That was the real surprise, for although Kate certainly had a head for business, no one had realized that Jesse had noticed that ability in the daughter he— seemingly, at least—had virtually ignored.
Walker thought that Kate would probably be very good at running most of the family business, once she recovered from the shock.
As for Amanda, she had resisted the idea of inheriting anything at all at first, but Walker urged her not to make any decision for at least a few months. She was in no state of mind to consider the matter logically, he told her; she needed to give herself time to heal and then decide what she wanted to do. Glory was, after all, her heritage.
Walker doubted that his arguments had much effect, but the letter Jesse had left for Amanda certainly gave her food for thought. It had been delivered to her at the same time the new will had arrived, a sealed letter the law firm had been instructed to give her privately so that the remainder of the family would not know of its existence—unless Amanda chose to tell them about it.
He thought she probably would, one day. So far, however, only Walker had seen it. He hadn’t asked to read it, but Amanda had offered it, saying she wanted him to know as much as she did herself about the past.
Walker had read the letter only once, but it remained vividly in his mind even now, and when he thought about it, it was Jesse’s voice he heard.
My dear Amanda,
I wish there were some gentle way of telling you what I believe you need to know. I wish I had been strong enough to tell you before I had to leave you, but even though I wanted to, I could never find the courage. Please forgive me for that.
You understand love, don’t you? You understand how it captures us without warning, giving us no choice to make except to fight what we feel —or endure it? I think you do understand, Amanda; I’ve seen the way you look at Walker.
I loved Christine. It was something beyond my control, not of my choosing. I fell in love with the wife of my son, and I can’t begin to tell you what agony it was. The blame is mine for what happened, Amanda. I should have been strong enough to fight what I felt, or at least unselfish enough to stop insisting they spend so many months at Glory, so that Christine and Brian could attempt to work out their problems without interference.
But I was selfish. I wanted my son near, even though he was off riding so much of the time and Christine was too close. Too tempting.
It happened only once, Amanda. Christine was lonely, her marriage troubled because of Brian’s selfishness—and mine. She was vulnerable. And by then I knew I loved her as much as I had loved my dear Mary. Perhaps even more.
I won’t lie to you and claim I regretted what happened. I did not. I regretted only that she was my son’s wife and so could never be mine. She said she loved me. Perhaps she did. She wanted to divorce Brian, but that I could never permit. The scandal of destroying my son’s marriage and claiming his wife for myself was something I couldn’t face.
But, in the end, what I did was worse, much worse.
I made her stay with him. Bribery, threats, whatever it took. Then she discovered that she was pregnant—and, for a time, Brian became a better husband. So she stayed with him.
I swear to you, Amanda, I had no idea you were mine. It wasn’t until you were a toddler that I saw the birthmark, the mark only my child could have had, and by then Christine’s love for me had turned to bitterness.
What could I do? The truth would have destroyed my son, ripped apart the family, and ruined your life. So I had to remain silent.
It was my punishment for what I’d done, being forced to watch you grow into a beautiful little girl and knowing I would never be able to tell you that you were my daughter. Being forced to watch Christine grow more unhappy year by year as Brian tormented her with his jealousy and his neglect.
What happened was, I suppose, inevitable. She fell in love with someone else.
I don’t know how much you remember of that last night, Amanda. I don’t know what you saw, or what your mother told you. I don’t know how important it really is to you to know what happened. But I believe I owe you that much.
I had believed I no longer felt jealousy of Christine, but when I realized she loved another man … I went mad, I think. I don’t remember everything, but I do know that I cornered her lover down in the stables and attacked him. I left him unconscious, and never saw him again after that night; I assume he ran from Glory.
As Christine did. She saw enough, I think, to frighten her badly. Perhaps she thought I would turn on her next, or that Brian would find out about her lover … I don’t know. All I do know is that she took you and ran away.
I wish I could say that was the end of the story, the end of my insanity. But I can’t. I did one more unforgivable thing, Amanda. In anger, I told Brian you were not his child. It was my fault he went wild that day, my fault he fell attempting a jump he would never have tried sane.
I killed my son.
You may never forgive me for any of this, I know. All I can offer in my defense is that I acted out of love, always. Love for Christine, for Brian, and for you.
As for the future, I leave it to you to decide if you will acknowledge your true paternity. Along with this letter, I have provided a signed and witnessed document attesting to the fact that you are my daughter. In addition, the private lab still has, in their files, the DNA test results proving your paternity.
There will never be legal questions, should you decide to go public.
Amanda, if you can’t forgive me, at least please try to believe that I love you. You are the one good and precious thing to come out of an impossible situation, and neither I nor Christine ever regretted that.
Love,
Jesse
Walker was still, himself, coping with the shock of realizing how many lives Jesse had destroyed; he could only imagine how much more stunning Amanda had found the truth to be. It was surely no wonder she was so quiet even now. She had a great deal to absorb, to accept.
