Touching Stars (4 page)

“It’s great,” Eric said, looking, if possible, paler. “Really thoughtful.”

“I can open anything you want me to.”

“Not right now.”

Gayle put a warning hand on Dillon’s shoulder. “Your dad’s tired, honey. He’s going to rest. You’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”

Eric seemed to take pity on his son, although he looked as if it was an effort. “Just tell me quickly what you’re up to these days, Dill. Before I take my nap.”

Under her hand, Dillon was squirming with excitement. “There’s going to be an archaeology dig at the farm next door. I think maybe I can register, even though everybody else’ll be older.”

“Jared and Leon are planning to be counselors,” Gayle explained. “And Travis—he’s the neighbor who teaches history at the high school—is considering whether to let Dillon join in.”

“Leon?” Eric seemed to be surfing through his memory.

“Leon’s the boy who came to live with us a while ago,” she reminded him.

“It’s like having another brother,” Dillon said, “only he’s cooler.”

Gayle laughed, but her hand still anchored her son in place. “Leon’s dad lives nearby. Leon moved back home last week.”

“But sometimes when he goes home, he has to come back,” Dillon said, “because his father drinks too much.”

Gayle saw Eric’s interest flagging fast. “Did you hear that Dillon won a prize as best middle-school drama student?” she asked, wanting to end on a positive note. “The principal gave it to him at the last assembly. I know he’ll want to show it to you later.”

“Good going, Dill,” Eric said.

“I could show you now,” Dillon said.

Gayle answered before Eric could. “Not now. Let’s let your dad rest, what do you say? He’s had quite a morning.”

“If Mr. Allen lets me go to archaeology camp, I’ll be digging for artifacts,” Dillon said.

Eric nodded.

Gayle turned her son and escorted him to the door. “Dillon, your dad’s going to need a good lunch when he wakes up. Can you take a package of chopped chicken out of the freezer? I’m going to make chicken salad.”

“I’ll be back later, Dad,” Dillon said.

Gayle waited until he was gone. Then she turned. “I’m sorry. He’s just so glad you’re here.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.
I’m
sorry.”

They both knew for what.

Eric ran a hand over his jaw, then along the side of his neck, as if he needed proof he was still in one piece. “Gayle, I’m here. I’m going to try with Dillon, I swear. I know he needs a father, and due to the luck of the draw, it looks like he ended up with me.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“It’s just that I don’t know him.” Eric dropped his hand. “He’s a stranger to me. And yes, that’s nobody’s fault but mine, so don’t say it, okay?”

She felt a flash of anger. “I hope you don’t think I invited you so I could tell you what a lousy father you are. You and the boys have to work out your own relationships. I’m just giving you the time to do it.”

She started toward the door again, but he stopped her.

“I’m sorry. I really am. Nothing I say or do seems to come out right anymore.”

She glanced over her shoulder. He looked beaten. Despite herself, she felt a stab of sympathy. “Get some rest. Right now the only thing you need to worry about is getting back on your feet.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

She managed a brief smile before she closed the door behind her.

J
ared knew there was a line beyond which the threads of reason would fray forever. Every cell in his body was screaming that he should cross it right now and forget everything barring him from having sex with Brandy Wilburn.

Only there were too many things troubling him. From what he knew, when two people had sex, it always meant two different things, no matter how much they loved each other. He was pretty sure Brandy had an agenda that was definitely not limited to physical release. If he went ahead and finished undressing her, he might be making a choice that would have lifetime ramifications.

But damn, her breasts in his hands felt warmer and softer than any dream he’d ever allowed himself.

“Jared, what is
wrong
with you?” Brandy pulled away angrily when he reluctantly shifted and put his hands behind his neck. She shoved his chest with the palms of her hands to separate them even farther. “Just tell me now. You have some deep, dark secret I don’t know about?”

He snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I’ve seen
Brokeback Mountain!
”

“Come off it, Brandy. You
know
I want to do it. It’s just…not the right time.” Sunlight filtered through the canopy of trees visible through the windshield, and he wished it were night. “Or place, for that matter.”

She pouted and began to button her blouse over her unfastened bra, but she took her time, glancing at him from under outrageously long dark lashes as her fingers wove in and out of buttonholes. “I don’t know what
would
be the right place. Nobody’s going to see us out here.”

“You want to lose your virginity in the back seat of a car?”

She was silent. Okay, so maybe virginity wasn’t an issue. He snorted again. He had never asked, and she had never volunteered. “I get it.”

She tossed her rumpled hair over her shoulder. “So who cares? It was only once, and the guy was a jerk. This would be like a real first time. If you’d let us get down to it.”

