Carolina Mist (39 page)

“That explains the noises I heard,” Belle noted.

“Cerise found that one pearl in a compartment in Thomas’s desk and was convinced that there was a fortune hidden somewhere, and she wasn’t going to stop looking until she found it. Cerise was right, you know. That birthday party was a turning point in my life. I’d never felt like I belonged anywhere, never had anyone care about me. After that, I told Cerise that I knew for a fact that there was nothing in the house and she should just drop the whole idea.”

“That’s who I saw you arguing with at the town fair,” Abby said.

“Unfortunately, Cerise was unwilling to let it go. I wasn’t able to convince her that there was nothing to be stolen. At that point, I was so ashamed at having any part in trying to rob you that I couldn’t face you, Abby.”

“You lied to us,” Abby said stonily. “You said you were going to Williamsburg to a sales conference. You don’t work for a sporting goods company, and you don’t do business with any North Carolina college.”

“Well, you’re half right. I didn’t have a sales meeting, but I was in Williamsburg.” Drew’s face flushed, and his eyes settled on the tips of his shoes. “There were some very old charges pending against me there. I went back to try to clear things up. I am tired of running from things. I wanted to start over. I could not do that until I wiped the slate clean.”

“What were the charges?” Colin asked.

“A check I wrote a few years back bounced. I never made good on the check. The person I had written the check to
pressed charges. It isn’t something I made a habit of doing. I simply didn’t have the money to make good on the check. I left the state, never expecting to be back in this area.”

“You lied about everything. You lied about your jo
b, you lied about who you are…”
Abby’s face grew darker with each accusation. “Why should we believe one word of what you are saying now?”

“I
didn’t lie about my job. I do work for G.K. Sports.”

“Then why did they say they never heard of you?” Abby’s chin jutted up slightly.

“Probably because you asked for Drew Cassidy, and they know me as Andrew Brannigan.” His downward gaze intensified, as if memorizing the pattern of the worn Oriental carpet. “There was a warrant because of the bad check. If I used my real name, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.”

“Is Drew Cassidy your real name? Are you Thomas’s grandson, or was that a lie, too?” Abby’s eyes began to burn.

As he opened his mouth to reply, Belle spoke up. “No, he is not Thomas Cassidy’s grandson,” Belle said softly, and, for the second time, all eyes turned to her.

“Then who is he?” Alex asked.

“Unless I am mistaken, Alexander,” she said as tears began to well in her eyes, “Andrew is your brother.”

42

T
he silence in the morning room following Belle’s pronouncement was total.

“Gran, I don’t have a brother,” Alex reminded her as gently as he could.

“Yes, son, I’m afraid you do.” Belle sighed and lowered herself onto her rocking chair.

“How can he be my brother?” both Alex and Drew asked at precisely the same moment.

“Oh, my, it’s all so complicated.” Belle shook her head slowly. “Wh
at a tangled web we do weave…”

“Gran, let’s start at the beginning.” Alex sat down on the footstool near Belle’s chair.

“Oh, dear, the beginning
…”
Belle shook her head again and sighed heavily. “Suppose we start by asking Drew why he believed that Thomas Cassidy was his grandfather.”

“My mother always told me that my grandfather was a wealthy man who lived in Primrose, North Carolina. My father’s name was Edward Cassidy. When I read that magazine article a year or so ago about Thomas Cassidy, the adventurer from Primrose, North Carolina,
I
just naturally put two and two together.” Drew held his hands before him as if they held his words for their inspection.

“And, unfortunately, came up with three,” Belle told him. “The house you visited as a small boy stands on the opposite side of the street, Andrew. The man who lived in that house was not Thomas Cassidy but Granger Matthews.”

“You’ve lost me, Gran.” Alex looked up at Belle somewhat blankly.

“Granger’s son—the one he had with his first wife—was their father.” Abby spoke up. “Mr. Tillman told me about Granger’s first wife and how she di
sappeared with their son…”

“Exactly so.” Belle nodded. “I wasn’t aware that you knew about that, Abigail.”

“Grampa was married to someone else before he married you?” Alex frowned.

“For a very brief time,” Belle told him. “Oh, but she was a wild one, that Annie Fields. Wanton and loose, she was. No one in Primrose was surprised when she took off. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before she would take what she could get from Granger and leave him.”

“Why would Grampa marry someone like that?” Alex asked.

“I’m afraid that Granger, like so many other young men in Primrose at that time, had a fling with Annie. When she
told him she was carrying his child, he felt it was his duty to marry her.” Belle swallowed hard. “He was a Matthews. He had to do what was right.”

