Secrets of the Riverview Inn Read online

  Stupid woman.

  “I’m a cop,” he taunted her. “Just like your husband.”

  “You’re nothing like my husband.”

  Fine time for her to realize that. It didn’t change anything. She was still here and he was recklessly close to his breaking point.

  “I killed a kid. Shot him down. Right through the heart. Right in front of his mother and baby sister.”

  She was a sphinx. Silent and unreadable.

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “You won’t.”

  He wished he could prove her wrong, but she was right. He turned away, frustrated by everything, by his inability to change or control anything that was happening. Life was a train bearing down on him. He wanted out of the way but he was paralyzed. Stuck.

  “I left Josie when my mom was dying,” she said. “I left her with Jared for six weeks.”

  He shook his head, knowing what she was trying to do. “It’s hardly the same thing, Delia. She left for thirty years.” He felt anger swell like a balloon and fill his chest until he couldn’t breathe for all the hatred. “Thirty damn years and she couldn’t call or write or anything? She just shows up pretending to be someone else, pretending to be a lesbian.” He laughed, but it hurt. “Maybe she is. Maybe that’s why she left.”

  He picked up the split logs and hurled them into the wheelbarrow. “I don’t even care. It wouldn’t even matter.”

  “That’s clearly not true, Max.” Delia’s voice was a quiet stroke to his raging temper.

  “She’s not my mother. She’s a stranger. She’s no one.”

  “She’s your mom. And you missed her.”

  He shook his head and kept working. But she couldn’t take the damn hint. She stood there watching him as if she had all the patience in the world and he was some temper-tantrum-throwing child.

  “When I came back from France,” she finally said when he wouldn’t say anything, “Jared had told Josie all these lies. That I was leaving for good and I didn’t want her to come with me, that I had met some other man. She believed him.”

  He wiped at his face. “It’s not the same thing, Delia.”

  “Why?”

  “You came back,” he said, incredulous that he had to point this out to her.

  “So did your mom,” she said, stunning him into a sudden silence. Then, as if the day hadn’t already taken enough turns, as if his head wasn’t already spinning, she stepped up to him and pressed one long, sweet kiss to his cold lips.

  “You should hear what she has to say. Then you can judge her all you want,” she murmured against his mouth. “But you need to hear her out.”

  She kissed him again and he didn’t do anything. Didn’t kiss her back, didn’t encourage her, pretended for as long as he could that she wasn’t right.

  But she was.

  12

  One moment his lips were hard under hers, unresponsive and she was ready to give up. In the next moment he’d pulled her so close she was lifted off her feet.

  He held her tight and his lips were soft, kissing her back.

  In a sudden flash, like a light flicking on in a pitch-black room, Delia was happy. Stupid, considering their situations, the heartache that seemed to meet her and Max at every turn. But there it was. She couldn’t ignore it. And she didn’t want to. Not right now, with his warmth seeping into her bones.

  She nearly laughed at the bad timing, that she should find this man now, when she had nothing. But laughter felt like crying and she just wanted to kiss him forever.

  “Okay.” He sighed. “Let’s go inside so I can listen to what she has to say.”

  “Great attitude,” she joked, and for a moment it seemed as though he might get angry. Then his lips quirked in a wry smile. A heartbreaking smile. The first she’d seen directed at her. His whole face changed, the clouds lifted, the intensity that surrounded him softened, and he was magnetic in a whole new way.

  He stole her breath in so many ways.

  “You’ve got a smart mouth, Delia. I think I liked you better when you were avoiding me.”

  “Oh my Lord, are you…” She looked around, pretending surprise while feeling bittersweet delight. “Are you teasing me?”

  His smile grew and she had to force herself to get them walking, to not spend the rest of the day out here flirting with this man, seeing what she could do to make him smile.

  “I liked you better when you were making me forget my problems,” she murmured, glancing at him through her lashes, like some B-movie vixen.

  His eyes flared hot with a sudden desire, the memory of their encounter on the bar unspooled between them, and he squeezed her hand.

  “After today I might need some of that forgetting myself,” he said.

  Ah, delicious, wicked and stupid temptation. She loved it.

  “Well—” she winked “—you know where to find me.”

  He kissed her again, hard and fast like a brand. The taste of his gratitude and respect was sweet and she could have kissed him for days, ignoring real life for as long as possible.

  He turned to head back to the lodge, leaving the wood and his anger behind. He tucked her hand in his and she hung on tight.

  They entered the back door and came upon Gabe staring out the window over the sink and Alice eating from a pint of ice cream as if it might run away.

  “What are you doing?” Max asked, dropping her hand to approach his brother. Delia’s throat went tight at the sight of the two big men, clearly grieving for their boyhoods without a mother.

  “Well,” Alice said around a mouthful of ice cream. “Gabe is pretending his mother isn’t in the other room and I’m stress eating.”

  She reached under the counter she was sitting on and opened the cutlery drawer to pull out a spoon and hand it to Delia. “Join me.”

  Delia didn’t need to be asked twice. She understood the profound therapy to be found in pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Cherry Garcia got her through her divorce. Chunky Monkey saw her through her mother dying.

