Leave it for the Rain: A Love She Couldn't Remember—A Woman He Couldn't Forget (Grayson Brothers Book 6) (29 page)

Adam was in his usual seat at The Crowe’s Nest talking with Leo when Radford Grayson walked in. At six-foot-five inches Radford wasn’t a man one could miss. Adam’s heart skipped a beat, and his first thought was Rebecca. Was she all right? What business did Radford have here? Was Rebecca with him? A dozen thoughts skittered through Adam’s mind as Radford surveyed the tavern—and then headed directly toward him.

Standing, Adam met Radford as he arrived. “I must admit that I’m surprised to see you, sir. I hope all is well.”

“I came to apologize for breaking my promise to you. I had to tell Rebecca about your call to the mill last week,” he said without preamble.

Adam shook Radford’s hand. “I probably shouldn’t have called, but I just... I needed to know that she was all right. I apologize and hope my call didn’t distress her overmuch.”

“She’s distressed, but not because of your call.” Radford turned and greeted Leo. “Good to see you, young man. Would you mind if I joined you two for a spell? I’ve got some business with Adam.”

“Good to see you as well, sir.” Leo stood, shook Radford’s hand, and offered his chair. “I’m off to refill my mug. I’ll be a while so make yourself comfortable,” he said, then headed toward the crowded bar.

Adam barely noted their exchange as he sat in his chair. What was Rebecca distressed about? It must be bad if it had brought Radford to Crane Landing.

“Rebecca is not with me,” Radford said. “I suspect that’s the main thing on your mind at the moment.”

“There are many things on my mind,” Adam said truthfully.

Radford gave a small nod. “I suspect there is. I’ve got a few things on my mind as well. And I have a few things to say to you.”

Adam cringed. Was this where he and Radford would cross words? He had hoped to have nothing but enjoyable conversations between them, but Radford apparently had some things to say and they were important enough to bring him to Crane Landing.

“Is Rebecca all right?” Adam asked.

“No,” Radford answered. “But I’ll get to that in a minute. I want to say straight out that I know our relationship hasn’t been the same since Rebecca’s accident. I don’t blame you for what happened to her, Adam, but when I saw my little girl broken and bleeding I lost all sense of reason. I was angry and more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Not even during the worst battles of the war did I experience that depth of fear. I literally felt ice in my veins.”

Adam nodded because he understood. “I haven’t drawn a full breath since that day,” he said. “If I could change places with Rebecca I’d do so in an instant.”

“I know you would, Adam. That’s one of the reasons I admire you and feel so bad about the unspoken rift between us. This business about you questioning whether you’re part of our family has been eating at me since you left. Adam, I don’t consider you a nephew because I’ve always thought of you as my future son-in-law. I was so stunned by your announcement about you and Rebecca ending your engagement that I didn’t have the words to say this to you at the time. When I call you
son
, Adam, I mean just that. To me, you’re my son. I apologize if my actions have put that question in your mind. But I can’t apologize for loving my children too much and that it makes me too protective at times.”

Adam nodded. “And I can’t apologize for loving your daughter too much.”

“Then perhaps you’ll consider coming home,” Radford said. “My daughter is broken. She’s lost without you.”

“Maybe she’s just lost without her memories. Maybe it has nothing to do with me.”

“I disagree. I know my daughter, Adam. She loves you and her upset is because of the rift between you two.”

Adam said nothing because he was fighting to hold back the flood of emotion swelling inside him like a tidal wave.

“Maybe this will make you think otherwise.” Radford drew a folded paper from his shirt pocket. “Rebecca asked me to give this to you.”

Adam’s hands trembled as he opened the note. A word from Rebecca, any word from her, was a gift.

My dearest Adam,

At Mrs. Redburn’s house we delivered—a baby.

I have more to share—and more to ask.

Please meet me at our willow this coming Friday at our usual time.

Yours,

Rebecca

Radford stood. “I’m heading back in the morning. Anything you want me to tell Rebecca?”

For a full minute Adam sat speechless. Did Rebecca
remember
the baby delivery or had someone told her about it? What more did she have to share? What did she need to ask?

