The Secrets She Carried (42 page)

Leslie was nowhere in sight when Jay walked into the tasting barn, despite Angie’s assertions that he would find her there. Circling a large stack of boxes labeled
FRAGILE
—the tasting glasses, he guessed—he eyed the walls, admiring photos Leslie had taken of the old mule exchange and fire station. She really did have an eye.

“Well, well, I certainly didn’t expect to see you here.”

Leslie’s voice came from behind him, cool and more than a little distant. He turned to find her in the doorway of the storage room, a hammer in one hand, a box of nails in the other.

“I figured it was time we talk.”

“Is there anything to talk about?”

“That’s what I came to ask you. The photos are a nice touch, by the way. The locals are going to eat it up.”

“That’s the plan. So?”

Jay stood staring, surprised at how much he’d missed seeing her face. “So?”

“You said we should talk,” Leslie prompted tersely. “So talk.”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“I’m not inclined to, no.” She took a stool at the bar and laid down her tools. “But I will listen, as long as it has to do with you staying.”

“You don’t need me. The tough stuff’s behind you.” He scanned the beamed ceiling a moment before bringing his gaze back to hers. “Why don’t you sign the papers, Leslie? I don’t want to sell to a stranger.”

“Then don’t.”

“You sounded like your father just then.”

“He told me he went to see you a few days ago. I’m sorry about that. He shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Is he bothering you?”

Leslie shook her head, and for a moment her mask slipped. “He’s too sick to bother anyone.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Jay shot back, wanting to lighten the moment. Her scorn was so much easier to take than her sadness.

“He was sick the night of the party,” she said, ignoring his attempt at humor. “But then, I guess you know that. I suppose I should thank you for what you did. I’m just still trying to figure out why you did it.”

“Let’s not do that now. The man needed help and I knew a doctor. Frankly, I’m surprised you don’t want to wring my neck.”

Leslie lifted vacant eyes to him. “No, I…needed this time…before he’s too sick to say what he needs to.”

“Is he…”

Leslie cut him off. “He goes back in six weeks. We’ll know more then. In the meantime, he’s staying with me.”

Jay studied her face a moment, half-hidden behind a curtain of dark hair. There were shadows beneath her eyes that he hadn’t seen since she first arrived. “Your plate’s pretty full. Are you going to be able to handle it all?”

She shrugged and pushed back her hair. “I have to. This is my life now. I own a winery, and my father has cancer. I wasn’t here for Maggie—I can’t not be here for him too.”

They sat quietly for a time, each seemingly fascinated by the grain in the varnished oak bar top. It was Jay who finally broke the silence.

“Your father thinks I should hang around until you forgive me.”

“I’ll bet,” she answered curtly. “He’s big on forgiveness these days.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you should stay whether I forgive you or not. You started something here long before you met me, and I don’t just mean the winery.”

Jay’s spine stiffened. “If that’s a reference to the book, I’d prefer to change the subject.”

“You took the advance. Why would you take the money if you never meant to finish it?”

“Why do you think?”

She looked away then, folding her arms on the edge of the bar. “You’re going to wind up in court over this.”

“Quite possibly. It won’t be the first time I’ve ended up on the wrong side of a judge.”

Leslie shot him an incredulous look. “You think this is a joke?”

“Far from it, but it is what it is. I did what I thought was right, and I’m okay with that.”

She didn’t answer right away, just stared at him in the bar mirror, as if working out her words very carefully. Finally, she spoke, her eyes probing places he didn’t want her to go. “If you did know the truth—if there was a way to find out what really happened that night—would you finish it?”

“No.”

His answer was immediate, too sharp, perhaps, but she needed to understand that for him it was over. He’d gone as far as he was willing to go. He’d been there the day they put Maggie in the ground, burying her ghosts along with her, and that’s how he wanted it to stay.

“Besides,” he added. “We both know there’s no way for that to happen.”

Leslie swiveled her barstool around to face him, green eyes bright with suppressed excitement. “What if I told you I could help you?”

“Help me?” Jay fixed her with a look of astonishment. “Leslie, your plate is full. Your father’s sick. You’ve got a winery to open in ten weeks. You don’t have time to save me from debtor’s prison.”

“I can promise you, the last thing on my mind is saving you from anything. This is about finding answers to a bunch of eighty-year-old questions. And I don’t believe it’s as impossible as you think it is. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve already found the man who can help us.”

Jay stared at her uncomprehendingly. “What man? What are you talking about?”

“His name is Landis Porter. He was one of the boys the police picked up the night of the fire.”

“Who, if memory serves, they wound up letting go. Leslie, if he couldn’t tell the police anything that night, what makes you think he’ll be of any help now?”

“Because I saw his face when I told him why I had tracked him down. He knows something, Jay. I’m sure of it. He just won’t say what it is. He all but threw me off his porch.”

“And this is the man you think is going to answer all your questions?”

“Maybe, if you went back with me. We could—”

Jay held up a hand, cutting her off. “I’m not getting dragged into this.”

“But you are in it! You’ve got three-quarters of a novel written. All you need to know is how it ends. Instead of leaving, you should stay and find out.”

“Leslie, I don’t know how to make this any clearer. I don’t want to know how it ends. I don’t care.”