In the meantime, of course, she was with him, and that was all he had asked of her. He had been at some pains to make no demands, to wait patiently and give her the time she needed, and by this sweltering July morning he was reasonably sure the corner had been turned.
A rumble from the general vicinity of his knee made Walker look down. A big-boned black and tan creature with one ear flying was looking back at him.
“You can’t have another of my shoes,” Walker told the Doberman puppy sternly. “Go find your brother and help him dig up one of the flower beds if you feel bored.”
The puppy Amanda had named Angel (“Because it’s as far from serial killers as you can get”) scratched behind his ear energetically and made the woof sound that was his idea of barking, then went looking for his brother, who was named Gabriel and who liked to dig up flower beds.
Walker turned his attention back to the sight of Amanda petting a horse. He watched for a few more minutes, then went down the steps and out into the hot sun.
“you’ll burn to a crisp,” he said when he reached her.
She gave the old horse a last pat and turned to him, smiling. “I’m wearing layers of sunscreen, as usual.”
“That won’t protect you from sunstroke.” Walker bent his head to kiss her.
“True.”
By mutual consent, they began to walk toward the path that led eventually to Glory. Most mornings they walked as far as the gazebo and back before having breakfast; it was a pleasant stroll and both enjoyed it.
“Les wants to meet for lunch one day this week,” Amanda commented idly. “I think she’s serious about staying.”
Walker thought so too. Unlike Amanda, the slender, redheaded former private investigator clearly did not find Glory overwhelming. And she did indeed seem to communicate with animals with almost telepathic ease—and with large, intense, temperamental Daulton men as well.
“Speaking of staying,” Walker said casually, “how do you feel about fall weddings?”
Ama
nda stopped and looked up at him. They had nearly reached the footbridge, and stood on the path near the gazebo. She was smiling just a little. “What did you have in mind?”
“A quiet ceremony and a long honeymoon. Beyond that, I haven’t thought.” He lifted a hand to her cheek and smoothed the sun-warmed skin over her cheekbone. Abruptly, no longer casual, he said, “I love you. God, I love you. Marry me, Amanda.”
Her eyes searched his face very intently. Finally, after what felt like an eternity to him, she said huskily, “I already promised to do that.”
Walker felt his heart skip a beat and then begin thudding heavily in his chest. Slowly, he said, “I … don’t recall asking you in the last couple of months.”
“No. You never did ask me. You just demanded my promise that I’d marry you. When I grew up.”
He didn’t move or say anything, even more conscious now of his heart pounding.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “not once through all of this, not once in all these weeks, have you asked me if I remember you. Why didn’t you ask?” She looked at him, smiling a little.
“At first … because I wanted to wait and see if you brought it up.”
“You mean you wanted to wait and see if I realized that I should have remembered you?”
He smiled. “A pretender might have realized that belatedly after finding out that King High was so close —and that path so well-worn.”
“Umm. But you eventually realized I was the real Amanda.” Suddenly curious, she said, “When was that, by the way?”
“The day we made love in the gazebo,” he replied without hesitation.
Amanda was surprised. “But … you called me to your office after that, to confront me about my not being Amanda Grant.”
Walker nodded. “I knew you’d lied about that. But, as you said yourself, the name you grew up using had nothing to do with whether you were born Amanda Daulton.”
Her gaze searched his face intently. “What made you so sure I was the real Amanda?”
He answered simply, his very conviction saying more than words ever could. “The way I felt about you. I could never have loved a pretender, and I realized that day I loved you so much it was terrifying.”
After a moment, Amanda drew a breath. “Why didn’t you ask then if I remembered you, Walker?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to put it to the test.” He shrugged slightly. “There was so much you didn’t remember. I suppose I didn’t want to hear you say I was part of those missing memories.”
Amanda took his hand and led him toward the gazebo, her expression grave. “The first time you brought me out here,” she murmured, “I wondered why you didn’t say something about this place. Then I wondered if you were waiting for me to say something.
“Then it occurred to me that maybe it just wasn’t important to you. I mean, you could have put a gazebo here only because it’s a lovely place, or because you thought something ought to be built here near the ruins of the old gatehouse. That seemed … a reasonable sort of thing for you to do.”
He waited, silent.
“I couldn’t really ask you about it. I’d already made up my mind that it would be best if I offered no one absolute proof I was Amanda Daulton, that I’d be safer as long as there was still a doubt in most everyone’s mind. So I was careful of what I revealed to anyone. I tried to stick to memories she might have told someone else, and made myself ignore the things she wouldn’t have shared with another living soul. Like this place, and what it meant.”
Releasing his hand at the gazebo, she walked to the old oak, stepping over the roots to get close to the trunk, and pushed aside the heavy branches of the azalea that hid so much with their thick summer foliage. Slowly, her index finger traced the awkwardly carved heart and the two sets of initials inside it. WM and AD.
