Larkspur Road (28 page)

They were renting out their L.A. house, she told him. And planned to settle Grady in at Broadcrest Academy before they left for London on the twenty-third of August.

“Broadcrest Academy is the last thing our son needs right now,” he told Val bluntly when she finally paused for breath.

“I disagree.” Her tone was defensive. A little shrill. “Drew thinks it’s
exactly
what he needs. Structure and discipline. A chance to grow up—and shape up. Drew says if his grades improve after a year, we can rethink everything. Maybe, if we’re still based in London then, Grady could transfer to a school there….”

Her voice trailed off, and he heard the doubtfulness she couldn’t quite hide.

“I know you think this is a mistake, Travis, but Grady’s interview with the headmaster is scheduled for next Thursday. It’s only a formality, since Drew has already pulled enough strings to get him in—but if you don’t want to take him then I’ll just have to fly into Billings on Wednesday and pick him up myself.” She hurried on as if expecting him to interrupt. “It’s all settled, Travis. Believe me, Drew and I have gone over and over this. There’s no other choice.”

She was trying her best to sound firm and unshakable, but Travis knew Val, knew that note of hesitation in her voice. Deep down, she knew as well as he did how wrong this was.

“There’s always another choice, Val.” He spoke evenly, but there was steel in the words. “Drew Baylor doesn’t get to call the shots when it comes to our son. So we’re going to talk about this. Hear me out.”

Unfortunately, at that moment, the door opened and Grady poked his head in.

“I need some help with my homework, Dad. Can I ask you something?” he whispered.

Travis’s first instinct was to say
Not right now
, and finish his conversation. Get this settled. His gut was trussed up in knots, and he needed to get everything straightened out, pull out the big guns and make sure Broadcrest Academy and its stuffy halls and messed-up rich kids and manicured lawns was taken off the table. But Grady had already waited too long for him to reenter his life, to be a real, full-time, hands-on father. His son was watching him with urgent need in his eyes.

Dealing with Val would have to wait a little longer.

“I’m going to have to call you back,” he said into the phone even as he forced a smile for the boy’s sake and waved him in.

“When?” Val’s voice rose to a near-screech as it always did when she was stressed. “I have a
thousand
things to do here, Travis. And I’m supposed to meet Drew and the rental property agent in
fifteen
minutes—”

“Soon,” he interrupted her tersely. “As soon as I can. I’ll get back to you in an hour.”

Ending the call, he studied his son. “What’s up, buddy?”

“I don’t understand what causes magma to rise in a subjection zone. And I have to
explain
it. They talk about it in my science book, and Mia told me about it the other day, but it’s kinda confusing. Can you help me?”

“Subjection zones, huh? They’re a little out of my area of expertise.” His brow wrinkled as he pulled a spare chair up to his desk for the boy and moved his coffee mug out of the way. “Let’s take a look at that book and I’ll give it my best shot.”

As Grady grinned, regarding him with absolute trust and the hopefulness only a child can feel toward his parent’s steadfast ability to make everything better, Travis felt his determination multiply fiftyfold.

No way was he letting his son get shunted off to boarding school like extra baggage shoved into a storage facility.

Not while he still had blood left in his body.

“What happened when you walked into your house, Aunt Winny? What did you say to him?”

They were only a half mile from town now. But Winny Pruitt wasn’t responding to Mia’s question.

Mia braked at a red light at the intersection of Grace and Pine. Glancing at her aunt, she saw the frown lines etched deeply around her mouth. For several long seconds Winny clung to that silence, and Mia had almost given up on learning anything more when her aunt suddenly began to speak as if the words had been corked up inside her too long, and there were too many of them to contain any longer.

“Henry Clayton behaved as if he’d never seen me before, that’s what happened. Smooth as a worm in mud he was. He shook my hand and told me he was honored to meet me and happy I was going to be his sister.”

Henry Clayton? Grandfather?

