Stay (Dunham series #2) (16 page)

“But Nessie—”

“Not another word, Pops. This was his decision and
as you can see, he’s not heartbroken about Simone’s passing or
getting the hell out of this shithole.” His mouth tightened and she
sighed. “Please let me come back for you,” she begged. “Please. I
can give you such a much better life than this.”

“I vowed before God and a priest I’d stay with your
mama, Vanessa Nicole,” he said solemnly. “An’ I’m gonna. Don’t
matter what she does ’cause what she does is on her at Judgment
Day.” He crossed himself. “Only matters what I said I’d do.”

Vanessa relented because that was completely true,
and bent to hug him. Nephew stormed out the door without a backward
glance or a word to his grandfather. “I love you, Pops,” she said,
pretty sure it would be the last time she’d ever see him alive.

“I love you, too, Nessie.”

But not enough. Never enough.

She left then and found Nephew sulking in the front
seat, his box wedged between his knees and the dash.

“What’s your problem?”

His mouth tightened. “Why do you love him?”

She shrugged, understanding instantly. “He’s my
father.”

He said nothing to that and she sighed, turning the
key to release that glorious roar and cover the awkwardness.
“Look,” she said when they finally turned out onto the highway,
“until you choose a new name and it gets carved in stone, I’m
calling you Nephew. Get used to it.”

“Fine with me.” As they ventured south, he began to
perk up. “Where are we going first?”

“UPS to ship your box. It’ll be there tomorrow,” she
said and ruffled his hair.

That done, Vanessa herded him into the salon at
Wal-Mart and had his hair cut to a respectable length, which was to
say, short. Very, very short. He squinted into the mirror and
didn’t let loose one word of protest. That was suspicious.

“You really can’t see worth a damn, can you,
Nephew?”

He looked up at her, his brow wrinkled, and said,
bemused, “I don’t know.”

She sighed and dragged him twenty feet to the
eyeglasses shop for an exam and had orders for glasses and contacts
sent to the Wal-Mart in Ava.

“Oh, my,” Vanessa murmured when she saw the
prescription, then looked up. “Okay. Clothes. If you don’t like
anything here, let me know and I’ll take you to Target.”

He looked at her, surprised. “You’re going to let me
pick what I want?”

Vanessa’s soul started to hurt. Was this how Knox
had felt before he’d asked Giselle to take her shopping for
clothes? At least she didn’t have to explain what a period was and
how to deal with it, like Giselle had had to do. “Yes, Nephew. Why
would I make you wear clothes you don’t like? Except, I’d prefer it
if you at least matched.”

She stood outside the changing room door holding
clothes Nephew had chosen. She’d tried to estimate his size, but
had struck out three times now. Twelve must be an odd age for a
boy, she decided, because almost nothing fit him well. When he came
out of the dressing room for the last time, she muttered, “Well,
it’ll have to do.”

That done, Vanessa found a medical supply company
and arranged for an electric scooter to be delivered to her father
in the morning.

Nephew stayed with Vanessa in her motel room that
night and she made him shower over and over and over again.

They left early Wednesday morning and though she had
absolutely no reason to pass by the courthouse on her way out of
town, she did anyway, looking for a glimpse, a sign, anything. But
the only sign of Eric was the same one that stood where she’d first
seen it, across the street from the courthouse.

Cipriani Kenpo

A bittersweet pain poked through her breastbone. He
knew what she’d wanted from him when she was thirteen: a “thank
you,” some acknowledgment of what it had cost her to prove his
innocence. Now, as a woman who’d been schooled in love by the best,
whose second lover had proven to be as splendid as her first, she
also wanted a whole lot of other things from Eric Cipriani, only
one of which was sex.

Shocking, is what it was.

Why
had he come to her motel room Sunday
morning with an offer of breakfast—and possibly more—when he had a
fiancée at home? And after he’d thoroughly humiliated her for
asking an important question? There was only one answer to that: He
was still the dog he’d been in high school. He certainly had not
knocked on her door to say what he should’ve said years ago.
Indeed, it was almost as if he’d forgotten all about it.

