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Gabe put the telephone receiver to his ear. "Hello."
Erin's voice sounded over the wire. "Jenny just called."
He could tell from the tone of her voice that she was upset. "Is there a problem?"
Erin snapped, "You know there's a problem. Jenny thinks you and I are going to be married. You planned this, didn't you? Now when we don't get back together it will be my fault. You had better find a way to tell her it's not going to happen without making me look like the villain."
He was appalled she would think he had such ulterior motives. "I can't talk now." He needed some time to pull his thoughts together and realign his defenses. "Jenny is waiting for me at school. Maybe we could get together sometime tomorrow."
Erin was emphatic. "No. You and I have to settle this now."
He didn't dare refuse. "We could come over later in the evening."
Erin was unyielding. "Not we. I want to talk to you alone. What time can I expect you?"
He agreed immediately. "I'll be there around eight o'clock."
"I'll be waiting, and don't be late."
Thirty minutes later Gabe pulled into the schoolyard. Jenny was waiting for him, a solitary little figure, sitting alone on an old stone bench near the deserted playground. I'll find a way to make everything right again, Jenny, I promise, I will. He stopped his car in the drive, honked his horn and waited.
Jenny looked up and waved before she collected her backpack and walked toward him. As she opened the car door, Gabe asked, "Did you have a good day?"
Jenny got in and threw her backpack into the back seat. "It was okay I guess. I'm glad summer school is almost over."
"So am I," Gabe replied. It was a conversation not unlike they'd had hundreds of times before, and yet it was different. The words hadn't changed, but the feelings had. The closeness he shared all these years with his daughter was gone and Gabe mourned the loss. He pulled out of the drive and into the afternoon flow of traffic. "I talked to Erin on the telephone today."
He expected a burst of spontaneous joy from his daughter. "So did I," she said. “After school I called and asked her if she's going to marry us. She said she hadn't decided yet. I think maybe she has and the answer is no."
His little girl was becoming an adult, and a cynical one at that. "Don't be so pessimistic. She asked me to drop by her house later this evening."
"I'm not invited?" There was a touch of jealously in Jenny's response.
Gabe felt the coldness of her withdrawal. "Erin wants to see me alone." He read in her hurt expression the impulse to question. Slowly, imperceptibly, a look of sad resignation framed her soft young features.
"Do you think she will marry us?"
Gabe didn't want to deal in negatives, not with so much at stake. "I think so. I hope so."
Jenny turned to stare out the car window. She didn't speak again until they pulled into the driveway of home. "Daddy, do you think you and Erin and I can ever be a family again?"
"Regardless of what happens," Gabe assured her, "you and I are a family. I'll always be here for you."
Jenny unfastened her seat belt. "I know, but it's not the same."
"Do you have homework?"
She nodded.
"Try to get it done before dinner."
"I can do it while you're at Erin's."
Gabe had never seen his daughter so dejected and defeated. "Cheer up. It could be good news."
Jenny smiled at him, but her eyes were pools of sadness. "I don't look for good news anymore. That way I'm not disappointed when it doesn't happen." She retrieved her backpack from the back seat, got out of the car and walked toward the house.
Gabe took his keys from the ignition and followed her inside.
That sense of gloom followed them to permeate the very atmosphere of the house. Dinner was a dismal affair. Cora seemed preoccupied with her own thoughts. Mavis was unusually quiet and withdrawn. Jenny's mind must have been a million miles away. Gabe stuck his fork in his mashed potatoes. If he couldn't convince Erin to give him a second chance, this was what he had to look forward to for the next twenty years. He renewed his resolve. He would win her back; he had to, for so many reasons, but most of all, for Jenny's sake. Erin was the one person who could bring sunshine and laughter back into this house and into the lives of the people in it. She could do that for him and Jenny. If Erin returned, no—when Erin returned, Cora and Mavis would have to go.
Cora's voice trespassed on his dreary thoughts. "Gabriel, would you like dessert?"
Gabe laid his napkin beside his plate. "No, thank you."
"Maybe you'd like more coffee?"
Gabe frowned. "No, thank you."
Cora turned, first to Mavis and then to Jenny. "Girls do you want dessert? I made a chocolate cake."
Mavis shook her head, signaling her refusal. Jenny mumbled a weak, "No, thanks."
"Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to cook." Cora stood and announced, "I'm having a slice of cake." She balanced her glass in her plate, and headed for the kitchen.
Jenny called after her, "Why don't you give Daddy a slice of cake to take to Erin? She loves chocolate."
Cora stopped in her tracks. Without turning, she questioned, "Gabriel?"
Gabe knew that tone of voice so well. "Yes?"
"You're going to Erin's house tonight?"
Gabe tensed as Jenny answered, "Yes, he is. Erin asked him over."
