “He just gives it away?”

“He sure does. And he won’t let anyone pay him. He’ll accept a free meal from the restaurants once in a while, but he’ll tip the server whatever the meal would’ve cost.”

Holly’s grandpa seemed to be as resilient as she, finding constructive ways to cope with the loss of his wife, and to reconnect with the townspeople after so many trying times. Bryce admired his generosity toward them, considering the undeserved blame that many had cast upon him in the past. Other people might not understand his way of handling things, but it really resonated with Bryce. Fred Birdsong had made a tough decision in a no-win situation. He felt responsible for the bad times the lodge had wrought upon the people of Thistle Bend—although he wasn’t. Giving out fresh fruits and vegetables that he’d grown in a labor of love was his way of making peace with it all.

Bryce could totally relate to his quest. He wasn’t responsible for what his father had done to this town and its people either, yet he felt compelled to make up for it.

“The Santa Claus of produce, huh?” Bryce raised his eyebrows. A smile tugged at his lips.

“Yep.” Holly raised her chin proudly. “That’s my grandpa.”

As awkward as it was likely to be when it happened, Bryce said, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

Calypso Coffee was one of the most chill coffee shops Bryce had ever been in—cabin-style, with wide-plank floors and colorful cushioned booths, the tables hewn from knotty slabs of wood. The building was one of the town’s originals, and they’d managed to update it while maintaining its charm. The kicker? The sweet-and-doughy aroma of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls was so thick in the air he could practically taste it.

Bryce sat in a corner booth, facing the door, waiting for his third cup of coffee of the day to lose some of its steam. His talk with Holly had left him reeling with unexpected emotions—anger, sympathy, determination.

And relief.

At least he had one piece of the lodge puzzle in place—he understood why Holly and her grandpa were wary about him and his project. It was bad enough that Holly’s grandpa had often been blamed for the troubles that plagued the lodge. But then her grandma had died, multiplying their woes to an incalculable number. They’d lost someone they dearly loved and cherished. He remained blown away by the bittersweet ways that they coped with their loss. In time, he hoped they’d be as gracious about Bryce’s “new” lodge, and allow it to transition back into their lives.

A trail ride—even on a rental bike—would help him organize his thoughts and reduce his stress, and the morning was perfect for it. Even so, getting on a mountain bike was a definite no-go for him today. His knee was still barking from his 9.3 dismount, and his questions about the woman from the suite at the lodge were too pressing for him to ignore. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out the calendars he’d been too tired to look at last night, hoping to find some answers.

Starting with the oldest one, he turned to January and began reading the notations written in tight, cursive handwriting that looked like a string of knots. It took him a while to decipher each one, yet there were only a few each month. He read through the first calendar, then the second, and began to realize that the notations in the date boxes were similar to the headlines that had been circled in the newspapers, yet worded differently. No new information so far, but something about them nagged at him. He kept reading, determined to figure out what it was.

As he read, his coffee cup ran dry, and the bells on the door rang countless times. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he made it to the final notation on the last calendar.

FORECLOSURE.

Bryce leaned back in his seat, raised his arms over his head, and stretched, disappointed that he’d just read through a shorthand rerun of last night. He propped his elbow on the table and rested his prickly chin in his hand, tapping his fingers on the picture on the calendar—light purple and yellow wildflowers in the foreground, a silvery-green-leafed aspen grove in the near distance, and jagged gray peaks beyond.

Wildflowers and green-leafed trees?

He glanced at the month.

June.

But the lodge had been foreclosed nearly five years ago…in
October.
He remembered this vividly because the newspaper with the foreclosure article had come out several days before Halloween. A picture of his father had run above the fold, and a picture of a man dressed as a vampire had appeared below it. Bryce had thought,
What’s the difference?

Struggling to remember the dates, he flipped through the calendars again, pinpointing numerous notations he’d swear didn’t match the dates on which they had occurred. The notations preceded the newspaper articles by weeks, even months in some cases.

Bryce’s pulse pounded, and not just from caffeine. The calendars
predicted
what had happened, as if they’d been a to-do list. There might be a couple of instances where what was written on the calendars hadn’t occurred, or what was reported in the papers hadn’t been noted in the calendars. But overall, things matched. He’d have to compare them with the newspapers to be sure, but he’d bet his big fat loan on the lodge that he was right.

Someone planned for nearly every bad thing that happened?

