Love Will Find a Way (24 page)

"And good at exaggeration. I hope you didn't believe everything you heard."

"Nah. I figured his tales got taller with the amount of liquor he drank. How's Rachel doing? I don't see her much. My wife, Kristie, says Rachel is usually too busy to talk."

"She's all right." Dylan realized the third degree he'd been avoiding had finally arrived. Most of the dads had just accepted him without question, but Lance obviously wanted information.

"Tough being a widow at her age, not even thirty yet. Damn shame." Lance took a long drink. "You know, Gary and I shared a beer at last year's camp-out. I think that might have been the last time I spoke to him. Hard to believe he's dead now. Makes you think about your own mortality, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Dylan said heavily.

Silence fell between them for a few moments, broken only by the crackling of the fire.

"Wesley likes you," Lance observed. "He's a good kid."

"So is your boy, Palmer. Is that a family name?"

"My wife's father. Had to get the old man off my back somehow."

Dylan smiled at that. "Good decision."

"You ever been married?"

"Nope."

"Smart man. You get married and have kids and this is how you'll spend a lot of Friday nights."

"This isn't so bad," Dylan said, leaning back in his chair. Actually, it wasn't bad at all. He'd enjoyed himself more than he cared to admit.

"It's not bad, but it's not exactly exciting. Gary brought his cell phone on the last trip. Spent half the night making phone calls to people on the other side of the world. I don't know anybody who doesn't live within a fifty-mile radius of my house. He was talking to Japan, I think. Amazed the hell out of me."

"Gary's firm designed buildings all over the world."

"And you built them, right?"

"Some of them."

"Impressive stuff."

"Thanks."

"Me, I'm a small-town guy. I run the pharmacy in Miller's Drugstore. If you need any aspirin, I'm your man."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"I wonder if Gary ever got that ticker of his checked out. I told him he better slow down if he was having chest pains."

"Gary was having chest pains?"

Lance shrugged. "I think it was just stress. He told me he was going through some heavy-duty stuff and wanted to know if I could recommend a tranquilizer or an energy booster. I told him to get himself to a doctor. He said he would. I don't know if he ever did."

"He was awfully young to have chest pains," Dylan said. Another new wrinkle unfolded itself in front of his eyes. If Gary had been having chest pains, why hadn't he mentioned it to him? Had they talked at all in the last year? Until a couple of weeks ago, he'd been sure their friendship had never wavered. Now he realized that there had been plenty left unsaid. He wondered why. Had he withdrawn from Gary in some subtle way? Had it been the other way around?
Or just the business of their lives that had intruded?

"Life in the fast lane," Lance murmured. "Not my style." He crumpled the empty cup in his hand. "I'm going to turn in. What about you?"

"In a few minutes. Thanks for the beer."

"No problem. Don't stay up too late. There's a lot more fun to be had tomorrow."

When Lance had left, Dylan stared into the last lingering flames of the fire and let his mind roll around what Lance had just told him. Chest pains? Stress? He had thought Gary looked tired. Had he been sick?

Maybe the accident hadn't been suicide. It was possible that the eyewitness who saw Gary driving erratically had, in fact, seen something else. Maybe Gary hadn't killed himself. Maybe he'd had a heart attack.

"You scared me," Rachel said as her pulse leapt with Dylan's appearance in the apple farm gift shop Saturday evening. She'd seen him drop Wesley off earlier that afternoon but had been too busy with a group of tourists to ask how the camping trip went.

"Sorry." Dylan flashed her an apologetic smile. "I saw the
Closed
sign, but the door was open, so I let myself in. What are you concentrating so hard on?"

"My sales receipts." She shut the cash register. "Wesley said he had a good time. I understand the two of you won three blue ribbons."

"We were certainly the best at Trivial Pursuit. Not because of me, because of your son. He knew answers that blew the rest of us away."

There was that genius thing again. She would have to deal with that soon. She couldn't believe five days had gone by since she'd spoken to Mrs. Harrington, and she hadn't even opened the private-school folders. She had to be the queen of procrastination. After the Harvest Festival, she promised herself; she'd deal with it then.

