Small Town Secrets Page 5

  “A couple of hours won’t affect the harvest,” he said. “As long as your potato bugs can wait.”

  She glanced at her garden. The flickering water created a rainbow that danced in the sunlight, and an unwelcome memory popped into his head of Pansy Oppenheimer, twirling under the waterfall, her hair flying out around her like a golden halo, laughing and teasing. Live a little.

  The memory dragged behind it an old familiar battered suitcase of guilt. Pansy, the impossible girl, so wrong for him, so outrageous… so irresistible.

  Nate reached out and pulled Mary to her feet. She was light as air. He kissed her. She was his life, his rock, his anchor. He loved her. He should have done this ages ago. A banked ember of passion flickered to life inside him.

  “A little skinny-dipping,” he murmured against her mouth. “A picnic, you and me, on a blanket. What do you say?”

  The smile she gave him made the sun seem like a flashlight. Mary lit up from the inside, happiness beaming from her eyes, all directed at him. She twined her arms behind his neck and suddenly the years fell away and she was the girl he’d fallen in love with in high school.

  “You’re shameless,” she whispered, her eyes glinting.

  He kissed her again, letting her know exactly what his intentions were.

  But at his heels, the old suitcase of guilt banged and thumped.

  He wasn’t shameless at all.

  *

  Doctors assured him there was nothing wrong with Mary, even though Jane and Cathy with their adolescent, coltish legs, outweighed her. She was fading away, before his very eyes.

  Perhaps not in body, at least according to the quacks, but definitely in spirit. She’d grown quiet, especially as the children grew into young adults with their own ideas and opinions. She had no tolerance for conflict, it seemed, but every day more conflict grew and simmered among them.

  With their first-born, the simmer had turned to a boil. Ever since Robert had split up with Linda, he’d been like a bear with a sore head, looking for someone or something to vent his anger on. Whatever youthful admiration he’d once held for his father turned into subtle mockery of Nate’s every decision. Robert’s grandiose ideas about changing the operation and further expanding the orchard were outrageous, impractical, ridiculously so. Damn his arrogance! The orchard had grown to success when Robert had been in diapers, through the very decisions he thought so laughable, and Nate was incensed that the boy couldn’t see it.

  Mary no longer attempted to mediate between them, choosing instead to absent herself from their arguments, which only added fuel to Nate’s anger. Why couldn’t the boy see that this wasn’t the time for such nonsense? He and Mary were finally ready to take it easy and enjoy life. She especially deserved peace and quiet.

  Yet it was as if the conflict between her husband and her oldest son caused Mary actual physical pain, their voices slicing through her very flesh. Every conversation ended the same way. Nate white-lipped with anger. Robert seething.

  Mary quiet and drawn.

  Maybe Robert’s focus on the orchard had been less about rebelling against his father, and more about distracting himself from the frustrations of young love. Perhaps it was simply a son’s desperate need to prove himself necessary, worthy of a father’s pride. Whatever his reasons, Robert ran off to Canada, leaving his home and family, rather than continue the endless battle.

  It would be years before Mary actually passed away, but Nate always believed that her slow death began in the same place where he’d once believed his own life had ended: in that damned orchard.

  Could cancer cells take root in a broken heart? Did silence and regret create the fertile ground for its growth?

  Who could say? Cause and effect hardly mattered once she was lowered into the cold ground.

  After her death, Nate threw himself into the orchard even more than before, the only way he could think of to survive the crushing grief. He worked dawn to dusk in the busy season and the rest of the months put his mind to the science behind his chosen crop, trying new varieties and cultivars, experimenting with graft techniques and pruning schedules.

  And left all four of his almost-grown children reeling, the rug pulled out from under them just as they took their first steps to independence, with only a broken, silent man left to guide them.

  Wrong though it seemed through his guilt and grief, Jackson Cherry Orchard became more successful than he’d ever dreamed it would be, a bitter triumph given thatRobert, who should have been there to work with him, had disappeared to Canada, with no word of ever returning.