“Gran, that’s the oldest trap
…”

“Well, there was no doubt that Annie was carrying a child. For years, there was speculation that perhaps it was not Granger’s. But the child was his. All one had to do was to look at the boy—Carl, they’d named him, after Granger’s brother, who was killed in the early days of World War I. One look at the boy, and there was no doubt who the father was.” Belle’s fingers twisted a tissue into a long, thin cord.

“You were in love with Granger even then,” Abby said softly.

“I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not in love with Granger Matthews.” Belle’s face, wet with slow tears, met Abby’s from across the room. “And to know he was lost to me—and for the likes of her!” Belle shook her head at the memory. “Well, Carl wasn’t but a few months old when Annie took up with a tractor-
trailer
driver. Used to stand right up there at the bus stop on Harper Avenue, waiting for the bus to take her to the diner out there by the interstate where she’d meet him. Everybody in town knew what she was up to. Granger pretended not to know, at first—once he knew, of course, he’d have to do something about it, you see, and divorce was unheard of in Primrose. Especially for someone in Granger’s position.”

Belle dabbed at her eyes and sighed deeply. “In any event, one day, Annie just packed up the boy and as much as she could carry and headed north, they said, with a salesman. Closed that door behind her and left Primrose. Of course, Granger hired a detective to bring Carl back, but they never did find them. The next year, Granger quietly divorced Annie. And two years later, he married me.”

“You burned the house down,” Abby said softly. “The house where Granger lived with Annie
…”

“People said Granger did it, but anyone who knew him at all would have known that he’d never have destroyed so valuable a piece of real estate.” Belle nodded, a wry smile
playing on her lips. “But I didn’t care a whit about that. All I knew was that as long as that house stood, it would taunt Granger. So I put a match to it. Several matches, if the truth were to be told. And I have never for a minute regretted it. Annie was gone and had taken that boy with her. I prayed every night that we’d seen the last of them. Even though he was the spitting image of Granger, that boy was all Fields.”

“How would you know that, Gran?” Alex sat, still as a stone.

“Because every time he needed money, he showed up on my doorstep. Oh, never when Granger would be expected to be home. Always in the middle of the day, when Granger would be at the bank. The only thing he ever wanted from his father was his money. Which I was happy to give him, if it meant he would leave Granger alone.”

“And Grampa never knew that his son had come back?”

“No.” Belle set her chin firmly.

“Gran, do you really think you had a right to do that?”

“A right? I had a
duty
to protect Granger. Carl would only have hurt him. He was a con man, a petty criminal. More than once, I sent money—my own money, I might add—to bail him out of jail.”

“Why would you have done that?”

“Because if I had not, he would have gone to Granger.”

“You mean Carl blackmailed you?” Abby asked.

“I really didn’t care about the money. Carl never understood that. Back in those days, money was not an issue. And as long as I could protect Granger, the money was unimportant.” Belle began to rock slowly in the chair, her eyes glazing over, as if she were transporting herself back in time. “But then,
she
showed up.”

“Who” Alex frowned. “Annie?”

“No. Annie was long gone by then. Died of pneumonia when she wasn’t but forty or so. No, we never saw Annie around here again, once she’d left town,” Belle told them. “No, it was Carl’s wife. Hard-looking little thing, she was. Thin and angry
…
and barely half Carl’s age. He must have been in his forties, maybe his fifties by then. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty, twenty-two.
Stood right there on my front porch and rang my doorbell, bold as brass. One baby by the hand, one baby on her hip.” Belle’s eyes narrowed as if squinting to bring the memory into sharper focus.

“Alex and Drew,” Abby whispered.

Belle nodded, her head down, unable to meet the eyes of anyone in the room.

“Carl had gone to prison again, she said. Managed somehow to get himself killed during some sort of brawl. Well, Carl had told her about the goose who was laying golden eggs In Primrose. She figured that Granger was responsible for the boys, now that their father was gone. Well, of course, I tossed her out on her ear.” Belle rocked rhythmically. “Granger had just had his first heart attack, and I was not going to permit that little piece of business to help him along to his second. I gave her every cent I had in the house and sent her packing.” Belle accepted the tissue Abby passed to her and wiped the tears from her face. “Soon after she left, I heard something out on the front porch—a cat crying, I remember thinking it was, at first. And there he was, wrapped in a blanket and crying to beat the band.”

“Alex,” Abby whispered.

“Yes, Alexander.” Belle nodded. “I lifted him up and looked into those brown eyes—Granger’s eyes—and I knew what I had to do.”

“Which was?” Alex asked.