  She hiked herself up on the counter beside Alice and dug in.

  “We’ve got to do this,” Max said to Gabe, who, Delia realized, was barely holding back tears while Alice was steadily crying into the ice cream. “Even if it’s just to say we’re done—”

  “I’m already done.” Gabe scowled. “I’ve been done for years.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Max said. “Until Dad brought her up a few months ago we never even talked about Mom. You and I got into a fight last summer because I mentioned her.”

  Gabe sighed and wiped the side of his face with his shoulder. “I don’t want to.”

  Max smiled and Delia’s heart lifted and hurled itself against her chest, struggling for the freedom to follow its own inclinations.

  Bad idea, she warned herself. Bad idea to care for this man more than you already do.

  But, she feared, it was too late.

  “Okay,” Gabe finally said. “But I don’t have to be nice to her.”

  “Absolutely not,” Max agreed.

  Gabe came over and braced himself against the counter so his wife could feed him a bite of ice cream.

  “I love you,” he told her, and leaned down to kiss the bulge of her stomach. “You, too, baby.”

  “Do you want me to come?” Alice asked. She put her spoon in the container and awkwardly lifted herself to hop off the counter, but Gabe stopped her.

  “I want you to sit here and eat some ice cream and put your feet up,” he told her, lovingly brushing a curl off her forehead. “I want you to think nonstressful thoughts and keep growing that baby. You don’t need this tension right now.”

  That was what marriage was supposed to be, Delia thought, watching them. A good marriage has kindness and respect and appreciation. Delia looked away so she wouldn’t cry, only to meet Max’s earnest eyes.

  Kindness, respect and appreciation were all right there.

  “Thanks,” he said, and she nodded, her th
roat clogged with emotion. “I mean it, for getting me out of that clearing and last night—”

  She pushed him away, literally braced her hands against him and steered him toward the door. The world was spinning so fast she couldn’t even make sense of it. Putting last night or today into words would make her have to think about it and she simply wasn’t ready.

  “Go,” she said.

  Then they were gone.

  “What did you do?” Alice asked, picking up her spoon again. “You’re like a miracle worker or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Delia said, and shrugged. She took the pint when Alice handed it to her and dug for a peanut butter cup. “I just went out there and talked to him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That he should do this. That it was the right thing.” She shrugged. “Isn’t it?”

  “Hell, yes. I’ve been saying it for years.” Alice squinted and pointed her spoon in Delia’s face. “I have the feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of years together, Delia, trying to get these Mitchell men to do the right thing.”

  Delia’s emotion and battling heart fell to her feet and she couldn’t even come up with a platitude. A half lie that would allow her to believe, just for the rest of the day even, that what Alice said was true.

  That she had years here. Even a few months.

  She didn’t. She might not even last the week.

  “I’ll be leaving,” she said, her honesty pouring out unfettered. “Probably by the end of January. Maybe sooner. This was never going to last. I was always going to leave.”

  It felt good to say it. To admit this truth she hid from these kind people.

  “Why?” Alice asked.

  “My husband isn’t dead. It’s complicated.” She stopped, not wanting to implicate this family further. “I have some loose ends I have to tie up with him and my daughter wants to be home and I think that might be best. I—”

  Alice’s warm smile vanished. Her eyes went cold and she laboriously pushed herself off the countertop. “Does Max know this?”

  Delia shook her head.

  “Then go now,” Alice said. “Don’t you dare hurt that man any more than he’s been hurt.”

  Iris’s hands shook. Her mouth was dry. Panic clawed at her like a wild animal and she hadn’t even opened the door to the lodge yet.

  Do this, she told herself. Do it or you’ll hate yourself forever.

  She pulled open the door and walked into the dining room to find Patrick right where she’d left him. Alone in a sea of empty chairs. She hoped maybe his anger had faded in the minutes she’d been gone and this conversation might be civil, kind even.

  “Patrick, thank you for waiting.”

  He stood and faced her. His beautiful blue eyes that once had looked at her with such affection and kindness, such warmth and, in the end, worry, were stormy. Now he regarded her as a stranger, a problem he had to deal with.

  “I want to know where you’ve been, Iris,” he said, anger lacing his voice. “Why you sent your letters through our lawyer, as if you didn’t want me to find you.”

  “I wanted to come back on my terms.”

  “So?” he asked. “Where were you and your terms for the past thirty years?”

  From the kitchen her boys arrived and she, like any mother, despite the circumstances, despite the anger that rolled off them in waves, was simply happy to see them.

  My boys, she thought with the pride only a mother, even an absentee one, could have.

  “I’ve been in Arizona.” She swallowed. “I was with my sister, then I met Sheila.”

  “Sheila?” Patrick asked, while Gabe and Max flanked him.

  “She’s…I cleaned her house. Then she became my doctor and I became her nurse.” She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you really lovers?” Gabe asked, and Patrick’s jaw dropped.

  “No,” she said quickly. “It was a joke. A bad joke. We’re just friends.”

  “Why are you back now?” Max asked, crossing his arms and looking every bit the hard-nosed cop he’d been.

