Buch lesen: «Now She's Back»

This is for my brother, Pete. One day, he walked out of our house, yelling for our cousin, but I heard him call for “Shrimpo,” and Shrimpo he became for years. Pete, my little buddy, my baby in a way. Pete, a softness in my heart. I love you, brother.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

PROLOGUE

THANKSGIVING WAS HER favorite holiday because it meant getting away from the anger at her house and bathing in the love at her grandmother’s. Emma Candler turned her father’s SUV into the lane that ran between their house and her grandmother’s white Victorian homestead on Bliss Peak. Pale, thready, early-morning mist wound between the hardwoods and the pines, drifting to the spires and lights of the resort town below.

Emma parked in the gravel courtyard in front of Nan’s house. Jumping out, she checked her watch and peered down the driveway, down the mountain. Her fiancé had promised to come early, but his family drama often distracted Noah from his promises to her. His father, Odell, tended to choose the big days on the calendar to have his most dramatic meltdowns.

She grabbed her overnight bag, as well as an ironstone bowl of cranberry sauce and another of coleslaw.

If she’d known how to whistle, she would have. The holiday was always filled with Nan’s traditions of cooking and expressing thanks—even for their dysfunctional family. They would eat, then hike, and then eat some more. Pure joy.

As Emma hurried up the stone stairs to the wraparound porch, she noticed that the paint had started to peel. Come summer, she thought, she could help her grandmother hire someone to do the repairs or even do them herself. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she opened one side of the double front doors.

“Nan?” she called. “I’m here. Are you in the kitchen?”

The aromas of turkey and spicy pie wafted into the front hall. Emma hurried to the kitchen in the back of the house, where she saw pumpkin and squash pies sitting on the island. Other dishes in midpreparation littered the counter.

But no Nan.

Emma was pushing her own offerings into any crannies she could find in the fridge, when she heard the clomp of feet overhead and voices. Angry voices. She couldn’t make out the words or who the voices belonged to.

She stopped what she was doing and hustled up the back stairs.

From the doorway of the nearest bedroom, she saw her tiny grandmother gripping Odell Gage by the shoulders. His jeans were undone and his shirt was gaping open. “Get out of my house,” Nan said. “Are you both insane? Emma will be here any second. Pamela, I want my key back. You aren’t using my house to... Never again.”

“Louisa...” Odell stumbled, dragging Nan with him.

Emma couldn’t see her mother, Pamela, yet, but her grandmother’s frantic wrestling with a violent man made her rush into the room and plunge between them.

He backed up, his mouth open in surprise.

“Keep your hands off my grandmother,” Emma said. Movement behind him made her look over his shoulder and into her mother’s horrified face. Pamela Candler turned, yanking a sweater over her head. Emma felt sick as she looked back at Odell.

His laughter grated and his breath smelled of alcohol. “Don’t take this so seriously. Everyone in this Podunk town knows your mama needs a little fun.” He yanked his shirt around, the easier to button it. “That’s what I am. A little fun.”

“Get out of this house.” Emma pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans as she and Nan followed Odell and her mother into the hallway, where the pair paused to adjust their clothing. Odell had just confirmed her worst suspicions about her own mother.

Nan curled a hand around one of her wrists. No doubt she meant to comfort, but the hallway was too crowded, and Emma too upset to calm down.

Odell turned to Emma and patted her shoulder. “This isn’t your problem, sweetheart. You just arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Emma took a couple of deep breaths.

“Wait, honey,” Pamela said, her gaze plaintive as she edged closer. “Think about what you do next. Your father...”

“He deserves to be done with you!” Emma said. “Odell Gage, Mother? Odell? Is it because I’m engaged to his son, or was that just a bonus for you?”

“Don’t talk to your mom like that.” Odell’s temper flashed in his dull eyes and a corner of his mouth twitched.

“Dad.”

Emma gasped at the strangled voice. Noah stood on the landing, his face thinned with anger.

“What are you doing here?” Odell moved toward him, but Emma stepped between him and his son, her back to the stairs.

“No,” she said.

Odell looked her up and down, interested, amused.

“Emma,” Noah and her grandmother said at the same time.

“You’re not touching anyone else I love,” Emma said.

Laughing, Odell pushed past her, but their feet tangled. She felt herself falling. She heard her grandmother scream. The plaster ceiling and Odell Gage’s face twisted in front of her as they tumbled, and then sharp pain became nothingness.

