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As the door slammed behind Gabe, Erin turned toward the stairs and began her slow climb upward. She was bone-tired. Beneath that fatigue beat a slow rhythm of happiness. Jenny had come to her, not in anger and resentment but with forbearance and acceptance.
Gabe agreed, or more accurately, had been forced to agree to let her see Jenny on a regular basis. Had she been unfair to pressure him so relentlessly? The long years of his silent deceit played across her mind. No. Never again would she accept his high handed tactics without fighting back.
That thought sustained her through that night and the next morning. She was almost beginning to feel this knotty problem could be untied without anyone being hurt.
Later that afternoon, she drove the short distance to Liz's farm to tell her sister the good news.
They were seated at Liz's kitchen table drinking iced tea when Erin broke her good news. "Gabe has agreed to let me see Jenny."
Liz Cantrell was four years older, two inches taller and five pounds heavier than her sister. She bore a remarkable resemblance to Erin. They both possessed the same fine bone structure, the same luxuriant fall of hair and the same huge, heavy-lashed eyes. Liz's hair was a darker hue of red. Her eyes were a fickle shade of hazel that could crystallize in moments of anger to pure amber. Those eyes were flashing now. "You believed him?" She set her glass on the table and narrowed her gaze in her sister's direction. "When did you talk to Gabe?"
Erin related the details of Jenny's visit to her house the night before, and how Gabe came in the wee hours of the morning to retrieve her.
All through her long, sometimes rambling account, Liz frowned and made little clucking sounds under her breath. She listened without interruption until Erin completed her lengthy report. She frowned and took a quick sip of tea before saying. "You finally stood up to him. It's about time."
Erin drew a long breath. "I was so angry with him. I still am."
"I can see why," Liz replied.
Erin stared down into her glass. "He should have watched Jenny more closely. Something terrible could have happened to her on the way to my house last night."
Liz shook her head. "No parent can watch a child twenty-four hours a day. Gabe thought she was in bed—" She stopped. "I can't believe I'm defending that man."
"He lied to me and then lied about lying." A pained expression flitted across Erin's face. I hope he will admit the truth and set this mess straight, for Jenny's sake."
"Ha!" Liz laughed contemptuously. You're an idiot if you believe concern for Jenny will move Gabe. He may be playing nice now, but watch him."
Erin wrapped her hand around her frosty glass and felt the cold slide through her fingers and up her arm to find lodging around her heart. "Do you think Gabe has some ulterior motive for agreeing to let me see Jenny?"
"Of course, he has an ulterior motive. He wants you to drop your suit against him. He knows if the case comes before a decent judge in an unbiased court you have a better than average chance of winning." Leaning across the table, she glared at Erin. "You're not thinking of dropping your custody suit, are you?"
"No, I'm not." Erin spoke slowly. "There was a time I believed Jenny was safe and secure, and most of all, happy with Gabe. What happened last night has changed my mind. Jenny is afraid of him. I can understand that."
Liz's perfectly chiseled features set in severe lines. "Are you afraid of Gabe?"
"I was once," Erin admitted. "He has a ruthless side that made me reluctant to push him too far."
Liz asked, "And now?"
"Sheldon taught me that you either fight the world or withdraw from it. He chose to withdraw. I choose to fight."
"And you can win," Liz assured her. "Any judge with half sense will see that Jenny will be better off with you and Charles and Mary than she is with that tyrant of a father, an overbearing step-grandmother, and a retarded step-aunt.”
Liz was overlooking one important fact that was of grave concern to Erin. "Jenny doesn't know me, or Charles, or Mary. She's been with Gabe all her life."
"And why is that?" Liz asked. She didn't wait for a response. "I'll tell you why, it's because Gabe had no qualms about taking her from you." She raised her hands and clenched her fists in frustration. "His taking your child from you was a deliberate, malicious act of revenge."
Erin wanted to be fair. "He believed I had betrayed him, and given what happened to him in the past, I can see why he did."
Liz lowered her hands and her voice. "It was more than that and we both know it. He never thought you were good enough for him. Neither did Cora. You were the housekeeper's daughter and he was Gabriel Harrow, lord of the manor."
Sweet recollections drifted across Erin's troubled mind. "Maybe Cora felt that way. Gabe didn't. Underneath that impervious exterior, there's a part of Gabe that's decent and vulnerable."
Liz hooted, "Gabe Harrow is vulnerable?" She shook her head in disbelief. "That man is a callous no-good."
Erin pushed her glass around on Liz's shiny kitchen table. The cold around her heart moved to shiver down her spine. "He's also Jenny's father. She needs him in her life. I want to make peace with him."