"But I did hold my own with the arm wrestling," Dylan added, drawing her attention back to the conversation at hand.

She smiled at the male pride on his face. "Congratulations. What did you think of the warrior games?"

"I particularly enjoyed painting my face," he said dryly. "No one bothered to mention that little tradition to me."

She laughed. "I figured it was something you had to live through. But you seem to be in one piece."

"One tired and hungry piece. What do you say to treating me to dinner?"

"Treating you?"

"Hey, you owe me. I just spent a night on the very hard, rocky ground by Sullivan's Lake with your kid."

"Okay. You're right, I owe you. But -- I hate to admit this. I'm not a very good cook. Grandma usually does the honors, and she went to visit a friend. When I called up to the house a minute ago, Carly said she and Wesley were eating macaroni and cheese out of a box."

"Good. You can take me out, then. The kids are already fed."

"Don't let Carly hear you call her a kid. She'll have your head."

Dylan grinned. "I'll be careful. So what about dinner?"

She hesitated, knowing there were a lot of reasons why they should not have a meal together. The only problem was, she couldn't think of what they were at this very second.

"I don't think it's a good idea," she got out.

"Since when has anything we've come up with been a good idea?"

She felt herself weaken at his mischievous wink. He looked so damn good. His hair was damp from a recent shower, his skin glowing from a fresh scrubbing. He looked delicious, he smelled even better. She was hungry, she realized. Unfortunately, it wasn't for food. But food was what Dylan had in mind. At least, she thought it was. There was a little gleam in his eye that she didn't quite trust, but what the hell. "All right. I'll take you to dinner. What kind of food are you in the mood for?"

"Hot and hearty and plenty of it."

"Then we'll go to Shenanigans. Uncle Harry serves up a mean Irish stew."

"Uncle Harry? Is everyone in this town related to you?"

"Just about."

"How did Uncle Harry escape the apple-farm tour of duty?"

"He married my Aunt Shannon, whose father used to run Shenanigans before she married my Uncle Harry. They contributed most of my cousins, by the way. They had nine children and now have a bunch of grandchildren, too."

"Sounds like a lot of shenanigans were going on in their house."

"Very funny. By the way, I did what you asked. I went through all the boxes and closets in the house."

"And?"

"The Goodwill people are going to love me and the garbage man is going to kill me. But I didn't find anything, Dylan, not even in the boxes from Gary's apartment. What do you think we should do next?"

"I think we should have dinner."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know, but for the moment, it's all I can handle. Your kid wore me out."

"Poor baby. I thought you said real men loved to camp."

"Real men don't have to take seven different eight-year-olds to the outhouse seven different times during the middle of the night."

"What about the other dads?"

"They seemed to be dead asleep. Nothing could rouse them."

"The old possum trick," she said with a nod. "Gary said they did it to him the first time he went on the camp-out, too. Some of those dads have older boys."

Dylan laughed. "The old possum trick? I should have figured that one out. I'm an idiot."

"No, you're not an idiot." She reached out and touched his shoulder. "You're a nice guy. A really nice guy."

* * *

Nice guy -- the kiss of death, Dylan thought, still thinking about Rachel's comment as he dipped his overly large spoon into a huge bowl of Irish stew at Shenanigans.
No self-respecting guy ever aspired to be nice. Successful, charming, good-looking, maybe even a little bad, but nice -- she might as well have told him she thought of him as a brother.

"How's the stew?" Rachel asked.

"Huh?"

"The stew. You were scowling at it like something tasted really awful."

"It's fine. I was thinking about something else."

"Want to share?"

"Not really. How about some more bread?"

She pushed the basket of warm rolls across the table and watched while he slathered a piece with some particularly fine-tasting garlic butter.

"This is great," he mumbled, his mouth still full.

"I'm glad you like it. So was the camping trip a pain?"

"No, it was fun. I had a good time."

"Really? Or are you just being nice again?"