  Jane, wild enough under Mary’s knowing hand, turned into someone he barely recognized after her mother’s death while Cathy went from merely thoughtless to utterly self-absorbed. He understood that the twins were grieving in their own way, but their endless talk of clothes and make-up and boys and parties had always beenlike a foreign language, mystifying and jarring to the ear. It exhausted him as much as it worried him. He had no idea how to reach them.

  Only Hal, quiet Hal, seemed to stay the same. Which was a worry on its own.

  Nathan Jackson, a pillar of the Cherry Lake community, on the outside but on the inside, a gaping maw of loneliness and anger, a shell of a man, going through the motions, his family, his future now a joke.

  No wonder he took refuge among his cherry trees.

  It wasn’t until he finally steeled himself to go through Mary’s things that he came across a letter addressed to him. A letter he’d never received.

  A letter from Pansy.

  Dated November, 1959, Manzanillo, Mexico

  Nate opened the yellowed envelope with trembling hands. The handwriting was so familiar, there was no doubt who it was from, even without seeing the return address.

  Mexico. She’d gone to Mexico. He should have guessed.

  Twin tracks of emotion ran through him. All the panic and desperation of his last meeting with Pansy, and now, bewilderment and a slow-growing anger at Mary, for hiding this from him.

  Mary, who’d always been so upfront, so trustworthy, such a good wife to him who’d never, not once, said a bad word about Pansy.

  Then the anger faded. So she was human, like the rest of them. Would he have been able to hand over such a letter, if the situation was reversed?

  Mary and Pansy, he thought. Both gone. He sighed and unfolded the pages.

  My dearest Nate;

  I’m writing to you from a volunteer station outside of Manzanillo, Mexico. In the face of the devastation this hurricane has wrought, you’d think my own sorrows would seem petty. So many here have suffered so much more heartache and loss.

  Yet every morning when I get up, I grieve anew that I will face yet another day without you.

  Tears filled his eyes so that the words blurred and he had to blink hard to continue reading.

  I’m so sorry I couldn’t say goodbye in person, but I knew if I saw you I might not have the strength to leave. Maybe I’m being a coward, I don’t know. I don’t know. But when I heard of the aid workers coming here, it was like a sign, telling me to go where I could help, not stay where I’d only bring harm.

  You are the best man I’ve ever known and if you let your family and Mary’s family down, you’d never forgive yourself. I am strong enough to survive without you. It seems impossible now, but my heart will heal. And I will grieve again, because the grief connects us.

  I don’t want to heal, Nate.

  He understood only too well. The details of Mary’s face were already growing fuzzy in his memory, and he railed against it. His pain kept her alive. Where would she be, when he forgot her?

  Pansy left. She hadn’t died; she’d chosen to walk away. And he’d worked hard to put her out of his memory.

  You did what you had to do. You were right. If we’d chosen our selfish desires over the needs of two entire families, it would have destroyed us. You were strong enough to see that clearly, when I could not. I’m so proud of you. I wish you and Mary a long and happy life, w
ith all my heart.

  His shoulders shuddered and tears fell onto the page. She’d been the most open-hearted women he’d ever known. And Mary had given herself fully to him, had stayed with him, had loved him, despite the fact that he’d never looked at her in quite the same way he’d looked at Pansy. How could he have had the good fortune to be loved by two such women?

  This next is difficult for me to write. Please don’t hate me for what I’m about to say, and understand that I too, had an impossible choice to make. I wanted to tell you, that last day. I intended to, in fact. But you’ll understand, I hope, that I couldn’t.

  He wiped his eyes, trying to recall their last conversation. There had been something. What was it? He looked down, suddenly dreading what he might read.

  I was pregnant when I left.

  He stopped reading, stunned. He sat back in his chair, trying yet again to remember what she’d looked like, what she’d said.

  Pregnant. He had another child? They had a child?

  But how had she managed?

