Sweet Laurel Falls (22 page)

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“In return, you can do something for me.”

She instantly looked wary. “What?”

“I invited your parents and you to dinner at my house on
Sunday. I doubt either of them is inclined to accept that invitation. You can
make sure they do.”

“The rumors are true, then. You
are
a crazy old man. How am I supposed to do that when Jack hates you and you’re not
on my mom’s list of favorite people either?”

“You’re a smart girl,” he repeated as the elevator doors
opened. “Lange genes, remember? I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

She shook her head in exasperation, but to his eternal shock,
she stepped out of the elevator and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for the tea and sympathy,” she said, then slid back
inside just as the doors closed behind her.

He stood for a long time gazing at the elevator with a finger
pressed against the skin she had kissed, feeling foolish that he thought he
could still pick up the scent of her in the air, of lemons and tears.

His granddaughter needed him, damn it. And her parents did too,
for that matter. He had become very good at subterfuge this past year. Now what
could he do to help the three of them?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Y
OU
’
RE
GOING
WHERE
?
”

Maura sighed and straightened a line of books on a shelf in the
home-improvement section, aware of Mary Ella’s horror-stricken expression beside
her. “Yes. You heard me correctly. As much as I would vastly prefer taking you
up on your offer to catch a movie tonight, I have plans. We’ve been invited to
Harry’s for dinner. I tried desperately to get out of it. I mean, who wouldn’t?
But Sage pulled the poor, pitiful
I just want to get to
know my grandfather
card, and now I’m stuck.”

“I don’t care
what
card she pulled.
I would have sliced off two or three fingers if it meant I didn’t have to share
a meal with That Man.”

Despite her own internal struggle over the impending evening,
Maura had to smile at her mother’s dramatics. “But, Mom, you have so much in
common. You both love art and music and books, and now you even share a
grandchild!”

“Oh, thank you very much for that reminder.”

“Seriously, why do you hate Harry so much? You’re nice to
everyone else in town, even grouchy Frances Redmond, but you treat Harry like he
ran over your dog or something. What did he ever do to deserve this gargantuan
grudge you hold against him?”

Mary Ella leaned back against the bookshelf, pensive. “You can
thank Jack for it.”

“Jack?”

“He was one of my favorite students. Oh, I know all about how
teachers are supposed to see the good in all our students and not pick
favorites, but that is sometimes easier said than done when you’re teaching
literature and composition to moody teenagers. I’ve taught hundreds of young
people. Maybe into the thousands. But something about Jack just…touched me. He
was so wounded and he tried desperately not to show it. I knew what his
childhood must have been like, growing up with an…unstable mother like Bethany
Lange.”

“She was more than unstable, Mom. She suffered from
schizophrenia.”

“Yes. You should have known her before her mental illness
started to manifest itself. She was just one of those beautiful spirits, you
know? Everyone loved her.”

She seemed wistful here, and Maura let the silence continue
until her curiosity swelled. “Your feud with Harry?” she finally prompted.

“Oh. Right. Well, I had Jack in my English class that terrible
spring when Bethany committed suicide. I tried to go easy on him with
assignments, but he insisted on filling every one. My heart was just breaking
for him. Do you know, he only missed one day of class, to go to her
funeral.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Something soft and tender fluttered in
her chest as she pictured him lost and grieving for his mother but determined to
focus on his goals.

“In one of our last assignments, I allowed the students to
write an essay about anything they chose. Jack wrote this really heartbreaking
piece about watching a beautiful bird trapped in a thicket of thorns, trying
desperately to free itself, beating its wings bloody in the effort. He had tried
to help but the bird had pecked and pecked at him and refused to let him
close—obviously a metaphor for his relationship with his mother. He seemed so
troubled that I decided—foolishly now, I can see that—to show it to Harry. I
thought maybe he would, I don’t know, make sure Jack received grief counseling
or something to assure him Bethany’s suicide wasn’t his fault.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t respond well.”

Mary Ella scoffed. “He laughed. Can you believe that? The essay
fairly
dripped
with his son’s pain and sadness, and
that bastard laughed. He said it was a good thing Jack didn’t fancy himself a
writer and had an architecture scholarship instead, because it was a bunch of
sentimental garbage. The bird was weak and would never have survived anyway,
even if Jack could have figured out a way to help it.”

