Shelby’s smile was so full it encompassed her whole face. Gemma tried to return it but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. She relaxed into the armchair and tried not to wince. This was her best friend’s dress fitting, and Gemma wasn’t going to mess it up. She’d been released from the medical center an hour ago, and all that was better left there. Especially after Dan had asked her so sweetly why she was crying, and she’d told him to leave.
Because she was a big coward.
He knew about Hal, but he couldn’t know what Hal left her.
Olympia sashayed her round figure into the room. The matron held a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade, which she deposited on the coffee table beside two platters of desserts.
If she could move her head without it pounding, Gemma would have probably taken three of each. Good thing.
Olympia clapped her hands. “Okay, ladies.” The woman’s eyes were shadowed, but no one said anything about the fact Antonia wasn’t here and apparently had no intention of showing up.
Olympia held out her hand to Shelby, who took it. “It’s time to try the dress on.”
At least three people squealed. One of them was Nadia Marie Carleigh, the town’s hairdresser. Gemma did her own hair color. Andra, the sheriff’s wife, sat with Nadia, who was round as a…not a house, more like a large farm animal—not that Gemma would ever say that to a pregnant woman, Andra least of all. Gemma would probably drop dead, alone, hours from now, and no one would ever know what killed her.
Andra waddled over and slumped on the arm of Gemma’s chair with an oof. She glanced down and smiled.
Gemma smiled back, trying not to make it obvious the woman scared the Charles Dickens out of her. “How are you?”
“I’m carrying this thing around twenty-four seven, how do you think I am?” Andra touched her belly. Her words had a tone, but the way she rubbed her stomach softly was louder.
“Ready to pop. Isn’t that what people say?”
Andra snorted. “I wish it was that easy to get one of these things out.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Never married. Never kissed…okay, maybe there was that one time, but it wasn’t Dan, so it didn’t count.
Andra looked like she wanted to say something, probably like, It’ll happen for you. But she didn’t, which was appreciated since Gemma despised when married people thought that a wedding and babies were the endgame of every single person. Gemma got enough drama writing fiction.
“How’s your head?”
Gemma shrugged but kept her attention on the door, waiting to see Shelby come back to the living room in the dress she would wear to marry Elliot in a couple of days.
“I heard you were at Dan’s farm when you fell.” Gemma didn’t move. Had pregnancy destroyed Andra’s interrogation skills? “Did you know he’s officiating the wedding?” The woman was blatantly rooting around for dirt. Andra and Nadia had likely decided Gemma would be more receptive to Andra than Nadia. Or Andra drew the short straw.
Gemma held her facial expression still. “Of course he’s doing the wedding. He’s the pastor.”
“I wasn’t sure you knew that.”
“Worried I’ll corrupt him?”
Andra hadn’t moved, either. And her face never gave anything away, ever. “Could you?”
“Nope.” She’d kinda tried, years ago in a desperate move. She had way too much respect for him to do that “tempting” stuff anymore. It hadn’t worked anyway.
“Well then.”
Gemma looked away, not the winner in the contest of wills between her and Andra. It could be construed as a draw. Better luck next time.
Andra chuckled. “So you’re feeling better.”
“As better as anyone who fell in a hole yesterday.”
“That was crazy,” Nadia jumped into the conversation, like she’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to interject herself. “Seriously, you fell through the earth into a hole. Shelby and Elliot told us all about it when we came to see you at the hospital—”
“You did?”
Andra nodded. “Shelby said you weren’t up to visitors.”
No one had told her. Why would they come to see her? It wasn’t like they were “friends.” Nadia and Andra had both come to town as adults. Frannie, who ran the bakery, showed up as an older teen. Antonia, Maria and Sofia, Olympia’s grown daughters, had come as kids with their brother Matthias—now Frannie’s husband. Gemma hadn’t really connected with any of them. Not even in a school of fifteen kids. They didn’t understand her, and she didn’t understand them.
Maria brought her twin boys to the library sometimes these days, but she didn’t give Gemma anything more than basic cordiality. The only one who’d tried to engage her was Beth, the daughter of the former president. But Beth was gone now. Gemma had seen in the paper a while back that she and her husband had a baby boy.
“I’m feeling okay,” Gemma said. “Just a little sore and a headache.” She had too many things to do to be out for the count. A genre to research, a mom to draw from her shell of grief, a library to run. A secret to protect.
Nadia nudged her. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, I guess.” Whether she would answer depended on what the question was. These women were entirely too prying, and Gemma wasn’t the kind of girl who shared just for the sake of sharing. Shelby got that from her, and Dan as well—to an extent. But no one really knew everything. Gemma wasn’t sure she wanted them to. Not that she was being mean, but she liked her privacy. Hal had too, evidently, so maybe it ran in the family. She might have inherited something from her father besides the radio station.