Gabe half-expected Cora to object, or complain; she didn't. Turning, she stared at him, her lackluster eyes empty and bleak. "If you'd like to take Erin a slice of cake, I'll wrap one for you."
Jenny scrambled to her feet. "I'll help. We can send some punch too. Daddy and Erin can have a party to celebrate if it's good news."
Once again, Cora stopped and turned to stare, this time at Jenny. "Celebrate? What good news are you expecting?"
Jenny pushed her chair under the table. "Daddy asked Erin to marry us. When she says yes, they can have a party."
The china plate in Cora's hands slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor. The crystal tumbler followed, exploding as it hit, sending shards of splintering glass across the tile floor. Over the resounding crash, she screeched, "You evil child! How dare you concoct such a ghastly falsehood?"
Jenny's hands tightened around the chair back. "It's not a falsehood! It's true."
Mavis cringed in her chair. "Mamma," her pitiful voice rose to a wail. "No. Don't."
Cora seemed oblivious to Mavis's cry. "This is even worse than opening someone else's mail." Her countenance crumpled like old parchment. She placed her hands over her face, and mumbled, "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."
"Jenny opened someone's mail?" Gabe frowned. "When did this happen?"
Cora stepped over the shattered remains of china and glass and leaned against the wall. "She opened Serena's letters to Joshiah."
When Gabe spoke, it was with a ring of authority. "You can hardly equate reading old letters to opening someone else's mail. The letters weren't sealed, I'm sure Jenny assumed—"
"But Daddy," Jenny interrupted. "The letters were sealed. I did open them." She rounded on Cora. "How did you know that?"
Cora sagged against the wall. "You must have told me."
"No! I didn't. I didn't tell a living soul."
The implications of what Jenny was saying burst into Gabe's consciousness with the force of an incendiary bomb. Was it possible that his father never saw those letters? If that was the case, only one person could be responsible for such a deception—Cora. A chaos of thought and passion mixed in his brain as suspicion closed around his heart like a clenching fist. "Sit down, both of you."
His tone forbad arguing. As Cora picked her way across the glass-littered floor, Jenny sat in her chair and put her elbows on the table.
Mavis cowered in her seat. She looked so frightened that for a moment, Gabe considered stopping his interrogation even before it had begun.
Cora sat down and hitched her chair toward the table.
Gabe's voice had a sandpaper edge. "Where did you find your grandmother's letters?"
A subdued Jenny hung her head. "They were in the attic."
That much Gabe knew. "Where in the attic?"
Jenny's head came up. "I swear I wasn't prying. It was an accident."
"What was an accident?"
"Let it go, Gabe," Cora admonished. "Can't you see that you're upsetting Jenny, and for no reason."
Gabe held up one hand. "You will have your turn to speak." He nodded toward Jenny. "Answer me."
"I found a secret place in the chimney flue." Jenny hung her head again, refusing to meet Gabe's gaze. "The letters were hidden there."
"Look at me when I speak to you. Tell me what happened."
Jenny lifted her eyes to stare at her father. "I sat down to look through a box of old pictures. When I leaned against the flue, I noticed the bricks were loose in one spot. I pulled one and it came out. I felt in the space inside and found the letters. They were tied with a piece of string."
Gabe asked, in a much milder tone, "Why didn't you tell me this before now?"
Jenny looked at him with tears glistening in her emerald eyes. "Cora told me not to tell. She said you had enough to worry about." Her answer stirred even more misgivings.
"You felt you could confide in Cora, but you couldn't confide in me?" Gabe hated to keep pressing his daughter for answers. There seemed to be no other way to tease the truth from this tangle of misunderstandings. "Why was that?"
"I didn't confide in Cora." Jenny twisted in her chair. "I didn't tell her anything she didn't already know. When she saw the letters, she said I had no business prying into secret places and if you knew, you'd be upset."
Gabe's steel-gray eyes bored into Cora's set face. "Is this true?"
Cora stared back with bold determination. "In essence, yes. If you will give me the opportunity, I can explain."
For what seemed an eternity, silence reigned as Gabe's harsh glare locked into Cora's defiant stare. Over the striking of the clock in the hall, Gabe asked, "Did my father know about those letters?"
"Of course, he knew, "Cora answered indignantly. "Do you think I secreted them away in the attic without his knowledge of their existence?"
"The thought crossed my mind."
Cora folded her arms across her chest. "You should know me better than that. I would never deceive Joshiah in such a manner."
Gabe wasn't completely convinced of that fact either. "Tell me about the letters."
Cora sighed and began, "The first one arrived a few months after we were married. I gave it to Joshiah, along with his other mail. He looked at the return address and slipped it into his pocket. I assumed he didn't want to read it in my presence. The other two came later the same week. I gave them to him and promptly forgot all about the entire incident."
