Tender Absolution

  “Good,” Carlie said, forcing some enthusiasm into her voice.

  “So—can I start shopping you around again?”

  Carlie had anticipated the question. Constance had been after her for years to resume her career. “I don’t think so.”

  “For God’s sake, why not? You’re through with your soul-searching in Alaska, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “About time.” Constance leaned back in her desk chair until the leather creaked. “So you’re going back to that little town in California.”

  “I have to. Even if it’s just to tie up a few loose ends….” she said, thinking of her father. Thinking of the studio in Coleville. Thinking of Ben.

  “There’s a man out there, isn’t there?” Constance shook her head from side to side and didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s always a man.”

  “I just think it’s time to stop wandering all over the planet.”

  “Sure you do, honey, sure you do.”

  The intercom buzzed and Constance picked up the phone. After a one-sided conversation, she set the receiver in the cradle and cast Carlie an I-told-you-so look. “That man who doesn’t exist?” she said picking up the conversation as if they’d never been interrupted. “He’s outside in the reception area, making a big scene, scaring poor Nina half out of her mind.”

  Ben? Ben was here? In New York City?

  “You’d better go on out there because as angry as he is, he’s still interesting. Nina mentioned something about signing him up as a male model.”

  “I wouldn’t suggest it,” Carlie said, grabbing her purse and throwing her coat over her arm. She hurried out the door and had started down the short corridor to the reception area, when she saw Ben, arguing with the petite strawberry-blond receptionist as he turned the corner.

  Her heart caught at the sight of him.

  Ben hesitated when he saw her, then continued down the hallway and took hold of her arm. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “Now, Carlie.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks. “You can’t push me around, Ben. Haven’t you learned that yet? I don’t know why you’re here or what you want, but you can’t come barging into my place of business, or my house for that matter, and start ordering me around like I’m some damned private in the army!”

  By this time Nina and two leggy models sitting in the reception area were staring at them. The models had dropped their magazines and Nina was ignoring the phone that jangled incessantly.

  Even Constance was watching from her office doorway.

  “I just thought we could use some privacy.”

  “Why?”

  His gaze slid to the other women in the room, then landed with full force on Carlie’s face. “Because, damn it, I was going to ask you to marry me.”

  The women behind her gasped and even the phone stopped ringing for a few heart-stopping seconds. “What?”

  “You heard me. Now, let’s go.”

  “You…you want to get married?”

  “Yeah. Right now, if we can.”

  “Oh, Ben, we can’t—”

  “Carlie, I’m sorry. For everything. I was wrong.”

  “But—”

  “And I want to marry you.”

  By this time the phone had started up again but all eyes were still trained on her. She felt embarrassment wash up her neck. “But just last week—”

  “I was a fool.” He stared straight into her eyes. “A lot has happened since last week and the upshot is that I know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life without you.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think,” he whispered, grabbing her suddenly, his lips crashing down on hers, his arms surrounding her. He smelled of brandy and rain and musk and he held her as if he’d never let go. His kiss was filled with the same bone-melting passion that always existed between them, and when he finally let her go, she could barely breathe.

  “Go on. Get out of here,” Constance said from somewhere down the hall. “This man means business. And the rest of you, back to work.”

  Carlie hardly remembered the elevator ride down to the lobby of the office building. Somehow, with Ben’s hand clamped on her elbow, he guided her outside and they braved the icy sleet and wind. Two blocks and around a corner, he held open the door to a crowded bar. They found a small table near the back and Ben ordered Irish coffees for them both.

  “Okay,” Carlie said, her heart still pumping, her ears still ringing with his proposal. “Start over. Why’d you come here?”

  “For you.”

  “The last I heard you never wanted to see me again.”

  “I sorted some things out.”

  “Maybe you should sort them out for me,” she said, trying to stay calm. She couldn’t marry Ben. His temper was too mercurial, his mood swings too violent. True, she loved him, but that didn’t mean she could live with him. Or did it?