“Well, my question is…” Nadia drew it out. “You’ve lived here your whole life—”
“I don’t want to be mayor.”
Andra burst out laughing.
Nadia grinned. “This isn’t about that, it’s about the radio station.”
“Oh.”
“I’m thinking about getting it back up and running. Maybe renovating the place… Did you know Hal still used eight-track tapes?” When Gemma nodded, Nadia continued, “Anyways, I think it would be nice, you know, like a way to honor him. Re-open the radio station in his name and start broadcasting again.” Nadia took a breath. “I’ve already petitioned the committee about the funds. I figured I’d do it all aboveboard instead of just writing a check myself, so I’m asking everyone what they think, to see if anyone has any objections.”
Gemma had more than a few. The radio station was hers, not Nadia and Andra’s. Hal left it to her in a will that had been drawn up years before, when she was only a baby. Since he’d been killed in the explosion that blew up half the ranch, Gemma had inherited an aging building she didn’t want—along with everything it contained.
Nadia was right, it did need renovating. But they couldn’t start knocking down walls in the radio station, not when Hal had built a secret room into the place where he’d stored file cabinets full of decade’s old paperwork. Gemma hadn’t figured out what it all was yet, but she needed time go through it. She just wasn’t all that motivated. It would likely not yield any answers as to why he hadn’t told her that he was her father. It looked more like government stuff.
How on earth was Gemma going to explain it all to these ladies still waiting for an answer? She opened her mouth to spout something or other, but the door opened and Shelby walked in. White dress, modest neckline. Embroidery. She looked breath-stealingly beautiful. They’d picked out a white gown for Gemma from the same magazine, just for fun, though hers had been a whole lot shorter. But she hadn’t bought it, because it wasn’t like she’d ever actually get married.
With her luck, Dan would see her in the sweet bridesmaid’s dress and have a heart attack. End of story.
Shelby’s mouth curled up into a smile. “Well?”
The girls erupted into screams. Gemma winced. She might not have come if she’d known they were going to be so loud. While they squealed and hugged Shelby, and Olympia tsk-ed at them for touching the dress, Shelby’s gaze never left her.
Gemma mouthed, It’s good.
Shelby grinned.
After Shelby had been hemmed and pinned so that Olympia could make the final adjustments, she changed back into her normal clothes, and they all sat to eat. Shelby put two of everything on a plate and set it on Gemma’s lap before she could object.
“Hush.”
Gemma shot her a look. “So, wedding girl.” She needed to deflect all this attention back where it was supposed to be. “Everything is all set for the big day?”
Shelby’s smile turned dreamy, and she nodded. “Everything is ready.” She glanced around, including the group in their conversation. “Elliot and I have been meeting with Dan, like John and Andra did. And like Bolton and Nadia will be doing one of these—”
“Not there yet.” Nadia held her hand up, palm out. The one with the engagement ring on her finger. “Taking it slow.”
They all laughed.
“We totally are!”
Andra shoved her shoulder playfully. “I give it four more months, tops.”
Nadia’s cheeks turned pink. “So… Shelby.” There she went, drawing out her words again. “Olympia is in charge of the dress, and Frannie the cake, so long as she’s not throwing up from morning sickness since the woman went and got pregnant again straight away. Dan is officiating the wedding…”
Shelby glanced aside at Gemma at the mention of Dan’s name. Just a look, but Andra shifted. Gemma gritted her teeth.
“What was that?” Nadia’s question was totally innocent. Still, Gemma glared at Shelby for a second. Why did she have to give stuff away like that?
“I think you should say Dan’s name again,” Andra said to Nadia like they were a tag-team. “More might happen.”
Gemma shook her head. “It will not.”
Shelby lifted her hands in surrender.
“I have to go.” Gemma stood. “My head is killing me, and I have to check on the library.” Which Shelby totally knew was a lie. The thing that killed her was leaving those two tiny cakes she could’ve eaten with one bite—
She grabbed them and stuffed them in her mouth, then said, “Bye,” without spitting cake everywhere.
“Gemma.”
She waved Shelby off, so her friend would know she wasn’t mad. She just didn’t want to talk about Dan with a bunch of women who thought he was their “friend.” Sure, he was their pastor, and he’d even “led Frannie to the Lord.” Which she was pretty sure he’d tried to do with her a bunch of times. Her life wasn’t fodder for girl talk. No way. That wasn’t sincere, and it would just end up being gossip.
