Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (26 page)

He wandered around the house for a minute, his eyes riveted for some reason on the damned box that still sat in the corner.

He stopped in front of it, staring the thing down.

All his dad wanted to give . . .

Adam nudged the side with his boot and stared at the writing as if it were going to change. He looked at the ceiling and ran a hand through his hair. Maybe Paige was right. This might be all his dad wanted to give. And that might have to be enough. Adam couldn’t keep chasing after some kind of acknowledgment he would never get for the rest of his life. That would make him truly a miserable, angry bastard.

He tried to get to a place of forgiveness, but suddenly the idea that he now had to sell the seaplane property and let down his mother’s legacy made anger lash up inside him again, slashing at a place behind his heart, making his chest constrict.

He took a few steps around the box.

He’d bury it. That’s what he’d do. He’d stab the damned thing with a kitchen knife, then drop-kick it into a ditch behind the house and bury it. He tore off his jacket and went back into the kitchen for a knife. He shuffled from one drawer to the next, flinging open one after another. Denny made crazy-eights around his legs.

He found the right knife on the side of the sink and lunged for it, then swiftly moved to the dining area, lifting the heavy box to his shoulder with a sharp exhale. He marched toward the back patio, one hand gripping the knife at his side. Denny nervously pattered at his feet.

“Go back into the house, Den,” he grumbled.

He didn’t need his damned dog to see him acting like a madman. But Denny just looked up at him, trotting along, not ready to abandon anyone.

On the patio, Adam threw the box onto the wooden planks. His fingers clenched into fists, giving him a grip on the knife handle that felt like expertise. He could already feel the knife thudding through cardboard. He could predict the spent feeling of anger it would unleash.

But he glanced again at Denny, who was looking at him with sad brown eyes, and suddenly, inexplicably, Adam stopped.

He dropped the knife. Landed on his knees. He pressed his hands into his thighs and let out a throaty sound that started as one of his favorite cusswords and then ended in some kind of anguished moan.

“You bastard. You’re not winning this one.” A pressure surprised him as it came from behind his eyebrows, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears.

His gaze landed again on the knife, and he picked it up gingerly this time. He used the flashing edge to lift the corner of the box. He was not letting his dad win anymore. He was going to accept this lame gift from his father, then stop feeling anything toward him at all. He was going to stop going after an acceptance that would never be his. Then he was going to be his own man. Dad: fifteen thousand. Adam: one.

The packing paper came out in fistfuls, which Adam tossed on the patio. Beneath the paper was a huge stack of letters, wrapped in red ribbon.
Ribbon? Good Lord.
Why would his dad tie letters in a ribbon? As he pulled the stack out, turning it over, witnessing the carefully tied bow, his hand became increasingly unsteady. His breathing shallowed. He leaned heavily into his thighs, afraid to take another item out.

This wasn’t his dad’s box.

It was his mother’s.

He took a few more breaths, glancing out at the meadow to make the tears retreat, then looked deeper inside. He missed her so much. He could suddenly remember her scent, her soft hands, her voice. His hand shook as he pushed aside more packing paper and saw his mother’s whittling tools, one of the flutes she liked to make out of birch branches. He gently moved them aside and saw a box of medals her father had earned in the war, and a framed photograph of his grandfather shaking hands with FDR in front of the little airport in 1935. The glass was cracked across their faces.

Adam had to look up again, until the tears went back. He couldn’t see a goddamned thing. He shoved the balls of his hands angrily against his eyes and then reached in until his fingers wrapped around a plastic bag. It was filled with yellowed photographs. There were about seventy, shuffled like an old deck of cards, the corners turning up. One by one, Adam drew them out, barely breathing, laying each one on the porch next to Denny, who sniffed at them.

“Son of a—” he whispered to Denny.

His eyes stilled on a shot of himself as a young boy—posing in his pajamas, beaming from the kitchen table. Another was him sitting on the porch eating popcorn, grinning from atop a brand-new bicycle. There were some of Adam and his father, his dad making him laugh, lifting him in the air. There were a couple of Noel as an infant, and several of both boys with their mother, which Adam suddenly remembered his dad taking. There were some with the old horse they used to have, Tilly, and some of Adam as a five-year-old, fishing in the pond, his dad right behind him, showing him how to hold the rod.

He put the stack down shakily. His breaths were coming short and fast, rasping through his chest. He hadn’t remembered those better times, but there they were, in Kodak, corners curling. The bad times had always come to his mind easily, shoving everything else from view, but there were good times, too, with his father. Now he remembered. He remembered the way his father had taught him to fish, even after his mother died. How he’d showed him how to throw popcorn in the air and catch it in his teeth when he was a teenager and they’d been cracking up on the back porch. How his dad had gone with him to the May carnival because he’d won an award in high school. How his dad would lift him in the air when he was a kindergartner and say, “Pretend you’re a pilot, Adam. You’re going to be a flyer. Just like your mom.” How his dad had laughed with them. How his dad had taught him to ride that bike in the photo.

He looked at another handful of pictures of him and his dad and Noel. Farther down were stacks of little cards, written out in his mother’s handwriting. His chest gave a painful tug as soon as he saw her familiar scroll, but he read on. They were recipes. For his mother’s pies. The ones she used to make at the harvest.

His dad was giving him this box, his mother’s box—willing it to him, singling it out—because he knew he’d take care of it.

Adam swiped another tear away, then tunneled to the bottom of the box, where he found twenty or thirty other items of memorabilia from his grandfather’s airport. There was an old logbook, an old leather helmet, a real set of pilot goggles. He sat back on his haunches. “Son of a—” he whispered to Denny again. He could definitely set up a museum with this.

