Chapter Twelve

GABE LED THE WAY BACK TO TOWN, where they dropped off Kendall’s vehicle in front of the B and B, and then he drove her back to Main Street to pick up their dinner: sandwiches, huge dill pickles, and bags of salt-and-vinegar potato chips from the deli. Gabe half expected her to balk at his dinner choice, but true to her word, she calmly ordered her pastrami on rye and an unsweetened tea. Minutes later, they were heading back to his truck with their brown paper bag dinners in hand.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Gabe asked as he put the truck in gear and headed out of town to the highway.

She cast a suspicious look at him. “No . . . at least I don’t think so.”

“Good.” He grinned. “And I’m not telling you where we’re going.”

He realized he was asking for a lot of trust, considering they barely knew each other, but after finding her crying on the steps of her grandmother’s house, he figured she needed an escape from town. He drove back around the lake the way they’d come, but instead of turning toward Lakeshore Drive, he continued onto a dirt road that wound upward into the hills. They jostled over a rut, and Kendall reached up to steady herself with the grab handle.

“Sorry. The later in the season it gets, the worse the roads get. We only have the resources to grade it once a year if we’re lucky.”

“I guess that’s a good reason to have four-wheel drive, isn’t it?”

“Something like that.” He smiled and continued up the hill, then pulled off onto what was little more than a path. When he finally stopped, they were perched on top of a rocky promontory, the mountain sloping steeply down to the lake. The town was spread out before them in miniature like the buildings on a model railroad, simultaneously realistic and whimsical because of their tiny scale. It reminded him of the model he had been building in his CAD application today, reminded him of the things that couldn’t be communicated in a rendering.

Kendall opened the door and stood on the running board so she could take in the view. “Wow.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Gabe hopped out of the truck and withdrew a heavy wool blanket from the back seat. Then he grabbed their dinners and circled around to the front of the truck, where he climbed up on the hood. “You joining me?”

Kendall’s eyes widened, and then her face softened into a delighted smile. “Okay.” It took her a couple of tries to get onto the bumper, so he held out his hand and hauled her up next to him. She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want to dent your hood.”

“Trust me, you’re not heavy enough to dent my hood. Besides, can’t you see all the hail damage?” He indicated the golf ball–size dents that peppered the hood and the top of the truck.

Kendall cringed. “I bet that hurt.”

He shrugged. “I bought it this way. Made it more affordable, and I knew if I was going to be spending any time up here, I would need something rugged. Last March we got fifty inches of snow.” He peeked into one of the paper bags and handed it to her.

Instead of digging into her food, she scooted back against the windshield and stretched her legs out in front of her. The waning, pink-tinged sunset added a warm glow to her blonde hair, the color in her cheeks. She took in the view silently as the horizon melded into a collection of sherbet shades, the sky above it starting to drift into a hazy violet-blue. “This is beautiful.”

“One of my favorite spots.”

She cast him an amused look, but there was something guarded beneath it. “I bet you bring all the girls here.”

“When I was a teenager? Of course. It was known as Make-Out Point when I was in high school.” He grinned at her. “But I haven’t been up here since I was seventeen.”

She reached for her iced tea and took a sip while she considered his words. “I take it you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend.” She held up a hand. “I’m not fishing; I just figured you wouldn’t bring me here if you did.”

“No, I don’t have a wife. Or a girlfriend.” There had been someone back in Michigan, his coworker. He thought he and Madeline had potential, but that evaporated when he was let go from his job. Maybe she was afraid that the layoffs would rub off on her, or maybe she just hadn’t been that interested in him. Or maybe it was the fact that they’d seen each other on and off for over a year and they’d never slept together. He thought that made him a Christian and a gentleman, but he was finding that some women took it as an insult. They hadn’t been as in sync as he’d initially thought.

Gabe shifted the focus back to Kendall. “How about you?”

“No, I don’t have a wife or girlfriend.”

For a second, he wasn’t sure what to think, but then she cracked a smile. “No boyfriend or husband either.”

“Cute.”

“I couldn’t help it. You were very nonspecific.”

Gabe leaned back against the windshield beside her and reached into his bag for his sandwich. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you’re beautiful and accomplished, and you probably have men asking for your number wherever you go.”

She lifted a shoulder, which he took as grudging acknowledgment. “If they can’t be bothered to have a conversation with me first, I can’t be bothered to give them a call.”

He could understand that. He’d had a few of those interactions in Jasper Lake, though he’d chalked them up to the dearth of young single men in town. Which, he supposed, proved her point.

“Their loss,” he said finally.

Kendall fell silent and removed her own sandwich from the bag, then took a big bite. She chewed thoughtfully for a minute and lowered her food to her lap. “I don’t think I can do this.”

He glanced at her. “Eat the sandwich or sit here with me?”

A ghost of a smile. “Go through Connie’s house.”

He’d been wondering if she would say anything about that. It was part of the reason he’d brought her up here. Somehow, sitting on the top of the world made it easier to face your problems. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s like having amnesia. I know that this place is somehow connected to me, but I have no recollection of any of it. It doesn’t mean anything, even though I know it should. It feels like . . .”

“. . . an alternate reality?”

She cocked her head and studied him. “Sort of. You sound like you know how that feels.”

Gabe took a deep breath. He hadn’t intended on talking about himself, but now he felt compelled. “You know that whole rebellious phase I went through when I was twelve and thirteen?”