Gemma walked, since she’d gotten a ride there with Shelby in the medical center’s golf cart. She could go home or to the library. Or her mom’s house. Instead she made her way to the radio station. Her life was her business, and if her father had entrusted something serious to her, she needed to figure out what that was so she’d know what she was protecting.
Dan’s life wasn’t fodder for gossip, either. Sure, he was their leader-guy for their church, but he had a right to the privacy he’d so carefully preserved all these years. He even managed to act normal around them, though she knew he would hit his limit after a few hours and need to recharge. All those women in that house were either members of his church or they attended sometimes. She was the odd one out. And not about to confront the fact she knew more about his faith, and what it meant to him, than any of them.
It’s breath.
How many times had she heard him say that? More than she remembered. She hadn’t understood it until the first time she’d seen him lose it. PTSD. Such a bland explanation for something that had rocked her world. She’d been so scared, and she wasn’t sure he even remembered what had happened.
Gemma glanced down at the tattoos that covered her right arm, the ones Olympia insisted she cover up for the wedding. She ran her finger down the middle, where the scar lay underneath.
A scar Dan had given her.
**
Dan muscled the wheelbarrow back into the barn. Sweat-equity he’d heard it called. This farm had been grown on his weeding, harvesting, tilling, and planting. A lot of that was his father’s relentless abuse: it had taken years, but he was able to call it what it was now. Still, even with all the hitting and shouting, and then more hitting, Dan saw life in those green shoots which peeked through the ground every spring and throughout the year in his green house.
Creation. He saw God in everything around him. His father—even just his memory of the man—wasn’t able to take that away. Dan loved this earth. He’d bled for it, cried for it, begged for it, and survived it.
“Caught you.”
He spun to see Chase lean against the wall then cross one foot over the other. Dan’s manager grinned. If he’d had a piece of hay in his mouth it wouldn’t have looked out of place.
Dan had figured one of them would corner him at some point today. It was safer if it was Chase and not Miranda.
Dan exhaled. “You caught me?”
“You’ve been avoiding me all day.”
Dan pushed the wheelbarrow down the aisle. Bay nickered, and he clicked his tongue in reply. He should call over to the medical center and find out how Gemma had been doing when they released her. Or he could call her place. He had her number noted down somewhere. He could dig it out and ask how she was… over the phone. That wouldn’t be weird. At least not weirder than him asking after her around town.
When he’d asked Papa what he should do, Dan heard only silence. He didn’t know what that meant but mostly figured it was his choice, and it wouldn’t have disastrous ramifications.
But what if God wanted their relationship brought to light in some dramatic revelation? What if Papa didn’t approve? Dan didn’t know if he could swallow that.
They didn’t see each other much, but when they did, it healed him. Gemma had been there through so much of what he had gone through. Placing her tiny hand in his. That soft squeeze of her fingers.
He could barely think about his life and she wasn’t in it. Gemma was God’s gift to his sanity. Without her, the past would be a yawning chasm of darkness. She was His light to Dan, even if she didn’t believe.
Chase’s voice turned sardonic. “Speaking of avoiding…”
“Avoiding is such a negative word.” Dan pulled off one glove and scratched the itch on his forehead that had been there for an hour. “What’s up?”
Chase pushed off the wall. “Need a hand?”
“Nope.” He liked it better when he worked by himself. All his staff knew that, and they only occasionally forced the issue to make him connect with someone.
“So we’re not going to address this giant gaping hole of an issue in the yard? Is that it?”
“I’m thinking about it.” John had set Mei on the investigation into a possible security risk that depended on where the tunnels went, but he hadn’t seen her yet.
“Think harder,” Chase said. “We need to know how far out we should walk to avoid stepping in a hole ourselves. We need someone who knows about this stuff to come and look at the property and figure out how to make it safe. The school is coming for a field trip in two weeks. They can’t bring kids here if there’s a risk one of them is going to fall in a hole like—”
Papa.
Chase’s hand settled on his shoulder. “Whoa. Set the fork down.”
Dan lowered the tool.
“Take a breath and push it out.”
He wanted to push off Chase’s hand and take two steps back, but that was both unloving and defensive. Chase didn’t fully understand his aversion to having a bigger man touch him, especially when adrenaline flowed. He breathed. His friend only meant well.
“I’m okay.” Dan waited another breath, while he debated how much to share. “I just keep seeing Gemma fall.”
“How well did you sleep last night?”
Dan shot him a look.
“Okay.” Chase’s look darkened. “You know you’re supposed to use those supplements I gave you when you need to rest.”