And Maura had to sit across the dinner table from the man. She
fought anger and revulsion. “And you’ve hated him ever since.”

“Jack was a kindhearted boy. He took after Bethany in that
respect. It broke my heart, the way Harry treated him. Everyone in town knew
that, to build his ski resort, he shamefully used her mental illness to break
the land trust she had set up for Jack.”

“Why didn’t anyone do anything about it?”

“Without Jack here to fight for himself, what could we do? He
walked away from the whole situation, and nobody else had any legal standing to
reinstate the trust. And if you want the truth, most everyone took the cowardly
way and let Harry and William Beaumont do what they wanted. Hope’s Crossing was
dying, our young people leaving, and people were eager for any way to keep that
from happening. Like it or not, Harry offered salvation of a sort.”

At what cost, though? Good or bad, Hope’s Crossing had been
forever changed by the ski resort and the resulting growth and development.

Before she could answer her mother, Mary Ella’s expression
sharpened on someone who had just entered the store at Maura’s back.

Maura turned at the sudden puzzlement in her gaze, and tension
suddenly coiled inside her. Laura Beaumont, Genevieve’s mother, was stalking
toward them and she did
not
look like she was
shopping for the latest bestseller. Her usually perfect hair was sticking out in
strange directions, and she was missing the immaculate makeup that was as much a
part of her as her own skin.

As she drew closer, she seemed to wobble a little, and Maura
picked up the definite odor of eau de liquor.

She drew in a breath. She had no fight with Laura, she reminded
herself. For months after the accident, she had hated the whole Beaumont family,
but after Charlie’s sentencing hearing, when the whole twisted truth about the
accident had emerged, most of her fury had abated. She tried to tolerate Laura
during their brief social interactions, mostly by not dwelling on the fact that
Laura had wanted her son to completely escape punishment for his impaired
driving, which had caused Layla’s death and Taryn’s severe injuries.

“Hi, Laura. Can I help you find something?”

“Yes. Where’s the little tramp?” she demanded loudly, her words
slurred at the edges.

Beside her, Maura could feel Mary Ella tense, and any hope she
might have stupidly held that she could avoid a confrontation with the Beaumonts
flew out the window. This was going to be a scene, and probably an ugly one.

“The brilliant Charlie Chaplin silent movie?” she asked in a
bright voice, deliberately misunderstanding. “I don’t carry it. I’m sorry. Our
DVD section is pretty small. Perhaps you can find it online. Just so you know,
it’s actually called
The Tramp,
not
The Little Tramp,
though many people get
confused.”

Mrs. Beaumont blinked at her, trying to process that. “I’m not
looking for a movie, you idiot. I want to talk to your whore of a daughter.
She’s ruined everything!”

And there went her temper. Maura dug her nails into her palms
to keep from smacking the other woman and tossing her out into the rainy
afternoon. “Okay, this is the part where you’re going to apologize for calling
my daughter ugly names, and then leave my store.”

“I won’t! Where is she? I hope she’s proud of herself. Three
weeks. Three more weeks and my Genevieve would have been Mrs. Sawyer Danforth of
the Denver Danforths. Do you know how long we’ve been planning this damn
wedding?”

Apparently Sawyer had found the stones to tell Genevieve about
his indiscretion. And apparently Gen had found the even
bigger
stones to either postpone the wedding—again—or back out of it
altogether.

For Genevieve’s sake, Maura hoped she had broken it off
completely and sent Sawyer “Keep It In Your Pants” Danforth on his merry way.
She understood indiscretion and that people made mistakes, but if a man couldn’t
be faithful during an engagement—when he was supposed to be completely enamored
with his chosen bride to the exclusion of all else—what were the chances he
would remain faithful after the vows were exchanged?

“Wait. The wedding’s off?” Mary Ella asked, her expression
wholly befuddled.

“Yes, it’s off! How could she go through with marrying him
after she found out he supposedly got the stupid little bitch pregnant?”

Mary Ella’s jaw sagged, and Maura felt a twinge of guilt for
not having told her, but she hadn’t felt it was her secret to share yet. Not
even with her mother.

“Last I heard,” she said coolly, “he was claiming he couldn’t
be the father and that Sage must have slept with dozens of men at college.”