"I suppose you're right," Liz acquiesced, but most ungraciously. "Be careful."
Erin was touched by her sister's concern. "You're worrying needlessly."
A smile lit Liz's face. "Let's talk about something more pleasant."
Erin was more than happy to do that. "I'll have Jenny next weekend, from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. I would like to bring her out to meet you and Logan and the boys."
"That would be great. How about coming for Sunday dinner?" Liz clapped her hands. "Logan and Josh and Rick are all going to love this."
Erin thought how lucky her sister was to have three wonderful men in her life. It was not until Liz laughed with pleasure that she realized she had given voice to that reflection.
"Logan is a man, in every sense of the word. Josh thinks he is. To me seventeen is still a kid—and Rick? Don't call my baby a man."
Erin reminded her sister, "Rick is fourteen-years-old. That definitely takes him out of the baby category."
"He will always be my baby." Liz pushed her chair back. "I have to start dinner. Will you stay?"
"Thanks, but I can't. Mary's expecting me." Erin drank the last of her tea and reached for her handbag. "I have a million things to do." That was a lie. She had nothing to do. The evening stretched before her lonely and long. She came around the table and gave her sister a hug. "Take care, I'll see you next Sunday."
Liz called after her, "Bring Charles and Mary, if they'd like to come."
Erin paused to take her car keys from her handbag. "Charles and Mary are driving to Cedar Gap next weekend to see Mary's mother. It will be just Jenny and me." She pushed the screen open and hurried across the porch toward her car.
As she got into her Lincoln and turned the key in the ignition, feelings of isolation and loss moved in around her sense of well-being. At times like this, she realized how bare her existence was. She had Charles and Mary and she was grateful for their friendship. Now she had visits from Jenny to look forward to. She wanted so much more than good friends and an occasional visit from her daughter. She wanted a man she could love and respect. She wanted to be a real mother to Jenny. She wanted what Liz had. She gave herself a mental shake. You're jealous of your own sister, shame on you. Those feelings of defeat and isolation refused to go away.
As Erin neared the city limits of Summerville, she slowed her vehicle. She couldn't shake the feeling of being disconnected from all the things that really mattered in life. Moved by an impulse she neither welcomed nor understood, Erin swung her car off the main highway and in the direction of the little house she and Liz lived in when they were children. It was a place that until now, she had carefully avoided.
As she stopped in the driveway of a shabby little two-bedroom frame house, she recalled the shattering event that changed her life—her father's untimely death.
Erin was barely six-years-old. She remembered like it was yesterday. A tall policeman stood in the doorway of the little house, holding his cap in his hand, looking awkward and ill at ease.
After receiving the news that her husband was dead from a heart attack, Erin's mother said, "He's only forty-two-years old and he's never been sick a day in his life."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ryan."
Her mother dropped down on the edge of the shabby living room couch. "My life is over too."
Erin tugged at her mother's skirt. "Is my life over?"
"Oh, darling, no," Faye Ryan wiped at her tears. "What Mommy meant is that our life here is over. You and Liz and I will make another life in some other place."
They would never have managed to make that new life if it hadn't been for Stephen Palmer. Steve worked with Erin's father. He lost his wife to some obscure disease shortly before Tim Ryan's sudden demise. He was left with a small daughter to bring up alone. Of all the mourners, friends, and relatives who sorrowed over Tim's passing, after the fuss and formality of the funeral was over, only Steve Palmer remained faithful and constant through the ensuing days, months, and years.
Erin's mother was unskilled and sadly lacking in education. She was forced to take the most menial of jobs. Somehow, over the next ten years, she managed to keep a roof over her daughters' heads, clothes on their backs and food in their stomachs. It was always a struggle.
Through those years, Steve remained a staunch friend. His success in his house-moving business enabled him to help the little family when Faye would permit it. Faye Ryan was a proud woman. She only relented when there was no other alternative. She was always careful to repay each loan she got from Steve. She always added the going rate of interest.
Erin often wondered why Steve and Faye didn't marry. Even though Faye was several years older than Steve, there existed between them a rare bond of friendship and understanding. It never grew to be more than that. After a while Erin realized it never would.
It was Steve who was responsible for Faye being hired as the Harrow's housekeeper. He had done some construction work for Joshiah Harrow and heard him mention he needed a housekeeper. He encouraged Faye, "Why don't you apply?"
Faye's eyes rounded in fear. "I'd be scared to go near that big house and those society people."
"Nonsense," Steve scolded. "You've worked as a maid at the hotel all these years. That more than qualifies you as a housekeeper." He put an affectionate arm around Faye's work-worn shoulders. "Promise me you will go down to Mr. Harrow's office tomorrow and talk to him."
