Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (33 page)

The first time he’d brought her here, on a Valentine’s Day warm with false spring, they’d just been beginning their first bloom. She’d been overwhelmed by that sea of young growth. Now, she was on an ocean of purple and yellow. It was almost a metaphor for their love—so new that first time, and so unformed. But now, so rich and vibrant.

Nolan had brought her here the first time because of the flowers, and he’d given her the bracelet she now always wore. He’d already given her a ring, and his ink. Did he mean to give her something more? She turned and smiled up at him, about to ask.

But the roar of another Harley broke the quiet of the moment. Len himself rode up and parked his monster of a bike next to Nolan’s classic.

Nolan seemed neither surprised nor irritated that their potentially romantic moment had been interrupted. Instead, he let go of her hand and went to his brother. Iris watched and waited.

The men talked for a minute or two, and then they embraced and came to her.

“Hi, Uncle Len.”

He squeezed her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Hey, doll.”

Both men looked like they’d just pulled one over on someone. Her, apparently. They grinned like dorks.

“What’s going on, you guys?”

Nolan took her hands in his before he answered. “So, this place has been abandoned for years. There’s a long, weird paper trail, but at the end of it is this: it’s owned by some kind of group that doesn’t know what to do with it. Only a couple of acres are worth farming, and it’s too expensive to develop, or something. Anyway, it’s just sitting here.”

“Yeah…okay…”

Now Len piped up his grinning mouth. His smile was so broad that the swell of his cheek had moved his eye patch a little. “I took a bid to ‘em. They accepted.”

Iris frowned, still not getting it. Why was Nolan so excited about land Len was buying?

Nolan shook her hands like he was trying to get her to catch up. “Babe, this is for us. Len will front us for the property.”

“What?” She turned to Len. “Uncle Len, what?”

“Yeah, doll. I love this place. It hurts me to see it sitting here untended, and I worry that someday somebody will figure out how to make money off it and fuck up what it is. I can’t think of anybody better to have it. Little Iris making her home on a bed of irises. Come on, doll. That’s practically poetic.” That grin spread even more, like he was telling himself an inside joke.

“Nolan?”

Her man pulled her close. “Nothing’s signed. If you don’t want it, then we won’t do it. But this feels like our place to me.”

She turned and looked at the decaying grey boards that used to be a house. One window still had intact glass, and the rotting remnants of a lace curtain clung to life above it. “There’s no house.”

“There is one, over that rise there, but it’s been empty a long time. It needs to come down. What I’ve got saved, and your take from that treasure hunt you had in the spring, we could build a little house with that. That’s why I asked Len for help to buy the land.”

“You did?” She turned again to her uncle. “But can you afford that?” The Horde did okay, but none of them was rich.

“Baby doll, my old lady’s a doctor. We’re doin’ fine, and we got no kids of our own to look out for. I want to help, and I know you’ll pay me back.”

She hadn’t seen the whole property, only this clearing. She surveyed the area—the sea of flowers, the thick copse of trees, the flattened grass where deer had spent their night. That pile of old house being reclaimed by vivid purple and yellow irises, making something that might have been dead and bleak brilliant and alive instead.

What she felt most strongly was hope. This was where her future was. Their future.

She caught Nolan’s hand and slid her fingers between his. “We should sign some papers.”

EPILOGUE

Two Years Later

Nolan turned slowly onto the graded gravel of their private road. When he completed the turn, he braked and lifted an anxious glance to the rearview mirror.

“She okay?”

Iris met his eyes in the mirror and made sure he could see her rolling hers. “Honey, she’s belted into her car seat, which is belted to the seat back here. Yes, she made it through your five-mile-an-hour turn without injury.”

“She’s so fucking quiet. She’s breathing?”

“She’s breathing. She’s awake and making those little puckers with her lips, so soon enough she’ll be yelling. She’s getting hungry.” His wife smiled at his reflection. “And you’re gonna have to start watching your language.”

“Sorry. Loki cried a lot more than she does, though. You’re sure this is normal?”

“I don’t know about this stuff any more than you do. But everybody at the hospital said she’s perfect. She’s perfect, Nolan. But are we going to live here, at the beginning of our road? Why’d we build a house at the end, then?”

He laughed and let up the brake. But he wasn’t going to fly down the road. They’d take it nice and easy.

Their gate was open, so he didn’t have to stop and open it. He’d closed it when he’d left, but people had been coming and going since he’d taken Iris to the hospital two days earlier, so he wasn’t surprised it was open. They both knew what they could expect when they came around the bend at the end of their road: a crowd. Their family celebrated a birth, especially a firstborn, in a big way, and they brooked no protest about that.