Drugs probably would have been better, if Dan were willing to go to Dr. Noel. Get something to make him pass out that also left him unable to dream. He was not adverse to medication, not when he trusted Elliot far more than any of the other doctors Sanctuary had suffered through over the years. Elliot was astute enough he’d noticed something was wrong and had offered to help him. It was Dan who was hesitating.
He didn’t have a chemical imbalance in his brain that needed to be regulated. What he had was a crazy past, and Dan didn’t want to have to go through the process of discovering the right dose if it meant that past was going to rear its ugly head in the meantime.
In an ideal world he’d have a professional counselor and a support system of professionals who knew exactly how to help him. But this wasn’t anything close to an ideal world—this was Sanctuary.
He’d rather pray and read his Bible. Which was exactly what he’d done. “I got half my sermon outlined.”
“That’s no good if you fall asleep during church tomorrow.”
Dan motioned to his manager. “It’s only you guys who fall asleep at church, not me.”
“Nice deflection. As if I’d do that.” Chase gave him a look. “Those supplements won’t do you any good if you don’t take them.”
Dan acquiesced with a nod.
“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to go in the house and take a look around. See what the damage is to the inside.” When Dan started to object, Chase said, “I know after the bomb went off you condemned it, but I think you did that without even going inside.”
“The foundation is cracked.” That was obvious enough from the east side wall. He didn’t need to go inside. “The basement probably caved in. It could fall to a heap of wood scraps any minute.”
“I’ll be careful. But if I can, I’d like to see if that tunnel Gemma fell into leads to the basement, or whether it’s connected to the house at all.” He glanced around the barn, like he suddenly wanted to be pacing out the distance between the walls and checking for false doors.
“It doesn’t lead here. I’ve checked the whole barn.”
“Did you know anything about it?” Chase’s eyes lit up. “An honest-to-goodness tunnel?”
“I had no idea.” He hadn’t stepped foot in the house in fifteen years, so it wasn’t like he went exploring around the place. Before that? The basement had been off limits.
“I’m going to look around in there. I’m also going to talk to the sheriff and see if he knows anyone who is a structural engineer, or whether we’ll have to request outside help.”
They could have someone flown in. A person with the required security clearance. Before the town had voted to break away from the federal government, and gotten the president’s signature of approval on it, they would have simply put in a request and the military would have brought someone in. They had less help now, which was likely the government’s way of punishing them for wanting their independence.
Dan let him go. If Chase wanted to go inside the house, Dan wasn’t going to stop him. He didn’t want anything to do with the place, but it was embarrassing to think of someone else seeing the disaster that was probably in there. His dad hadn’t been the cleanest person in the world, which Dan knew first-hand since he’d had to clean up most of the messes.
The last time he’d been in the house, his mom had been in there. But he didn’t want anything to do with that memory. Not even the good parts.
**
Night had fallen by the time Mei made it out to the farm. Chase met her at the rear of the house, skulking. The man wasn’t good at hiding. She could see his agitation from here.
“Ready?”
Chase nodded. “He thinks we’re going inside to see if it’s structurally sound.”
Mei didn’t care what the reason was, or that they had a valid excuse. This town was a fishbowl, and the way the farm manager treaded around Dan Walden like he was made of glass was bizarre. She didn’t know how they coped living so close to each other. She liked open spaces.
Chase used a key to get in the house, and Mei stood at the threshold of the door. “You realize you actually should have an engineer come in here, right?”
He nodded and disappeared into the house. “I’m just worried about Dan. He needs help, but there’s next to nothing I can do if I don’t know the extent of what I’m dealing with. I’m hoping the house will shed some light on it.”
Mei wasn’t worried about Dan. She rubbed her stomach and the left-over bruises from being lowered into that hole. She’d seen survivors before, many in way worse shape mentally than he was. He would be fine. Sometimes being left alone was the best medicine.
Inside the house was a cloud of dust thick enough Chase coughed. Old furniture, frayed from back when it was in use, was now ready to fall apart. Pictures on the walls were yellowed with age. Chase wandered into the kitchen, and Mei followed her instincts. Living room. She looked at the space. Couches laid out like that, only a man would place the rug in that spot. A man who didn’t know a thing about interior design.
She knelt and slowly lifted the corner of the rug, tilting her head to see the floor below. Her flashlight illuminated the wooden boards.
With one glance to check Chase wasn’t looking, she switched her flashlight to emit a black light.
Blood.
She let the carpet drop back down and got out her satellite phone. The town had spared no expense in keeping their people safe, though she’d had to wrangle a connected phone of her own. The sheriff wanted to give her a two-way radio. Like that would do.
Mei sent a message to her contact.
Get me everything you can find on Dan Walden’s parents.