Blessing in Disguise (63 page)

He loves you. You love him.

Think of Gene, how short a time you had together. There are no guarantees, not ever. Live for the moment. That’s all you or anyone really has. Think of what you’d be losing
. ...

Stop being sensible—follow your heart for a change.

Then, once again, she was seeing the stares and cold shoulders she and Gabe would have to endure at Shady Hill, where her family had belonged forever. She thought of Lucinda Parmenter dropping by the other day to pick up the begonias Cordelia was donating to the Garden Club’s annual sale, and how the old biddy had nearly fainted at the sight of Gabe, at eight in the evening, seated at her kitchen table in his shirtsleeves drinking a beer.

“A word to the wise,” she’d whispered to Cordelia on her way out. “I know you’ve always gone your own way, my dear. But remember that not everyone will be as broadminded as I am about your ... friend.”

No, it would never work. It was time she started giving herself a good sharp dose of reality.

Cordelia pushed her chair back on the worn Aubusson carpet, and stood so abruptly that a swarm of tiny fireflies flitted at the corners of her field of vision. She remembered that she had skipped breakfast, and thought,
I must eat something.
Perhaps Netta still had some of last night’s chicken in the icebox, and those tasty ham biscuits. Oh, and there was that lovely tart she’d made from the rhubarb springing up everywhere in the grassy borders around her kitchen garden.

A picnic, that was it. She’d break it to him then.

Downstairs, she packed a hamper, and went off in search of Gabe.

She found him in back, by the toolshed, cleaning and oiling his shears and pruning saw while arguing good-naturedly with Hollis about the benefits of manure over chemical lawn fertilizers. The tips of his ears were sunburned, she saw, and the beaked bridge of his nose. Who would have thought it would be so blazingly hot this early in the summer? In her light cotton blouse and gabardine slacks she felt much too warm all of a sudden.

“I packed us a lunch,” she said, holding up the hamper. “Let’s eat out in the gazebo, where it’s cooler.”

Gabe looked up from wiping his saw blade with a chamois rag to cast her a brief, questioning glance. But then there was only his slow, sweet, and somehow knowing smile, and the thoughtful way in which he nodded. She watched as he washed his hands under the garden hose with a sliver of soap he kept on the little stone ledge above the faucet. With droplets of water still sparkling on his reddened knuckles, he took the hamper from her, and they started down the gravel path that wandered past the newly planted vegetable garden with its rows of seedlings, past the strawberry patch and a low fence against which grew clusters of nodding hollyhocks and foxglove and delphinium.

Stopping at the white lattice gazebo, Cordelia felt a sharp pang at the thought of what she had to tell him.

Oh, if only he didn’t make it so hard! She saw that he’d cleaned the dust and dead leaves off the gazebo’s benches, and swept the spiderwebs from its latticework. As if he’d known she’d want to come here today.

She felt her heart fill with anguish. She was destined to go on loving a man who could never wholly be a part of her world ... a man both intelligent and kind, who thought of little things, like spreading one of the checked napkins she’d brought over the wooden bench for her to sit on.

“You did a nice job.” She pointed up at the weeping willow he’d pruned earlier this spring, noting how he’d managed to tame it without sacrificing any of its natural sweep.

Gabe nodded, and took the drumstick she offered him. “I patched it so it wouldn’t bleed.” She saw how the sun slanting through the lattice had cast a net of brilliant diamonds over the scuffed toes of his work boots.

Cordelia felt nearly sick with what she knew she must say. Had he already guessed? He
must
have, she thought. His words, seeming to mean more than what he was actually saying, were cutting into her, reminding her that, even if she couldn’t marry him, there was no going back to the way things had been before.

“I remember when we moved back here, the girls and I, after Gene ... well, when Mother needed looking after. Grace was almost fourteen, and hadn’t yet discovered boys. She used to spend all her time down there scooping up tadpoles and God knows what else. I swear, she had a permanent ring around her ankles from wading in that filthy water.”

“You must feel nervous about her coming back after all this time.”

Funny. Anyone else would have assumed she’d be looking
forward
to Grace’s visit, or maybe even
dreading
it, but Gabe knew her too well.