“I suppose,” she said, “even a fake Amanda might have found this. And drawn her own conclusions.”
Walker cleared his throat and, hoarsely, said, “I suppose she could have.”
She allowed the azalea branches to hide the heart again, then turned and came to him. Halting an arm’s length away, she slid a hand into the front pocket of her jeans and drew out a small object. She held out her hand, palm up.
“But could she have found this?”
In her hand lay a green stone a couple of inches long and an inch or so wide. It was more opaque than translucent, the color deep and oddly mysterious. It might have been a chunk of green glass from a bottle, or a piece of the quartz so common to the Carolina mountains and streams. Or it might have been—
“You believed it was an emerald,” Amanda said, looking up at him rather than the stone as he reached out slowly to lift it from her hand. “You had heard your grandfather talking about the night his father won King High, and how the winning pot held a number of raw emeralds, and when you found this here in the creek you were certain that’s what it was. Even though your father told you it was only quartz, you believed it was an emerald. And so did I.”
He raised his gaze to meet hers, finding her smoky gray eyes so tender it nearly stopped his heart.
“The night we left,” she said, “I made Mama wait while I ran back to my room to get it. I knew we wouldn’t be coming back, and I couldn’t leave without it.”
“Amanda …”
Softly, she said, “When a twelve-year-old boy gives his most precious possession to the little girl who adores him, it’s something she’ll remember—and keep —for the rest of her life.”
With a rough sound, Walker pulled her into his arms, his mouth finding hers blindly, and Amanda melted against him with the deeply satisfied murmur of a woman who had, finally, come home.
KAY HOOPER, who has more than four million copies of her books in print worldwide, has won numerous awards and high praise for her novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is currently working on her next novel.
Look for Kay Hooper’s novel
available
from Bantam Books
Here’s a sneak peek.
C H A P T E R
ONE
TUESDAY, MARCH 21
Whoever had dubbed the town Silence must have gotten a laugh out of it, Nell thought as she closed the door of her Jeep and stood beside the vehicle on the curb. For a relatively small town, it was not what anyone would have called peaceful even on an average day; on this mild weekday in late March, at least three school groups appeared to be trying to raise money for something or other with loud and cheerful car washes in two small parking lots and a bake sale going on in the grassy town square. And there were plenty of willing customers for the kids, even with building clouds promising a storm later on.
Nell hunched her shoulders and slid her cold hands into the pockets of her jacket. Her restless gaze warily scanned the area, studying the occasional face even as she listened to snatches of conversation as people walked past her. Calm faces, innocuous talk. Nothing out of the ordinary.
It didn’t look or sound like a town in trouble.
Nell glanced through the window of her Jeep at the newspaper folded on the passenger seat; there hadn’t been much in yesterday’s local daily to indicate trouble. Not much, but definitely hints, especially for anyone who knew how to read between the lines.
Not far from where she stood was a newspaper vendor selling today’s edition, and she could easily make out the headline announcing the town council’s decision to acquire property on which to build a new middle school. There was, as far as she could see, no mention on the front page of anything of greater importance than that.
Nell walked over to buy herself a paper and returned to stand beside her Jeep as she quickly scanned the three thin sections. She found it where she expected to find it, among the obituaries.
GEORGE THOMAS CALDWELL,
42, UNEXPECTEDLY, AT HOME.
There was more, of course. A long list of accomplishments for the relatively young man, local and state honors, business accolades. He had been very succe
ssful, George Caldwell, and unusually well-liked for a man in his position.
But it was the unexpectedly Nell couldn’t get past. Someone’s idea of a joke in very poor taste? Or was the sheriff’s department refusing to confirm media speculation of only a day or so ago about the violent cause of George Caldwell’s death?
Unexpected. Oh, yeah. Murder usually was.
“Jesus. Nell.”
She refolded the newspaper methodically and tucked it under her arm as she turned to face him. It was easy to keep her expression unrevealing, her voice steady. She’d had a lot of practice—and this was one meeting she had been ready for.
“Hello, Max.”
Standing no more than an arm’s length away, Max Tanner looked at her, she decided, rather the way he’d look at something distasteful he discovered on the bottom of his shoe. Hardly surprising, she supposed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was just uneven enough to make it obvious He couldn’t sound as impersonal and indifferent as he wanted to.
“I could say I was just passing through.”
“You could. What’s the truth?”
Nell shrugged, keeping the gesture casual. “I imagine you can guess. The will’s finally through probate, so there’s a lot I have to do. Go through things, clear out the house, arrange to sell it. If that’s what I end up doing, of course.”
“You mean you’re not sure?”
“About selling out?” Nell allowed her mouth to curve in a wry smile. “I’ve had a few doubts.”
“Banish them,” he said tightly. “You don’t belong here, Nell. You never did.”
She pretended that didn’t hurt. “Well, we agree on that much. Still, people change, especially in—what?— a dozen years? Maybe I could learn to belong.”