Secrets of the Riverview Inn Read online

  But the spa was empty of supplies so the delivery needed to be rushed. Today was Thursday and two older women had scheduled messages for Saturday, plus she had a couples massage on Sunday.

  Delia rubbed her forehead. She and Josie could run into Albany to pick up some stopgap supplies.

  She heard Josie’s voice in the kitchen where she was helping Chef Tim roll out pastry dough.

  Guilt and gratitude warred in Delia. These people were so kind, taking Josie under their collective wing and acting as if they had just been waiting for a little girl to come around to help. As Tim explained it, they were all practicing for Gabe and Alice’s baby.

  “Cameron, I swear to God, if you don’t—Oh, sorry.” Alice stood in the doorway, a nervous Cameron behind her.

  “I’m just placing an order for the spa.” Delia rolled away from the desk as if she’d just been caught embezzling. “Gabe said—”

  “It’s fine, Delia,” Alice said. “I was just coming in here hoping to hide out.” She shot a disgruntled look at Cameron, who threw his hands in the air and walked away.

  “It’s not like I don’t have better things to do,” he cried.

  Alice smiled, easing into the chair across from the desk and propping her feet up on the milk crate set there for that exact purpose.

  “How are you doing?” Alice asked, folding her arms over her belly. “We haven’t had much chance to talk.”

  “I’m good,” Delia said, smiling through her lies. “Excited about being here.”

  “Well, that’s lucky, we’re excited to have you here.”

  “It’s win-win,” Delia said as a joke, since they’d never know that this job was a landslide victory for her. “How are you feeling?” she asked, attempting to turn the conversation away from her.

  “Like a bloated whale washed up on a shore somewhere.”

  Delia laughed, remembering the feeling all too well. “Well, it gets—”

  “So help me if you say better, I’ll poke myself in the eye with a fork. Everyone keeps saying that.”

  “I was going to say worse.” Delia winced. “I gained so much water weight with Josie I had to wear my husband’s shoes home from the hospital. I had a baby, a sore crotch and man-size feet. It’s much worse than feeling like a beached whale.”

  Alice’s pregnant belly shook with her laughs. “Oh, that’s good. It’s so nice to hear some honesty.”

  Delia’s laughter sank to her feet, weighted down by new guilt.

  “Well,” she said, turning to leave. “I’d better—”

  “Have you checked in to school for Josie? I mean, after the holiday break?”

  “Yep,” she lied. “We’re all signed up.” She’d love to sign her daughter up for school, but she didn’t think they’d be here that long.

  “Are you raising Josie alone?” Alice asked suddenly, and Delia blinked, stunned into temporary speechlessness. “You mentioned your husband, but you’re here alone. I just wondered—” Alice shut her mouth, blushing slightly. “Sorry. I…ah…I guess I’m starved for a little conversation.”

  “My husband died.”

  The words popped out, unplanned, setting up a whole new set of lies. Of checks and balances Delia would have to keep straight. But even as the words rolled off her tongue, it didn’t feel like a lie. The man she’d married, like the person she’d been, had vanished at some point, buried under the rubble of their marriage.

  It felt good to wash her hands of him at least in this small way.

  “I am so sorry.” Alice looked totally chagrined.

  “It’s okay,” Delia said, making sure she sounded as though it wasn’t, so Alice wouldn’t ask any more questions. She’d have to tell Josie that if anyone asked her father was dead. Oh, God, she could just imagine what that would do to the poor girl, the confused hysterics the latest lie would cause.

  “Delia—” Alice leaned forward and grabbed her hand, and Delia fought the urge to pull away “—I just wanted to tell you how great it is that you’re here. Since we started advertising the spa services, we’ve gotten double the number of reservations. We were worried we would have to lay off Cameron for the winter, but now we won’t have to. Which—” she tilted her head to peer through the open office door to where Cameron worked, oblivious to their conversation “—is a lifesaver.”

