Enright Family Collection (70 page)

“I’ll give my family your regards.” She took two steps backward, appeared about to say something, then apparently changed her mind, because she turned her back and walked through the office door without another word.

Ben leaned against the desk and cursed softly. After so many years of fighting off the memories, he was being forced to deal with feelings he had tried to keep buried for a very long time. And in his effort to protect himself, he had hurt someone who had wanted nothing more than to greet an old friend.

As for Delaney O’Connor, he had some explaining to do.

*  *  *

Zoey ignored what felt like a ball of wax in her throat, straightened her chin, and left the building without giving in to the urge to cry and to curse. She made it to her car, made it to the end of the parking lot before slamming on the brake and giving in to tears that made her feel almost as foolish as she had felt standing in Ben’s office and realizing that Ben was not delirious with joy at seeing her again. If anything, he had looked positively
pained
when he realized who she was. Whatever had made her think that he would have been as happy to see her as she had been to see him? He had never known what special place he had held in her life, had no way of knowing that, all through her stormy adolescence, she had held on to his memory like a magic token, that she had always harbored the secret dream that someday, he would come back into her life, and make all her dreams come true.

Well, he was back, all right, but the dream seemed, somehow, to have run a tad off course. There was nothing to do but go home, cry it out, and figure out how she’d get through the next few months without making a complete and total ass out of herself.

And Ben himself simply wasn’t at all the way he was supposed to be.

What had happened to the boy she had known, the one who had always been her champion, her buddy? She had
found little of
him
in the man who had sat behind the big mahogany desk, his eyes smoldering with emotions that had seemed to run the gamut from sorrow to wrath in the blink of an eye. What had happened over the years that had stolen the joy from his eyes, the light from his smile?

And what would it take, she wondered without wanting to, to help him to find those things again?

Chapter
12
 

“When were you going to tell me that one of Delia Enright’s daughters worked for you?”

Ben’s words, clipped and cool, greeted Delaney as soon as he walked into the living room of the condo overlooking a broad stream that, miles away, fed into the Brandywine River.

Taken off guard, Delaney paused only briefly as he took off his overcoat. He opened the hall closet, taking advantage of the opportunity to look for a hanger and gather his wits at the same time.

“Ah,” Delaney said, cheerfully, “so you ran into Zoey, did you? I thought that might be a nice surprise for you.”

“I didn’t run into her, Delaney. She came to the office. She knew I would be there.” Ben shifted his leg, which had become increasingly more stiff and painful as the day progressed.

“I might have mentioned to her that you’d be around at some point.” Delaney shrugged.

“Before you ‘mentioned’ it to me?”

“Well, I guess I may have let her know that I was hoping that you’d come back.”

“Did you hire her, Delaney?”

“No. No, I did not hire her.” Delaney sighed, partly from relief that this was one question he could answer honestly. “She was already working here when I bought the company. I bought her contract along with all the others.”

Ben looked at him skeptically.

“I swear, son, that’s the truth.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that she was here?”

“I thought it would be a nice surprise for you, Ben. I thought . . . that is, I was hoping that you would be happy to see her.”

“It was a surprise, all right.” Ben got up and tried to pace off his anger, but his leg slowed him down.

“Ben, you might want to see the doctor tomorrow, instead of waiting till next week. You’re obviously in pain.”

Ben looked out the window on the swift-moving waters of the stream, swollen from a week’s worth of rain. He was in pain all right. But it had little to do with his leg.

“My leg will be fine.”

“What is it, Ben? Why are you so angry?”

“You manipulated me, Delaney.”

“Guilty.” Perhaps the direct approach would be more effective.

Lightning shot through the night sky, a jagged metallic flash behind the woods.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I thought it was time, son,” the old man said softly.

“Don’t you think that should have been my decision?”

“It’s one that you didn’t seem able to make.” Delaney lowered himself into his favorite chair and stared into the fireplace at the logs that Mrs. Jackson, the housekeeper, had laid before she left earlier that day. The damper was still closed and the logs were unlit. “Ben, I think I understand why it’s been easier for you to stay away. But sooner or later, you have to face up to the past.
It’s all part of who you are. You can’t cut and paste whole parts of your life, son.”

Ben stared at his grandfather silently. That had been exactly what he had been doing for years. Cutting out the parts of his life that had hurt, hoping to make the pain go away.

How had Delaney figured it out, when he himself wasn’t sure why he kept his foot on certain doors?

“Are you going to leave now, go back to England?” Delaney was asking.

Ben pondered the question. Of course, he could go. He could turn his back on all of it—on Westboro and all the memories that he had kept in the shadows for so long—and simply leave. It was his choice.

“Gramps, are you really sick?” Ben asked. First things first.

Delaney reached in his pocket and pulled out a tiny pillbox and tossed it to Ben from across the room. Ben caught it with one hand and opened it. Four tiny pills lay inside. He looked over at his grandfather.

“Nitroglycerin,” Delaney told him.

Ben snapped the lid shut and tossed the pillbox back.

“I promised you that I’d help out for as long as I could. Until I can drive again.” Ben met Delaney’s gaze levelly. “I won’t go back on that.”

“Thank you, son.” Delaney let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

“But, Gramps . . .”

“What, son?”

“The next time you want to surprise me . . . don’t surprise me.”

Later, after dinner had been served and Delaney had excused himself to turn in, Ben stood and looked out that same window. The rain had stopped and the clouds had given way to a cool, clear night. The moon, having made its appearance, cast a golden glow on the stream that ran little more than fifty yards away.