She didn’t add that, when Sage had reported that part of their
conversation, Jack had wanted to climb the stairs at the lodge and rip his head
off. It had taken both of them to talk him down.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Laura Beaumont snarled. “But
the fact that he
might
be the father was apparently
enough for Gen to call off the wedding. Where is she? I want to ask her what the
hell she was thinking to ruin my daughter’s life! She knew he was engaged, the
sneaky little bitch. I bet she slept with him on purpose, didn’t she, and
probably poked holes in the condom too. She recognized a money train when she
saw it, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass who she might hurt in the process.”

So much for the gracious society matron, doling out her
patronage around town like freaking Queen Elizabeth. Apparently Laura was a mean
drunk. Who knew?

As Maura saw it, she had a couple of choices. She could take
the other woman on right now—and probably chew her up and spit her out. Or she
could try to deflect Laura’s anger and in the process protect her child.

Sage was the important one here. She wouldn’t put it past Laura
to track Sage down at their house or, worse, at one of her friends’ houses for a
confrontation, and that was the last thing Maura wanted. Better to nip this in
the bud now by using the power card—the only person Laura Beaumont and her
husband feared.

“Sage isn’t here right now. I’m sorry. She’s probably at home
dressing for the dinner we’re having shortly with her grandfather. You know
Harry. He’s so impatient. He wouldn’t want us to be late.”

She blinked like a big, crazy-haired owl. “Harry?”

She deserved to be struck by lightning for shamelessly using
Harry this way, but just now she would do anything necessary to protect her
child. “Harry Lange. Oh, I just assumed everyone in town knew. Harry’s son,
Jackson, is Sage’s father. They’ve recently reestablished their relationship.
It’s really been heartwarming to see.”

Beside her, Mary Ella cleared her throat, and Maura prayed she
wouldn’t say anything.

As for Laura, she stared at the two of them, brow furrowed as
if she had just stumbled onto a stage and discovered she was the star of a play
she’d never rehearsed. “Uh, really? I…hadn’t heard.”

“Oh, yes. It’s not something we’ve necessarily been trying to
keep a secret, but we haven’t exactly put an ad in the paper or anything. Harry
and Sage are becoming quite close.” This was a blatant lie, though Sage
had
told her and Jack about going to his penthouse
apartment the other night at the lodge. If this would protect her daughter, she
didn’t care how many lies she had to tell.

“I…see.”

Laura visibly withered, all her bluff and bluster trickling
away. For one brief, preposterous second, she actually felt a little sorry for
the mayor’s wife, used to pushing her weight around town and making everyone
accede to her wishes. Harry was the only person she couldn’t afford to
offend.

Though she had little reason to be compassionate to the other
woman, she decided perhaps a little sympathy was called for in this situation.
She called these little impulses toward unsolicited goodness her
What Would Claire Do?
moments. Her new sister-in-law
was the most sincerely generous person she knew, almost to a fault.

Maura always figured she couldn’t go wrong if she tried to
guess how Claire would behave in a given situation and then attempted to emulate
that. Right now, she figured Claire would dig deeply for a little kindness, no
matter how difficult.

After an awkward moment, she reached forward and squeezed
Laura’s fingers. “I’m very sorry about the wedding. I know how much effort you
and Genevieve have put into making it perfect. From everything I’ve heard, it
was going to be exquisite. Perhaps she and Sawyer can still work things
out.”

Laura closed her eyes, her chin trying its Botox-tight best to
wobble a little. “I doubt it. She’s so livid with him. I’ve never seen her like
this. Her father and I talked to her until three in the morning, and she just
won’t listen to reason. She said she won’t marry a man she can’t trust, and
she’s convinced she’ll never be able to trust Sawyer now.”

Good for Gen,
she wanted to say,
but she didn’t think Laura would appreciate the sentiment. She thought of the
few times she had seen the happy couple over the past few months, and the random
vibe she thought she had picked up that perhaps Genevieve Beaumont wasn’t as
thrilled about her upcoming nuptials as everyone else.

Maybe Gen had been looking for an excuse to derail the wedding
crazy train. Sage had given her that, in spades.

“We have to let our children make their own decisions, don’t
we?” Mary Ella said softly. She stepped forward to pull Laura into an embrace
that was much more genuine than anything Maura could have provided right then.
“As much as we might wish we can hold their hand and guide everything they do, a
good mother knows her job is to arm her children with the courage and the
capability to make the tough choices for their own lives, even if we don’t think
they’re the best ones for them.”