Love Will Find a Way (33 page)

"So you did it in secret?
All these years?
But someone knew, didn't they?" Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "Gary knew."

Carly nodded, her eyes begging for understanding. "He came down here one day to clean things out. He found the paintings and asked me about them. So I told him the truth."

"You told him the truth," she echoed tonelessly. "Which was what?"

"That my real ambition was to go to school at the San Francisco Art Institute. That's why I've never been able to finish college. Business doesn't interest me." Carly drew in a shaky breath. "Gary encouraged me to apply to the school and he let me use the apartment for my interview. That's the only reason I was there, Rachel. You have to believe me."

"I don't know what to believe!"

"Well, believe that. It's the truth."

"I have to go." She was having a hard time breathing in this place with no air and far too many paintings. "I can't do this right now." It was all she could do to climb the stairs instead of running up them. Once she'd slammed the basement door behind her, she ran as fast as she could down the hall and out of the house. When she hit the front yard she stopped, dazed, shocked, scared. Where could she go now? Her safe haven had just turned into a world she didn't recognize. Where the hell was she going to go now?

* * *

Dylan wanted to follow Rachel, but first he had a sobbing young woman to deal with. Carly had burst into tears the second the basement door had slammed shut.

"She'll come around," he said soothingly.

Carly shook her head, the tears running down her face. "I don't think she will. She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you. She loves you. You're her sister."

"She thinks I'm like Mom now," Carly said, sniffling. "And I am, you know. I'm just like her. That's why I don't fit in here. Why I should be leaving. Rachel wants me to love this place, but I don't. I mean, it's okay, it's home, but tending to the orchards is not my dream."

"It doesn't have to be. Once Rachel thinks about it, she'll realize that you have to live your own life and go wherever that life takes you."

Carly looked at him with a small glimmer of hope in her eyes. "Are you just being nice or do you really believe that?"

"I really believe it," he said firmly. "Don't underestimate your sister."

"I wish she could understand that I have to paint. It's in my blood. My relationship with our mother was different than hers. I missed having a mom, but I didn't really miss my mother as a person. I was three years old when she left. I didn't know her. Rachel was my surrogate mom. I had my dad and my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, to fill up my life. But Rachel remembers being with Mom. She remembers the way things were before she left."

Dylan nodded. He understood completely, because he'd had a family for a while, before everything had been torn and ripped and broken beyond repair. Maybe it was harder to go on when you knew what you were missing.

Carly turned to look at the portrait on her easel. "I don't even know if I'm any good. I'm probably cursed with a desire that doesn't match my talent."

"That one looks pretty good to me. What did the Art Institute say?"

"They said I could come if I could pay for it."

"Did Gary give you the money?"

"No. He said he was going to, but something came up. I don't know what. Maybe the house construction cost more than he thought. I didn't want to beg. And he was preoccupied. Then he died, and it was too late."

Dylan wondered again about Gary's preoccupation. What on earth had been going on in his life that had distracted him to such an extent?

"I asked Gary not to say anything to Rachel," Carly said. "That was probably a mistake. Because now Rachel feels like Gary kept something from her."

He nodded. "Yes."

"He urged me to tell her. I never found the right time."

"Did Gary ever say what was bothering him?" he asked her, more interested now in Gary's preoccupation than in Carly's big secret. She stiffened slightly, and he wondered why. "You stayed at his apartment. You didn't notice anything odd? Out of place?"

"Like what?"

"Like other women, phone calls, notes, clothes that didn't belong there. Let's cut to the chase, Carly. Rachel thinks Gary was having an affair. That's why she went nuts when she found your underwear. Obviously, it wasn't you. What do you think?"

"I already told Rachel about the phone call Gary got here from some woman named Laura."

"Was that it?"

"Well, no. The same woman left a message on Gary's answering machine the night I was there. I didn't answer the phone, just let the machine pick up."

"Do you remember the message?"

"I wish I didn't," she said.