“Adam?” Radford rapped his knuckles on the scarred wooden table top. “Any message?”

“No, sir,” he said, because his mind was spinning too fast to capture a clear thought.

Disappointment filled Radford’s eyes, but he gave Adam a nod of acceptance. “All right, son. I hope you’ll give some more thought to coming home.”

o0o

An ocean breeze rolled into the bay and across the dock where Adam sat mulling over his unexpected note from Rebecca. Thousands of stars lit the dark sky, and a breathy ocean song filled his ears. It was a night made for romance... or for a person to feel like the loneliest soul alive.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and Adam turned to see Leo approaching.

“For a smart man you can be the world’s biggest fool,” Leo said, cuffing Adam in the head as he rounded the bench to stand in front of him.

“Thanks, Leo.” Adam rubbed his head. “I came out here to clear my head, not get it knocked off my shoulders by my best friend.”

“Well, someone needs to wake you up! What are you thinking, man? You’re going to lose that girl for good.” Leo sat on the bench beside Adam. “Why are you sulking out here alone when you should be packing a bag and catching the first train home?”

“I don’t know.” Adam shook his head. “She says she’s not ready to get married, but I can’t help wondering if it’s because she’s changed and doesn’t feel the same about me anymore. I’m afraid I don’t really know her, Leo. She’s different since her accident.”

“Of course she’s different, Adam. She’s six years older than when you left for university. You’ve only been home for a few weeks at a time since then, and hardly at all this last eighteen months. I think she gets confused at times because of the accident, but I don’t think her changes can all be attributed to getting a knock on the head. How much time have you actually spent with Rebecca during the past six years?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“How much have you changed and grown during that time?” Leo asked. “How much did Rebecca really know
you
before her accident? Adam, maybe you
are
seeing the real Rebecca.”

The comment hurt. Rebecca had become a woman in his absence. He knew the girl from his past. He remembered his teen sweetheart. He learned about her life in her letters, but the woman she’d become in his absence was an intriguing mystery to him. Each visit home had been connected by points of reference to their past and their young love. The time they had spent together in Crane Landing was their first prolonged adult romance ever—and it was real. Of that he was certain.

“Leo, have you ever wanted something so badly it eats you up every single day?”

“Yeah, Adam. I want to find my brothers.”

Adam groaned at his stupidity and insensitivity. Leo and his brothers had all been shipped out to orphanages and were young boys the last time they had seen each other. Only Benny had remained with Leo. Adam had spent the last ten years helping Leo look for his lost siblings, and they still hadn’t located them. “I’m so sorry, Leo. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re
not
thinking, Adam. How could you have let Radford leave without a return message for Rebecca? She was
asking
you to come home!”

“For what purpose?” Adam asked, exasperated. “She told me only weeks ago she’s not ready to marry me. What else could she want?”

“I don’t know, Adam, and unless you go home you won’t know either.”

Jaw clamped, Adam stared across the dark water. “I can’t go back, Leo. I can’t cause Rebecca any more heartache. I’ve put her through too much already.”

“You know, Adam, Rebecca isn’t the only one who has been changed because of her accident. It’s changed you, too. I’ve wanted to talk with you, but you were too wounded.” Leo hooked his hand over Adam’s shoulder. “Miss Tansy wrote to me about the accident and asked me to watch over you. I know what happened, Adam, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was,” Adam said, his eyes still focused on the dark body of water. “She was there because of me. She wasn’t paying attention because she was looking at me.”

“Regardless why she was there, it was her responsibility to keep herself safe. As for whether she still cares for you, all you have to do is look in her eyes. From the first time I met her I knew she was your girl. Not because you warned me to stay away from her, but because of the way she looked at you. She loved you. I saw it in her eyes then and I see it in her eyes now. Wake up, Adam, before it’s too late.”

They fell silent. Adam’s mind was too full to think clearly about anything. “We’ve been through a lot together, Leo. I sure hope this is the worst of it.”