Mia’s heart lurched. She couldn’t seem to form any words, but fortunately, she didn’t need to because Winny
suddenly appeared to want to spill all those bottled-up memories out into the open.

“Smooth he was. Lied as if he did it every day of his life, which he no doubt did. It didn’t sink in on me until later, how ambitious Henry was in those younger days. He saw himself as a man on the rise. A man with a future. My parents owned a prosperous farm, even had two hired men to help with the chores, and he no doubt saw the benefits of marrying the cherished eldest daughter. Alicia’s reputation was spotless, while mine…” She gave a short, bitter bark of laughter. “A week or two in town and he knew as well as anyone what my reputation was. He knew I might be good enough to fool around with in the dark shed near the railroad tracks, but not good enough to be seen on his arm in public. Or to walk down the aisle of a church and say ‘I do.’”

“But he left Gram—after only a few years—when my mother was still a little girl!” Mia burst out. “He abandoned them both for some barmaid and was never heard from again. What did he get from the marriage?”

“Well, I was long gone by then, but Abner wrote me later what
he
heard. Henry stole nine hundred and seventy-five dollars from my father’s safe before he ran away. A fortune in those days. So I guess his true nature won out in the end. Henry wasn’t cut out for staying in one place any more than he was cut out for marriage. He was an opportunist who grabbed his chances as they came and lit out whenever the urge took him. I’d bet my horse, if I had one, that he dumped the barmaid for a banker’s daughter as soon as the opportunity came along.”

The streetlight changed to green and Mia stepped on the gas and accelerated, cruising past the park and the Toss and Tumble Laundromat, her aunt’s words whirling through her head. As she neared the hospital entrance, it suddenly occurred to her that her grandfather hadn’t been all that different from Peter. Peter Clancy had left her in similar fashion, taking every dime of the savings from their joint account.

“Chalk it up to the wedding quilt.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until the words tumbled from her mouth.

Beside her she heard Winny’s indrawn breath.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Winny,” she said quickly. “It’s just that Gram always used to say none of the women in our family had any kind of marriage luck except the bad kind after the wedding quilt burned up. It’s seemed to hold true.”

“I never should have burned that damned quilt,” Winny muttered. It sounded like she was talking to herself. Suddenly she glanced over at Mia. “I did it out of spite the night I left. Hurt feelings and rage got the better of me. I was sorry for it later, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. Not for a long time. And by then…it didn’t matter anymore.”

“You said you left home because your family threw you out.” Mia hesitated. “Was that because you burned the quilt?”

“
That’s
what you think?” Winny stared at her incredulously. “So it’s true. No one ever told you what happened. Any of it. All these years, I figured they passed down the stories about the family tramp. The wild, no-good daughter. Winona.” She drew a breath and stared out the window at the hospital, at the half-empty parking lot.

Mia had the feeling she was seeing something else.

Not a tidy hospital shaded by willow trees near a park where children played. Not a town where people called out to friends and shop owners knew all of their customers’ names. She was seeing something dark, something ugly. And far away.

“The night my father ordered me to leave his house, I tried to tell him the truth. What really happened. I tried to tell all of them. But they wouldn’t believe me,” she said heavily. “Not my parents, not my sister—they believed Henry. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

Mia pulled up at the curb in front of the hospital, her throat tight at the bitterness in her aunt’s voice. It was 11:32. But if she didn’t find out right here and now why Winny had
been forced from her home, her aunt might never choose to talk about it again.

“I’ll believe you, Aunt Winny, I promise. Whatever it is.” Reaching out, she placed her hand over her aunt’s thin, veined one with the defiantly bright fingernails. “Tell me what happened.”

Winny closed her eyes for so long, Mia thought she wasn’t going to reply, but finally she opened them and stared—not at Mia—but into the distance, at something, or someone, Mia couldn’t see.