The irises that ran riot across a huge swath of their property were in bloom, and they’d exploded into their full flower in the two days they’d been gone. Like the land itself was celebrating.

“Look at all the flowers, ladybug,” Iris cooed. Nolan smiled at the sound of her voice, so soft and loving, so maternal.

Their little girl had been born on the seventh anniversary of the day he’d met Analisa Winter. Throughout the years that he’d loved Iris and built a life and a future with her, Nolan had felt Ani’s presence in little things like that, in the way his memories of her resonated in his love for his wife and now his child. Iris had been right that he hadn’t had to lose his first love to have another. His heart was full, and yet it stretched more and held his whole world.

“I love my girls.”

She blew him a kiss in the mirror. The bracelet that had been his first gift to her caught the sunlight and gleamed on her wrist. “We love you, too, Daddy.”

He went around the bend to their house—and he’d been, of course, right. Everybody they knew was on their lawn, their bikes and trucks parked everywhere. Somebody—his mom and Shannon, most likely—had strung pink and purple streamers and balloons all around their covered porch, and over the trees. They had tables set up and loaded with food, another table mounded with presents in pink paper, and kids running around everywhere. They all stopped what they were doing—dozens,
scores
of people, a town’s worth—and watched Nolan park their new SUV.

Showdown stood in the middle, with Shannon at one side and Isaac at the other. He had little Austin in his arms, but he handed his grandson over to Shannon and came forward. Everybody seemed to know to hold back and let him go first.

Nolan’s mom held back, too, wrapped in Bart’s arms. They’d been a couple since Christmas, and she and Loki had moved in with Bart and his kids at the beginning of the summer. They’d made a new family, and nobody had been surprised. Everybody had been happy for them, growing a new love from the seed of shared loss. Nolan’s fears that she would be hurt had been unfounded. Even Ian was on board by now.

She hadn’t been able to face the thought of selling the house Havoc had bought her, so she’d rented it to Double A and Candy. Nolan was glad—he hadn’t wanted her to sell, either. It belonged in the family.

The family that now loomed like hungry animals, waiting to meet his daughter.

Iris had driven everybody crazy by making the request—no, it had been a demand, one that had been Nolan’s difficult job to enforce—that they be left alone at the hospital. She’d wanted it to be just the three of them for those first days. No one had yet seen the baby.

And—another of her demands—no one knew her name yet. Iris wanted her father to see the baby before he knew. She wasn’t sure how he’d take it.

Nolan hung back and let Showdown go around to the door of the SUV. He helped Iris ease out, and he wrapped his daughter up in a hug that nearly engulfed her. Then the baby made one of those stuttering squeaks that was about the cutest damn noise Nolan had ever heard, and Iris leaned in and freed their girl from her seat.

While he watched that scene, standing at the back of the SUV, Nolan felt a hand slide into his and turned to see his mom standing at his side.

“Hi, Mom. You want to meet her?”

“Let’s give Show a minute.”

Cradling the baby, Iris showed her daughter to her father, and Nolan came a few steps closer, bringing his mom with him.

“Daddy, meet Daisy Corinne.”

Show had been reaching for the baby. Now he dropped his hands and stared at Iris. He said nothing, but Nolan could see an epic written on his face. Every possible emotion flashed through Show’s eyes.

“Is that okay?” Iris asked.

Fuck, Nolan hoped so—they’d already done the birth certificate. This was why he’d thought the big secret was a horrible idea, but Iris had been adamant. He’d had a lot of trouble telling his pregnant old lady no. She’d exploited that weakness shamelessly.

Show didn’t answer her. But he held out his hands, and Iris set Daisy in his arms.

“Hi, little flower. Look at you, beautiful. Look at you,” he said, cradling her close, and Nolan realized Show was crying—he could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m Gramps.” He bent and kissed her little head, and Nolan saw his back shaking.

“It’s okay, Daddy?” Tears streamed down Iris’s face. That sight, more than anything else, brought a lump to Nolan’s throat.

Raising his head to his little girl, Show nodded. He managed to get ahold of himself. “It’s perfect, baby. She’s perfect. Your sister would’ve loved it.”

Nolan’s mom squeezed his hand, and he turned to her—she was crying, too. “You guys are something else, dropping all this out in public.” She was smiling, sort of, and tried to laugh through the tears.

Nolan found himself asking the same question: “It’s okay?”

“God yes!” His mom threw her arms around his waist. When she let him go, she went to Iris and Show. “Okay, Show—don’t bogart the grandbaby. She’s my first, you know.”