She awoke in an ambulance. The EMT at her side didn’t bother to look at her, “Odell Gage said she threw him down the stairs and then lost her balance and fell with him. The guy probably deserved it, but he broke his leg before he hit the bottom, and then her grandmother had to pull his son off him.” The EMT shook his head. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“He deserved worse.” Emma faded into unconsciousness again. The next time she opened her eyes, she was in a treatment room, and Noah sat next to her bed, his face in his hands.

“How’s your father?” she asked.

He raised his head. “You’re awake,” he said with relief, but then his face hardened. “He’s fine. He was still so drunk, he collapsed more than fell. Are you in pain?”

She ignored the question. “The paramedics said your father claimed I pushed him. Do you think I did?” Emma asked.

“Who do you think I am?”

She sighed. “I’ve never known. I said I’d marry you because I loved you so much. I thought you’d show me you cared as much for me as you do for your mom, and your sister and brothers. But you keep me at bay, as if you’re afraid to.”

His eyes told her he was tired of the same old argument, the one they could never resolve.

She plucked at the stitching on her starchy hospital sheet. “I didn’t push your father, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“I saw what happened, but what were you thinking when you stepped between him and me?”

“That he’s done enough.” Her stomach roiled. “He has to stop hurting you and your brothers and sister, and he can’t lay another finger on anyone in my family.”

“You think this will stop him? You push him, he shoves back. You’ll be lucky if you aren’t testifying about adultery at their divorce trials and then leading them down the aisle as maid of honor at their wedding. He knows how to get under your skin.”

“We’d both be lucky if he divorced your mom, and my father finally got tired of Mother cheating on him.”

“Emma, how can you say that about me?” Emma looked up as her mother pushed through the partially open door and then shut it behind her. “Don’t worry. I’ve told your father you misunderstood what you saw, and Odell was only looking for Noah. I spent the night with my mother to help her get ready for today. Odell isn’t going to press charges.”

Emma shook her head. “Press charges against whom for what?”

“He’s saying you pushed him down the stairs. We know that’s not true, but he’s already managed to spread the story, and people like to talk. Now you get some rest, and maybe you’ll be able to come home tomorrow.”

With that, she was gone again, her breezy lies poisoning the air. The heart monitor at Emma’s side tapped out a hectic beat.

“She thinks she can stay with Dad after being with your father.” Emma closed her eyes as twenty-two years of family dysfunction replayed in her head. “I have to get out of this town.” She grabbed Noah’s hands. “Come with me. You can do your residency somewhere else. We can be married. I’ve waited for you so long, but I can’t breathe here anymore.”

“I can’t go.” It was the answer she expected. “My father will be more out of control than ever because of what happened today. My mother can’t protect herself, and he’ll try to punish my sister and brothers out of his sick sense of retribution. He’s a thug.” Noah shook his head. “I cannot go with you.”

“Owen is almost your age,” Emma said. “Maybe it’s his turn to protect them. And your mother should step up.” She pulled his hands to her face. “I’m begging you. I love you. You say you love me. Love me more than them, this once.”

“I do love you more than anyone. I just can’t walk away from the war zone at home.”

“It’s not your home anymore.”

“But I’m the one the others come to when they can’t stay in that house with him.”

“You’re supposed to be my place.”

“Understand, Emma.” He pressed his palms to either side of her head, his fingers tangling painfully in her hair. “I want to kill him for what he did to you, for what he’s done to all of us, but I have to find a way to help my family survive.”

“I’m leaving Bliss, Noah.”

“Stay. We can live it down.”

“If you don’t come with me, nothing will ever be right for us. Our plans will die. We’ll never be married. We won’t have children who know they’re loved. I can’t wait any longer for you to finally choose me.”

“Emma, come on. You’re not the only person who needs me. Give me a chance.”

“We don’t have a chance if we stay here. I’m getting out, with or without you, because if I don’t, I’ll be broken.”

CHAPTER ONE

Four Years Later

“JUST CHECK ON him.” Suzannah Gage followed Noah from the back of her SUV as he carried a sack of goat feed into the garden shed. “Owen’s failed at rehab twice already. If he’s drinking again, he could fall off Louisa Candler’s termite-ridden roof.”

“It’s Emma’s roof now, Mom, and that’s your point. You think if you can send me over there, I’ll forget she left me and beg her to start over.”

“If I’d been strong enough to throw your father down our stairs, she never would have left.”