  Alice kept talking about the baby and bed rest and worrying about Gabe, but Delia couldn’t hear her for the pounding of blood in her ears.

  She was going to leave these people high and dry. It was inevitable. One night in the not so distant future she’d pack up her daughter and their meager belongings and—she wasn’t proud to admit it—all the free shampoo and soap she could get her hands on, and she’d be gone.

  All while these people were counting on her.

  “I better go check on Josie,” she said, interrupting rudely. “She’s probably under Tim’s feet.” She tried to laugh, the merry tinkle of a laugh that her mother had perfected as a smoke-and-mirrors abstraction that buffered reality.

  It’s cancer, but what’s a little cancer? Ha-ha.

  I’m leaving, sweetie, but you’ll love to visit me in France. Ha-ha.

  But Delia could tell by Alice’s face, the confusion there, that she didn’t have her mother’s merry way with distraction.

  Regardless, she had to get out of this room. It was getting hard to breathe.

  “All right,” Alice said. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Great,” Delia agreed, moving to the door, painfully aware that Alice watched her.

  “Delia?”

  She turned, her mouth too full of her lies to talk.

  “Thanks.” Alice lifted a shoulder. “For the honesty. It’s nice to have another mom around.”

  “No problem,” Delia said.

  She had to leave. She was a fraud. And the kinder these people were to her the worse she felt.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Iris Mitchell asked, drinking in the snowy view through the windshield of their rental car.

  “If you like snow,” Sheila Whitefeather muttered, yanking on her gloves and pulling her hat down over the sparse regrowth of brown fuzz on her head.

  “Look.” Iris ignored her friend’s sarcasm and pointed out the window at a deer that lingered at the edge of the forest to their left. “It’s so wild here.”

  “We have deer in our subdivision,” Sheila countered, clearly rooted in her sarcasm.

  She looked back at the magnificent stone and wood lodge and prayed to God—who, oddly enough, had been listening to her more lately than ever in the past—for the strength to handle what was to come. For the grace to deal with the anger that would be laid at her feet. And, if he had a moment, if he could send one of her boys out that front door so she could get a good look at Max or Gabe, well, that would be great, too.

  “You worried?” Sheila asked, her hand clasping Iris’s where it clutched the steering wheel in a death grip.

  Iris rested her forehead against their clasped hands. “Scared to death,” she confessed in a whisper.

  “Okay.” Sheila’s matter-of-fact voice told Iris that they were going to be reasonable now. Attack this reunion as though they were mapping out an election campaign. It was Sheila’s strength, meeting things head-on. Cancer. Death. Reunions between Iris, her husband and the sons she’d left behind. Sheila was strong where Iris was weak. And vice versa in so many ways.

  “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Sheila asked.

  “Well.” Iris sighed as she straightened. “I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to think there might be weapons involved. I think they might throw things at me. Patrick, I’m sure, will want to strangle me.”

  Sheila patted her hand. “All right. We can practice ducking. But I, for one, don’t think they’ll even recognize you. Thirty years have gone by. The boys probably don’t have a clear picture of you in their head and Patrick, no doubt, burned all the photos and—”

  Not recognize me? Iris thought, pai
ned—though she did not have the right—by such a notion.

  “Okay, let’s stop being reasonable,” she said. Reasonable was hard. It hurt. It was something she’d never been good at.

  In the years that had passed since she’d seen her family, her memories of them—the curl of Patrick’s biceps, the feel of Gabe’s hair under her hands in the bath, the sweet weight of Max against her when he fell asleep and she had to carry him from the car—had been bronzed, undiminished by the ever-forward movement of time. That she might be forgotten so utterly seemed ludicrous.

  “This is ridiculous, isn’t it?” she asked. Again.

  “Yes. Completely.”

  “But I have to do it, right?”

  “So you say. But if you need to say it again, go right ahead.”

  “I’m getting older. I mean, I could die tomorrow. I could get cancer—”

  “It’s not contagious,” Sheila said with a raised eyebrow.