  “I was upset the last time I saw you,” Ben admitted. “Tracy had told me about the baby—”

  “Tracy?” Carlie whispered, aghast.

  The waiter brought their drinks and disappeared.

  “Seems she saw you at the Coleville Women’s Clinic once and figured out about the baby.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Look, Ben, I know I should have told you but there never seemed to be the right time.”

  “It’s all right.” He grabbed her hand and held it between his. “I, um, have done a lot of soul-searching the last week. I talked to Nadine and we found all Kevin’s old letters up in a trunk she’d stored in the attic. I read them again, made a little more sense out of the past and realized that Kevin did kill himself over a woman, but the woman wasn’t you. It was Tracy.”

  “You know this?”

  “I had it out with her,” he admitted, his face creasing into a frown. “She admitted that when she found out she was pregnant, he’d wanted her to get an abortion. She’d refused and pressured him to marry her. Also, he was having trouble at the mill, more trouble than we knew about. He was probably going to be fired or laid off. All that, along with the fact that he wasn’t completely over you and I was seeing you, pushed him over the edge. He did kill himself, Carlie, but it wasn’t our fault.”

  “But what about Randy?” she asked, her throat closing.

  “Randy will always be a part of my life. I told Tracy the same thing. If the kid needs me, I’ll be there. Even when he doesn’t think he needs me, I’ll be in his face. The one thing that Tracy was right about was that the kid needs a father figure.” He sipped his coffee. “And I’m going to be it.”

  Her heart swelled in her chest.

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want kids—our kids. I do. Three of them.”

  “Three?”

  “Well, four. That way two won’t gang up on one.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” she whispered.

  “Nope. Just a couple of ideas. I think we should figure it out together.”

  “You’re serious about us getting married?” she said, still unbelieving.

  With a half smile, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a tiny box.

  “What—?”

  He handed her the box and she opened it. A single clear diamond winked up at her. “I’d like to say that I bought this eleven years ago and kept it all the time, ’cause I’d planned to go out and buy you a ring the night Kevin… Well, anyway, I didn’t get around to it.”

  Her hands were shaking so he slipped the ring out of the velvet liner and slid it over her finger. “Will you marry me?” he asked and her throat was so full, she could barely answer.

  “Of course I’ll marry you, Ben.
I’ve been waiting to hear you ask me for as long as I can remember….”

  EPILOGUE

  December

  CARLIE HEARD A soft cry and burrowed deeper under the covers before she was suddenly awake.

  “Want me to get her?” Ben’s voice was groggy.

  “I’m up.” She leaned over, kissed her husband and felt the milk in her breasts start to let down. “Coming,” she whispered, nearly tripping over Attila who lay at the foot of the bed.

  The cabin still smelled new, the scents of wood and paint lingering as Carlie picked up her baby and cuddled the warm little body to hers. She crept downstairs, turned on a switch that caused the tiny winking lights on the Christmas tree to sparkle to life.

  In an old rocker, near the window, she held her daughter to her breast and smiled at the tiny face with sky-blue eyes and a cap of dark curls.

  “Here you go,” she whispered and kissed Mary on her downy head. From the window, she could look across the lake and see the mist rising over the water as dawn approached. She felt an incredible calm.

  Nadine had insisted on giving them this cabin as a wedding present. Ben had declined of course, but worked out some deal with his sister so that they could afford to live here. Nadine, caught up with twin girls and preadolescent boys, had finally realized that she didn’t need a second home.

  It was satisfying, Carlie thought, smoothing one of Mary’s downy curls with her finger. They were all parents now. Turner and Heather had a second little boy, the spitting image of his older brother, Adam, and Rachelle and Jackson were the proud parents of a son. A new generation for Gold Creek.

  And though some couples had divorced, others had married. Ben’s father, George, had married Ellen Tremont Little, and wonder of wonder, Thomas Fitzpatrick was squiring Tracy Niday around, though Carlie had little hope that their affair would blossom into anything other than what it was.

