Courtship of the Cake (30 page)

LOVE IN SPADES

Time spent at the inn, with all its unspoken secrets, began to close in on me, so for a change of scenery, I decided a nice long run off-property after breakfast was in order. Lost in my own thoughts, I managed to make it all the way over to Bridge Street before realizing where I was.

I ran into just about my favorite person in New Hope: Mick's aunt. She was sitting on a bench down the road from the bakery.

“Look at you, off for a jog. Meanwhile, I'm
shvitzing
like a hooker in church!” Sindy fanned her face.

“Lunch break?” I smiled, stretching out my hamstring.

“No, I went to deliver Mick's meringues to Mr. Woolhouse. Poor thing is in the hospital; they think it's pneumonia.” Sindy shook her head sadly.

Nash had chalked up the second-oldest citizen's ailments and begging off on the key ceremony as hypochondria and stage fright . . . but even he had been out to visit the man regularly in the week since.

“Tell me, dear. How are things out at the Half Acre?”

I tilted my head and regarded her. “Let me put it this way: Quinn still wants me to use the front door.”

Sindy nodded wisely. “That girl is one for keeping up appearances.” She sighed. “Damn shame, everything.”

“Can you tell me what ‘everything' is, because people”—
including your nephew
, I wanted to add, but didn't—“are pretty close-lipped up there.”

“Oh, me?” Sindy whipped out a hanky and dabbed at her face with it. “I can't get through the whole thing without crying. Come. The town library is a much better resource.”

She marched us down the street, into the cool, hushed building, and right over to the microfilm machine.

“Can I help you find something?” a librarian asked. Sindy waved him away and pulled a box from a long file drawer. She slid out the reel, popped it on the machine, and sent it rolling in a blur of days and months.

“Ah, here it is.”

It was hard to believe such a story; so many secrets and such pain were encapsulated in one microscopic square of film that would survive five hundred years, if stored properly.

HISTORIC INN BURNS, ONE DEAD, ANOTHER MISSING read the main headline. Below it, in smaller font:
GROUNDSKEEPER
AND SON QUESTIONED
.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. The headlines were so primetime surreal, the kind of train wrecks you just couldn't turn away from when you saw them on the news, or on the front page. But when connected to lives of people who you knew . . . Sindy's running commentary in her stage whisper kept it in perspective.

“Quinn was off at college, Bear was out on the road with one of his bands. Tina . . . their mom . . . she was supposed to be visiting her sister in Maryland. But she wasn't feeling well and had turned back for home. Nothing a little chicken soup and good night's sleep wouldn't fix. She'd gone to bed in one of the rooms in the new wing.” Sindy shook her head
slowly. “Bill hadn't known . . . he'd just assumed the place was empty and it was the perfect time. Nash's father said he heard screaming.”

“But . . . but their mom . . . ?”

“Yes. Deaf people have vocal cords, too. They can make sounds perfectly or awfully. They're human beings, nothing more or less.”

CO-WORKERS, FRIENDS PAINT A DARK, TROUBLED PATH FOR NEW HOPE PROPRIETOR.

“Bear and Quinn's father did it . . . for the insurance?” I asked, a queer, tight feeling rising in my chest. I felt rage toward the man who supposedly made delicious bananas Foster French toast. How dare he do this to his family?

“The stock market had crashed, and the tourist industry took a hit after 9/11. I guess the poor guy saw loss coming from all directions. Figured insurance from a total loss was the only way. But I don't think he ever meant to harm anyone. Sure, they had issues. What family doesn't?” Her voice dropped even lower. “At first, everyone was quick to blame the Nash boys. Oh, your sweetie was a wild and troubled one, hon. And his dad, Scott ‘Nutso' Nash, crazy in the head since Desert Storm. Sole witness, and what with his lighter found on the property.”

I remembered everyone's reaction when Nash pulled his dad's lighter out at Logan's birthday party, and my heart just about broke all over again.