She got mad all over again and the speedometer
measured every rise in her temper, leaving behind that cesspool of
a town
and
its prosecutor.

Who still hadn’t said “thank you.”

* * * * *

16: At the Foot of Hardscrabble Hill

April 2010

“Aunt Vanessa,” Vachel demanded late one afternoon
in early April as he burst in the back door with his usual
post-siesta energy. “What’s going on? There’s a missionary out
weeding a flower bed. They’re not supposed to be doing stuff like
that.”

“His companion’s father died and he doesn’t have
anything else to do right now,” Vanessa said as she tended the
sauté pan in which a week’s worth of parched corn sizzled. It was a
popular snack she put out on the bar instead of peanuts. “His
bishop’s taking them to the airport tonight so he can go home. I’m
going with them.”

“Why do you have to go?”

“I paid for the ticket. I have to go so I can
provide ID.”

It was late when Vanessa returned from Springfield
with two very quiet men. The lone elder and his bishop disappeared
down a dimly lit path to gather his things from the missionaries’
cottage, then left to stay with the bishop’s family until he was
assigned a new companion. Vanessa climbed the back steps of the
mansion wearily, then trudged up to her office to check her
email—

—then suddenly dropped into her chair with a gasp
and a choke.

“Aunt Vanessa, I’m going out for— What’s wrong?”

She looked up from her laptop to see Vachel hanging
over the threshold by the doorjambs.

“Your grandfather died,” Vanessa murmured, dashing
her tears away. Not that she hadn’t expected it.

Vachel’s mouth tightened. “I’m not going back.”

“Yes, you are. Go pack.”

“I have things to do.”

“They’ll wait.”

“But—”

“This isn’t negotiable, Vachel,” Vanessa said,
giving her voice just enough harshness to make sure he knew she
meant every word. After all, she had backup. “We’ll leave tomorrow
morning.”

She knew that panicked look in his face, a look he
hadn’t had for a year now thanks to a plethora of good male
influence, regular therapy, and a bedroom suite that allowed him as
much space and light as he could get without being outdoors.

“I don’t want to go, either,” she said softly. “But
I loved my father and I think you loved him too.”

“No, I didn’t,” he flashed back, anger showing
through the panic. “He wouldn’t protect me.”

She couldn’t argue that, but she wouldn’t relent. He
growled and pushed himself away from the door, yanking it closed
with an angry slam. Vanessa sat and listened to him thump and throw
things around in his room; she didn’t have to wonder what he had
planned for the night.

He clipped down the stairs to raid the ice maker so
he could go check his crawdad traps—his release valve when he
couldn’t otherwise contain his anger.

She looked back at the screen.

Subject: Your father

Reply-to: [email protected]

I didn’t know if anyone would let you know. His
obituary is attached.

EC

Vanessa didn’t kid herself she grieved for her
father; she didn’t. He had earned his rest and she only wished she
could ask him how Whittaker House stacked up to heaven. But she
could stop worrying about him now, about his obstinance and his
willingness to live with LaVon, about why she even cared since he
hadn’t protected her or fed her. However, before Knox, Vanessa had
had Dirk to protect her, so she could afford to feel more charity
for her father than Vachel could, to feel some measure of love for
what little her father could give her. Vachel had had no one.

No, Vanessa didn’t grieve for her father. She
grieved for the messenger and for herself.

For what she still wanted that she couldn’t
have.

Eleven months, three weeks, and three days.

A week and a half shy of the year anniversary of
Simone’s death.

She knew, because she’d kept track. That fact
embarrassed her; it embarrassed her that a little thrill ran
through her at the sight of
his
email address in her
inbox.

She sighed as she re-read it. It wasn’t as if she
hadn’t expected the news, but not from
him
.

As long as she kept the image of him as a
seventeen-year-old with a bad reputation, questionable parentage,
and little to nothing in the way of potential and/or worldly
possessions, in orange and shackles at his arraignment, she had a
chance at keeping her libido from going out of control.

