Clate managed a smile. "Me, too. Mabel Porter, my assistant in Nashville, told me about the house. But that's not why I'm here. I just—" He stopped, squinting in the heat, trying to put words to the sense of urgency that had gripped him in the past three days, since he'd watched Hannah Frye pull an old doll out of her treasure chest and he'd fallen in love with her niece. Somehow he had the feeling if he didn't come here, if he left now, that whatever he had with Piper would slip through his fingers. He licked his lips, sighed. "I just wanted to come by and say hello."
His father cleared his throat, shoved his knotty hands into his threadbare pockets. "Well, I'm glad you did. You want a drink or something? I've got iced tea inside. Francie, she likes those flavored teas—you know, mango and raspberry and things—but I just like regular old tea. She's a nurse up at the county hospital. She'll be back home soon." He took a breath, awkward, trying so damned hard. Clate could sense his father's nervousness. "You don't have to drink it inside. I can bring it out."
"It's okay. I'm not that thirsty."
Finally, his father's watery eyes focused on him, and he said, "I think about you every day, Clate. Have for years. You're in my prayers and have been ever since I got sober. Before that—" He shook his head. "The devil had hold of me, son. That's all I know. But I gave him the hold on me. I gave it to him, and I know I did. I can't say it any plainer than that."
He wasn't going to beg forgiveness. In all Clate's youthful fantasies of what his father would do when—if—they saw each other again, he had him on his knees, begging. And Clate would refuse. Deny him that easing of his guilt and misery. Only now, his father wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wasn't asking for anything.
"Regular iced tea?" Clate asked.
"Lipton. I bought the tea bags myself."
"The kids?"
"I made a pitcher of Kool-Aid for them."
Clate rocked back on his heels, and he breathed in the sweet honeysuckle. Vengeance. Irma Bryar had warned him against its seductiveness, its power to deceive, warp, destroy. Now, finally, he understood.
He looked back at his father. "I need to turn the car off."
"Go ahead. I'll pour the tea and call Sammy and Miranda."
No fear that he'd get in his car and drive back to Nashville. Whatever he chose to do, his father would accept. "Sammy and Miranda. Nice names."
"Francie picked 'em out. Me, I'm no good at that stuff. They're good kids. Like you were."
When he sat behind the wheel, felt the hum of his car's engine, Clate knew he could drive on down out of the hills and wind his way back to Nashville. He didn't have to have iced tea with his father. He didn't have to meet his brother and sister. He could get out of here, go back to his work, his meetings, his responsibilities— to the status quo of his life. He had a choice.
But if he went back, he'd lose Piper. She hadn't asked him to come here. She didn't even know he'd come. Yet he knew, with a certainty that Hannah herself would have understood, that he would lose her. The status quo was no longer enough.
He climbed back out of the car, and he walked up onto the front porch where Irma Bryar had sat in her rocking chair for so many decades. He could see her now, that worn, wise woman so willing to give of herself. She knew he'd be back. One day, he would have to come home and see his father.
A head popped up over the porch rail, and a gap-toothed smile flashed at him. "Arc you my brother?"
"You must be Miranda."
"He's your half-brother, nit." Another head popped up, the grin snaggle toothed on the older child, Sammy. "Aren't you?"
"Yes, I am. My name's Clate."
"Like Daddy's," Miranda said.
"I think your father—" He stopped himself, instantly noting their confusion. "I think our daddy's pouring us drinks."
"Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid," they chanted, giggling, and clattered up onto the porch, and Clate followed them inside.
Clate had asked that unless there was a bomb in the hotel, no one disturb him until he returned to Nashville. When he did, he immediately knew something was up. He could feel it in the air as he walked through the lobby. Then he noticed the odd looks, the quickly suppressed smiles. He started for the elevator, and stopped.
Piper.
She was here.
"Hell fire," he muttered, figuring Hannah was having her effect on him. He was thinking he knew things that he couldn't possibly, on any rational basis, know.
But she was here. He knew it.
It was late, and Mabel had gone home, but she'd left a message and a key on his desk. "A woman who says she's Piper Macintosh arrived at 3:40 p.m. Red-brown hair, slim, Red Sox shirt, nasty bruise on her right eye, very smart. Enjoy, Mabel."
Taking long strides out of the office and down the hall, he was at her door. He knocked, and her voice called, "I'll bet our Miss Mabel left you a key."
He used it, and when he pushed open the door, he heard soft music and the pop of a champagne cork. Piper walked over to him in a sleek black dress, a cameo necklace, and sparkly black velvet shoes. "The shoes are a bit big," she said, handing him a glass of champagne. "A woman in my open-hearth cooking class insisted I borrow them once she saw the dress. Anyway, there's not much opportunity to wear sparkly shoes in Frye's Cove. The necklace is Hannah's. She says—well, you can imagine."
"Something about the love of your life being drawn to cameos?"
"Something."