"I don't know." Faye hesitated, "What if—"
"No what ifs," Steve told her sternly. "Think what it would mean to your girls if you had a job like that. You could send Liz to that secretarial school she wants to attend and who knows, maybe Erin could think about going to college."
The sound of a horn behind her startled Erin from her reverie and brought her back to the present with a start. How long had she been daydreaming?
A man in a pickup stopped behind her and was leaning out his window. "Hey, lady, you're parked in my drive."
"I'm sorry." Erin started her car and backed from the driveway.
The man wheeled into his drive and stuck his head out the window again. "No problem. Are you looking for somebody?"
Should she tell him she was looking for the little girl she lost somewhere in the decline of passing years? "No, thank you."
Erin became aware once again of the world around her. A reluctant sun hung low in the western sky. Night birds twittered in the branches of the tall oaks that stood like custodians in the front yard of the little house.
Erin put her car into gear and pointed it toward Hackberry Street.
By the time she reached her drive, twilight had crept in almost unnoticed. Erin sat for a few minutes, watching early evening weave its magic spell before she took her keys from the ignition, got out of the car and went into the house.
As she came through the front door, Mary called from the kitchen, "You're home. I was beginning to worry."
Erin dropped her handbag on the table in the foyer and walked toward the back of the house. "Am I late for dinner?"
"No." Mary appeared in the doorway. "Did you have a nice visit?"
From somewhere inside the kitchen, Charles called, "How are Liz and Logan and the boys?"
"Fine," Erin said as she squeezed past Mary and into the kitchen. "Something smells good."
"I made chicken and rice." Mary moved from the table to the stove and back again, carrying dishes and food. "I made an extra casserole and put it in the freezer. You can reheat it for you and Jenny when she comes next weekend for her visit."
Erin's hand rested on the back of a kitchen chair. "Jenny and I are going to Liz's for Sunday dinner. She invited us today."
Mary put a bowl on the table. "Maybe you should clear it with Mr. Harrow before you take Jenny there."
Erin sat in her chair and scooted it near the table. "I don't need anyone's permission to take my daughter anywhere. Gabe knows we're going. He doesn't like it, but he knows he can't stop me."
Charles seated himself across from her. "Be careful Erin."
Liz had said those same words to her earlier in the day. "Do you think he might try to stop me?
Mary chimed in, "He's teasing you." Her gaze swung to Charles. "Aren't you?"
Charles laid his napkin across his lap as he shook his head. "No. I'm not. I don't trust that man."
Erin thought he wasn't the only one. "Liz has her doubts too, but enough about Gabriel Harrow. Tell me about your plans for next weekend."
The meal was eaten amid conversation about Charles and Mary's plans for the coming weekend. They were excited about their trip to Cedar Gap. "We're going to take Mamma to the rodeo and the stock show," Mary said, as she ladled food onto plates.
Erin suddenly realized that all she had to offer her daughter during a three-day weekend was one Sunday Dinner. "I should have planned something more for Jenny. I hope she won't be bored."
"Never you mind," Mary comforted, "Jenny won't be bored, she's going to be with you."
Erin wasn't sure her company was a guarantee against boredom. "All the same, I should plan some activities." She would think about that tomorrow. "Tell me more about your trip."
After dinner Erin took her coffee to the front veranda and sat in the porch swing. Night had long ago enfolded twilight in its soft embrace. She leaned back, sipped her coffee, stared toward the heavens and let her mind drift back over the events of the day. Liz's warning to be wary of Gabe's intentions returned to play through her head like some old refrain. By sheer will power she stopped those thoughts only to have them replaced by recollections of her visit to the little house on Blum Street. What possessed her to go there? That place held nothing but sad old memories.
"Erin?" Mary came through the screen door. "You have a phone call."
Gabe wouldn't dare call and say he changed his mind about Jenny's visit, or would he? "Who is it?"
"I don't know." Mary came across the veranda, handed Erin a cell phone and sat beside her in the porch swing.
Erin mouthed a polite, "Thank you," as she put the phone to her ear and offered a tentative, "Hello."
Marc Renfro's rich baritone rang out loud and clear. "Erin? This is Marc."
Erin got a tighter grip on the phone. "Yes, I know. I recognized your voice."
"You did? Then I have made an impression." How assured and confident he sounded. "I'm glad I caught you. How have you been?"
"I have been okay." Erin braced herself. She suspected Marc was going to ask for another interview and she didn't think she was up to that. "Can I do something for you?"