“Me, too,” Leo said, “but nothing stays the same, Adam. If I ever find my brothers I know they won’t be the kids they were when we were split up and dumped at the orphanages. I
pray
they all survived to manhood and are happy, prosperous men. I’m eager to get to know them, to hear their ideas and dreams and meet their families. I hope they remember our past when we were all together, but it’s all right if they don’t. Living in the past offers us nothing. It’s where they are now and what’s in their future, in our future as a family, that I’m interested in.” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and sighed. “You can’t keep clinging to the past, Adam. It’s gone. All you’ve got is the present and a dream for your future.”

Adam nodded at the painful truth. “What if you don’t find your brothers?” he asked.

Leo lifted his head, his profile strong against the backdrop of night. “I’ll find them,” he said with certainty. “It might take the rest of my life, but I
will
find them. You don’t quit on your dreams, Adam.”

Rain fell in thick sheets that drenched Rebecca’s riding habit within a minute of leaving the livery, but she would not turn back. Her heart thundered and her thoughts flashed like lightning bolts through her mind. Would Adam be there? Why hadn’t he given her father a message? Did he still love her? Or had she hurt him too deeply and completely broken his heart?

On and on her thoughts struck with searing pain as she rode toward the willow tree.

Despite the downpour the rocky creek bed was low as Star picked her way along its loamy shore. The rain was as necessary as the summer sunshine that was scorching the grass. Rebecca needed Adam like the willow and the creek needed the rain. If he didn’t come home... if he wouldn’t meet her... She shook her head unable to bear the pain of that outcome.

“Adam, please be there,” she whispered.

But he wasn’t there when she arrived at the willow.

“Adam?” she called, hoping he was just hidden inside the umbrella of drooping, dripping branches.

Not a word or a wave hello or the sight of his handsome face welcomed her.

“Oh, Adam...” Her whispered heartbreak seemed to speak to her mare.

Star walked to the tree, pushed through the long dangling branches and stopped inside as she’d apparently done many times before. Rain poured down through the tree, splattering across the sodden ground.

Unmindful of the deluge, Rebecca leaned forward and draped herself over her mare’s neck. “You remember, don’t you, my beauty? You’re telling me we’ve been here before.” Pressing her face to the horses’ wet coat, Rebecca choked back a hard sob. “He’s not coming home...”

Star shifted her hooved feet, sinking in the saturated earth beneath the tree. She shuddered her shoulders, blowing out a gruff whinny as if to tell Rebecca to get off and stand on her own two feet.

Swallowing hard, Rebecca gathered her sodden skirt and dismounted. Her boots sank deep into the fecund earth. For a few minutes she stood in the rainfall uncaring about her clothes. She removed her hat and raised her face to the rain. “Dear God, please wash away this pain. I can’t bear it...”

She didn’t know how long she stood there thinking about Adam and all she’d lost or when exactly the urge came over her to search for whatever it was she felt she’d lost beneath the tree, but she found herself pacing off six steps from the trunk of the willow. There, she sank to her knees unmindful of the mud and runnels of water pooling around her skirt. She took up the closest sizable stone and began scraping the soggy earth, turning up decayed leaves and small sticks and pebbles. Something important was here. She didn’t know it—she felt it. And so she dug until she had scraped an area several inches wide.

Rain splattered across her head and shoulders, tumbling her hair down her back in a sodden mess. Soaked to the skin, she methodically dragged her fingers through the earth letting the rain wash over her as she dug up leaves and twigs and pebbled earth.

She knew the instant her fingers rolled over the stone what she’d been looking for.

The stone in her skirt pocket was a
worry
stone. Adam’s stone was in her muddy hand. He’d left it here along with his heartache for the rain to wash clean.

These scraps of memory tortured her as if her mind were a prisoner being fed just enough to keep her alive. A sob burst from her throat and she wept hard and deep. She wanted to remember everything about their stones and the memories they had surely made beneath this tree.

o0o

The rain had delayed his trip to Fredonia, but Adam went to the willow tree anyway. Rebecca wouldn’t be out in the deluge, of course. He knew that. But
he
needed to go there.