“It was two weeks before the wedding,” she whispered. “I was in the kitchen, alone, making a dish to bring to my aunt’s home. She was hosting a small dinner party in honor of Alicia’s engagement. My mother had one of her headaches—she was resting in her room before dressing for the party. My father and Alicia were on an errand. And Henry showed up at the front door early to see my sister.”

Mia watched as a young woman was wheeled out of the hospital, a newborn baby nestled in a pink blanket in her arms, her husband at her side, carrying a small suitcase and a clutch of release papers and instructions.

“What happened then?” she pressed quietly.

“I told Henry Alicia was out, and I tried to close the door.” Winny spoke in a monotone. “But he grabbed it and held it in place. Then he pushed right past me, into the hall, bold as you please, and declared he’d wait for her.”

From the park a few streets away, the sound of children’s laughter floated like faint music to Mia’s ears, but Winny didn’t seem to hear it. Just as she hadn’t seen the woman and the baby. She seemed to have forgotten that they were parked in front of the hospital, that Doc Grantham was waiting to check her foot. She was back on her family’s farm, trapped in the past, facing a man who’d hurt her.

“Instead of waiting in the parlor, like I told him, Henry followed me into the kitchen. I ordered him to get out, but he…he wouldn’t go.” Anger shimmered in her eyes. “He
pushed me against the wall.
Hard
. Covered my mouth with his hand. I was scared, fighting him. Struggling to get free, but he just laughed. He told me he still wanted me, that he kept thinking about me. He told me we could still have fun times together, that no one need know. I kicked him—I was trying to get away. But I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I couldn’t get away.”

Mia felt sick as her aunt drew a deep breath.

“Suddenly Henry pulled his hand from my mouth. He pinned my hands to my sides and held me against the wall beside the pantry and he kissed me. I tried to twist away but he only held me tighter…and he…he wouldn’t stop….”

Disgust shook Mia to her core. Even though it had all happened long ago, pain still trembled through her aunt’s voice and glazed her eyes.

“I tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t let me go. He just laughed at me and started groping me—” Winny broke off with a shudder. “And then Alicia and our father walked through the kitchen door and found us like that. It must’ve looked like we were embracing…kissing.”

“No. Oh,
no
.” Mia didn’t even realize she whispered the words aloud. But her aunt seemed not to have heard.

“Soon as Henry saw them he shoved me away and pretended he was shocked. He told them he’d been waiting for Alicia to return, passing the time with me to be polite. He told them I suddenly threw myself at him, kissed him, and he was caught off guard—” As Mia’s breath froze in her throat, Winny’s mouth twisted. “They believed him. My own family. My own sister. They wouldn’t listen to a word I said. They thought I’d actually
do
something like that. That I’d hurt my sister.”

Her voice was dull now. Dulled with an old, rusty pain and the resignation that came with time. “No matter how I tried to deny it, all of it, they wouldn’t listen. My mother came downstairs in her shift and they told her. All of them
stared at me with contempt in their eyes. None of them believed me. They took his word over mine.”

Finally, she lifted her head, met Mia’s stricken gaze. “My father told me I’d been nothing but trouble from the day I was born. Told me I was to get out of his house and never return. My mother looked heartbroken, but she was angry, too. She asked me how I could do this to my sister. And Alicia, she stared at me. I’ll never forget the sadness in her eyes. She said to me in the coldest tone I’d ever heard her use—‘I know him. He’s a good man. And you’re so jealous of my good fortune you’re trying to ruin it. I’ll never forgive you.’”

A clutch of pain ripped through Mia’s heart.
Gram…sweet, kind Gram
. She must have felt so betrayed. But it wasn’t her sister who’d betrayed her. And those words had ripped the two of them apart.

“My father gave me until morning to leave, but I lit out that same night after they all went to my aunt’s.” Winny leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Before I left, I set fire to that quilt out back in the yard. When nothing was left but some fabric threads and a pile of ash, I doused the fire with a bucket of water and walked away. Never looked back.”