Bryce could hardly wrap his head around such a crazy thought, yet he couldn’t chase it out of his mind. He traced his fingers over one of the notations on the calendar. Despite its knotty look, the handwriting was distinctly feminine, at least to his eye—another thing he’d be willing to bet on.

Had the woman from the suite been the evil mastermind behind the Lodge at Wild Rose Ridge? Or had she been the recording secretary for his father, who’d had a dastardly plan from the get-go? Bryce had never considered that the trouble that had besieged the lodge had been premeditated. His stomach soured just thinking about it. He’d assumed an entirely different scenario, which had his father as a slippery salesman whose experience couldn’t back up his blather. Both the lodge and its finances had been mismanaged, and people had suffered because of it. The newspaper articles had alluded to a common sentiment that Bryce’s father had little remorse for the trouble he’d caused people and businesses. The story hadn’t been pretty but, until now, it was the one that Bryce had believed in. Now everything had turned upside down.

No matter how the story had unfolded, the new information brought Bryce no closer to identifying the woman and finding out what had become of her. Discovering the box of bullets with several missing, and the birth control pills left behind mid-cycle, had only ratcheted up his worry that something tragic had happened. He had to find out the truth before anyone else saw the suite and started talking. But all he had to go on were initials from a ring that might not have belonged to her, and a picture of her with his father. Just in case he ever had the occasion to ask someone about her, he’d taken a photo of the picture and cropped out his father, leaving the woman smiling but alone.

He also had the identity of the man in the picture from the late 1800s, if it hadn’t simply been part of the lodge’s décor.

Warner Montgomery III.

Lindsey had identified him as the guy who’d saved Thistle Bend by bringing the railroad to town. Surely someone with an accomplishment of such magnitude would be featured in the museum. Bryce gazed out of the huge picture window at the large white-clapboard building on the corner across the street—Thistle Bend Mountain Heritage Museum. It might not hurt to take a little tour of it and see what he could find.

He stuffed the calendars into his backpack, tossed his coffee cup in the trash, and headed out, thankful it was the last time today he’d hear the jingling bells on the door. Outside, a town employee tended to the vibrant wildflowers in one of numerous wooden planters that flanked the street.

“Mornin’,” Bryce said to the middle-aged woman who wore a hat with a patch on it that said
Town of Thistle Bend.
She stood straight, pruners in hand, and smoothed her hand down the front of her reflective vest.

He smiled, admiring the array colorful flowers. “Fine job you’re doin’ there.”

“Why, thank you,” she said.

Bryce could’ve sworn she blushed.

He crossed the street, remembering something about the museum having once been a gas station and hardware store. Sure enough, an old-timey gas pump still stood out front. He stepped inside the museum—vast, cool, and quiet, with the ceiling open to the rafters. Clearly the place had been a hardware store, because they’d left the display cases intact with merchandise from years ago. He liked the authenticity of the place—that they embraced the history of the building instead of forcing in a design that didn’t fit.

A dark-haired woman with a pleasant face stood behind the counter, dressed in jeans and a lightweight yellow sweater. “Like to have a look around?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Bryce paid his admission fee and began his tour. As determined as he was to find Warner Montgomery III, he couldn’t help but stop and marvel at the model town that was the centerpiece of the main hall. The plaque on the front noted that the layout and buildings were historically accurate from the 1920s. A little train hitched with plenty of coal cars sat still on the tracks surrounding the town.

As if he were five again, Bryce was itching to see it run. He dug into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and dropped it in the gumball-machine-style box mounted at the corner of the model. The coin clanked as it hit bottom, and the train took off, chugging around the track, whistle blowing. He smiled as it made its way through tunnels, around to the coal tipple, and past the depot. In the town, tiny people played baseball, tended gardens, and hung clothes out to dry. He spotted the museum, where a couple sat out front on a bench. The model was so intricate and well constructed that Bryce stood awestruck by it. He fed three more quarters into the box, kicking back as the train made its rounds, noticing something new each time he shifted his gaze.

The train stopped and Bryce tore himself away from the model. Nearby he found an interesting exhibit about coal mining in Thistle Bend, the lifeline of the town until the mines had closed in the early fifties. Another exhibit, about skiing and mountain biking, answered the question of what saved the town from dying after the mines shut down.