Noah shoved the feed into a shelf tall enough to keep it out of the goats’ reach. “She didn’t push him, Mom, and you shouldn’t joke about it. Most of the people in town think she ran away out of guilt.”

“She did me a favor,” Suzannah said. He glared at her, and she waved her hands as if trying to erase her words in midair. “I mean, watching her life fall apart made me realize I needed to fix my own. I do feel responsible for your breakup, and I wouldn’t mind helping you forgive each other.”

Noah grabbed the last bag of goat feed. “You live in a dream. Emma’s been traveling the world without a word to me, and you think we can get over our split with a little chat on her collapsing porch?”

“Don’t you want her back?”

He stood there, leaves blowing around his head, hardly feeling the weight of the bag in his hands. “No.” He’d tried to stop managing his family’s emergencies, and he had a full life, running his medical practice in town. He’d even begun to organize a committee to open a clinic that would provide more extensive care than he could in a one-man office. “I have my life. I want to be here. Emma made her life elsewhere. She never believed in me anyway.”

“Never believed in you?”

“Forget it.” He put the last bag of feed on the shelf and ushered his mother back into the crisp sunlight. “I’ll go see Owen, but don’t dream up any more ideas about Emma and me. Deal?”

“Deal.” She pulled the hatch down on her vehicle. “For now, anyway. You’ll go while he’s working? Not to see Emma, honest, son, but to make sure your brother’s sober when he’s working.”

“All right, Mom, but Owen is old enough to take care of himself, and I’ve had it with being my family’s keeper.”

“I know.” Her face wrinkled with worry. “Owen thinks I have no right to worry about him because I spent so many years letting your father treat us badly.”

Noah glanced from her to the inn she’d created out of their old farmhouse. Pale yellow, surrounded with white porches and landscaping that was his mother’s pride and joy, it bore little resemblance to the tumbledown wreck of a family home it had been.

“This place is like you,” he said. “Bright and shiny and new.”

“And it’ll last, as long as I don’t let a man like your father into my life.”

So she was capable of understanding his position. He wouldn’t go back to a woman who’d made him feel like he was never enough. He’d been torn between his family’s real need and Emma’s emotional insecurity about their relationship. He’d loved her, but never enough to suit her hunger.

Besides, everyone knew she was only staying long enough to repair termite damage to her grandmother’s house.

Bliss had never made Emma Candler happy either.

* * *

THE SCENT OF sawdust and new wood treated to discourage termites filled the house. Emma leaned her forehead into the screen on one of the wide, open windows, to watch her contractor, Owen Gage, on the lawn sawing lengths of wood to repair her wraparound porch. Down below, in town, the courthouse bell tower spiked above wispy clouds.

The clock bonged out three echoing chimes, and Emma turned back to her work. The house her grandmother left her had been empty for thirteen months. Dust that would have upset Nan covered everything. Emma had spent her first two weeks back home digging into the grime and neglect, eradicating loneliness that made her ache for Nan’s comforting, sensible company.

With every dish and each neatly folded linen, slightly musty from disuse, she heard her grandmother whisper, “Come home. Take your place. Grow up, girl.”

And every time she felt tempted, she remembered that Bliss had always felt like a suit of clothes that didn’t fit. She had no place here, and she’d finally grown enough to know her life was elsewhere.

Besides, Noah lived here. Each time she left the house, she risked running into him. She didn’t want to renew their unhappy relationship, but she still wondered why she’d never been enough for him. Why he’d never chosen her first.

It couldn’t matter anymore. She wouldn’t allow it. When a woman couldn’t find answers to such a simple question, her only peace would come from burying the question forever.

She carried the last tray of china cups from one of the cherry cabinets to the kitchen island. She surveyed stacks of Limoges Haviland China, and the jewel tones of Nan’s everyday Fiestaware.

Which stack to wash first? The last time she’d emptied the kitchen cupboards to clean the shelves, she’d been eight years old, and she’d stood on a red stepstool to pass crockery and china to Nan. The memory filled her with longing so keen she closed her eyes and felt the metal stool’s steps cutting into her bare feet.

Lift your face and look to the sky to keep from crying.

That was what Nan had always said.

Emma looked up at the plaster ceiling. An iron chandelier hung from a rose medallion in the center. Both were blurred by her tears. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the death of the one person who’d made her believe unconditional love existed.

She could almost see Louisa Dane, in a pale green housedress, her hair in tight, black curls, her movements swift and economical.