“Especially since Bill was MIA. Four days it took, for his body to turn up downriver. Fishermen saw it caught in a tangle of branches. Stones in his pockets. Then Scotty Nash was free to go.”

I flicked the switch and the microfilm screen faded to black. I didn't need to see any more. “Go where?” I asked quietly.

“Well, now. Isn't that the million-dollar question?” Sindy said. “He's at Belmont.”

With a father in the psychology profession, I had a passing knowledge on mental institutions within the tri-state area. No wonder Nash didn't feel he had a home to come back to.

“Stuart—your Nash—he headed west soon after. He needed a good, clean slate, that boy. I had no doubt he would go far. It was Bear I worried about. He was in a real bad way. Pretty much catatonic, until he adjusted to his happy pills. I don't know how he and Quinn could stand it, going back to that house so soon. The two of them, rambling around in the quiet. I think they both stopped talking altogether, actually. Just signed. It was what they always did with their mother, bless her, and maybe it brought them some peace? I just don't know. But Logan was born into that silence. That boy was a shining light and a godsend to Quinn. But ain't that a kick in the rear? Testing his hearing was an afterthought.”

I sat, absorbing all that information. Sindy pulled out a lipstick and compact and made the rounds, puckering up her lips before turning to me.

“Honey, have you and Nash gone over to the Orphans' Court to apply for your marriage license yet?”

“Oh, uh . . . no. I was going to research where to go.”
Orphans' Court?
That sounded like the last place you'd need to check off on your wedding to-do list. “Why Orphans?”

“Oh, that's just how things are done here in this county, dating back to the 1600s. From births and adoptions to wills and deaths! Marriage is somewhere in there, if you're lucky.” She winked at me.

“Sindy, can I ask . . . ?”

“Yes, honey.” The way she answered so firmly spread warmth through me, like I could ask her just about anything. And something in her eyes gave me the feeling she knew the topic was her nephew.

“Was Mick . . . an orphan? He mentioned his mom once, and never knowing his dad, but—”

Sindy pushed the rewind button on the microfilm machine, and the reel began its trek backward. We watched it go. Slow at first, but then it picked up speed. Sort of like the older woman's answer.

“Sofia was my sister's youngest. And she was just a baby herself when she had Mick. Fifteen. She was a good kid, a little on the wild side. Just so young, and scared out of her wits. Lots of religion in our
family upbringing, so that baby was being born, so help us God. Not sure who the father was. A boyfriend?” Sindy gave a shake of her bangle bracelets to show her doubt. “Maybe. Sofia wouldn't give up the farm. Took that knowledge with her. And she wouldn't give up little Mick for adoption when she laid eyes on him, no way no how. Especially since he was born smack-dab on her birthday!”

The film slowed as it reached the end, and flapped off the spindle with a loud clack. The librarian gave us his best death stare, but Sindy just eyeballed him right back. “Don't blame me,” she said to everyone around us. “Blame the technology.” She stuffed June 1, 2002–December 31, 2002 back into its little gray box.

“Anyhoo,” Sindy continued, as she gathered her purse and bags and signaled toward the exit door. “She tried her best. Really, she did. And I always looked after them both. Walt and me, we never had kids of our own. And my sister, she had enough kids, and enough problems. When Sofia left, my sister couldn't go through raising a kid again. So Mick came to us.”

I pulled down my sunglasses, perched on the crown of my head, to combat the noonday sun's glare, and to hide my tears. My heart ached for the boy who had become the man I was getting to know. “How old?” I asked, my voice barely a croak.

“He was five. Almost six.” Sindy kept her chin up and squinted down the sun like she was up for a challenge. “Sofia was turning twenty-one. It didn't take a crystal ball to see what the future held, had she stayed here. Money and men were waiting in the bars. We didn't discourage her from leaving. But it caused a rift between my sister and me that was never mended. The two sides of the family were never close again. It's just me and Walt and Mick.”

“And Sofia? Do you ever hear from her?”
Or does Mick?
I wanted to add, but couldn't bring myself to.