  “I’m saying—” Iris took a deep breath, what am I saying? “—that life is fragile and I’ve pretended for thirty years that this was something I would do—later. When I was stronger. Better. And well…later might not come. I might die. Something might happen to one of them and I’d never know. It’s later now and I have to do it.”

  “Okay.” Sheila nodded as if the answer satisfied her. “What are your expectations? What do you really want from this?” Silence filled the car and Iris could only hear her own heartbeat and Sheila breathing. “Do you want forgiveness?”

  In the millions of times they’d talked about this, forgiveness had been something they never discussed. The pink elephant in the middle of the room.

  “That’s a bit lofty, isn’t it?” Iris joked to protect herself, because of course she wanted forgiveness. She wanted her boys and her husband to wrap her in their arms and tell her they understood. But that wouldn’t happen. She knew that—Patrick had told her in his letters that it wouldn’t happen.

  She didn’t deserve that.

  But considering Patrick’s role in her absence she figured maybe she did deserve an apology.

  “I want Patrick to explain why he wouldn’t let me come back. I’d told him I was better. That I found meds that were working,” she said, perking up a bit, warming with this long-held resentment.

  “Ah, but you didn’t tell him the whole truth, did you? So, you can’t put all the blame at his feet,” Sheila reminded her.

  Right. Yet another reason Iris wasn’t allowed to hold a grudge. Another reason she shouldn’t expect or even want forgiveness.

  Iris knew Patrick. If he’d known the whole story, he would have moved heaven and earth to have her back. But she would never have known if they were together again because he still loved her, because he’d forgiven her. Or if he was simply tolerating her so his family could be together. And she couldn’t live like that.

  “I wanted to be wanted,” she said. “For me. And me alone. When he said, ‘Don’t come back,’ I knew he didn’t want me. But why wouldn’t he divorce me?” she looked at Sheila, who was nodding along. The anger that Iris had tried not to feel because she had no right to it burned white-hot in the center of her reasons for being here. “If he didn’t want me anymore, if I was such a curse upon his life, why are we still married? Tell me what sense does that make?”

  “None.”

  “And did he even tell the boys that I wanted to come home? And that he told me not to? I bet not.” She shook her head, gathering her hat and gloves from the console between them. This inappropriate anger put wings on her feet and suddenly she was anxious for answers. “Not my ‘don’t rock the boat’ husband. My guess is I’ve been the bad guy for a long time.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, then I think my expectation is to get an apology from my husband and to apologize to my boys. And if we can move on from that in some kind of fashion—then wonderful. And if not, I can go to my grave knowing I gave it my best shot.”

  “And I can go to my grave having seen more snow than should be allowed,” Sheila said, her smile bright in her pale face. “Navajo don’t like snow.”

  “Understood. I am forever in your debt.” Iris nodded and looked back out the window, hoping again for a glimpse of one of her boys. But there was only a little girl exiting through the front doors, her pink jacket a bright spot in the white landscape.

  Is that my granddaughter? she wondered, her gaze clinging to the girl as she stepped down a trail in the woods on the opposite side of the parking lot.

  “Are you going to tell them about Jonah?” Sheila asked the other question Iris had taken great pains to avoid.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, truthfully, shaking her head. “I thought I’d play that one by ear.”

  “Well, then let’s go in and get this damn charade started.” They both opened the doors and gasped at the cold air that swept in. “What did you tell them when you made the reservation?” Sheila asked.

  “That we were lovers celebrating our anniversary,” Iris said, straight-faced.

  “Wonderful, my husband will love that.”

  It felt good to laugh, even if it was out of place in this serious moment.

  They left their bags in the car and picked their way carefully over the ice and heaps of shoveled snow and finally made it to the cleared sidewalk that swept around to the front of the building.

  The Riverview Inn was beautiful. Truly. It filled her with a long-gone maternal pride that the two boys she’d known had grown into the kind of men who could build something like this with their hands and the sweat of their brow.