Dylan didn't like the sound of that. "Will you tell me?"

"I don't want to. Maybe I heard it wrong. Maybe I misread the intent."

"Why don't you let me be the judge?"

"All right. She said she needed to speak to Gary immediately and that if he'd ever loved her, he'd call her back." Carly snapped her fingers. "Oh, and she said something in Italian, like amore something, and she mentioned Venice. I don't know exactly. I just remember that it sounded foreign and mysterious and kind of romantic. God, I shouldn't say that."

Dylan's mind began to whirl. Hadn't Gary spent a few weeks in Italy? Yes.
The summer after their senior year in high school.
His pulse accelerated as he recalled the postcards.
Wish you were here. I met an incredible girl. I think I'm in love.

Dylan hadn't thought much of it. Gary had always been in love. But he'd acted differently when he came back, in a more somber, less joyful manner. He'd said things hadn't worked out. They'd broken up. What was her name? Was it Laura? Damn. Dylan wished he had a better memory.

"I should have told Rachel," Carly continued. "But I couldn't figure out how to tell her about the message without mentioning that I'd been in San Francisco."

"A tangled web, huh?" he asked with sympathy.

"It certainly turned out that way. One lie led to another. Even tonight I lied about going to dinner with Travis. We went to an art gallery in the city. It was incredible. I wish I could tell Rachel about it."

"You will. Just give her some time. I'll go find her."

Carly nodded, then reached for an afghan hanging over one of the boxes. "Take this; you may need it."

"Why, where am I going?"

She smiled. "Where do you think?"

The answer came to him immediately. He took the blanket out of her hand. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. And if you feel like putting in a good word for me, I'd appreciate it."

* * *

The grass was cool beneath her fingers. Rachel leaned back and stared up at the sky through the branches of Lady Elaine. She'd have a better view of the stars from somewhere else, but it was here, under this shadowy tree with its protective branches, that she felt the safest. Although she'd come to realize in the past few weeks that it wasn't always the obvious that could hurt. Sometimes pain came in subtle, unexpected, surprising ways.

Secrets. She'd never thought much about them. They were the gossipy little tales you told when you were young and swore you'd never tell another soul. They were about goofy things like who liked whom and where you stashed your chocolate and what you'd really bought at the bookstore when your dad asked.

Rachel smiled, remembering the elaborate lie she'd made up just so she could buy a sexy novel. She'd read it at night with a flashlight under her covers when she was fifteen years old. And no one had known. No one had suspected that she had questions about sex and love and desire. Her grandmother had tried to do her duty by giving her the motherly talk, but the abstract conversation had done little to help Rachel in terms of what hooking up meant in high school.

She had tried to do better by Carly, to be open and honest and frank. She sighed, thinking of how she'd failed. Not about sex, maybe, but about everything else. Carly had had her own secret, her own desire,
her
own worries. And Carly had had no one to talk to either. She hadn't hidden in her bedroom. She'd hidden in the basement.

Secrets. So much more a part of her life than Rachel had ever known.

Gary and secrets.
There was another combination that Rachel didn't want to think about but couldn't avoid. Maybe he hadn't done with Carly what she'd initially feared, but he had kept her visit to the city and her passion for painting a secret. Why? Why had his loyalty been more to Carly than to her, his wife? Had it not been that important to him? Had he thought of it as Carly's secret, rather than his own?

How she wished she could talk to him, ask him all the things that were bothering her. Ask him how they'd gotten so off the track, how they'd lost touch with each other, how they'd gone from being intimate to being distant. Had it happened overnight, in a week, in a month, in a year? Or had it happened over time? If he'd lived, would they have stayed together?

She'd never know. No matter what she and Dylan found out, she'd never know that.

The crunching of leaves and the soft sound of footsteps told her someone was coming. She didn't have to turn her head to know it was Dylan.

He'd followed her again. The way he'd followed her before. And it wasn't until just this moment that she realized how disappointed she would have been if he hadn't come after her.