“No.” Sindy marched across the street, and I had to scurry to keep
up. “What's done is done,” she said quietly, finally donning a pair of cat's-eye sunglasses. “No regrets. We support those we love. When it came time for Mick to go to school and to train, off he went.”

But Mick had come back. Did he feel bound by that duty, perhaps to make up for the sins of his mother? Maybe that was the reason behind his anger toward Nash as well. Nash, like Sofia, had left their little town and never looked back.

I thought about Nash comparing love to a soldier. Wounded at war.
Even if it comes back, it's never the same.

“Now those Bradley kids.” She clicked her tongue. “It was love they needed after that tragedy, not money. And luckily, I got that in spades.” She twirled, skirts ballooning and pocketbook swinging out, and grinned like a starlet in those vintage glasses. Only Sindy could pull off pale yellow Bakelite without looking kitsch in the twenty-first century. “And I think you have that charm, too, honey.” She tweaked my cheek with a white-gloved hand. “Lots of love in you.”

“Thanks, Sindy. It was a nice afternoon.” And I meant it, too. Even after all the heartbreak that had been revealed today. “You heading back to the Night Kitchen?”

“You go on. I believe I'll do some antiquing therapy across the bridge.” She hustled across River Road while the light was in her favor, then turned and blew me a kiss before journeying on.

Yes. Even after all the heartbreak, Sindy was a strong testament to the staying power of love.

•   •   •

Mick was bent over a beautiful wooden boat replica sculpted in cake, his steady hands in food-service gloves carefully affixing a set of zebras crafted from fondant. A mixture of surprise and pleasure crossed his expression as I walked in. “Hey!” His brow, however, wrinkled in alarm. “Did I forget we had another consult?”

“No.” I suddenly felt shy. “Just wanted to come say hi. Is that Noah's ark?” Mick had already added a menagerie of fondant animals, two by two, up the chocolate gangplank. “That is magnificent.”

“Thanks,” Mick said, leaning this way and that to inspect his handiwork. “It's for a little boy named Noah, would you believe? His sixth birthday.”

“Lucky kid. That's a pretty extravagant cake.”

“Yeah,” Mick said absently, tilting his head and using a toothpick to run a realistic-looking groove through the “wood” made of modeling chocolate. “It's all about the parents these days, usually. And what they want.”

I couldn't help but think of the conversation I had just had with his aunt. Of Mick's mom leaving when he was that age, and of them sharing a birthday. Was it painful, to create such beautiful reminders of your own painful memories?

“I just ran into Sindy outside,” I said softly. “A while ago, actually. We went to the library.”

Mick twirled the toothpick between his fingers and didn't meet my eyes. “Quite a history there on the Half Acre, huh?”

“I'm still processing it.”

“Nash should've told you before you got here, just what you were up against.”

I nodded; in many ways, that was true. He had come to set some things to rights, and had wanted my help. But I couldn't really help with so many secrets and unanswered questions. Sort of like massage; if you didn't tell me what hurt, I had a hard time figuring out how to fix it.

“Family histories are complicated,” I agreed.

I thought about Jax and Dex. They had been living under the shadow of a deathbed confession for fifteen years, made by their grandfather. A religious man, the family patriarch had felt the need to absolve himself of any sin, by confessing a secret he'd promised his
wife he would never reveal: she had been pregnant with another man's child, and he had raised that son as his own. And now that son's children, twin boys, were the only ones left to carry on the Davenport name . . . except they weren't really Davenports by blood. The news had split the family at the funeral that day, pitting relative against relative, as the elder Davenport knew it would. He had borne no ill will against his wife for her past transgression, but he wanted to make sure her soul was clear so she could join him in heaven. He changed his will and tied up the fate of the boys' inheritance until the day she passed, and her own will would decide the outcome. Jax, of course, loved unconditionally. But Dex had turned resentful and distrustful of women. My mother likened the cruel family dynamics to Harlow's monkey experiment. Jax tended to cling to women, longing for contact comfort, whereas Dex? He was more like the severely disturbed monkey kept in the isolation chamber too long.