He needed to get his legs beneath him. They felt weak and shaky as if they feared the uncertainty of their direction. Should he go see her? Should he turn around and walk away before Rebecca tore out another piece of his heart? His indecision was playing havoc with his body as much as his head.

Rain pounded his shoulders and splattered noisily against the rocks around him. Thick runnels of water streamed across the rocky shore and drained into the creek. Head down to shield his face from the stinging rain drops, he barely looked where he was going. He’d walked the creek so many times he could do it by rote. When he approached the flat rock by the bend in the creek he knew that he’d reached the willow tree. Parting the wet branches, he stepped inside and removed his hat to dump the water off.

Rebecca’s beautiful black mare stood across from him, her coat and saddle wet, her mane sparkling with raindrops.

Beside Star, kneeling on the sodden ground was Rebecca. Rain—and tears?—streamed down her face as she looked up at him. Her hands were covered in mud and she was drenched.

“I remembered our worry stones,” she said. “I remember the baby we delivered and that my mother didn’t give birth to me. During our trip to Crane Landing I was daydreaming as you and Daddy said, but I was actually remembering the trip I took to Buffalo with Grandma when I was nine.
She
was the lady with red hair that I talked with. I recalled a story my grandfather told me and why we buried our stones here. But there’s one thing I simply must ask you, Adam. I hope for our sake that it’s true, but for your sake it isn’t.”

Finding her here... soaked, digging in the earth and talking in riddles he couldn’t understand, scared him nearly as much as the fall that had stolen her memories. “Rebecca, darling, what’s wrong? You can ask me anything. You know that.”

Her dark tear-filled eyes locked with his. “Was your mother a prostitute?”

Her question hit him like a fist in the stomach, punching his breath out on a gasp. “Is this why you have reservations about marrying me?” he asked. He understood why, but it tore him apart.

“Please, Adam. Forgive me, but I must know.”

“Yes,” was all he said because he couldn’t squeeze another word past the lump in his throat.

A small sob burst from her mouth and she rocked on her knees. “It seems our mothers made the same poor choices.”

“The same choices?”

She nodded, tears slipping from her eyes. “Different circumstances, but the same outcome only my mother has a wealthier sponsor. Oh, Adam, I’m so sorry to ask this of you, but knowing that these thoughts are actual memories and not the result of an unstable mind, is such a...” Her voice broke and she struggled to finish. She opened her clenched fist and showed him the stone he’d buried on a few weeks ago. “These thoughts... these
memories
are all I might ever get back, but they are real memories and not the thoughts of a madwoman. Adam, if this is enough for you, I’d like to... I want...” She bit her lip as tears flowed from her eyes. As he stood in stunned surprise, a hard sob burst from her and she wept as she gazed up at him. “I miss you so deeply, Adam...”

He fell to his knees and pulled her into his arms. “Rebecca... my darling... .my beautiful wonderful lifelong sweetheart, what is happening?” he asked, rocking her in his arms.

“I don’t remember our love, Adam. I
feel
it.” She leaned back and met his eyes, her own dark and filled with pain. “I
feel
it.” She pressed her muddy fist to her chest. “I
know
our love, Adam—in my heart. Everything is in my heart and it’s tearing me apart.”

Another sob broke her confession.

He held her as the rain poured over the tree and splattered down upon them. It plastered their clothing to their bodies and their hair to their heads. And there was nowhere else he could have wanted to be in that moment. He could barely believe that Rebecca was in his arms sharing her memories and acknowledging their love.

She loved him.

Her feelings were honest and true and from the
woman
she’d become through the years and heartaches and hardships of her life. She hadn’t fallen in love because of her memories of him or their teen love. They were moving forward instead of backward. Adam had been going back for so long; back to Fredonia... back to Rebecca... back to the dream of a young boy that he’d never considered another direction. Rebecca had no choice but to move forward from where she was right now. She was doing her best to “grow where she was planted.” And he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t heard Rebecca. He hadn’t allowed a single other possibility into his mind for fear of losing everything that had kept him going during his years away. Ironically, his desperate need to cling to his past had nearly ruined his future and he’d almost lost the only thing that had ever mattered to him—Rebecca.

