Home to Laura

chapter FOUR



“DO YOU WANT to go inside the old homestead?” Nick asked Emily.

“Yeah!”

She ran up onto the veranda. He stepped around her and tested the front door. Unlocked.

For the first time in four years, Nick set foot into the house he’d grown up in. He’d come home for Mom’s funeral. Before then, it had been nine years since he’d been in this house.

It hadn’t changed. That angered Nick. If it had to still be here, couldn’t it at least have a new look? What had Gabe done while he’d lived here? Preserved it? Coated it in formaldehyde to remind him of how hard their life had been? Gabe had always been a masochist of sorts.

He hadn’t renovated at all, hadn’t made additions to make the bedrooms larger, hadn’t changed the structure to reflect the times and current styles.

He’d left the place clean. Spotless. Not a trace of a dust bunny or fur ball hid in the corners. Military training did that to a man, Nick guessed.

“Dad?” Emily said from behind him. “Can you move inside so I can see?”

No. But he did. He swallowed his distaste and stepped through the doorway.

“Wow, this is cool.” Emily nudged her way around him.

Cool? Not by a long shot.

Over the years, as he’d become more secure in his wealth, he’d tried to give his mother things, even a new house. She’d refused, almost as though she didn’t believe she deserved more than what she had here. He’d tried to pay for repairs, upgrades. Always the same answer. “Things are fine as they are.”

Had she kept this house as a shrine to Dad? But it didn’t feel like one. It felt, simply, like a small old house.

All Mom had taken from him had been flowers on special days and chocolates ordered and delivered from Europe. And trips to stay with him and Marsha and Emily, since he’d had no desire to step into this town again. She’d seemed to enjoy those visits. He’d treasured them.

He stood lost in anger and confusion and fear. Fear? Why? He had nothing to fear here. It was just an old house. Nothing more.

There were things that had happened here that he didn’t understand, though, vague memories that confounded him, angry words that bounced around in a room in his mind that he kept locked, and that he never entered. Why dig up the past?

The living room sat empty, stripped of all its old furniture by Gabe. Everything had been cleared but Nick’s room.

Still that frisson of fear confused him.

He stepped toward the fireplace, the stones and mantel blackened by years of use. He used to lie in front of the hearth when he was a child. If he were ill, his mother would bring him special treats. More often than not, though, she would be at work and he would be left in Gabe’s care. Then, Nick would get healthy things. Chicken soup. Homemade, yes, and Gabe did a good job of turning himself into a credible cook, but to this day, Nick could not drink the stuff.

He’d wanted his mother and her affection. He’d far preferred her coddling to Gabe’s practical solutions.

“Because of the way you talked about it, Dad, I thought this would be a really awful house.”

“It isn’t any great shakes. It was really run-down when we were kids. Gabe did stuff since then. Fixed the roof, painted. Only the basics. I would have renovated. Gutted it. Enlarged it.”

“Even without furniture it feels cozy.”

Cozy? Claustrophobic, more like. “It does?”

“Yeah. You just can’t see it ’cause you’re used to our big place.”

The kitchen was pitifully small. They had barely fit a table and four chairs into it. When the whole family was seated at the table, no one could open the fridge to get anything.

He looked down at his daughter. “And you wonder why I have such a big dining room. Now you know.”

She turned in a circle, studying the kitchen, the hallway to the bedrooms and one bathroom, and the living room she thought was cozy and he thought confining, and said, “Now I get it, Dad. You live in such a big house because the one you grew up in was so small.”

“I wanted you to have more than I did.”

“I do, Dad. I have you.”

He swallowed hard. Sweet Emily. After all of his resistance, he was so glad she was here with him today.

“I mean, material goods,” he said. “I wanted you to feel like you had comfort and room to breathe.”

She wrapped her arms around him and tipped her head back so she could see his face. “I totally understand you now.”

His sinuses hurt. His little girl was too wise and too loving toward a guy like him who chewed up business opponents as if they were M&M’s.

She pulled away and he missed her warmth, felt a draft as though a ghost had stepped between them.

“Show me where you used to sleep. Which room was yours?”

“Don’t—” But she was already running down the hall.

He followed her, his feet dragging because he didn’t want to see...that nothing had changed. Gabe had kept it all exactly the way it had been when Nick had left to live in Seattle. More accurately, Mom had left it that way, almost as a shrine, and then Gabe hadn’t changed it later when he’d returned from Afghanistan.

The single bed looked small now. The bookshelves were covered with all of his childhood and adolescent books, along with his basketball awards.

His old metal toy trunk sat in the corner where he’d left it.

All of it, every last item that marked the stages of his childhood, was covered with a layer of dust. Forgotten. Abandoned.

Gabe had kept the house clean, but not this room.

Rene had been after him for weeks to deal with his stuff.