She nodded.

“Well, that was because I found out the man I thought was a family friend, the guy I called Uncle Bob, was really my father.”

Her eyebrows arched upward and her mouth rounded into an O.

“My father was always out of the picture, so my mom raised me by herself. It wasn’t easy. She was living off a secretary’s salary, which was enough to get by on but not enough to have any extra, you know?”

“How did you find out the truth?” Kendall asked softly.

“I got pneumonia one winter and ended up in the hospital. They wanted my family health history, and she told them she didn’t know about my father. But then when she thought I was asleep, she made a phone call. The next time she left the room, I hit Redial. It was ‘Uncle Bob’s’ office.” He made quotes with his fingers around the name. “I demanded to know what was going on, and she broke down and told me.”

“Wow. Who was he, then, that they kept his true identity from you?”

Gabe grimaced, a ghost of the disappointment and dismay he’d felt still present all these years later. “He was her boss. And he was married at the time. With two daughters.”

“Oh.” She took in the revelation. “I would be angry too.”

“I was furious. Even more so because he knew we were struggling and never paid her more. He ate up my gratitude when he brought me new soccer equipment for school or a bike for Christmas. I thought he was this great guy doing things out of the kindness of his own heart, when really he was a deadbeat who refused to take care of his own kid because he already had a family.”

“I take it you two haven’t reconciled?”

If she guessed that from his tone, he wasn’t hiding his bitterness as well as he thought. He let out a short laugh. “No.”

She reached over and placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry, Gabe. That’s terrible. I really can’t blame you for reacting the way you did.”

His eyes flicked down to her hand on his arm, but he kept his face impassive, not wanting to spook her. She had been so distant that touching him voluntarily seemed like a real act of trust. “Thanks. I wish I could say I was completely over it. I mean, I forgave my mom, and I have no doubt that things worked out for the best for me, but I still can’t understand what he was thinking.”

“Do his wife and kids know?”

“They got divorced. Ironically, his wife left him for someone else.” He made a face. “At that point, there wasn’t any real reason to hide it. His kids know now, which I assume means that his ex does too.”

“But he and your mom—”

“Barely speak. My reaction put a damper on that arrangement. She found a new job, a better job, and to my knowledge, they have very little contact.”

Kendall took her hand back and a pang of regret shot through him. He found himself hoping that she would return the trust and share something of her own life, but instead she just went back to her sandwich.

And then she asked in a small voice, “Do you know when my grandmother’s will was written? Do you think she knew where to find me and that’s why she named me as heir? Was it . . . some sort of deathbed change of heart?”

More regret shot through him, this time that he couldn’t give her the information she sought. “I’m sorry. I have no idea. Her will came as a complete surprise to everyone.”

“It’s just that . . . I was in four foster homes and a group home before I turned ten.” She shot him a sad smile. “I was sure that my mom was looking for me, so every time a family wanted to adopt me, I ran away or started causing trouble at school so they’d have to move me.”

An undercurrent of pain ran beneath her matter-of-fact tone, and he stayed quiet so she’d keep talking.

“Eventually I figured out that she wasn’t coming back. I stopped running away, stayed in the same school, and graduated.” She shrugged. “It was pretty okay. The Novaks were good people. It’s just that . . . if my grandmother knew I was out there somewhere, knew my full name, I should have been pretty easy to find. So why didn’t she?”

Gabe shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, Kendall. The date on the will was a couple of years before she died, so I don’t think it was a last-minute thing. Maybe she always held out hope you were out there somewhere. I wish I could tell you for sure.”

She nodded, her expression shifting to resignation. She opened her bag of chips and popped one after another into her mouth, crunching thoughtfully.

“Do you . . . do you think it would help to have some company to do the inventory?”

She stopped crunching and looked at him, her expression slightly suspicious. She swallowed hard, grimacing at the scrape of chips down her throat, and then said, “Are you volunteering?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“But you have work to do. You’re the mayor. It’s not like you can just take time off to help me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be very far away. I’ve got my laptop and my cell phone if anyone needs anything, and I can still spend a couple of hours in the office in the morning.” He also had two models to put together, two possible futures he was trying to compare and contrast for the city council, which meant that he would be spending a lot of late nights on his sofa with his dog. But the glimmer of hope he saw in her eyes made it impossible for him to do otherwise. She needed him, and he couldn’t keep himself from stepping up.

“I feel guilty for taking you away from your real duties,” she said, but the reluctance in her voice was waning.

“It’s fine. I promise. Plus, with two of us, it will take half as long. Though I warn you, I don’t know my Chippendale from my Chip and Dale.”

The joke elicited a sudden laugh from her. “One is a piece of furniture and the others are cartoon characters. I’m sure you’ll catch on quickly.” She sobered. “You’re sure? I really don’t want the entire town mad at me because you’re not doing your job.”

“Trust me, no one knows what a mayor actually does anyway. A couple of days out of the office isn’t going to kill me.” He stuck out his hand. “So do we have a deal?”

She hesitated, then placed her hand in his. “Deal.”

They shook and Kendall gave him a smile that warmed him to his very core. Once more, he was struck with the feeling of being a complete fraud, this time not because of his work abilities, but because he was pretending to be her friend.

When in reality, he was interested in so much more.