She drew a deep breath and let it out forcefully. “Fine. Then stay to help me open the winery. I’m not helpless, but it would sure be easier to do this with a partner.”

“A partner,” he repeated tightly. “And where does that leave us?”

She was hiding behind her hair again, hands knotted tightly between her knees. “I haven’t changed my mind about us; I can’t. But I don’t think that should matter. We’re adults. We can work together without it having to be messy. There was no
us
when I agreed to stay, and we did all right. It was only when we got…silly, that things went wrong. It doesn’t have to be about us. It can just be about the wine.”

Silly.

The word landed in his belly like a fist, brutal and without pity. Was that
what she thought, that they were just being silly? Jesus, he’d been a fool; the worst kind of fool, in fact, since this was hardly his first time getting punched in the gut. Still, Maggie would want him to see his commitment through. It was the least he could do after all she’d done for him.

“Six months,” he said finally. “That gets the doors open. At the end of that time you sign the quitclaim deed and we go our separate ways—clean break, no arguments.”

The proposal seemed to satisfy, though some small part of him had held out hope that she might protest the leaving part. Instead, after a curt nod, she gathered her hammer and nails and slid off her stool, leaving him to watch her retreat.

Leslie

A
ngie set a mug of hot chocolate in front of Leslie, then slid into her own chair. “Okay, out with it,” she said, after venturing a cautious first sip.

“Out with what?”

“With whatever’s going on. You pop over here in the middle of the day, but you’re a million miles away. Something’s up, so let’s have it.”

Leslie stared into her mug, watching her marshmallows dissolve into a slick of pale froth. “I talked to Jay yesterday,” she said, without looking up. “He promised to stay six months, to get us through the opening.”

Angie nodded. “He told me this morning. He also told me your father was back and that he’s pretty sick.”

Her head came up then, her hands squeezed tight around her mug. “He’s been paying for Jimmy’s treatment all this time. Did he tell you that? With the money he got for the manuscript.”

Angie’s mug came down abruptly. “He sold the book?”

Leslie made a face. “Not exactly. He took the advance but never finished the book.”

Two weeks ago, in a moment of weakness, Leslie had finally broken down and told Angie about the manuscript. She’d wanted only
to be left alone to lick her wounds in private, and hoped spilling the whole ordeal would put an end to all the sidelong glances and not-so-subtle questions. Instead, Angie had doubled down on her attempts at reconciliation.

Angie looked alarmed now. “But he’s
going
to finish it, right?”

“No. But the money’s gone and he can’t pay it back.”

Angie scowled as she reached into the nearby bag of marshmallows and dropped a few more in her mug. “That doesn’t sound like Jay. Why doesn’t he just finish it?”

“That’s what I keep saying, but it isn’t that simple. Adele—that’s the woman buried up on the ridge—has been dead almost eighty years. We think—or at least I do—that she died in a fire, but we don’t know how or why.”

“But you don’t think it was an accident.”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t think Jay does either. There was some kind of secret, something Maggie wanted to tell him before she died, only she never got around to it. He thinks it had to do with Adele’s death.”

“Has he said what he thinks it might have been?”

Leslie shook her head as she took another sip of cocoa. “He won’t talk about it. It’s like he gets squeamish every time I bring it up. He cuts me off or changes the subject. I just don’t understand it.”

“Maybe he’s frustrated. Maybe he wants to finish the book but can’t.”

“But he could. I managed to track down a man I think could help us, but he won’t talk to me. When I asked Jay if he’d go back with me to try again, he turned me down flat.”

Angie was quiet for a time, running the ball of her thumb around the rim of her mug. “It sounds like Jay might not be the only one frustrated about this book not getting finished. That’s a pretty big change of heart for you.”

Leslie nodded sheepishly. Somewhere along the way she had simply stopped being angry, somewhere around chapter three, she guessed.

“You’d understand if you’d ever read those pages.”

Angie popped a trio of tiny marshmallows in her mouth and stood to gather the mugs. “I don’t have to. I was a fan long before I ever met him.”

“I guess I’m a late bloomer.”

“Do you love him?”

Leslie closed her eyes, shook her head. Why was everyone asking her that? “I can’t.”

Angie threw her head back and laughed, a throaty peal somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

Leslie felt vaguely annoyed. “One of who?”

“One of those women who think if they talk fast enough and long enough, they’ll eventually drown out what their heart’s telling them. You can’t, honey. The heart wants what it wants. If you’re in love with Jay Davenport, you may as well just look in the mirror and say so.”

“And then what?”

“And then you make damn sure he stays.”

Jay stood cool and expressionless on the back porch when Leslie opened the mudroom door a few hours later. He was holding what appeared to be a heavy carton of books.

“I’m bringing these back,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “I found them mixed in with mine.”

Leslie stared at the neatly packed carton, wondering why he was bringing it now. There was something final in the way he set it down just inside the door, a sense of loose ends being wrapped up, that made her look up at him questioningly.

“I also need to ask a favor,” he said gruffly.

Leslie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“I’ve got some boxes over at the cottage that I brought down from the crawl space. It’s junk, mostly, but I
was hoping you’d come over and see if there’s anything you want to keep before I haul it away.”