She got it.
“Polka dots,” Daren says, leaning over my shoulder as he looks at the picture. “Nice.”
I hurriedly tuck the photo into my purse. “I don’t think your baseball cards are in the kitchen. Let’s move along.”
We spend the next hour riffling through my dad’s house and all his things. It’s a weird feeling, being back in the place I grew up. Nothing much has changed. The furniture is still in the same place. The mail is still piled by the back door. And pictures of my mother and me still hang on the walls. Like we still live here. Like he never cut us out of his life.
I’m not sure if this breaks my heart or infuriates me. Either way, it’s an enormous contradiction to his behavior these last few years.
After we’ve ransacked all the bedrooms, Daren and I move down the hallway and into the study. The study was my father’s special place to work and think. It was his favorite room in the house and mine too.
It looks exactly the way I remember. The walls are still lined with books and the large globe I used to spin around and around as a child still stands in the corner, now coated with dust.
And of course the study still smells like smoky vanilla.
I try to ignore the burning behind my eyes as I sift through my father’s personal belongings, but it’s almost too much. The pictures. The vanilla. The lingering presence of all my happy memories.
Daren opens the top drawer of my dad’s old desk and freezes. Then he looks at me. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
I wrinkle my brow. “What?”
He pulls a stack of papers from the drawer and drops them on the desk with a thwack. Dust flurries go flying from beneath what looks like a collection of bank statements.
He clucks his tongue admonishingly. “Kayla Turner, you little fibber.”
“What are you talking about?”
He points to the top of the page where it reads KAYLA TURNER TRUST FUND in bold letters and my jaw drops.
“What?” I say in a near whisper as I scan the first few pages in disbelief. It does indeed look like I have a trust fund set up in my name. Or had a trust fund.
The statements show a series of withdrawals over the past few years, some large, some small, with the last one being two years ago. The trust fund now has a balance of zero.
Beside me, Daren lets out a quiet whistle. “Wow. You burned through that pretty fast.”
I blink rapidly, staring at the statements in complete and utter confusion. “I didn’t… I can’t…”
“In the future,” he says, scratching his cheek, “if someone asks you if you have a trust fund, the correct answer is yes. Even though yours has no more money in it. Fibber.”
I look at him. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You’re a hot fibber.” He grins. “But you’re a fibber nonetheless. Not that I blame you. My entire identity is built on fibs—”
“No. You don’t understand. I’ve never seen this before in my life.” I hold up the papers. “I never had a trust fund. Hell, I barely had a bank account. My dad must have set this up and used it himself.”
He squints at one of the pages in my hand. “Then why were all the withdrawals made in Chicago?”
He points and I follow his finger to the location details for each withdrawal. Every single one reads CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
“What? This makes no sense.” I shake my head.
He studies me. “You really didn’t know about this trust fund?”
“No! My father never mentioned it to me. Not once.”
He frowns. “Then who made all the withdrawals? Your mom?”
“I guess…”
It’s the only logical answer, but even as I stand here staring at the proof I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. My dad set up a trust fund for me, and my mother not only knew about it, but cleaned it out?
My blood begins to boil. No. There has to be a better explanation.
I gather up all the papers, even the ones left in the drawer, and wrap them in an empty file folder I find on the desk.
“I’ll sort through all this later,” I say more to myself than to Daren as I stick the folder in my purse.
He eyes me. “Are you sure?”
I nod and take a deep breath. “Let’s get back to looking for your baseball cards.”
Daren runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t think they’re here. We’ve looked pretty much everywhere.” He closes the empty desk drawer. “Let’s just go to the train station.”
Suddenly eager to leave Milly Manor and all my unnerving questions behind, I heartily agree. “Yeah. Okay.”
As we start to leave, Daren’s phone rings. He wriggles it out of his pocket, glances at the screen, and answers, “Hey, Ellen.” He listens. “Sure. I can probably run some supplies out to the inn tomorrow. What do you need?”
As he continues his conversation I run my eyes over the desk again, looking for any papers I might have missed regarding the trust fund. My eyes stop on a framed photo at the edge of the desk and I gingerly pick it up.
There are pictures all over Milly Manor, but there is only one in the study. And it’s a picture of Dad and me at the lake when I was nine years old.
We’re each holding a fishing pole and I have on the biggest grin. We didn’t actually fish that day because I thought it was mean to hurt the fishes but he went along with my tender heart and we “pretend fished” all afternoon and ate my favorite sandwiches: peanut butter and jelly with bananas.
In the picture, I’m wearing the heart-shaped locket he gave me for my birthday that year. I lost the necklace years ago, but it was always one of my favorites. My dad used to write me notes on tiny scraps of paper that said things like “I love you,” or “Have a good day,” or “I love being your daddy!” and I’d store them in that locket for safekeeping.
Then when I returned to Chicago, I wore that necklace every day knowing my father’s teeny notes were hidden in the locket. It was like having him with me everywhere I went, tucked inside the heart around my neck.