  “Oh God, my darling Pansy,” he murmured into his hands. “How did things go so wrong?”

  He forced himself to pick up the page and continue reading.

  I wanted so badly to tell you, Nate, but when I heard what you had to say, I knew I couldn’t. You’d have chosen me, using the baby as a weapon against your family, and I couldn’t let you do that.

  I told myself I would give the child up for adoption, but I doubt I’d have been able to go through with that. Already, I was beginning to love it.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Of course she loved it. Other women might be terrified at the prospect of raising a child alone, but not Pansy. She would no doubt see it as a miracle.

  But the week after I arrived here, I lost it.

  Oh, Nathan, if there is anything I will regret for the rest of my life, it’s that this precious baby that we created together never drew breath. If any child was born of love, it was ours. I’m so sorry I failed it.

  I have to sleep now. Tomorrow will come too soon but there are many people here to feed and comfort and weep with.

  Maybe one day we’ll meet again. I don’t know. I understand that you need to focus on your life with Mary and that we can no longer have contact. I don’t expect a response, nor should you feel obligated to send one.

  Be happy, Nate. Life lies ahead of you, full of riches and joy. Take it and regret nothing. But whatever happens, know that I’m grateful that I had the chance to love you. Thank you for sharing your heart with me.

  –Pansy

  Tears flowed freely down his cheeks. This loss, gone now for decades, felt like a fresh wound. He wanted to hold her, grieve this shared loss together, but if Pansy had once waited for a response, she’d have long given up. Where she might be now, or if she was even alive, he had no idea.

  How much more could he take, Nate wondered. It was too much. It was all too much.

  Chapter Eight

  ‡

  Spring, 1992

  Cherry Lake, Montana

  Pansy Oppenheimer pulled her ancient Toyota Celica up to the pumps at Reg’s gas station on the outskirts of town and killed the engine. A young, good-looking boy jogged up to her before the car had rocked to a full stop.

  “How much?” The kid threw a greasy rag over his shoulder and twisted the cap off her tank. He was wearing a snug t-shirt and had the lean muscled body that suggested he spent his off-hours tossing bales of alfalfa.

  “Twenty,” said Pansy, admiring him in the side mirror. He was probably the son of someone she used to know, she thought wistfully. It had been years since she’d done anything more than look, but she liked to think of attractive men as art. Just because she was closing in on fifty didn’t mean she had to stop appreciating art.

  Knuckles rapped on her passenger side window. A man closer to her age, and sadly, not at all artful, leaned in. She rolled down the window. The label sewed onto his coveralls read Reg.

  “New in town?” asked Reg.

  She tried to recall if he’d been in high school at the same time as her.

  “You might say that.”

  Though, in truth, Cherry Lake was the only place she’d ever felt at home. It had always sat on the border of her mind, glimmering like a beacon, calling her, reminding her that all her wandering was nothing more than a long, circuitous route to the starting place. And Nate.

  Reg picked up a squeegee and began to clean her windshield. His knuckles were gnarled and scarred, his shoulders stooped and he had deep lines etched in his forehead. Perhaps he was older than her, after all.

  “Where would a gal go to pick cherries around here?” she asked, hoping she sounded casual. Her own family had long since moved on from Cherry Lake. There was only one person who had the power to draw her back and she didn’t know if he was even still here.

  But Reg didn’t require a lot of prodding.

  “Jackson Cherry Orchard,” he said promptly. “South on Route 35. There are signs. You can’t miss it.”

  Jackson Cherry Orchard. The small farm she remembered hadn’t warranted a name, much less road signs. Of course, that was before Nate’s marriage, and the acquisition of land that accompanied it.

  Mary Lewis had been the right choice for him. Look how well it had worked out. But still, the thought came with a pang deep in her chest. She wondered if Nate ever felt the same pang. She hoped not.

  He’d never responded to the letter she’d sent. Of course, she hadn’t really expected one. But now, she hoped enough time had passed that they might be able to let go of those old hurts and be… what? Friends?