Over the next half hour, he turned each item over in his hands, then carefully packed them back into the box, along with the key that would open the metal container at the bottom. They were bonds, probably purchased for him as a child, and his mother had kept them there. It wasn’t a fortune, but it would be enough for him and Amanda to start over.

He packed the key on top and closed the flaps on the box. Then he stood up and stared down at it, realizing he’d almost buried the damned thing.

Now he looked at the box with a new feeling.

It was the feeling of freedom.

And his first feeling of gratitude toward his father.

When Amanda came home, Adam was sitting at the dining table.

“Hi,” she said. “Look at these tortillas I made. I’m going to roast some meat tonight for soft tacos just like Rosa’s.” She smiled and headed straight past him to the kitchen to turn on the oven.

“Amanda, I need to talk to you.”

She glanced back at him with a concerned frown, then plopped down across from him.

He didn’t know how to lead into this, so he took a breath and blurted it out. “The ranch sale fell through.”

He waited for the disappointment to sprawl across her face, but instead she looked blank. He worried that he may not have been clear.

“We can’t leave,” he clarified. “Not yet. We’ll have to stay awhile. But I’ll come up with another plan. I found some lost money that was mine, and I think I can make it work for us—it’s enough to at least move us to an apartment in Alabama and get you enrolled in your art school.”

He waited for her disappointment again, but none came. She simply looked blank.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m starting to like it here.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“I like volunteering at the center, and I like some of the people here, and no one is bothering me about my mom, and . . . you . . . you seem to like me now.”

His chest had been rising with hope, but her last line sent a dagger through it. Is that all she thought he could muster for her? A begrudging “like” after all these months? He realized this was where he needed to set himself apart from his father. He shook his head. “I
love
you, Amanda.”

He reached across the table for her hand. Much to his surprise, she didn’t pull away. He let out a sigh of relief and realized how scared he’d been to do that. Had his father been similarly scared? Had his father thought his children would have rejected him? Would they have? Had they? It was entirely possible the lack of affection had gone both ways.

But he was done with this cycle now. He needed to be brave about this and let his pride go. He needed to show this girl how much she was loved.

“I know we got off to a rocky start,” he began, “but I think we just scared each other. I didn’t know you existed, and you didn’t know I did. I think we’re both the types who need time to adjust to a new reality.”

The way she slowly nodded her head reminded him a little of himself, or maybe even Noel. And definitely his mom.

“Once I adjusted to the idea of you, though, I couldn’t have been happier,” he added.

She looked up with doubt.

“I couldn’t have been happier it was
you
. And all I wanted to do then was make things up to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for the first part of your life, but I promise I’ll be there for the rest. I just want to take care of you. I want to provide for you, and raise you where you’re happy, and be the kind of dad mine was not.”

“You didn’t have a good dad?”

Adam sighed and looked at their hands. “He tried. At least I think he did. I was reminded an hour ago of how hard he might have tried. But my mom died when I was young, just like yours did. I know how hard that is. My dad never made the adjustment to her death, and never seemed to know how to take over or treat us with love. He treated us like ranch hands. I think he just didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t have a lot of love himself growing up. But I . . . I don’t want to be like that. I don’t know what I’m doing, either, Amanda, but I’ll try. I promise.”

“You’re not like that.”

He looked up.

“I can tell you’ve been trying really hard,” she said. “And you’re very fair. And you’re nice. I’m glad you’re my dad.”

Tears clogged the back of his throat. He cleared it and had to glance away.

“It’s been especially nice since Paige has been around,” she added. “You’ve been different since then.”

He was finally able to meet her eyes. “Is that right?”

“She seems to show you how to love.”

He was surprised a sixteen-year-old could be so insightful. The tears kept threatening in the back of his throat.

“Yes, Paige is very special.”

“Is she very special to
you
?”

Adam nodded.

“Maybe you should get married.”

He smiled. Her wisdom and her naïveté were still entwined. “It’s not that easy. Paige has her own life. She has things she wants to do, and following around after me isn’t one of them.”

“What about staying here?”

He blinked back at her. All his old reasons for leaving were gone now. He didn’t hate this place anymore; he could probably pay back his dad’s debts if he sold the seaplane property; the Conservancy seemed desperate that they wouldn’t have a bison wrangler anymore; and the town—Kelly, Antonio, Joseph, and the rest—would be guaranteed to keep their jobs. The only thing left, really, was Amanda herself.

“What about your art school?”

“I might be able to find some classes out here for my senior year, maybe. If not, maybe I’ll work with Rosa at her cantina after school and then apply to a culinary college next year.”

“
Culinary
college?”

“Yes. Culinary art. I was accepted to the Culinary Conservancy at the art school.”

His mind whirled back to their conversations.
Damn. Of course.

He studied her carefully as a peaceful look came over her face.

“You’d truly want to stay here?” he asked.

“Yeah. And that way, you can ask Paige to marry you.”

He laughed again. “Still not that easy. She has things she wants to do. And she has to be in love with me first.”

“Aren’t you in love with her?”

His gaze snapped back up.
Was
he in love with Paige? He knew he loved her spirit. He knew he loved her spontaneity and her silliness and her fun and her laughter and even her crazy calamities. But even with all that, she also had an iron-hard determination to make things work, even when pieces were falling around her, and he loved that, too. He loved how she loved her family. And how she’d earned Amanda’s trust—it took a special person to do that. But mostly he loved how he was when he was with her: he was a better man. Paige made him better. And he trusted her.