“Either clear it out or I’m putting everything in storage. We gotta move on this.”

If the weather held and there weren’t any late Colorado snowstorms, they wanted to demolish the house so they could start digging the foundation of the hotel the second the land thawed.

He was here now. He might as well clear it out today.

He studied the room. When they were young, Gabe had tried to celebrate every little thing, every pennant or badge any of them had won. Had tried to cheer his younger brothers up.

Once Nick had grown up enough to attend school, though, he’d come to understand that the town hadn’t adored him as his mother had. At home, he’d been special. Outside of this house? He’d been just another ordinary kid and that had been the cruelest trick life had played on him.

“Wow,” Emily breathed. “You used to play basketball? Look at all of your trophies.”

She stood in front of a wall of photos beside his bed. “Look at you and your brothers. You were about my age now. Wow. Surreal.”

Farther along was the room Gabe had shared with Tyler. When they were kids, there’d been bunk beds. When Nick had returned for Mom’s funeral, a double bed had already replaced those boyish ones.

“So whose bedroom was this? Gabe’s or Tyler’s?”

“Both.”

Emily wrinkled her nose. “Really? Your bedroom was bigger even though there was only one of you?”

He’d never noticed. It had honest to God never registered that Gabe and Tyler had had less than he’d had.

Looking at their small bedroom now, Nick wondered why Mom had worked things out so unfairly.

Emily wandered to the back of the house.

“That was my mother’s bedroom. Apparently,” he said, “Gabe turned it into an office after she died.”

“Can we visit her grave while we’re here?”

God, that would be hard. “Yes.”

“Can we go through the stuff in your room?”

He nodded.

Gabe had left flattened boxes and packing supplies in the small storage room at the back that used to hold emergency supplies for when they had blackouts. With Colorado’s winter storms, they’d been regular. Nick dragged a couple of boxes back to his room.

“Dad, look!” From the windowsill, Emily picked up a tiny figurine of a woman wearing a long dress and with a lamb crooked in one arm. “It’s so pretty. Is it really old?”

“Yes. It used to be my mom’s, her favorite thing in the whole world.” He took it from her. His sinuses ached again. Gabe must have left it in here for him. Okay, so maybe his brother wasn’t a complete prick.

Nick handed it back to Emily. God, he missed his mother.

“Here,” he said. “Keep it.”

“Really, Dad? Thanks.” She handled it reverently. “Look! A photo album.”

Photos. He hadn’t expected Gabe to leave him any.

“Oooh, let’s look at them.” Emily grabbed an album and threw herself onto the bed, where light shining through the window formed a halo around her. She could have been a young version of his mother sitting darning the endless reams of socks he and his brothers put holes in.

Where they had inherited their dad’s chocolate eyes and nearly black hair, Emily had inherited Mom’s mahogany hair and those blue eyes with the striking hazel ring.

But Mom’s prettiness had been beaten out of her by two jobs and her grief after Dad died, which she tried to muffle late at night so her boys wouldn’t hear her. But they did.

We did.

It had driven Gabe, the oldest, to take care of her and his younger brothers.

It had driven Tyler into law enforcement, to protect any scrap that was good about this life.

It had driven Nick to run and not come back.

But none of that had touched Emily, and he didn’t want it to now.

“Was this Grandpa?” She held a photograph of his father standing in brilliant sunlight on top of Mount Everest with a grin on his face. No wonder he’d been happy. The ascent had been a success, an incredible accomplishment.

The descent, however, had killed him.

He merely nodded, unable to speak. He’d been only five when Dad died, but so much tension had swirled through the house after his death, along with the grief. It had sent his mother into a tailspin that had taken her months to pull out of, but she had—eventually—and then she’d come to him.

“You’re my last baby, my special baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” he’d protested, but he’d liked how tightly she’d held him.

“No, you’re not. You’re my little man.” She’d kissed his head and whispered, “I love you,” and he’d never felt more secure.

No one had spoken about the tension. There were things Nick was sure he didn’t know, those things that scared him, unaccountably, and he wasn’t sure he ever needed to know any of it.

“How did he die?” Emily asked.

“On Mount Everest. When he was climbing back down from the summit, he’d come across a man who’d tried the climb without oxygen and was dying. All the other climbers were ignoring him, but Dad thought he could save him. Instead, they both died.”

“Why?”

“Because that top portion of Everest is so hard. The air is thin. Even with a supply of oxygen it’s hard to do anything, walk, even breathe, let alone try to drag someone else back down the mountain with you.”

Nick’s emotions toward his dad had been ambivalent ever since. He’d missed the big, fun man who used to toss him into the air and catch him before he fell, but he’d also been angry. Look what his death had done to Mom and his three sons. He’d left them with nothing more than the house he’d inherited from his father.