Gabe lifted an eyebrow. "Your husband of a few months was receiving mail from his first wife and you weren't curious about the contents of those letters?"
"Joshiah told me all about Serena before we were married."
Gabe raised an eyebrow. "All about her?"
Cora's mouth pulled into a thin line. "Maybe not all, he did tell me of her many infidelities."
Gabe didn't pursue that subject since Jenny and Mavis were both watching and listening with avid interest. "Do you know how the letters got into the attic?"
Cora said with complete aplomb, "I put them there."
Gabe was careful not to let his surprise show. "Why?"
Cora's expression moved from troubled to pensive. "On an impulse, I suppose."
By sheer force of will, Gabe held onto his rising annoyance. "That's not an explanation. It's not even a good excuse."
Cora drew a long breath. "About a week after the last letter came, I found all three of them in the drawer of Joshiah's nightstand. Not one of them had been opened. When I asked him why he hadn't read them, he became very guarded and told me not to intrude into his affairs. That's when I realized how painful the situation was for him. I said I thought he should find out what Serena had to say. He became violently angry and told me to mind my own business."
"Which, obviously you did not do."
Cora countered swiftly, "Oh, but I did. The letters lay in that drawer for the next two weeks. Then we got the message that Serena had died. Joshiah seemed devastated. A few days later, I was cleaning house, taking things up to the attic to be stored, when I ran across them again, still unopened. I decided to stash them away for a while. I had every intention of returning them to the nightstand after Joshiah had some time to get over Serena's death."
"But you didn't," Gabe said, and then asked, "Why not?"
"Because I forgot about them." Cora was very near tears. "Joshiah never asked about them again, and over the course of time, they slipped my mind."
The Joshiah Gabe remembered would never have forgotten letters sent to him by Serena. He was set to say so, when he realized that both Mavis and Jenny were hanging onto his every word. He turned to his daughter. "Honey, why don't you and Mavis go upstairs for a while?"
"No, Daddy." Jenny's bottom lip protruded. "I want to stay."
What Gabe had to say, must be said to Cora alone. "All this talk is upsetting Mavis." He should have sent Mavis out of the room long before now. "Take her upstairs and entertain her while I discuss some things with Cora. You and I can talk later."
Mavis stood and ran trembling fingers through her hair. "Can I go, Mamma? Please, I want to go."
Gabe chided himself for not noticing her overwrought state before now.
Cora nodded. "Maybe that's best."
Jenny hung back. "But Daddy—"
Mavis reached for her hand. "Please, Jenny, let's go. We can play the game. I have to start all over again. Can you tell me how the story goes?"
"Okay." Jenny turned as she went through the door. "Don't forget, Daddy, you and I are going to talk as soon as you get back from Erin's house. I want to know everything she said to you."
As the sound of footsteps died slowly away, Gabe faced Cora. He knew of no kind way to say what must be said. "Tell me what really happened when Dad got those letters from Serena."
Cora's face flushed a deep red. "Are you calling me a liar?"
"I don't think you're lying. Neither do I think you're telling me all the truth."
"I knew the moment that woman came back, there would be trouble. Now look what she's done."
Her vindictive outcry took Gabe by surprise. "Are you talking about Erin?"
Cora wiped her nose on her napkin. "Of course I'm talking about Erin. Don't let her do this to you—to us. Don't fall under the spell of that evil woman again."
"Less than ten minutes ago you were calling my daughter an evil child. I won't tolerate such talk, not even from you." Gabe steadied his voice and clamped down on his anger. "This is not about Erin, it's about you and Dad and Serena's letters. I want to know why you put unopened messages my mother sent to my father in an obscure secret hiding place in the attic."
Cora refused to be intimidated. "I told you why."
"I don't believe you."
Cora sent him a grim, determined look. "I don't know what else I can say."
"Try the truth," Gabe answered coldly.
"I'm not lying! I've never lied to you."
There was a time Gabe would have believed that. Now he wasn't so sure. "Tell me again what happened. This time, I want every detail and every particular, beginning with the arrival of my mother's first letter."
Cora began to speak, slowly at first. Gradually, her voice gained momentum. Gabe sat in stony silence, listening as she spun with false and deceptive simplicity, a story that could have fooled his intellect, but not his heart. "I know my father too well to believe he refused to read Serena's letters."
Cora opened her mouth to reply. Before her lips could form words, Jenny came bounding into the room, her eyes huge in her pale face, her hair flying like a dark curtain behind her. She had an old shoe box under her arm. "Daddy, you have to see this and you have to see it now." She put the shoebox on the table and lifted the lid.
Cora's eyes dilated. Every ounce of color drained from her face. She pointed to the box. "Where did you get that?"
"Mavis had it," Jenny answered. "We were going to play the game when—"
Gabe interrupted. "Where is Mavis?"