  “Hey, you two, how about a walk?”

  “Now? I’m in my robe,” Carlie protested as she gazed up the stairs. Ben was dressed in jeans and his leather jacket and he was carrying a snowsuit for Mary and Carlie’s long black coat. “It’s freezing.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Wondering what he was up to, Carlie finished feeding and changing her daughter, then put the infant into the heavy snowsuit. Ben and Attila were waiting outside on the porch. “I’ll carry her,” he said, taking the baby from his wife’s arms and walking toward the lake.

  The sun was rising over the mountains to the east and mist danced upon the smooth water. “What’s going on?”

  “Just honoring a time-honored tradition.” At the shore, he bent down and scooped some water into his hand.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Absolutely.” He pulled a champagne glass from the pocket of his jacket, bent down and scooped some of the water from the lake, then held the glass to Carlie’s lips. “I think we’ve been blessed by the God of the moon—”

  “Sun,” she corrected.

  “Whatever. Drink. But not too much.”

  She sipped and then Ben took a swallow before dunking his finger and spilling a few tiny drops on his daughter’s forehead.

  “Hey—wait—”

  “Christening her.”

  “I don’t think Reverend Osgood would approve.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t,” Ben agreed, kissing his daughter on her cheek. “But we have a lot to be thankful for. This pip-squeak of a daughter, your father’s new job at the Bait and Fish, the house—”

  “Each other.”

  He smiled and sighed. “Each other.” Slinging an arm around Carlie’s shoulder, he held her close. Little Mary yawned and closed her eyes again.

  Carlie rested her head against his shoulder and watched as the sun rose in the sky, turning the mist on the water’s surface to a glorious white cloud—the ghosts of Whitefire Lake.

  She closed her eyes and imagined she heard the sounds of native drums but realized it was only the steady, constant beating of Ben’s heart.

  * * * * *

  Author’s Note

  A short history of

  Gold Creek, California

  THE NATIVE AMERICAN legend of Whitefire Lake was whispered to the white men who came from the East in search of gold in the mountains. Even in the missions, there was talk of the legend, though men of the Christian God professed to disbelieve any pagan myths.

  None was less believing than Kelvin Fitzpatrick, a brawny Irishman who was rumored to have killed a man before he first thrust his pickax into the hills surrounding the lake. No body was ever found, and the claim jumper vanished, so murder couldn’t be proved. But the rumors around Fitzpatrick didn’t disappear.

  He found the first gold in the hills on a morning when the lake was still shrouded in the white mist that was as beautiful as it was deceptive. Fitzpatrick staked his claim and drank lustily from the water. He’d found his home and his fortune in these hills.

  He named the creek near his claim Gold Creek and decided to become the first founding father of a town by the same name. He took his pebbles southwest to the city of San Francisco, where he transformed gold to money and a scrubby forty-niner into what appeared to be a wealthy gentleman. With his money and looks, Kelvin wooed and married a socialite from the city, Marian Dubois.

  News of Fitzpatrick’s gold strike traveled fast, and soon Gold Creek had grown into a small shantytown. With the prospectors came the merchants, the gamblers, the saloon keepers, the clergy and the whores. The Silver Horseshoe Saloon stood on the west end of town and the Presbyterian church was built on the east, and Gold Creek soon earned a reputation for fistfights, barroom brawls and hangings.

  Kelvin’s wealth increased and he fathered four children—all girls. Two were from Marian, the third from a town whore and the fourth by a Native American woman. All the children were disappointments as Kelvin Fitzpatrick needed an heir for his empire.

  The community was growing from a boisterous mining camp to a full-fledged town, with Kelvin Fitzpatrick as Gold Creek’s first mayor and most prominent citizen. The persecuted Native Americans with their legends and pagan ways were soon forced into servitude or thrown off their land. They made their way into the hills, away from the white man’s town and the white man’s troubles.