Mom had gone to work at two jobs to feed three hungry, growing boys and Gabe had turned into pseudo-dad.

Nick had a lot to sort through here. Emily could help him. Maybe it would be a good project to share with her—a father/daughter project. The thought excited him. It might be the only way for him to get through this without breaking down into maudlin self-pity and grief.

He unfolded the boxes and taped their bottoms.

“Let’s start here.” He knelt on the floor in front of the old trunk. As a child, he’d never noticed how frayed the fabric covering was, or how dented the metal at the corners. When he had looked at it, he had seen it as his treasure box.

“We didn’t have money when I was growing up, but my mom used to buy me a little something every week or so.”

“Wow, look at all these old cars.”

“Matchbox miniatures. Cars from movies. Look, here’s the Batmobile.”

He pulled out another tiny car. “James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5. A perfect little replica.”

Emily took James out of the driver’s seat. “He’s so tiny.”

“It’s a wonder I never lost him.” He looked through the chest for more.

“I owned a lot of Matchbox vehicles. Buses. Motorcycles.”

He picked up a car with large wheels. “Look! When Hot Wheels came on the market, Mom started to buy me those. They were exact replicas of muscle cars and hot rods.”

He and Emily raced them on the bare floor.

He’d spent hours with his cars, would never go anywhere without one in each pocket. So many toys, and yet each one had been a treasure to him.

“You and your brothers must have had so much fun playing with these.”

“What?” Nick asked. “My brothers?”

“Yeah. They must have loved these, too.”

“They didn’t belong to my brothers.”

“Dad, are you saying you never played with them?”

“We played some stuff. Snowball fights. They taught me how to toss a ball around.”

“No. I mean, you never let them play with these?” She pointed to the toy box.

“They were mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

How could he explain? The way she looked at him he knew she thought he’d been selfish. “We owned so little. This room and these cars, these toys, were my universe. I had nothing else.” In town, no one paid him any attention. He wore his brothers’ hand-me-downs. He ate macaroni and cheese until it came out of his ears. But here in this room? He was the pirate of a great and worthy ship and he owned treasure.

No. His brothers were not allowed in here. It was his private paradise and he wasn’t about to let them in to muck it up.

“Dad, you always said you lived in poverty.”

“We did. We were hungry a lot of the time.”

“But you have all these cars. A whole trunk full.”

He’d never questioned why Mom spent money on these, why they had to scrimp for food and clothing, but Nick had these toys. Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars weren’t cheap. He’d just believed that they were his due. He felt disquieted now wondering if his brothers had somehow been cheated for his benefit. If so, why didn’t they hate him?

“Can I meet Gabe and Tyler while I’m here?” Emily asked.

Where had that come from out of the blue? “Maybe.”

“Does that mean no?”

She was ruining their “together” time. “Let it go, Emily. Isn’t it enough that you’re here with me and I’ve shown you where I grew up?”

“Sure,” she said, but he knew he’d disappointed her. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“There might not be toilet paper.”

“I have tissues in my pocket.”

She returned a minute later, but something had changed. She was subdued.

They looked at more of Nick’s things, but Emily’s heart wasn’t in it as it had been before.

He heard a vehicle turn into the driveway and come to a stop with a screeching of tires.

Curious, he went to see who it was.

Gabe stepped into the house. Nick hadn’t seen him since the man had come to him in the winter desperate for Callie’s address. Nick had given it to him only after Gabe had agreed to sell his third of the Jordan land to him.

“What are you doing here?” Nick asked.

From behind him, his daughter said, “I called him.”

“When?”

“In the washroom.”

When had she learned to be devious? Where? It was small consolation that she looked remorseful. She was also defiant. “I wanted to meet him. He’s my uncle.”

Gabe opened his arms. Emily ran into them.

They laughed and hugged and Nick wanted to rip them apart. She shouldn’t be as happy to see the man as she was.

She’s my daughter.

Nick knew he was being petty, but Gabe brought out the worst in him. It had started long before the man hadn’t come home from Afghanistan to attend his mother’s funeral. Until a few months ago, Nick hadn’t known Gabe had been wounded at the time, but the seeds of his anger with this brother had been sown a long, long time ago—almost from the day their father died and Gabe took it upon himself to become a strict disciplinarian.

A sound on the veranda drew Nick’s attention. Callie MacKintosh stepped into the room, looking bright and colorful and vibrant.

“Hello, Nick,” she said with a smile, as though there were no hard feelings between them. Well, he had hard feelings, by God.

“Callie,” Emily squealed and traded Gabe’s arms for hers.

All of five-four and nothing more, redheaded and pixie-ish, Callie radiated health and happiness. She’d never looked like that when she’d worked for Nick. She’d been exceedingly competent, but had looked tired and harassed.

Once again, St. Gabe had come to the rescue. Everybody loved Gabe.