  Friends would be good. One could never have too many friends.

  “Thanks, honey,” she called to the boy with a wink. He tipped his head and grinned, before disappearing into the garage. “And thanks to you as well, Reg.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “No honey for me, huh?”

  “Nah,” she said with a laugh. She put the car in gear. “You’re more of a sweetheart.”

  In the rearview mirror, she saw him smile. Ten years dropped away and her heart lightened. No matter what she found at Jackson Cherry Orchard, she was back where she belonged.

  *

  Spring, 1992

  Jackson Cherry Orchard

  Nate remembered when he thought there was nothing worse than to watch your daughter marry the wrong man. Especially since he’d had to fork out the dough for the whole shebang, which he suspected would be undone before the first anniversary.

  Now, as he applied the wrench to a stubborn tractor bolt, he admitted he’d been wrong. Worse was to watch your daughter pretending to herself and everyone else that she hadn’t made a mistake. With a screech of complaint and a sudden jolt, the rusted metal gave way. Nate’s arm slipped, scraping hard against the chassis and he dropped the wrench. His plaid work shirt sleeve was undamaged but he rolled it up anyway to check his arm. The skin was intact but an angry red spot suggested that a nasty bruise would be forthcoming.

  He braced himself against the round, red bumper and let his head fall forward, fighting the waves of grief, anger and frustration that continued to arrive at the oddest times.

  He still missed Mary, although to his shame, he didn’t miss her the way everyone assumed he did. She’d been a wonderful wife and they’d had a good marriage but they’d never been… well. No use thinking about what they hadn’t been.

  He only wished that whatever it was that he sensed they’d been lacking, his children would find it with their mates.

  He pushed himself upright again.

  Focus on the positive. Hal was married to Julie, a union Nate was cautiously optimistic about. Perhaps his youngest son had escaped the wounds that troubled Robert, who’d eventually found his way back home. He still disappeared mysteriously from time to time, returning to Canada, Nate suspected. But whatever – or whoever – kept drawing him back couldn’t compete with Linda, his one-time girlfriend and a very nice young woman. Nate hoped, they’d mend the rift
between them. At least they were talking now, occasionally. That was something.

  But it was his twin daughters he felt he’d failed the worst.

  Since the moment Owen Palmer had shot into town, all shiny car and flashy clothes, Jane had been on a non-stop track about the man. Once he’d begun wining and dining her, and she got a taste of roses and jewelry and surprise weekend getaways, she’d been bound and determined to marry him.

  He didn’t know exactly what the man did for a living, something in acquisitions, he thought. Which, he thought wryly, made him an appropriate match for Jane, being that her entire life was about acquisitions.

  The girl was empty in a way that broke his heart and left him with nothing but yawning helplessness and angry frustration that he couldn’t finish the job Mary had started.

  And Cathy looked at Jay Logan the same way, as if he’d come bearing the key to her freedom. How did you explain to your daughters that what they were seeking could not be found in the arms of these spit-polished men?

  At least, he thought with a sigh, they’d chosen men with means. They might end up unhappy, but they wouldn’t starve.

  That was something.

  Wasn’t it?

  The crunch of gravel sounded on the yard and the old shepherd mix roused himself to give a lackluster woof of warning.

  A car door slammed and he heard voices rising and falling as whoever it was spoke with one of the farm hands.

  The machine shed door creaked open, letting a shaft of sunshine inside.

  “Mr. Jackson’s right in there, ma’am,” said the boy. “A guest to see you, sir.”

  Nathan looked up and there in the doorway, backlit by the bright spring light, stood the figure of a woman.

  Who might this be? His boys knew everyone around here. Something about her posture, her stillness, set a low hum of energy buzzing through him and he straightened to his full height.

  “Nathan Jackson,” he said, wiping his hand on a rag. He walked forward, holding it out in front of him, blinking to clear his vision. If only she’d come further in, so he could see her properly. Did she seem… familiar?