He felt as if he were going to explode, and not just sexually. For weeks now he’d felt as if there was a stranger living inside his body, somebody trying to claw his way out. “The timing sucks,” he said.

“Why? I got it before. You were worried about your dad. I could see why maybe you didn’t want to make love. I mean, why should you feel good when he was, like, you know…But he’s home now. You’re going to have a whole summer with him. What’s the problem?”

“Guys usually have to talk this up. How come you’re in such a freaking hurry?”

“Jared!” She sniffed and turned away.

He was contrite, but not very. He was crazy about Brandy. Just the sight of her in the halls of their high school turned him into a jabbering moron. Once he’d been talking to his physics teacher about a test score, and Brandy had come in to wait for him. And right in the middle of the conversation, he couldn’t remember one thing they’d been discussing. He was that far gone.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t like this, either. But my life just feels up in the air or something. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Oh great, so now I’m a mistake!”

“How come you don’t get this? I mean, how hard can it be? I just don’t want to do it right here and now.”

“You sure seemed like you did a minute ago.”

“Part of me’s always ready, you know that.”

“I don’t know why the rest of you isn’t!”

He opened his door and swung his legs over the seat to step outside and adjust his jeans. So far June had been surprisingly cool, but the afternoon sun was warming the air, even through the fully leafed branches of the hardwoods in the forest just below her house. Apparently she’d decided she needed some air, too, because he heard her door slam.

He didn’t get back in behind the steering wheel. He crossed his arms and leaned against his mother’s sedan. He wasn’t sure what Brandy would do, maybe walk back to her house in a huff, but in a little while she joined him.

“Where were you before you came to get me?” She leaned on the car beside him and folded her arms, too, as if she were imitating him.

“I had graduation practice. I told you already.”

“It was supposed to be over at
two.
It was after three by the time you got to my house.”

“It just took longer, that’s all.”

“Marijoe called me when it was over. She was already home by two.”

“I had some extra stuff to do. And stuff for my party.”

“You’re late a lot these days, like you’ve got something going on the side. Is there another girl? Is that what this is about?”

“No!”

“So were you hanging out with Cray?” “Cray” was Creighton Green, who had been Jared’s best friend since elementary school.

“I told you what I was doing,” Jared said.

“Maybe it’s been a hard day for you. Maybe that’s all this is.”

He wondered if every woman thought she was some kind of emotional detective. If every single one looked at somebody she loved and thought she understood, by osmosis or something, at least a part of what was wrong.

“My dad looks like a skeleton.” He glanced at her. “Do you know what that means?”

“That he’s sick? Or maybe that taking care of himself when he was trekking through the mountains wasn’t much of a priority.”

“He says he’s not sick.”

“I bet it’s hard to see him that way.”

“It makes me furious.” Jared punched the air in front of him, a lightning-quick punch, like a striking snake.

“I’d be mad, too.”

“He’s always been this big guy. Huge. Like nothing could ever get him.”

“No, my mom’s huge. She weighs like a million pounds. Your dad’s hot. I’ve seen him on TV.”

He ignored that. “He’s always been on the go, you know? Now he doesn’t look like he has the strength to go anywhere.”

“Maybe that means he’ll stay around for a little while. Wasn’t he the one who took off and left your mother?”

Jared didn’t like to think about that, but not surprisingly, he’d been thinking about it all day. He understood the basics of his parents’ divorce. His dad saw the whole world as his home. His mom saw this little corner of the Shenandoah Valley as hers. She hadn’t wanted to raise her sons here and there, without roots or friends they could count on. She hadn’t been willing to leave Toms Brook and the inn that meant so much to her.

So his father had simply taken off and left them all behind.

“He hurt her,” Jared said. “He hurt all of us.”

“Maybe you don’t know everything that happened.”

“I know he’s the kind of man who runs out on the people he’s supposed to take care of.” He looked at her. “You know what I mean?”

“I know you’re angry at him.”

Jared wondered, but he didn’t think so. His father had been gone most of his childhood. He’d watched other fathers at Boy Scout banquets and campouts, and he had wished that his dad had been there with him. He’d been angry then. And there had been plenty of times when Eric had promised to spend time with his sons and something more important had come up, at least more important to Eric. He’d been angry then, too.

But deep down Jared knew that Eric was just Eric. That he loved his oldest son as much as he loved anybody. That he would do whatever he could for the family he left behind. That he lived simply and never begrudged his ex-wife and children the money he sent them each month. He hadn’t left Jared’s mother for a younger, prettier woman. He hadn’t left his sons because they disappointed him.

He had simply left because that was the kind of man he was. A man who let the wide world seduce him away from his commitments.