They look like a family.

Thunderstruck, he forced himself not to react, not to lash out. Emily had a right to know her uncle Gabe and she had a right to see her friend Callie.

She chattered to both Gabe and Callie, and the joy on Emily’s face undermined his need to pull her away from these people and keep her for himself, to take her back to Seattle and lock her in their home.

“Dad, Callie invited me to stay with them tonight!”

What? But she’d wanted to spend time with him.

“I can meet the dogs. Gabe said he’ll teach me all about dogsledding.” Emily looked younger than her twelve years, like an excited little girl. “Can I sleep over at their place?”

How could Nick say no? She was crushing him into the dirt, trading him in for Gabe, but how could he tell his little girl no?

“Yes,” he said, as though the word had been wrenched from his lips. Emily ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He wanted to hold on tightly and not let go.

Gabe watched him carefully. Nick’s senses, on high alert from the trip down memory lane in this godforsaken house, detected understanding. Or worse, compassion.

He shuttered his own expression. He didn’t need anything from Gabe.

Emily kissed his cheek. “Uncle Gabe can take me to the B and B to get my knapsack.”

“Have a good time, sweetheart.” With an effort, he smiled. “Don’t bring home any dogs or puppies.”

“Aw, how did you guess?” Emily asked, but she was joking. Before she left, she turned back and studied him, frowning. “Will you be okay, Dad?”

He nodded, his throat full and closing up on him. No, he wouldn’t be all right. He didn’t want to spend the night alone. He wanted her back already. In Seattle, in his office, he was real, successful. Here in Accord, he was...

That was the problem. Who was he? That little boy who had grown up with so little? Who’d been ashamed of his hand-me-downs and his unending hunger?

They turned and walked to the car and Nick again had that sense of them looking like a family.

Ever since Dad’s death, he hadn’t felt like part of the family. Not really. Had Mom done that by treating him differently than she had his brothers?

There was no denying the bond between Gabe and Ty.

Emmy got into the backseat of Gabe’s truck and waved.

Don’t go.

His daughter had just blown him off. What did he expect? How many times in her life had he called to cancel outings he’d booked with her because something had come up at work?

Payback was a bitch.

He looked around the small house, eerily convinced that the ghosts of his dead ancestors walked these rooms. He couldn’t stand to be here alone.

Seconds later, he closed the front door and fled to his car.

Coward.

You bet.

* * *

LAURA WANDERED DOWN the rows of headstones until she came to her father’s grave and stared down at his headstone. He’d never understood that, when he had gone to another woman, he hadn’t betrayed only Mom. He’d betrayed his daughter, too. A breach of faith and ethics affected everyone. She’d always thought him so strong, so perfect, so...Daddy. The man he became after Amber’s death had been a stranger.

She heard a footfall behind her and turned. Nick Jordan stood with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. She thanked the heavens he didn’t have his daughter with him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Her nod felt brittle.

“You don’t look all right.”

Neither did he. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong with him, on what had changed since earlier today in her bakery, but some of his urbanity, his confidence, had been tarnished. He looked tired and, while he stared down at a grave, sad.

He leaned forward and placed the flowers beside a headstone two plots down.

“Your mother’s grave?” she asked.

He nodded.

Laura hadn’t realized that her father and his mother were buried so close together. She knew that Gabe visited the cemetery every couple of weeks, presumably to leave flowers on her grave, but Laura had avoided coming here those days. Easy enough to do. Until recently, Gabe had run his life to a strict timetable.

“I’ll leave,” she said. “I won’t intrude.”

“Don’t go,” he said and, for a second, sounded desperate. “I intruded on you.”

Ever since losing the baby, Laura had been immobilized by a strange lassitude that hit her at the most inconvenient times, and she stood frozen, undecided. Fate was messing with her head and she didn’t know where strong, decisive Laura had gone. These days, she needed comfort, affection—love—and couldn’t find it.

Nick ran his fingers through his hair—an odd gesture for him. He looked nervous, and so alone.

“I’m at loose ends,” he said. “My daughter is staying with Gabe and I have no plans for the evening. Would you—?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to have supper together?” He must have seen her alarm because he raised a hand, palm out. “This isn’t a date. I don’t relish eating alone in my old hometown and you look like you could use company, too.”

He was right. She could. But Nick’s company? That could be dangerous.

But she hadn’t felt this alone since Amber died.

Mom was emotionally unavailable. Laura would have to figure out why eventually, but not today. First, she needed to get past her own blue funk.

Her two best friends were on a cruise they’d booked months ago when Laura was pregnant and thought she’d have a baby to raise.

Nick held out his hand to her. A peace offering of sorts, she guessed.

She stared at his long fingers for moments on end, the temptation strong. She couldn’t be alone tonight. She just couldn’t.

She took his hand.

God help her.