Show grinned and—reluctantly—handed Daisy to her grandma.

Nolan’s mom snuggled her granddaughter. “He might be Gramps, but don’t call me Granny, little miss. Nana will do.”

~oOo~

Nolan leaned against the post at the bottom of his porch steps and watched his family celebrate. Iris was inside with Daisy, rocking her to sleep after a meal. Once everybody had gotten an eyeful, and, in select cases, an armful, of the baby, they’d all gone on to entertain themselves in the way they always did at their parties. There was a rowdy game of horseshoes going on near the half-built barn. Others were sitting and standing around, bullshitting and gossiping. Saxon manned the big grill. The littlest kids were playing in a bouncy castle Double A and Candy had rented. The other kids were off somewhere, doing their thing.

Bo was sitting at the picnic table with Deck and John, showing off his rock collection.

Bo did better with younger kids and with adults than with kids his own age. The younger ones thought nothing of his quirks; the adults accepted them. The kids around his own age saw them as weird. He was going to be fifteen next month, and as Nolan stood there watching, he realized, for the first time, that Bo’s connections with kids were all temporary. He had friends until his friends grew old enough to think he was weird. Then he had to find new friends.

Even in his own family, though he was loved by everyone, he lost connections when the other kids took paths he couldn’t follow.

Fuck, what a shitty way to go through life.

“You got yourself a fine young family, brother.” Isaac came up and tapped his bottle with Nolan’s. “Good job.”

“Thanks.” He took a pull from his beer. “Everything’s different now, isn’t it?”

“What, because you’re a father? Fuck yeah. For the rest of your life, not one single second will go by you don’t think about that little girl. I mean waking or sleeping. Everything you do, you’ll think about her. And then one day—” He nodded across the yard to Gia, who was sitting with Iris’s sister, Rose. Gia had turned seventeen a few weeks back. She looked about twenty-five. “One day, she’ll tell you to mind your own business and get out of her way so she can live her life.”

“Jesus, Isaac. Today, you gotta go there? Daisy’s been home two hours.”

He grinned. “Sorry. If it’s any consolation, it’s no easier with boys.” Isaac shifted his regard to his son. “Different, but not easier.”

“How is Bo?”

Isaac finished his beer before he answered. “Bo’s okay. He’s smart, and he knows where he’s strong and where he’s not. He’s got real talent with the lathe—he’ll be better’n me someday. He’ll be able to make a living, and woodworking is solitary work. He likes it better to be alone. I guess that’s a mercy built into kids like him—he doesn’t much miss what he can’t have.”

He’d spoken as if he’d known exactly what Nolan had been thinking as he’d come up.

Not knowing what he could add to that bit of deep insight, Nolan turned the subject back. “So…will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Let Gia live her life?”

“Hell no. That’s my little girl over there. She’ll always be my little girl, and I’m always gonna be payin’ attention. Just gotta be sneakier.” He laughed, and Nolan joined in.

After another pause, Isaac said, “It’s good, naming her after Daisy.”

“Iris knew right off that’s what she wanted to call her. As soon as the ultrasound woman said we had a girl, she called her Daisy. She told me later that she’d known since she was twelve that if she ever had a little girl, she wanted to name her after her sister. But we didn’t know how Show would take it.”

“Like the honor it is, brother. Those of us who knew Daisy, who were there when Show lost her, we could’ve told you.”

A truck came around the bend, and Nolan stepped forward. “Finally! Len and Tash are here. What took them so long?”

Isaac shrugged. “Dunno. He had a Humane Society board meeting—guess it went long.”

As they started toward the parking area—the part of their yard that had become the parking area—the door behind them opened, and Iris came out, the little baby monitor clipped onto her pocket. Nolan turned and went up the steps to her.

“Hey. How’s she doin’?” He hooked his arm around her, and she did the same to him.

“Sleeping like an angel. I could’ve come out fifteen minutes ago, but I didn’t want to stop looking at her.” She nodded toward Len’s truck. “What’s going on over there?”

Len had pulled something from the covered bed of his truck—a large box, covered with a tarp or something. Looked heavy.

“Let’s go see. I’ll help you with the steps.”

“I’m not an invalid, Nolan.”

“No, but you’re sore, right? Let me help.”

She huffed at him, but she leaned on him as she eased her way down the steps.

By the time they got to Len’s truck, they already knew what was in that box. He’d set it down on the grass in front of the parked trucks, and even over the bustle of excited children, they could hear the yips of puppies. From the sound of it, a lot of puppies.