“I knew we had to keep you. I called Josie out in California and told her there was a child—the son of a local girl who’d gotten herself into trouble. I said that I’d told the girl’s mother that I’d help to—discreetly—find a home for the boy. Josie never hesitated for a second. She fell in love with you the second she set eyes on you. We all did.”

“Did Mom know?”

“That you were the son of her half-brother? No. She never did.”

The silence began to crowd them, filling the room to its capacity and threatening to stifle all of them.

“But you must know, you must believe,” Belle spoke firmly, addressing Drew directly, “that even as I have blessed that woman every day for leaving that baby on my porch, I have cursed myself for having turned the other boy away. There is no consolation for you, Andrew, in knowing that I would have given anything—
anything
—to have had a chance to bring you back. I did try to track you, but there was not a trace.”

“I was probably well into the foster care system by then.” Drew’s eyes seemed to become hollow with the memory.

“Oh, how you must hate me.” Belle buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “All you went through. All you suffered because of my spitefulness
…
”

Drew reached over and wordlessly took the old woman’s hands, stroking and patting them with his own, while he struggled with the implications of Belle’s story.

Finally, he asked, “Why is my name Cassidy? I saw my birth certificate. My name is Cassidy.”

“Annie remarried when Carl was about five years old. Her new husband adopted Carl. The irony that Annie’s new husband was named Cassidy was not, I feel certain, lost on Annie.” Belle blew her nose as daintily as she could.

“So when Drew saw the article about Thomas, knowing that his father was bo
rn
in Primrose, he naturally assumed that Thomas was his grandfather,” Abby noted.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Drew looked down at Alex, who still sat at Belle’s feet. “Neither of us is who we thought we were.”

“I guess we both need to decide which is more important”—Alex raised his head solemnly—“who we were or who we are. And if the past means more than the future.”

“Well, there’s not much in my past worth holding on to,” Drew told him, “and there’s never been much for me to look forward to. Maybe that will change now.”

“Colin.” Belle addressed the policeman, who had sat silently on the sofa at the opposite side of the room as the long-hidden truths sought their disclosure.
“
Are you going to arrest Andrew?”

“Can’t think of anything to charge him with,” Colin said after a time. “He wasn’t really impersonating Thomas’s grandson. He truly believed he
was
Thomas’s grandson. He wasn’t involved with the theft of Susannah’s things. Only thing he’s really guilty of, far as I can see, is bad judgment in hooking up with Cerise. Unless you want to press charges against him for unlawful entry—those times he came into the house through the tunnel—I don’t see where he’s committed a crime. He’s free to go, far as I’m concerned.” Colin stood and folded up the notebook that had been resting on his knee. “So, unless there’s something else, I guess I’ll just check in at the station and call it a night.”

“Thank you,” Belle said, and Colin responded with a nod of his head as he headed out of the room.

The sound of the front door closing as Colin let himself out echoed through the first floor.

“Oh, my boys,” a clearly distressed Belle cried, “how can either of you ever forgive me?”

“You’ve given us both a lot to think about, that’s for certain,” Alex told her as he stood up and stretched his legs to unkink his knees.

“Miz Matthews
…”
Drew began.

“Will you ever be able to call me ‘Gran’?” Belle asked, then smiled ruefully, looking directly at Alex. “Though that, too, was part of the deception, since, of course, I’m not really your grandmother, you know.”

“G
r
an, don’t ever say that. Don’t ever even think that,” Alex said softly.

“I think you all have a lot of things to say to one another. So, Drew,” Abby told him as she stood, “I will make up the back room at the end of the hall for you.”

He nodded, and, as he looked up, Abby saw the first trace of tears on his face. She patted him on the back, then kissed Belle on the cheek before standing on tiptoe to kiss Alex’s lips, which were trembling and dry.

Abby locked the front door and checked to make certain the dining-room lights were all off before heading quietly up the steps. She would have guests to tend to in the morning. They would want breakfast and conversation, and, besides,
she knew, Alex and Drew and Belle needed time to redefine themselves. As much as they all loved Abby, and she them, she could be neither party nor witness to their first tentative steps toward accepting their new roles in one another’s lives.

It was near dawn when Alex slid into bed beside Abby. He said very little, other than, “I think Gran and Drew will be okay.”

And you,
Abby wanted to ask,
will you be okay?

Instead, she merely permitted him to entwine himself around her. When he was as close to her as he could get, he closed his eyes, though Abby suspected he did not sleep. When the sun shed the first hint of morning, she moved her legs over the side of the bed, attempting to rise quietly and begin the preparations for breakfast.