He turned away from that thought and explored another. “When my mom told us what had happened, all I could think about was how much I wished I could have been the one to save him. And that if he hadn’t gone there, if he’d stayed here with us, or even just somewhere safe in the U.S., none of this ever would have happened.”

“Even I know things don’t work that way. Maybe if your father had stayed here, somebody would have crashed into him on the interstate, or shot him because he got in the way of a drug raid, or maybe just forgot to tell him the floor was slippery after they mopped it. Things just happen.”

There was more he could have told her, more guilt, but he doubted she would understand. “You don’t think we control things?”

Brandy had smooth, cushiony skin, skin that Cray insisted would sag before she was twenty-five. But looking at her now, watching the way her honey-hued face creased with laughter and her black eyes danced, Jared felt hot all over again.

“Jar-Jar,” she said, “we don’t control hardly a thing. You know better. All we can do is reach out and grab whatever comes our way and hang on to it. Hard. As hard as we can. Hang on for dear life.”

And that, of course, was what Eric Fortman hadn’t done, and what Jared’s mother could and did do so well.

“And I’m right here to hang on to, if you want me,” she added.

Jared couldn’t tell Brandy that he wasn’t ready to hang on to
any
one. There were some things it was impossible to say.

Several years ago Gayle had realized that in order to continue operating the inn at something of a profit, she had to boost her occupancy rate. Insurance costs had skyrocketed, and competitors had increased. Summer and fall were her strongest seasons, but even during those months she had too many vacant rooms.

So she had hired a consultant, who’d suggested targeted advertising and specials, like honeymoon and anniversary packages, and discounts with river outfitters on the South Fork. She had decreased the nightly rates for longer stays and hired a professional designer to produce a slicker Web site with views of every room. And to make the inn unique, she’d begun a summer entertainment series featuring local crafters. Each summer she turned over the small, light-filled morning room off the kitchen to a valley artist, who set up a studio and spent part of most mornings demonstrating his or her craft, and teaching basics to interested guests. In exchange, Gayle paid a minimal stipend and sold the artists’ work in her small gift shop.

Three years ago she’d invited a jewelry maker who created fabulous millefiori beads from polymer clay. Two years ago she’d brought in a stained-glass artist. Last year she’d welcomed a weaver, who set up an antique floor loom and wove new rugs for the inn’s entryway.

This year, she’d invited the quilters.

The SCC Bee was the official quilting group of the Shenandoah Community Church. Gayle was a former president of the board of deacons, and she was still heavily involved in the congregation’s activities. To help support the church’s prison ministry, she had asked the quilters to create a star quilt for the stairwell, a large space clearly visible from the inn’s front door.

Until now she had never been able to fill the space with anything that pleased her. The size was odd, too large for a single oil painting, but a grouping looked out of place. Whatever she displayed there had to hang flat against the wall or risk being dislodged as guests made the turn.

Since she’d decorated most of the inn with quilts, another quilt was the natural choice. Unfortunately, she had never found one that really suited the spot. So this year she had asked the Bee to create a top that would fit snugly and harmonize with the colors in the reception area, then to spend the summer quilting it in the morning room. In return, she promised a sizable donation to the church.

The quilters, led by Helen Henry, who was the area’s most celebrated quilter, had agreed, and the top they’d created—after their usual good-natured squabbling—was perfect for the stairwell. Using Civil War reproduction fabrics of reds and golds, blues and greens, they had designed and beautifully executed a stunning wall hanging of four traditional stars, the intricately pieced arms of each touching those of its neighbors.

Helen had pointed out that there was one star for Gayle, and one for each of her sons. Gayle didn’t know if the Bee had chosen to do four stars on purpose, but she appreciated the symbolism.

The pattern was known as Touching Stars, and Gayle, who was not a quilter, could see that each diamond-pieced star was identical to the Lone Star that hung in Eric’s room, only these were scaled-down, intimate versions. She had fallen in love with the pattern and the quilt top at first sight, as well as the dozens of varied star blocks the quilters had pieced and quilted to sell in her shop as potholders or table toppers. Stars had been a favorite of quilters through the centuries, and there had been many to choose from.

What could be more perfect for an inn named for the Native American legend that some believed had given the river its name? Daughter of the Stars, the Shenandoah River, where the morning stars had placed the brightest jewels from their crowns.

This afternoon, with Eric still napping, Gayle enlisted Noah to help rearrange furniture in the morning room so the quilters, who were due tomorrow, could set up the old-fashioned quilt frame that would take up the center of the room. If they desired, guests would be encouraged to quilt a few stitches. By summer’s end, if not before, the quilt would be finished, bound and hung.