“Why, yes.” She smiled at him, noticing the pale squint lines at the corners of his eyes. “I
am
a bit. It’s true she invited me to her wedding, but I don’t think she’s altogether forgiven me for being her mother.”

“And you don’t know that you’ve quite forgiven her for not being the daughter you wanted?”

“Perhaps. But I’m learning that not everything ought to bend to my way of thinking. Heavens, look at Sissy! She’s always gone along with me—except for marrying that dreadful Beech—and look where it’s gotten her.”

“She’ll come around. What you’re doing for her now is the greatest gift any parent can give her grown child.”

Gift? Sissy had done nothing but whine and complain! Why, half the folks in Blessing were probably saying she’d pulled the rug right out from under Sissy’s feet.

“Gabe, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, somewhat peeved. “I’ve done absolutely
nothing
for that child since Beech moved out except listen to her carry on.”

“Yes, but you’re letting her find out on her own what she needs to do. You’re letting her grow up.”

Cordelia hadn’t thought of it that way, but all at once she felt as if she’d been granted some kind of reprieve, and along with it a whole new perspective.

“Well, maybe I’ve done a little growing up myself,” she admitted. “A little odd for a woman my age ... but I’m finding out that things I would never have believed could happen have a way of happening anyway.”

“You mean Nola?”

“Partly, yes. All that dreadful publicity when Grace’s book came out. But now ... it’s like some kind of miracle, seeing the library she designed all built, big as life. Almost as if it were Eugene himself who ...” She stopped.

Gabe simply nodded, letting her know she didn’t need to finish the sentence. He understood.

“She sent me a note along with her RSVP,” Cordelia told him. “She’ll be at the dedication, but she asked if she could stop by sometime beforehand. I invited her for tea.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She was pleased to see that she was capable of surprising him.

The truth was that her invitation had surprised Cordelia, too. She still had such mixed feelings about Nola Emory! Mostly, she wished that the young woman would simply turn out to be a bad dream, that one day Cordelia would wake up and Nola would no longer exist.

Then why had she invited her? Good manners? No. More than anyone else, Nola Emory had a right to be there on the day Eugene’s—and her—library was dedicated.

Gabe looked up at the branches curving over them and remarked, “God’s cathedral. We cut and prune, but, in the end, we can never really lay claim to any of it, can we?”

“You and Gene would have been great friends,” she told him. She’d always known it, of course, but she seldom spoke of Eugene to Gabe, especially not in any way that might sound as if she were comparing them.

“I’m sure we would have,” Gabe replied mildly.

Cordelia fell silent, watching a cardinal stitch its way among the branches searching for twigs for its nest. She felt completely at ease, yet at the same time pressingly aware of what she had to say. “Did I tell you? The Governor will be coming,” she said brightly, wanting desperately to postpone the inevitable. “He’s promised us some sort of speech, though I swear, if he says one word about that new highway he’s trying to railroad through here, I will personally see to it that he is tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.”

Gabe chuckled, wiping his chin with his napkin. “I know you, Cordelia. The most you’ll do is seat him next to that woman who heads the Green Belt Berets.”

“Wilmadene Klempner? Mercy, she’s enough to make him
wish
he’d been tarred and feathered instead.” She smiled as she nibbled at a cold ham biscuit. “But that’s not a bad idea. ... I wonder if I ought to invite her? It’d be worth it, almost, just to see the look on Lottie Parker’s face.”

“Just like the look she’d give you if you were to show up with me on your arm?” There was a subtle challenge behind the lightness of Gabe’s tone, and Cordelia felt herself grow very still. The sun weaving through the latticework seemed suddenly to imprison her, a cage made of light and shadow.

“Gabe ...”

He put a hand over hers, gentle and at the same time urgent. “I know what you’re going to say, Cordelia. I see it in your face. All I’m asking is that you give it some more thought, don’t give me your answer right this minute. I can wait.” He smiled, and she was nearly shattered by the glimmering of half-formed tears in his eyes. “Patience is the art of hoping, a wise man once said.”

Cordelia felt that she herself might die if she hurt him, but then the words were spilling out of her: “Gabe, I love you, but I don’t think I can marry you.”