  In 1860, when Kelvin was forty-three, his wife finally bore him a son, Rodwell Kelvin Fitzpatrick. Roddy, handsome and precocious, quickly became the apple of his father’s eye. Though considered a “bad seed” and a hellion by most of the churchgoing citizens of Gold Creek, Roddy Fitzpatrick was the crown prince to the Fitzpatrick fortune, and when his father could no longer mine gold from the earth’s crust, he discovered a new mode of wealth, and perhaps, more sacred: the forest.

  Roddy Fitzpatrick started the first logging operation and opened the first sawmill. All competitors were quickly bought or forced out of business. But other men, bankers and smiths, carpenters and doctors, settled down to stay and hopefully smooth out the rough edges of the town. Men with names of Kendrick, Monroe and Powell made Gold Creek their home and brought their wives in homespun and woolens, women who baked pies, planned fairs and corralled their wayward Saturday night drinking men into church each Sunday morning.

  Roddy Fitzpatrick, who grew into a handsome but cruel man, ran the family businesses when the older Fitzpatrick retired. In a few short years, Roddy had gambled or squandered most of the family fortune. Competitors had finally gotten a toehold in the lumber-rich mountains surrounding Gold Creek and new businesses were sprouting along the muddy streets of the town.

  The railroad arrived, bringing with its coal-spewing engines much wealth and commerce. The railway station was situated on the west end of town, not too far from the Silver Horseshoe Saloon, and a skeletal trestle bridged the gorge of the creek. Ranchers and farmers brought their produce into town for the market and more people stayed on, se
ttling in the growing community, though Gold Creek was still known for the bullet holes above the bar in the saloon.

  And still there was the rumor of some Indian curse that occasionally was whispered by the older people of the town.

  Roddy Fitzpatrick married a woman of breeding, a woman who was as quick with a gun as she was to quote a verse. Belinda Surrett became his wife and bore him three sons.

  Roddy, always a hothead and frustrated at his shrinking empire, was involved in more than his share of brawls. Knives flashed, guns smoked and threats and curses were spit around wads of tobacco and shots of whiskey.

  When a man tried to cheat him at cards, Roddy plunged a knife into the blackguard’s heart and killed him before a packed house of gamblers, drinkers, barkeeps and whores. After a night in jail, Roddy was set free with no charges leveled against him by the sheriff, who was a fast friend of the elder Fitzpatrick.

  But Roddy’s life was not to be the same. One night he didn’t return home to his wife. She located Kelvin and they formed a search party. Two days later, Roddy’s body washed up on the shores of Whitefire Lake. There was a bullet in his chest and his wallet was empty.

  Some people thought he was killed by a thief; still others decided Roddy had been shot by a jealous husband, but some, those who still believed in the legend, knew that the God of the Sun had taken Roddy’s life to punish Kelvin Fitzpatrick by not only taking away his wealth, but the only thing Kelvin had loved: his son.

  The older Fitzpatrick, hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, took his own life after learning that his son was dead. Kelvin’s daughters, those legitimate, and those who were born out of wedlock, each began their own lives.

  The town survived the dwindling empire of the Fitzpatricks and new people arrived at the turn of the century. New names were added to the town records. Industry and commerce brought the flagging community into the twentieth century, though the great earthquake of 1906 did much damage. Many buildings toppled, but the Silver Horseshoe Saloon and the Presbyterian church and the railroad trestle bridge survived.

  Monroe Sawmill, a new company owned and operated by Hayden Garreth Monroe, bought some of the dwindling Fitzpatrick forests and mills, and during the twenties, thirties and forties, Gold Creek became a company town. The people were spared destitution during the depression as the company kept the workers employed, even when they were forced to pay in company cash that could only be spent on goods at the company store. But no family employed by Monroe Sawmill went hungry; therefore, the community, who had hated Fitzpatrick’s empire, paid homage to Hayden Garreth Monroe, even when the forests dwindled, logging prices dropped and the mills were shut down.