"I am not nice," he grumbled. "Stop saying that."

"It's a compliment."

"Not to a guy it's not."

She rolled her eyes. "I will never understand men if I live to be a hundred."

"We're not the mysterious ones. That's you and your female cohorts."

"Is that something you men came up with at the campfire after the boys were in bed? Gary used to say that the dads gossiped like a bunch of hens at the campfire."

"Men don't gossip. We share information."

"Good. Then how about sharing some of that information with me?" She leaned forward, and he felt a catch in his chest as her blond hair caught the light and her blue eyes sparkled. She really was a beautiful woman, not the pretty young girl he remembered but a woman with life and love sharpening her features, adding wisdom to her eyes and tenderness to her smile.

"Dylan, I asked you a question," she said.

"Sorry. I got distracted."

"By what?"

"You."

"Oh."

He smiled at the familiar flush that crept up her cheeks. "There it goes again, like a red flag saying
stay back
."

She put her glass of water to her cheeks. "It's warm in here, don't you think?"

"It's always warm when we're together."

"I think you're trying to distract me from my question. What happened at the campfire? Did the other dads wonder who you were and why you were there?"

"Let's see... there were the usual questions, nothing too intense. I did have a private chat with Lance, the pharmacist."

"He's a good guy. Gary liked him a lot."

"Lance liked Gary, too." Dylan paused. "He did say something, Rachel. It's probably completely irrelevant, but it made me wonder."

"What?"

"He said Gary told him he'd been under a lot of stress and had had some chest pain."

"Chest pain? You mean like a heart attack?"

"Just some pain, tightness. I think it was probably stress. Lance told Gary to see a doctor. Do you know if he did?"

Rachel thought about that for a moment. "Yes, I think so. He had a doctor in the city, a woman. Her last name was Flanders. I could check the bills
again,
see when he last went in. He didn't have regular checkups, but I know he mentioned seeing her a couple of times."

"It's something to look into."

"Why? I don't see the connection. Oh …"

He saw the light come on in her eyes. "If he wasn't feeling well as he came down the mountain –"

"He could have swerved across the divider or lost control of the car," she finished. "Maybe that's it, Dylan. Maybe we've been going down the wrong road."

"It's possible. It doesn't explain the rest, but..."

"You mean Laura."

"Yes. We still have to figure out her place in all this. Hey, you better eat; you still have a full bowl."

"I'm not that hungry," she said.

"Sorry. We should have saved this conversation for later."

"It's fine. I'm saving too many things for later as it is."

"Like what?"

"Wesley."

"What's wrong with Wesley?"

"Nothing's wrong. Everything is right, too right." She folded her hands on the table. "Okay, here's the deal. I met with Wesley's teacher on Monday and she told me that Wesley is a genius."

He relaxed at her words. "I told you he was a smart kid."

"He's not just a smart kid. He's reading at a high school level and doing math problems that no one has taught him how to do. And his writing is way up there, too."

"Wow, that's amazing. Great, though."

"It would be great, but Mrs. Harrington says Wesley needs a special school for gifted children so he can be truly challenged and still be in an environment appropriate for his age and emotional development. Needless to say, there aren't any such schools around here."

"Where are they? San Francisco?"

"And other big cities. But I can't move Wesley. I can't uproot him. This is where he feels safe and loved."

Now he saw her problem, and saw it more clearly than she had probably intended. "This is where you feel safe and loved," he said quietly "Isn't that the real problem?"

"I'm a horrible person," she whispered, "always putting myself before everyone else. I've got to stop doing that."

"You're not a horrible person. You've made a good life for yourself here, and you don't want to leave."

"But by staying I might be denying Wesley the education he deserves."

"You know what?"

"What?"

"You need some time to think about what you want to do. It's been a rough year. Give yourself a break. You don't have to do anything about Wesley's schooling right this second, do you?"

"Not this second, but probably sooner than I want, which would be when Wesley is eighteen years old. I'm not even sure I'll be able to let him go then. Carly seems to think my hold on people is the same as a death grip."