Bryce made his way to the Movers and Shakers exhibit in the front corner of the second hall, where he hit the mother lode. His pulse ticked faster as he stared at a life-sized version of the picture of Warner Montgomery III that he and Holly had seen in the suite at the lodge. Just as Lindsey had noted in her text to Holly, the exhibit illustrated how he’d brought the railroad to Thistle Bend, even displaying his handsome antique-gold pocket watch with filigreed arms and bold roman numerals, chain and winding keys attached. Bryce read the accompanying placard.

The railroads needed highly accurate, precision timepieces so their locomotive engineers could maintain strict schedules and avoid collisions. The one belonging to Warner Montgomery III is a rare McIntyre with twenty-five jewels. Still precise—nearly to the second.

“Bryce?”

Surprised to hear his name, he turned. “Lindsey?” He was nearly certain the girl standing beside him was her. He’d met her only once, but she was super-good-looking and hard to forget. He stifled a grin, remembering how blindsided he’d been when he’d walked into Holly’s office and found her and Lindsey there—two beautiful women; one, the elusive perfect ten.

“Nice to see you again.” She had a southern twang that Bryce hadn’t picked up on before. Her outfit looked just like something Holly would wear—black jeans and boots, a gauzy white blouse, and long necklaces beaded with silver and turquoise.

“Likewise,” he said.

She shifted her gaze from him to Warner Montgomery and back, then pointed at the picture. “This is the same photo Holly texted me, right?”

Bryce had no idea what Holly had told her about the suite, if anything. He nodded, debating what he could say to her without revealing too much. “She came with me on a walk-through of the lodge. We found his picture in one of the suites, and were curious who he was.”

Lindsey tipped her head, her brow furrowed. “I thought the lodge was stripped bare. It’s kinda weird that you found a picture of him in there.”

She didn’t know the half of it.

“We thought the former owner might’ve added a touch of history to the place by using pictures of Thistle Bend’s influential residents as décor in the rooms.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard that, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. I could ask around if it’s something you’re really curious about.”

Holly had offered too, and Bryce still felt the same about the idea. “Nah. I’m more about the future of the place than its past.” He glanced back at the placard displayed with Warner Montgomery’s pocket watch. Lindsey had grabbed his attention before he’d gotten the chance to read the fine print.

Donated by Millicent and Merribelle Montgomery.

“Do you know the ladies who donated his watch?” he asked.

She smiled brightly. “Sure. Everybody does. The Montgomery sisters are his granddaughters—the sweetest, quirkiest old ladies you’ll ever meet. They’ve been around here for eighty-some years. Lots of people think they have special powers, mostly because they make tonics and tinctures to cure all kinds of ills, and everything they bake is magically delicious.”

Something in her eyes told Bryce that she believed it, too.

“They have an amazing home and garden up beyond Narrowleaf Pass, but they come to town every Sunday morning to work their booth at the farmers market. You should stop by tomorrow and introduce yourself.”

“I’d love to meet them.”

And ask them a few things about the lodge.

Lindsey looked him up and down, and raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Believe me, they’d love to meet you, too.”

This time, Bryce almost blushed.

“You can’t go wrong with anything you buy at their booth, but definitely try the homemade oatmeal cream pies, and the chocolate-chip-cookie-dough truffles.” She pressed her palm against her flat belly. “Mmm. Indescribably tasty. Fair warning, though. One bite and you’ll be addicted.”

He could see why Holly liked Lindsey. She was upbeat and animated and real.

“I’ll be in line first thing,” he said lightly.

“That might not be soon enough. They sell out every Sunday. Last week was the first farmers market this season. People got in line at their booth an hour early.”

“Were you one of the early birds?”

“Nope.” She grinned, leaned in close, and whispered, “I have an inside connection with Milly and Merri.”

“Do you now?” he teased.

She nodded, bunching her lips and raising her eyebrows.

“Then maybe you should introduce me.” That would be a whole lot better than his waiting in line and trying to properly introduce himself while the ladies were busy selling their tonics and treats. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was hold up a line of people intent on a sugar rush. They’d dislike him even before they found out he was buying the lodge.

“I’d be happy to. Let me get in touch with them and find out whether before or after market hours would work better for them.” Lindsey pulled her phone from her back pocket, brought the screen to life, tapped an icon, and handed him the phone. “Give me your digits. I’ll text you and let you know what Milly and Merri say.”