  Iris shrugged off her coat, as if taking off her armor. She stood in from of them, this firing squad, feeling naked, as vulnerable as she’d ever felt, with what little pride she had left. “It’s the first time your father would let me come back,” she said and tried not to feel such glee when the boys turned astonished eyes to their father.

  “What is she talking about?” Max asked.

  Patrick opened his mouth to tell his version and Iris decided she was going to tell this story her way. They could believe what they wanted, but she wouldn’t constantly be painted the villain.

  “Three months after I left I wrote to Patrick and told him I wanted to come home. That I was…better. Your father told me to stay away.”

  “Dad?” Gabe asked. “Is this true?”

  “Better?” Max asked, his dark brow furrowing.

  “She left,” Patrick said, defensive. Like a brick wall, no one could convince him he was wrong. “Was I supposed to just let her come home after she’d decided she missed us?”

  “Yes!” Gabe cried.

  “Were you sick?” Max asked her, his attention unwavering. “Is that why you left?”

  “In a way,” she hedged. Her stomach drew up into knots and it was so hard to breathe. Not even her medication could control this anxiety.

  “In what way?” Max asked. “How about a little up-front honesty for once, Mom.” His sarcasm and temper, quick and hot like a flare gun, stunned her. She hadn’t seen this side of him since being here.

  “You don’t remember?” she asked.

  “Remember what?” Gabe scowled. “You took us to the park. We had spaghetti for dinner, you told us a knock-knock joke and in the morning you weren’t there. That’s what I remember.”

  “You cried a lot,” Max said, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t do the math that was right in front of him. Right in front of all of them. “You would stand at the kitchen window and cry.”

  She nodded. It was the tip of the iceberg, but it was part of it. But she found the words difficult to say. To open these old wounds was harder than she thought.

  She opened her mouth, but no words came out, only a struggling gasp.

  “You were just kids,” Patrick said, his voice softer, naked without the anger and blame. “You wouldn’t have understood or remembered.” His eyes were wet and it hurt her to see the pain still so fresh.

  “Understood what?” Max cried.

  Patrick put his trembling hands on their shoulders and they turned to him, their father. She was the outsider.

  “Dad?” Gabe asked, concerned, when Patrick seemed to falter.

  “You wouldn’t have understood that your mother was sick. Not physically, but mentally. I worried every day that I would come home and find her—” He swallowed. “Dead. Or worse, dead, and you boys hurt. She was so sad all the time and I was so scared.”

  “I was depressed,” she supplied, and all eyes swung to her. “Clinically depressed with suicidal tendencies.”

  Gabe and Max rocked on their heels. Patrick tried to shore them up, as he probably had for thirty years, but Gabe collapsed into a chair, his face ashen. They were openmouthed with shock and she could see them searching their brains for buried clues, hints that the mother they’d loved had been so damaged.

  “I left because I was so worried I would hurt you. Or scare you,” she tried to explain. “I couldn’t live like that anymore. I went to Arizona for three months and in that time I met Sheila and she diagnosed me and put me in touch with a support group and medication that helped. And, I tried to come back. Twice.”

  “Twice?” Gabe cried.

  “And you said no?” Max whispered to his father, shaking his head. “Did you even think about us?”

  “Of course I did,” Patrick said. “You’re all I thought about. She wrote again a year after she left and by this time, we’d figured things out. We were doing okay.” Patrick was pr
actically pleading and while she thought she’d feel satisfaction, all she felt was more guilt, more pain, more love. “And I had time to realize how hard it had been before she left.” Patrick looked at her. “It was easier with you gone. We were happy again. We’d moved on. That’s why I said to stay away that second time. Because I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t bring the worry and fear back into our lives.”

  He didn’t pull his punches and she was shattered by his words, though she’d always suspected that was the case. It was why she hadn’t pushed, why she had let him make that decision. Because she’d already hurt him enough.

  The room echoed with silence. It pounded against her eardrums like a heartbeat.

  “Why are you back now?” Gabe asked.

  “Sheila got sick and I realized—” she shrugged, feeling selfish for bringing this into their lives so she could have peace of mind “—I could die. One of you could and we’d never…” She shook her head. “I’d never know you. I’d never know your wives and children, and I want to. I want to know you.”

  There, she thought, I said it. Her intentions were out there for them to shred and throw back in her face.

  We don’t want to know you, she thought Gabe would say. You’re too late.

  Instead, they all stared at her.

  “Have you always suffered from depression?” Max asked, his eyes narrowed as if working on a puzzle.

  Her blood went cold. She wasn’t ready for this. She’d made promises that she wanted desperately to keep, but she couldn’t lie anymore.

  “No,” she answered carefully, “though I have been on antianxiety medication for the past few years.”

  Patrick looked at her, his eyes sharp, and she knew it was over.

  I’m so sorry, Jonah, she thought. But I have to do this. I can’t lie to them anymore.

  “You’d gotten depressed with the pregnancies,” Patrick said. “But that was years before you left. Max was six. You’d been so good for so long. It was just the last couple of months…”

  She could see them all realizing the truth and not wanting to. Gabe closed his eyes on a whispered curse.