“Careful,” she’d said that long-ago afternoon when thunder had rumbled on the mountain, and wind had blown gusts of raindrops through the open windows. “I’ll be leaving these dishes to you, and you’ll pass them on to your daughter. You don’t know it now, but one day you’ll have some chicken or ham, a sweet potato or some coleslaw from these plates, and you’ll remember helping me with my spring cleaning.”

“But will I be glad?” Emma had asked, eager to get to the attic for a rendezvous with Nancy Drew or Judy Bolton, girl detectives whose books Nan’s mother had collected.

“More than you can imagine. This is a memory you need to press in your heart. I know because I loved my grandma, too.”

Emma picked up a rose-painted plate and held it to her chest as if she were hugging her grandmother. As if she still could.

The sound of sawing stopped, abruptly dragging her back to the present. Owen had no helper, so when he needed an extra set of hands he put hers to work.

“Why are you here, Noah?” she heard him ask.

She straightened, then set the plate carefully back on its stack.

The men’s voices continued, one filled with righteous anger, the other low and rich, bringing back hurtful memories.

“Cut the drama.” Noah’s voice rose above his brother’s.

“Well, what are you doing here?” Owen asked. “Can I offer you a beer?”

Emma’s stomach tightened, reminding her of every argument she’d witnessed in her own home and at Noah’s. Wife against husband. Brother against brother. Father against children. Her newly clean, white kitchen dimmed as she took a step toward the hallway.

“Beer jokes aren’t funny when I’ve picked you up staggering drunk so many times. I came because Mom asked me to make sure you’re sober enough to work on this house.”

As Emma left the kitchen and looked down the long hall to the front door, Noah stepped in front of the screen, his back to it. In his navy suit, he was out of place. His dark brown hair was shorter, curling tightly against his head, cut close above his ears. His back looked broader, his shoulders tense.

“I’m not drinking,” Owen said, with the futile air of a man no one believed.

Noah’s stillness was hard to read from behind.

“Even if you aren’t,” he said, “this isn’t a one-man job.”

“When it’s not, I put Emma to work.”

“Emma’s paying you, and you make her work on her own house?”

She hurried toward them, slowing only when Owen’s gaze veered over Noah’s shoulder, his eyes angry enough to light a fire.

“Stop,” she said. “I don’t need to be rescued, Noah, and Owen, we’re losing daylight minutes.”

She opened the screen and stepped onto the porch. Lean and controlled, Noah dropped his ice-blue gaze all the way to her bare feet and then dragged it back up her faded jeans and Doctor Who T-shirt, to her makeup-free face and pulled-back hair.

“Emma.”

She trembled as if he’d touched her, but he showed no sign that she’d ever mattered more than any homeowner who’d hired his brother.

Then he tugged at his tie, a sure sign of tension, and she released a breath. She didn’t want to be the only one pretending indifference. But the past was over. Time had swallowed it up, and she should be grateful she never had to worry about mattering to Noah again.

“Why don’t you come inside?” she asked. “Owen’s busy out here. We don’t need to disturb him.”

“Don’t bother, Emma,” Owen said. “I’m the reason he came. He’d like to breathalyze me. You don’t even figure in his plans.”

A gust of cool wind rustled through the changing leaves and brushed the mortified heat from her skin. She’d given Owen this job even though her father had suggested his drinking might turn her renovations into a disaster. When she’d left town, Owen had been a guy who liked to party. Now, he was as blunt as a hammer, with an alcohol problem that cloaked him in censure.

“One thing I don’t have to do anymore,” Emma said to both brothers, “is listen to anyone in your family argue. This is Owen’s place of business, and I can’t afford more labor hours while you two sort out your problems with each other.”

Noah nodded. “Right.” He turned to his brother. “I’ve given up being the family do-gooder. This was a onetime deal. Just drop by the inn and let Mom see you’re sober.”

His suggestion apparently lit a fuse. Owen’s work boots scraped through grit and sawdust on the porch planks as he came at his brother. Emma stepped between them.

“What do you think you’re doing, Owen?”

“I don’t need—”

“You need to calm down.” She turned her back on him, ignoring the rage shimmering around him.

Noah looked at her, his full mouth stretched thin and bracketed by deep lines.

Soon after she’d left, she realized she’d been one more needy burden to a guy who’d carried his family on his back all his life. But now he looked even more disillusioned than he had the night she’d walked away. Four years hadn’t made him any happier.

“Come inside, Noah, and I’ll give you coffee.” Talking might ease the awkwardness between them. She was tired of ducking down alleys and around corners to avoid him.