Ah, but now she’d seen him as a grown man,
successful in his own right, having come back to become a powerful
man in the county that had nearly beaten him.

She closed her eyes and dropped her head down on her
keyboard, oblivious to beeps. She wanted to kiss him—deep and
slow—wanted to wrap her legs around his waist, wanted to feel his
naked body against hers, in hers—

The passion in his voice when he had asked her to
breakfast . . .

The hungry way he had watched her the two days she’d
spent at the courthouse arranging for Vachel’s guardianship . .
.

It had taken every bit of self-control Vanessa had
developed over the years to ignore him, ignore that, ignore what he
obviously wanted from her when she wanted it so badly, too.

For reasons she didn’t understand, she had
immediately visualized him here, on her turf, in her life.

At Whittaker House.

But he had a fiancée then and he had a wife now and
he had had no business asking her to breakfast or watching her
that
way—and
why
would she want a man like that
anyway? And why was she aching over a married man?

Vanessa sat in her office chair, looking at her
phone it as if she could divine some meaning from it. In a fog, she
picked up the receiver and hit the speed dial by rote.

“My father died,” she said without preamble. “The
wake is tomorrow night.”

“Oh? You going?”

“Yeah. He was the only member of my family I cared
about.”

“Mmmm.” Knox held the phone away from his mouth to
talk to Justice for quite a while and Vanessa could hear them
rapidly trying to arrange a plane ticket. Then, “Okay. I’ll be out
tomorrow. Hopefully by noon.”

“Thanks.”

“You all right?”

Vanessa heard the slight hesitance in his voice, the
question he wanted to ask that he wouldn’t. “Tired. Took one of the
elders to the airport to go home. His father died. Came back to
find out mine did, too. Then Vachel pitched a fit at having to go
back.” She knew she was babbling; he knew it, too. She continued to
rattle on, listing every item on the to-do list, though he knew it
as well as she, but he let her talk without interrupting. Then she
stopped.

“All right, kid. Well, I’m sorry.”

She swallowed. “Um, Knox? I— I wanted to tell you
I’m sorry for not— Uh, not coming to see you when you were in the
hospital.”

“Vanessa,” he said slowly after a long pause. “Have
I made you feel like I was unhappy that you didn’t?”

“No.”

“Where have I always run when things got a little
too hot in my kitchen?”

She sighed.

“And where did I spend two months getting waited on
hand and foot, getting chauffeured to therapy and doctor visits
after I got out of the hospital, after the wedding? And who covers
my ass when I want to commit suicide-by-sugar?”

“I don’t—” Crap. She was going to start crying. “I
don’t know what I would have done if you had died.”

He chuckled. “I did die.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Vanessa, what’s all this about? You’re not usually
so maudlin and I know this can’t be over your father.”

I’m lonely.

The thought shocked her because she hadn’t been
lonely since she was a child; her self-appointed guardian and his
minions had made sure of that.

Way too much to do.

Too many things to accomplish.

Nash.

Good Lord, how could she be lonely when she had a
mile-long to-do list, a vision of a far grander Whittaker House,
and a live-in lover?

But right now, she wanted to not feel so empty and
hopeless. She glanced at her email, Eric’s initials mocking
her.

It was the first time in almost two years—since
Justice and Knox had asked her to be on Eric’s arm for their
wedding—that she’d been able to put a name to those feelings.

“I— I, uh . . . I’m not— Er, well, I mean—” Knox
remained silent, waiting for her to say whatever she had to say. If
only she knew what that was. “I don’t know how to say it,” she
finally whispered.

“It’ll all work out,” he said abruptly. “You need to
have a little faith.”

Vanessa hung up after the appropriate goodbyes,
wondering what Knox expected her to have faith in and where he
thought she would find enough to do any good.

The camouflaged door between her office and Nash’s
suite opened. When closed, it blended into the woodwork flawlessly;
a careful inspection wouldn’t yield its presence, much less a
casual glance. There were secret passageways and concealed doors
like that all over Whittaker House and only Vanessa and her
architect knew them all.