"She's upstairs in her room." Jenny shoved the box in Gabe's direction. "Look, Daddy, it did exist after all."
Gabe gazed down and his blood froze in his veins. The box held two aged, nude Barbie dolls, and curled around them, was a man's finely tooled leather belt. Jenny picked it up and held it, outstretched for him to see. Inscribed across the back were four intricately chiseled, ornate letters: GABE. The word burned into Gabe's brain like a firebrand.
Insight like an electric flash exploded across the horizon of his understanding, revealing a fact more fatal than error: Erin had told the truth. His universe tilted and spun out of control. Confusion crowded his brain, rendering him speechless.
Jenny stretched the belt, now stiff and brittle with age, across the table in front of him. "Daddy, say something."
What was there to say? As order emerged from Gabe's confusion, one fact became crystal clear. Cora was responsible for this deception. It was a truth he was reluctant to accept, even now. He lifted the belt and ran his fingers across its tooled surface. "Go upstairs and bring Mavis down."
Since Jenny had lifted the lid on the shoebox, Cora sat cold, stiff and silent. She moved now like a zombie. "Don't involve my daughter in this debacle."
"She's already involved." Gabe thought he should be violently, furiously angry. All he felt was a tremendous sense of loss coupled with a vacant sensation in the pit of his stomach. Cora, the one person in the world he thought he could trust, had betrayed him.
No—
That wasn't true. He had betrayed himself—and Erin. "I want to know everything, beginning with how Mavis came to have this belt."
Cora wiped her eyes with a napkin. "It's over. In a way, I'm glad." She reached to touch his arm. "Everything I did, I did for you."
Gabe recoiled. "Answer my question." He was amazed that he could appear calm and detached. "How did this belt get into my house?"
Jenny stopped at the door. "Should I still get Mavis?"
Gabe shook his head. "No. Go up and sit with her."
Jenny objected, "But Daddy—"
This was not going to be a pleasant undertaking. "Go, Jenny. I'll call you down later." Could his daughter sense his confusion, his fear, and his terrible remorse? Gabe added a heartfelt, "Please."
"All right," Jenny agreed reluctantly. "Promise I can come down soon."
Gabe glanced at his watch. The hands pointed to seven-thirty. "Come back in thirty minutes and bring Mavis with you."
"You're going to be late for your date with Erin."
How could he face Erin now, or ever again? "Call her and tell her I've been detained."
Jenny backed toward the door. "She will want to know what time you will be there."
"Tell her I'll be in touch."
As Jenny disappeared down the hall, Gabe turned his attention to the pale woman seated next to him.
"I know you took the belt from Steve Palmer's office. What I don't know—what you are going to tell me—is when you took it and why."
Cora rested her elbows on the dining room table. "This is Erin's fault. If she had stayed away none of this would have happened."
If he ever released the coiled spring of rage inside him, he might do something savage and irrefutable. "Tell me when you took the belt."
"I suppose I'll have to now." Cora's distress was evident. "I didn't plan it." Her voice cracked, faltered, and then rallied. "You know how attached Mavis is to her Barbie dolls. Each one has a name and a place in her make-believe world. Early Sunday morning after her visit to Steve's the night before, she begged me to go back and fetch her dolls for her. It was almost noon before I relented and went. The place was open and empty. I went inside. I found the dolls in his office. I took them. The belt was there and I took it too."
"Like you took Serena's letters?"
"I'm not saying anymore." Cora's voice shook with anger. "Not until I find an attorney to represent me."
"I think you will, if not to me, to the authorities after I call them." Gabe stood. "You have one hour to get out of my house."
"Where will I go?" Lifting her hand, Cora implored, "Gabe, please don't do this. I love you like you were my own son. Everything I did, I did for you."
"You don't know the meaning of the word love." Rage pulsated through Gabe's blood. "You made me believe that Erin—" He couldn't complete the accusation. If he'd had an ounce of faith in Erin, she would still be his wife. "You lied to me over and over again."
A vulgar imprecation rose from deep in Cora's throat. "I'm not above lying again. Do you think anyone is going to believe you weren't a party to this little deceit?" She rocked back on her heels. "I don't think so. You had better stop and consider how much you have to lose before you decide to throw me to the wolves."
Gabe was stunned by her daring. "Are you threatening me?"
"I'm warning you. If you go to the authorities with some tale about how I took evidence from the scene of a crime, I will swear you knew all about it. I will vow it was a part of a plot to discredit your wife so you could gain custody of your daughter."
"You could never prove that!"
"And you can't disprove it," Cora reminded him with a sneer. "Don't push me. You will be sorry if you do." Her coarse features hardened. "You have the hour you gave me to reconsider. I'll be waiting for your decision." She spun on her heel and hurried from the room.