There had been another cool, moonlit night in March
when he and Nick Enright, both almost twelve that year, had slipped out of their beds and met inside the barn, prepared for adventure.

“Got the flashlights?” Ben had whispered.

“Yeah. Where are the oars?” Nick began scrambling around in the hay that covered the floor in one of the unused stalls.

“I already carried them down to the river,” Ben whispered back. “Grab one end of the canoe and let’s go.”

“Wait just a minute.” Nick took a flashlight and found the side door, which he opened. One of the horses, purchased along with the property, nickered in the dark. “Shhh, Jasmine. It’s me, Nicky. Shhh, old girl.”

“Come on, Nick.”

“Right.”

They had each grabbed an end of the long thin canoe and carried it through the open door, Ben balancing his end on his hip once outside, so that he could close up the barn. Once they had left the immediate area of the barn, the night became blacker and the woods deepened. The smell of damp earth that had yet to warm with the approach of early spring surrounded them as they walked down to the banks of the river. As quietly as possible, they slipped the canoe into the water, then climbed aboard and rowed unhurried into the dark of a Chester County night.

“There used to be Indians all along the Brandywine,” Nick told him, still speaking in hushed tones.

“And British troops, too, during the Revolution,” Ben said.

“Do you think General Washington ever floated down this very part of the river?”

“Probably. Him and Lafayette.”

“You think there’s ghosts here?”

Ben had nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought of it before, but yeah. I think there’s plenty of ghosts. Indians and soldiers.”

They had floated past some hanging rocks that in the dark had loomed large, both of the boys unconsciously paddling just a little faster.

“Are you afraid that we’ll see them, Ben? The ghosts?”

“No,” he had said, and he wasn’t. “Are you?”

“No.”

Their oars dipped into the water in perfect rhythm, making a warm, tinkling sound. Without warning, the moon emerged from behind the veil of clouds, the flood of light startling them with its suddenness. They both laughed nervously.

“What would you do if we saw one? What would you do if we rounded the next bend in the river and the ghosts of soldiers were standing right there along the bank?”

“I’d wave,” Nick said, and they had both laughed, the sound of it echoing far along the banks of the river and long into the night.

Ben could almost hear them, those boys who had loved the river and had sought adventure. He and Nick had spent countless hours there on the Brandywine, exploring the rocks and the riverbanks and all the streams that fed into it, and had most likely even passed by this very spot, where Delaney’s condo stood, at one time or another.

Suddenly, Ben missed Nick terribly. The feeling crept up and washed over him before he knew what was happening and could take his accustomed evasive action. Nick Enright had been the best friend he had ever had, and there were times when Ben could convince himself that that type of comaraderie came along once in a lifetime and he should be happy that he had had such friendship once, to chalk it up to a time gone by. And usually, he was successful in putting Nick back into that mental box labeled “Childhood Memories” and closing the lid. This, however, would not be one of those times.

Ben thought back to that afternoon, the look on Zoey’s face when she had realized he was not only stunned to see her, but that he was not particularly happy about it.

She had seemed to all but dance into the room, her face lit with what he now acknowledged as joy at the prospect of seeing an old friend after so many years. He had been so overcome with so many emotions that he had barely been able to react to her. The woman who had come into his office bore no resemblance to the child he remembered. That goofy-looking little girl had grown into a beautiful woman, the kind who could take your breath away. Ben wasn’t sure that perhaps she hadn’t done just that, that maybe part of his reaction was shock at discovering not just that she’d grown up, but
how
she’d grown up. After all, the last time he’d seen her, she’d had braces. Her knees and elbows were constantly skinned and scabbed from falling out of trees or off her bike. And she’d been straight as a stick back then.

Ben had not been so overcome by emotion that he had failed to notice that she was no longer straight as a stick.

There had been long shapely legs inside those black leggings, he’d noticed
that
when she’d first come into the room. And over the years she had grown curves in all the most unlikely places—unlikely from his standpoint, anyway—this was little
Zoey Enright
he was talking about here. Somehow, he’d never thought of her growing up at all, and certainly had never thought she’d have grown up, well, like she
had.
And her hair, once little more than a ponytail high atop her head, now flowed around her face in dark waves. Zoey had grown up, all right, and she had, from all appearances, done a damn fine job of it.

The very first thing tomorrow morning, he vowed, he would seek her out and apologize to her for having let his own personal demons chase the light from her eyes. And maybe, one day soon, he’d find the courage to face those demons down.

*  *  *

“Mom, I made a complete ass out of myself,” Zoey wailed into the telephone.

“Oh, sweetie, it wasn’t all that bad. Actually, I thought it was, well, sort of cute the way the camera stayed on the
bowl while you were trying to nab that elusive little piece of eggshell.”

“Not that.” Zoey sighed. She’d forgotten about her forced venture into televised cooking. “Later. When I went to see Ben.”

“You saw Ben today?”

“You will never believe this. Mom, Delaney brought him here to help run the HMP.”

“Ben is there? At the station?”

“Yes. And you were absolutely right about him. It was exactly what you said.”

“And what was that?”

“The man is nothing like the boy, Mom. Ben grew up to be a cool, unfriendly man. He wasn’t even happy to see me.”

“Zoey, I find that really hard to believe.” Delia frowned. “Ben was never cool and unfriendly, not to anyone, least of all to you.”

“You yourself said people change, Mom.”