My eyes start to burn again. He wasn’t always a bad father. In fact, he was the best. Which is probably why it hurt so much when he stopped wanting to see me. And why it still hurts now.
“It seems like your dad really loved you.” Daren’s voice startles me and I blink away the emotion in my eyes. I didn’t realize he was off the phone. “He kept all your pictures up,” he continues, nodding at the photo in my hands. “You two look happy there.”
We do look happy—like a real family. A sinking feeling overwhelms me. I don’t have a family anymore. I barely had one to begin with, but now…
“That was a long time ago.” I put the picture back on the desk. “Let’s go.” Without a word, I lead Daren by the wrist out of the house I grew up in.
12
Daren
Well that didn’t go at all like I’d expected—and not just because I didn’t recover my box of baseball cards. Watching Kayla’s face filter through all those emotions as we moved through the house was rough.
She acts bitter and angry toward her father, but her facial expressions as we walked from room to room were anything but. She’s hurt, obviously, but she also seems sad. And lonely. Two sentiments I’m far too familiar with.
And the fact that she didn’t know about her own trust fund threw another wrench into my pile of Kayla Turner preconceptions. James wasn’t lying about setting up a trust fund for his daughter. But Kayla wasn’t lying about not having one either. Which most likely means Gia was the fibber in the family. Yikes.
I follow Kayla to the car and we climb inside, awkwardly fumbling before finally plopping in our seats.
As she puts her seat belt on and drives away, the wisps of blonde escaping her hair tie drift away from her face revealing her flushed cheeks and blue eyes, lost in thought.
Her lips are coated with some kind of clear gloss, shining against the pale skin of her chin and throat as she bites down on the bottom one. I sta
re at her bitten lip, now slightly swollen, and the sight of her thighs, right next to my mouth when I sat up from searching under the couch, flashes in my mind.
It was all I could do to not flick my tongue out and run it up the soft skin of her legs. And from the way her eyelids had grown heavy as she stared down at me, she probably would have let me. Hell, she probably would have grabbed my head and directed my tongue where to go.
Growing hard, I shift in my seat and try to get myself under control.
Dammit. I shouldn’t have kissed her last night. If I hadn’t pressed my mouth to hers and felt her tongue roll over mine, then I’d surely have more control over myself today. But I couldn’t help myself. Something about Kayla drew me in like a siren song, enchanting and impossible to resist. And much like the Siren’s prey, I’m now surely doomed. Because now I’ve tasted Kayla and all I want is more.
Things would have been fine if she hadn’t sunk into the kiss with such craving. If she had kissed me back with your typical strangers-kissing-in-a-parking-lot desire—you know, part curiosity, part greed—I could have been satisfied with just one kiss.
But Kayla kissed me back with the passion of a long-lost lover. Desperation on her lips. Sounds of desire escaping her throat. She kissed me back like I was something she needed. I’ve never felt needed like that before.
We come to a stoplight and the engine idles loudly. The light turns green and the engine groans before we’re on the move again. Looking out the windshield, I stare at the rusted hood of her little green car and frown.
Just another unexpected piece of the Kayla Turner puzzle.
Stitched up clothes, empty trust fund, a run-down vehicle…
Is it possible I was wrong about Kayla? Was she telling the truth about being broke?
“So,” Kayla says into the silence. “Instead of leaving our inheritance in a bank account, my father stashed it in a train station locker. Super safe, Dad.”
I quietly laugh. “Yeah, it’s not the most secure place in the world. But I guess it makes sense. He really liked the train station.”
“That’s right,” she says slowly, nodding. A hint of a smile tugs at her lips. “He used to talk about how the train brought Copper Springs to life. He’d say”—she lowers her voice—“Before the train got here, this town was just a plot of land. But the train brought people—”
“And the people brought heart,” I finish.
She smiles with a nod then glances at me curiously. “So what’s the deal with you and my dad? You guys were close?”
I inhale deeply and shrug. “My dad wasn’t the greatest. He was a decent businessman but he wasn’t a great father. Your dad, though, he was all right.” I look at her. “Did you know they used to be good friends, our dads?”
She furrows her brow and shakes her head.
“They were golf buddies,” I say. “I used to caddie for my dad sometimes. Not because I cared about the game but because I liked being around my dad. It made me feel like I was important to him, you know? So Turner—your dad—got to know me when I was a kid on the golf course. My relationship with Pop was strained and Turner saw that.
“Your dad offered me a job taking care of his lawn when I was young and at first I was like hell no. I was a rich kid. I didn’t need to work. But my dad would constantly say, ‘People without money or power are useless to me,’ and being a jobless, powerless kid, I was one of those people. So I thought if I could make my own money then maybe my dad wouldn’t think of me as useless anymore—”
“What?” she squawks, holding up a hand. “No offense, but your dad sounds like a dick.”
I nod. “Oh, he is. Trust me.”
She waves me on. “Please continue.”
I swallow. “I didn’t want my dad to think I was useless so I took Turner up on his offer and started mowing the lawn. Over the years, my relationship with Pop just got worse. He and my mom went through some shit that you might not have heard—”
“You mean the Reverend Keeton thing?”