He draped an afghan around her shoulders, then dropped down next to her, not saying a word, not needing to.

A second later, she put out her hand and he took it. They sat there for a long time, just listening to the night. She'd come to this spot searching for peace, for a connection to the past, to the strength of those who had lived and loved before her. But the tree hadn't given her the comfort she craved. It had come now, with Dylan.

"How is Carly?" she asked finally.

"Worried."

"I should go back and talk to her."

"It will wait. How are you?"

"I'm better now. Now that you're here."

He squeezed her fingers. "It's been a long night. Are you cold? Do you want to go inside?"

"Not yet. You don't have to stay, though." She felt compelled to say the words, even though the last thing she wanted him to do was to go.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily. So what about Carly? What are you thinking?"

"I overreacted, didn't I?"

"It's just art, Rachel. A lot of people in the world like to paint. It doesn't make them deserters."

"It made my mother one."

"Carly is not your mother. She isn't married or with children. She's free to do what she wants to do. And she wants to paint. More than that, she wants your blessing to paint."

Rachel shook her head in bewilderment. "I still don't understand how she could like art. After everything we lost because of it."

"She was just a baby when your mother left. She doesn't remember."

"I remember. I remember that the only time I had with my mother was when I sat for a painting. Then I'd had her undivided attention. The rest of the time she didn't even see me. I wanted her to see me so badly. I loved her."

"What was she like?"

"Beautiful. Her voice was soft, her laughter like music. She didn't laugh much with us, but when her artist friends came over, she couldn't stop. I'd sneak downstairs and listen to their parties. We weren't enough for her. Now I feel like we're not enough for Carly."

"You mean you're not enough for Carly."

"It sounds so selfish when you say it like that. I want her to be happy, Dylan, I really do. I love her. I just don't want to let her go. But I know I have to. I have to let her be who she is." She glanced over at him. "I'll tell her in the morning."

"Good," he said approvingly, and she felt a surge of pleasure.

His opinion had become important to her. He had become important to her. She'd known it all along, but tonight the words needed to be spoken.

"I'm glad you're here," she said. "You're fast becoming a huge part of my life, in case you hadn't noticed."

"You've always been a big part of mine," he said.

"Even with all the years between us?"

"They seem like nothing now, don't they?"

"Like the blink of an eye. Times passes faster than we realize."

"Which is why we shouldn't waste one second of it."

"You're right."

They fell silent for a moment. It was a beautiful night, filled with stars.

"I never realized how much I liked quiet until I came here," Dylan mused. "I've always lived with noise, radios blaring while we work, the roar and hum of power tools, the television on when I'm at home. Quiet was never one of my goals."

"Quiet gives you time to think. And you don't like to do that."

"I don't. Very perceptive, Rachel."

"What's wrong with thinking?"

"When I was a kid, I spent too much time feeling sorry for myself or being frustrated with the terrible tragedies that I couldn't change – Jesse's death, my parents' divorce, my mother's remarriage.
Not a tragedy to her, but it wasn't good for me."

"You had it rough."

"Yeah, well, focusing on it didn't get me anywhere. But staying busy, making goals, working hard, that gave me purpose and a little bit of peace."

"Because you could outrun your thoughts. I wonder if Gary felt a little bit the same way."

Dylan laughed. "No, Gary didn't have that many thoughts to outrun. I loved the guy, but he wasn't a deep thinker. For him it was never about the bad stuff but about the possibilities. The glass was always half full, not half empty."

She couldn't help but smile back. "You're right. Gary was a dreamer. That's what appealed to me about him from the first second I met him. Maybe that was his escape mechanism. He just dreamed away his problems. He focused on the positive, on what could be, instead of what was." She paused. "Maybe he did that in our marriage, too. He was always talking about the future. I just never realized it was because he wasn't that happy in the present."

"He was happy."

"We don't know that any more, Dylan."