Noah nodded. He paused to put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. His fingers were splayed, long and sure.

And kind.

Emma stared at the veins beneath his skin, the ridges of flesh on his knuckles. He could say he wasn’t in the business of protecting his family anymore, but he was lying to himself.

Noah loosened his tie as he crossed the threshold. “What do we need to talk about?”

She glanced back at Owen, who was gulping coffee from his thermos lid. His eyes bore dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in the five days he’d worked for her, and his hands shook as if he’d electrocuted himself with one of his own power tools. If he was drinking the hair of some dog, she might drag him up to the roof and throw him off herself. As Owen poured another cup, she shut the door and willed herself into a state of detachment.

“We need to get some things straight,” she replied.

He was lean, but he made the foyer seem small, despite its being as large as most of the apartments she’d rented in her wanderings across Europe and Asia. He dissected her with his gaze as if she were another problem he needed to solve.

She tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. Even with the windows open and a late-October breeze whipping fresh air into the house, Emma felt uncomfortably warm, too aware of the man. She turned down the hall, hiding her face from his intense gaze. Noah could read people in seconds and decide what came next.

Hence his skill at protecting his mother and siblings from their father.

After reaching the kitchen behind her, he walked around the island and took a couple of mugs from the long cabinet over the coffee maker. Just like the old days, when they’d visited her grandmother, who’d occasionally advised, but never judged or doubted that the guy from an abusive family belonged with the daughter of the town’s most scandalous woman.

“How long are you staying?” Noah asked.

“Gossip travels these hollows as fast as the breeze. I’m surprised no one’s told you I’m only here until Thanksgiving. The house should be finished by then.”

He poured the coffee for both of them and pushed one mug toward her. He turned back to the cabinet and took down sugar, then grabbed half-and-half from the fridge.

“So we don’t need to discuss anything. You’re just a visitor here. I’m never leaving Bliss. Case closed.”

“I don’t know if you think of me like most people here.”

He laughed, startling her. “Of course not. I was there, I saw everything, remember? Anyway, the very next day, I drove my father in his car to his brother’s in Kentucky, and then I took the bus back. He’s not welcome here.”

“I might have pushed him if he’d hurt my mother or Nan.” Or Noah. A piece of information she left in the past. “I’m not staying long, but I’ve dreaded seeing you.”

“No need.” Noah pulled at his tie once more. She must have imagined the tension she’d thought she’d seen in the movement. He seemed totally relaxed as he added cream to his coffee.

“We don’t owe each other explanations,” he said. “You left, and I stayed. That’s all we need to know.”

Then why did she feel as if she were testing an injury every time she saw him?

“I do wonder why you hired my brother,” Noah said.

“What?” If she meant nothing to him, why did he care? “Was I supposed to ask you before I hired him?”

“Answer me.”

She tried to see it through his eyes. “You think I might be using Owen to get at you?”

“Your father must have told you about Owen’s drinking. You came back for your dad’s wedding and Nan’s funeral. You must have heard about my brother.”

She rubbed the back of her neck as she remembered avoiding Noah at Nan’s service. She’d wanted to thank him for coming, but she hadn’t trusted herself. Her mother’s constant hunger for the next man had made her afraid Noah was her drug. There hadn’t been anyone as serious as him since she’d left.

“It’s an old habit,” he said, “trying to get my attention.”

Because he’d rarely focused it on her. “So you think I realized, after four years, I couldn’t possibly live without you, and then chose the one contractor who’d drag you to my home.”

“I just need to make sure you know that won’t work.” He looked straight at her, the kindness he’d shown Owen just as evident for her.

“Noah, I broke up with you, and I didn’t come back dying to worship at your arrogant feet.” Only, he wasn’t being arrogant. He was trying to let her down easy, just in case she needed letting down. The three years of their relationship had been an exercise in frustration she wouldn’t repeat for any reason. “I hired Owen to repair the termite damage to my house because his estimate was the one I could afford, and he has good references.”

Noah straightened the tie that seemed to be giving him so much trouble and drank from his coffee cup. “And we’re not getting involved again.”

“I only give my time now to people who deserve me,” she said. It would be true if any other man had mattered to her as much as Noah.

She had acquaintances, colleagues, clients in her website design business. No one who made her want to love again.

Noah took his mug to the porcelain sink she’d bleached to glowing perfection only that morning. “I should get out of here,” he said. “Why are you spring cleaning? Are you planning to sell?”