Rain streamed over her head and off the ends of her hair. “To know you were willing to sacrifice everything you’d dreamed of rather than force me into something I wasn’t ready for is...”—she pressed her hand to her chest—“it takes my breath away,” she whispered. “You’re such a noble and selfless man and I’m deeply honored by your love.”

Shaken to his core, Adam cupped her wet face in his palms. “I’m sorry I pushed you. It’s just... I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. If you need more time, Rebecca, I’ll wait for you. Whatever you need, I’ll respect your wishes.”

"I don’t need time, Adam. I just had to know I wasn’t losing my mind. The only thing I need is
you
.”

They both moved into the kiss, falling to the wet ground as their longing and deep need for each other consumed them. Adam finally held the girl he’d been missing and the woman he’d fallen in love with.

Rebecca clung to the man she adored and the sweet boy she had recognized in his letters.

There in the sacred space beneath their willow they found each other again. Rain poured over them, washing away the pain they had carried for so long. The storm in their life was passing, and in its wake came sunshine. The broken limbs would heal and life would flourish again.

o0o

One week later, holding her father’s sturdy loving arm, Rebecca stood beside him on their porch where she and Adam had shared so many childhood secrets and spent years flirting and falling in love and dreaming of their future.

She didn’t remember it all, yet, and it no longer mattered.

Adam’s longtime friend, Leo, stood as his best man and in some unspoken way represented their past.

Rebecca’s maid of honor, Mary Crane, who had traveled to Fredonia with her family and Leo, stood beneath the oak tree with them awaiting a new, healthy Rebecca who was beginning to remember moments in her life—small nearly insignificant moments like sewing curtains or braiding her sisters’ hair to big events like receiving Star for her sixteenth birthday and dancing in Adam’s arms for the very first time.

“Are you ready, sprite?” her father asked, his eyes perhaps a bit misty and shining with love.

She was ready. “Yes, Daddy. I’ve been waiting a very long time for this day,” she said, not because she remembered waiting, but because she
felt
the years of longing. She
knew
the love she and Adam had shared and cherished for a decade. It filled her now and she embraced it with her whole being.

As her father walked her down the porch stairs and across the lawn to where Adam and the others waited, Rebecca glanced at her family and friends who were gathered together to witness and celebrate her day.

Dawson Crane stood at her grandmother’s side—in friendship? In love? Definitely in support and that’s all that mattered to Rebecca.

Her mother and siblings were beside them, smiles on their faces, love in their eyes. Rebecca’s heart surged with emotion. Oh, how she loved them with all the differences that made them each unique and the similarities that made them...
family
.
Her
family.

Her aunts and uncles and their children were spit shinned in their Sunday best. Close friends of the family, some Rebecca remembered meeting like Aunt Tansy, Leo’s mother who was beside herself to have her beloved Leo home again, and Aunt Aster who was married to Doc Milton, were there. A slew of other aunts and uncles were there with their children. Family friends, like Helen Fiske, whom Rebecca didn’t remember, but would happily reacquaint herself with after the ceremony, completed the gathering of over forty people.

Rebecca’s smile shone for every person there whose lives had touched hers in some way or another. She wrapped them in thoughts of love and gratitude and hoped she would someday remember how their lives intertwined. For now it was enough to know they were there because her parents and Adam loved them.

Adam...

Her heart and her eyes turned to the man waiting beneath the oak tree. To think that this tall, handsome man in his perfectly cut, three-piece black suit was waiting for
her
took her breath away. He’d waited for ten years. He’d educated himself and apprenticed and made himself into a wordly man capable of taking care of her. He’d done all of that for
her.
When she was lost in the darkness of her own mind he brought her back into the safe, comforting light of their love.

She knew this man—and she loved him.

With great joy she walked to him on her father’s arm.

o0o

Adam’s heart pounded as Pastor Ainsley asked, “Who gives this beautiful young lady to this special young man?”