  Of course, Patrick would have helped.

  Her heart stuttered and she paused for a moment. Static, noise and fluff, filled her head. Patrick. Patrick. If he was here, would he know her despite the years? Or would he simply see the silver hair that had once been black as coal? Would he look past the wrinkles in skin that had been smooth? His wife had been lean and strong where now she was soft and round. Her breasts were bigger, her belly fuller.

  She knew in her bones that no matter what the years had done to Patrick she’d recognize her husband. She’d know him if he’d lost all his hair, wore glasses or even a mask.

  “You coming?” Sheila asked, holding open the big front doors.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” Iris chastised her friend and herself for letting Sheila do too much.

  Sheila rolled her eyes, but sagged slightly when Iris took the weight of the door away.

  “If you’re going to treat me like I’m dying, they’ll never believe we’re lovers,” Sheila muttered, and Iris laughed.

  “If you take off your hat, they’ll never believe we’re lovers. I’ve never liked bald women,” Iris joked back, but her gaze scanned the empty room searching for one of her boys. Her heart pounded so hard her ears throbbed and her chest ached.

  “You okay?” Sheila asked, wrapping an arm around her waist. Iris nodded, unable to speak for the nerves. “We don’t have to do this. We can—”

  A door swung open, revealing a kitchen and a tall dark-haired man.

  “Oh my God,” Sheila breathed, and Iris’s knees buckled. “He’s your spitting image.”

  “Max.” She sighed, her head swimming. Sheila held her upright.

  It was her Maxwell coming through the door. Named after her father.

  He caught sight of them and stopped. Blinked then smiled awkwardly and Iris knew this boy as her own. The boy that had taken after her, not just in looks but in spirit, too. Max had been moody and quiet, a foil to his blond, gregarious brother.

  She prayed that her plague, the sickness she dealt with, didn’t infect him as well.

  “Hi,” he said, a shy half-grin that managed to be both welcoming and awkward on his face. “Are you checking in?”

  “Yes,” Sheila said.

  Oh, what did I do? What did I give up? Iris raised a trembling hand to her face, suddenly overcome with guilt and shame and a horror that she’d allowed herself to let go of her family.
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  What am I? she wondered, shaken to the roots of her person, ripped away from the firm moorings of who she thought she was.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, approaching with his hand out as if to stop her from falling. His eyes were sharp now. Focused. She knew he’d been a cop, a good one, honored several times for bravery and courage. He’d always been a boy happiest with something to do. Something to build. Work on. A problem to fix, a puzzle to solve. “Do you need—”

  “I’m fine,” she said. She glanced at him, smiling, but had to look away as if he were a too-bright sun.

  “Tired,” Sheila filled in. “From the drive. We have reservations. This is—” She paused and Iris knew she was unsure if she’d used her real name. Such a ruse. Such a ridiculous errand coming out here.

  Max spun the registry book on the desk beside them a quarter turn and read whatever was written there.

  “JoBeth and Sheila?” he asked, filling in the silence with his no-nonsense voice.

  “That’s us.” Iris aimed for bright tones but sounded like a frog and Max’s eyebrows pulled together.

  “My brother usually does all this stuff.” He waved his hand over the book, indicating just what he thought of those things his brother took care of and Iris almost smiled again. It was as though they were still boys. “But, I’ll show you to your cabin and you can check in later after you’ve rested.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Sheila said, still holding Iris around the waist. It was no longer necessary, but a comforting support all the same.

  He led them out the door and down the shoveled path toward a lovely green cottage with white gingerbread trim that faced the lodge across a large open field, that was probably a garden in the spring.

  Sheila asked questions about dinner times and spa services and Iris let it wash over her as she watched her boy, finding traces of Aunt Celia in the straight line of his nose, a little of her father in his smile and dark eyes. But this boy was her son. The dark hair, the high cheekbones. The full lips that curved slightly downward, indicating a serious nature that his brother and father did not have.