I cock my head. “How do you know about that?”
She shrugs. “I was good friends with Lana Morris growing up and she always filled me in on the latest Copper Springs gossip.”
“How nice of her to keep you in the loop,” I say dryly. “But yeah. My mom left my dad and married Amber’s dad, and the town brought out their pitchforks for both our families. All hell broke loose and my mom and Brad got divorced. Then my mom moved to Boston and my dad sort of spiraled down a dark path of booze. So while my own parents were pretty self-involved and caught up in all their crazy drama, your dad was there for me.” I laugh softly. “Sometimes I hated it because he was always giving me advice and trying to keep me in line. But most of the time, it just felt good to be noticed, you know?” I gaze out at the road. “Then last year, someone I really cared about—a girl named Charity—died in a car accident. For a while, I blamed myself for her death. I became self-destructive and didn’t really want to live anymore. I was on the edge. But two people helped pull me back; made me believe there was something important inside of me. One of them was my boss, Ellen.” I pause. “And the other was your dad.”
Charity’s death—among other unfortunate events last year—really ripped me up. Afterward, Turner could see it in my eyes: the recklessness; the blatant disregard I had for myself. So he gave me more work. He wanted more things planted in the garden and more trees pruned around the yard. And while I was busy tending to all that, he was at my side, planting new vegetables and trimming the hedges right along with me. Most days, we worked in comfortable silence. But every now and then, Turner would ask about my life then comment on how well I was “handling” everything. I started to live for those moments—the brief exchanges between us where he would praise me and I wouldn’t feel like a total failure. And then one day, I was better. Not healed completely, but better. Because of Turner.
“So yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “He and I used to be pretty close.”
As I watch the road fly by, my chest starts to hurt. I should have kept in contact with Turner instead of wallowing in my own problems this past year. I should have tried harder to show him how important he was to me.
Kayla eyes me in silence, her free hand wrapping around the steering wheel tightly. Then she quietly and sincerely says, “Well I’m glad he was there for someone,” and returns her gaze to the road.
I stare out the window. Me too.
13
Kayla
“Are you sure this place is still open?” I shade my eyes and squint up at the rusted sign that reads COPPER SPRINGS TRAIN STATION hanging above the old building. Cobwebs litter the corners of the sign and dust covers the windows of the station. “It looks deserted.”
Daren exhales. “It shut down a few years ago. But the people who have lockers here still use them sometimes. I guess your dad was one of those people.” He looks at me with a gleam in his eye. “You ready to claim an inheritance?”
A spark of glee shoots through me as I grin back. “Oh I’m ready.”
I am ready and excited, but I’m also nervous and filled with adrenaline. Today might be the beginning of a new life for me. Daren’s chest rises with a full breath as if he’s anxious as well and I wonder of this could be a new beginning for him too. Studying him for a moment, I realize I don’t know much about him. Nothing, really. I know about his parents’ taboo behavior and his sexual reputation, but I don’t know anything real. Anything that matters. And a part of me wishes I did.
The double doors at the front of the train station screech as we open them and step inside. Dim light filters in through the clouded windows and gives the large, musty lobby a weird yellow glow.
“The lockers are over here,” Daren says, heading right.
“I’m guessing you’ve been here before?”
He nods. “Growing up, we had a housekeeper named Marcella who was like a second mother to me. Before the station closed, Marcella would come here to pick up her family members when they
’d visit, and sometimes she’d bring me along. I loved Marcella’s family.” He smiles. “They were all loud and loving and always excited to see one another. They were even excited to see me, which rocked my world. Marcella treated me like a son and her family did the same.”
“Do you still talk to her?” I ask.
His eyes shadow over. “No. She passed away a few years ago.”
I quietly say, “I’m sorry.”
I do the math in my head, tallying up the lost loved ones in Daren’s life. My father. The Charity girl. And Marcella. Empathy swims through my veins as I scan his face. He knows I’m watching him, but he continues to stare straight ahead.
“Here they are,” he says, pointing ahead.
On the side of the station stands a set of lockers. All of them old. All of them looking as if they haven’t been touched in a decade. They probably haven’t.
Our footsteps echo as we walk to the lockers.
“Twenty-three…” Daren says, perusing the numbers.
My eyes drift back and forth across the rusty lockers. “There.” I point to one on the left side. We step up to it and I pull the golden key from my purse and hold it up. It looks too large to fit in the small keyhole.
Daren frowns. “That’s weird.”
I try to insert the heavy key anyway, but it’s much too big. “Did we get the wrong locker number?” I pull the suitcase note from my purse and reread it.
“Nope,” Daren says, reading it over my shoulder. “It says twenty-three.”
I look around. “Is there another set of lockers in the station?”
“Maybe.” He glances around. “But that key looks too large to fit in any locker.”
I examine the key. “You’re right.” I blow out my cheeks and look up. “Let’s walk around and see if there are any other cabinets or storage areas.”