“There’s a difference between thinking something and knowing it absolutely.”

“I’d only make you unhappy.”

“Are you sure it’s my happiness you’re concerned with, Cordelia?” A slight chill stole into his voice.

“I’m not young anymore. And you ...”

“I don’t see growing old as a handicap,” he said. “For either one of us.” He smiled. “ ‘Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.’ ”

“Oh, Gabe, quoting Browning won’t help when you’re looking after a doddering old lady. You
know
what I mean.”

“Yes, I think I do.” Carefully, he wrapped his chicken bone in a paper napkin and replaced it in the basket. When he looked at her, his face was full of sorrow.

She placed a hand on his arm, wishing with all her heart that its weathered strength, those sturdy bones standing out in relief on the back of his wrist, the faint tracing of sun-bleached hair along his forearm, all could be hers forever and ever to be comforted by.

At that moment, Gabe pulled her into his arms, and kissed her. His mouth tender, seeking. Enveloping her with his smell—that of green things and new beginnings. She wanted more than anything for his kiss to go on and on, for his arms never to let go of her.

But, in the darkest chamber of her heart, she couldn’t keep from wondering if their love, like a fragile flower protected by tall hedges, would survive if exposed to the harsh elements.

You’re a fool, Cordelia Truscott,
whispered the voice she now recognized as that of the young and idealistic ingenue whom Eugene, on a trip home to Blessing to announce their engagement, had once made love to in this very same gazebo, under a moon made for fools.

Gabe, drawing back and pressing a finger lightly to her mouth, shook his head, as if to silence whatever she’d been about to say. Right now, she wasn’t sure what that was, because her heart was thundering so in her ears that it had shaken all her thoughts loose, and made her wonder if maybe she
was
losing her marbles.

“Wait,” he said. “A few days, a few weeks. Will you give us that much?”

It was the “us” that decided her. How could she say no to a man who understood that—if she said goodbye—she would be hurting herself as much as, maybe even more than, him?

Nola had had to change planes in Charlotte, with a twenty-minute layover that had stretched to an hour and a half. On the flight to Macon, she’d picked up a copy of
U.S.A. Today,
which featured a half-page photo of the newly completed Truscott Library. As she scanned the article below it, a paragraph about Maguire, Chang & Foster had jumped out at her.

I should have been the one getting credit, she thought now as she followed the airport exit signs in her rented Blazer. It’s my name that should have been in that article, and on the brass plaque beside the entrance.

But then she reminded herself that, if her name had been there, the library would never have gotten built. And it was still her design, even if only a few people knew it.

Anyway, it had all worked out. Her ten-thousand-dollar severance bonus, plus the fifteen Ken Maguire had invested, had set her up nicely in a small office at Thirty-ninth and Eighth.

Now, after more than two years, it was still hand-to-mouth. But things were picking up. Just in the last month, she’d landed a commission for a drive-through bank in Greenwich, and two apartment renovations. And she’d also been joined by her old rival, Randy Craig, who’d gotten them a strip mall in Ridgefield, and an elegant shingle-style vacation home out in East Hampton.

So why was she here instead of back home in New York, buried in vellum and eraser shavings, where she belonged?

I have to see it, just once. Even if I’m the only one at that damn ceremony besides Cordelia Truscott who knows. ...

Now, as she sped east along Interstate 16, Nola felt sure she was on a fool’s mission. What had she been hoping to find when she got to Cordelia’s? A red-carpet welcome?

The woman, after all, had kept her end of the bargain. Never breathing a word, and at the same time watching over the library—according to Ken Maguire—like a mother lioness while it was under construction, making sure no corners were cut, no aspect of the original design sacrificed for the sake of economy or simplification.

So what more could she expect?

The dotting of the i? The crossing of the t?

She’d told Cordelia she ought to be arriving around five, and already she was late, with more than an hour’s drive ahead of her. By the time she got there, Cordelia would be ready for supper, not tea. Should she stop somewhere and call?

Nola decided to keep on driving. Either Cordelia would want to see her anyway, or her lateness would provide a convenient excuse to back out.