Laughter rumbled in her ear. "What a question and yes, you can. You can bid me welcome. I'm coming to Summerville. I should arrive sometime next Saturday afternoon. I'll be there for a couple of weeks. We're doing a background story as a prelude to broadcasting Steve Palmer's new trial."
Erin thought of all the foreign and exotic places that Marc must have visited over the years and chuckled. "Bring along a good book or two. Summerville is not the most exciting place in the world."
"I think it could be." Marc's voice was seductively soft. "Will you have dinner with me next Saturday night?"
His dinner invitation was the last thing Erin expected. "I'm sorry. I can't. My daughter will be with me over that weekend."
"You're seeing your daughter now?" Marc's voice lifted in surprise. "That's great. And hey, that's no problem. Bring her along. I'd love to meet her."
"That's very kind of you, but this will be Jenny's first visit with me." He was one pushy man. "I think it would be best spent in the privacy of home and not in some public place where we might be noticed."
"And someone like me would draw even more attention, right?"
He was arrogant too. "Right."
"Still, I'd love to meet your daughter and I'll bet she would love to meet me."
What an egotistical statement. It was also true. Erin could imagine how excited Jenny would be to count as an acquaintance a celebrity like Marc Renfro. "I'm sure she would, maybe some other time."
"You'd like to see me again, too." Marc tagged his statement with a husky, "Wouldn't you?"
He was openly and unashamedly flirting with her. Erin wasn't sure how to respond. How could she tell him, and still spare his enormous ego, that she wasn't interested? "Maybe you can come to the house for lunch one day before you go back to New York."
Marc answered with complete aplomb. "I have a better idea. I'll come to you house for dinner next Saturday night."
Erin thought he had some nerve inviting himself to her home, as if he were an old friend. She couldn't object without seeming rude and ungrateful to someone who had been so willing to publicly champion her cause. "I'm not sure..."
"Is sevenish okay?"
"I...guess so."
"See you then." He hung up the phone.
Erin closed her phone and turned to gawk at Mary. "Marc Renfro just invited himself here for dinner next Saturday night."
"You wanted something exciting for Jenny. Now you have it." Practical as always, Mary added. "You can serve them chicken and rice. I'll make an apple pie for dessert."
"He invited himself."
"Sometimes aggressiveness pays off." Mary took the telephone from Erin's limp fingers. "Think how pleased Jenny is going to be."
It was not Jenny that Erin was concerned about. "I don't want Marc getting any wrong ideas."
Mary's brows pulled together across her prominent nose. "About what?"
"About him and me; it's been a while since I've had to fend off an interested male, but I still recognize the signals. Marc was coming onto me."
"There's nothing wrong with that," Mary said. "Sheldon's been dead for almost a year. It's time you got on with your life."
What Mary didn't understand, or more accurately, what Mary didn't want to accept was that Erin was getting on with her life. She was working to win her daughter's respect and hopefully, her love. She was trying to make amends for past mistakes. That was the sum total of her present and her future. "It wouldn't be wise to get involved with a man like Marc Renfro."
Mary's smile reduced to a grin. "Involved? The man is coming to dinner, that's involved? And what do you mean, a man like Marc Renfro?"
Erin smiled. "Egotistical and shallow, Marc's a playboy, a self-confessed rogue and a confirmed bachelor."
"Sheldon was a confirmed bachelor until you came along," Mary reminded her.
How could Mary compare a man like Sheldon Bennett to the likes of Marc Renfro? "Sheldon was nothing like Marc."
"Sheldon was a man, so is Marc."
"And there the comparison ends."
A sudden gust of annoyance shook Mary. "Why not enjoy Marc's company while he's around? It sure beats being alone."
"I'm not alone. I have you and Charles. I'm seeing Jenny again." Erin spread her hands. "What more could I ask?"
"So much, so very much, more," Mary wrapped her long skinny fingers around Erin's arm and gave her a little shake. "Erin, my dear, you will always have Charles and me. We love you like the child God never saw fit to give us. That's not enough to fill all the empty spaces in your life. You need a husband who will love you, one you can love back."
As wonderful as that sounded, Erin doubted it would ever come to pass. "I've had two husbands." One she had loved with all her heart and he couldn't love her back; the other had loved her and try as she might she was never able to return that love. "I've been divorced and widowed." What made her think she'd be lucky enough the third time around to match love with love? "That's enough."
"You," Mary said with emphasis, "are becoming a cynic."
"And you are an incurable romantic."
"I'm an optimist too, so I keep hoping." Mary stood, stretched and yawned. "This romantic optimist is about to call it a day. Good night."
"Good night. I'll be in soon." It was a long time before Erin left the porch swing and went into the house.
