A
bby Weaver relinquished her secure hold on the leg of the pine farmhouse table and lurched across the black-and-white checkerboard floor. Reaching her destination, she grasped her mother’s leg and gazed back in amazement at the distance she had traveled.
“Well, look at you!” Keely Weaver turned away from the kitchen sink, dried her soapy hands, and bent down to pick up her year-old baby, nuzzling the warm, springy flesh of her cheek. Abby laughed, delighted with herself and with her mother’s response.
“What a big girl you’re getting to be,” said Keely, burying her face in the soft, cotton T-shirt that Abby wore and rubbing her nose against the baby’s tummy in a way guaranteed to make Abby squeal with giggles. “Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”
“What are my favorite girls up to?” asked Mark Weaver, coming into the kitchen and lifting the baby from her mother’s arms. He held his daughter against his chest, the sleeves of his pin-striped business shirt now rolled up, and kissed her over and over again on her sparse, silky hair. “Are you making your mommy laugh?” he asked, looking the baby intently in the eye, and cupping his large, tanned hand around her little head. The gold of his wedding ring glinted in the last rays of the sunset coming in through the wall of windows in their kitchen.
“She’s been practicing her freestyle,” Keely observed, smiling at the sight of the two of them. Mark was an attorney—sleek, handsome, and renowned for the intractability of his arguments. But around his baby daughter, he was about as ruthless as a bowl of pudding. Mark was driven about his work, but he changed gears instantly the moment his gaze landed on the fuzzy head and shining eyes of his baby girl. At his
office and in the courthouse, people joked about the way he would whip out her picture and insist that they admire the most beautiful baby ever born.
“How could you be walking already?” he asked Abby in wonderment as she poked one of her stubby fingers between his lips. He pretended to chew on it for a moment, then gently enveloped her tiny hand in his. “Next thing you know, you’ll be wanting a dress for the prom.”
Keely sighed and nodded. “It’s true. It’ll be here before you know it.” Even as she said it, a thought about Dylan dimmed her spirits like a cloud dims the light of the moon.
Seeming to sense the change in her, Mark reached out his free arm and included his wife in the embrace. “That was a great dinner,” he said. “I know this is a terribly old-fashioned thing to say, but I love having my family here waiting for me at the end of the day, and a wonderful dinner on the table.”
“Meet the Flintstones,” Keely said, pretending to be annoyed with him. But Mark was not fooled. He drew her closer and kissed her, to their baby’s delight.
“You know I don’t mean it like that,” he said.
“You did, and you know it,” she teased him.
“No. Really. If you want to go back to work, I’m for it. Although I admit I’ll be a little jealous to have all those teenage boys wanting to be teacher’s pet.”
“Oh, stop it,” she said, but she smiled. “Teenage boys are not interested in the likes of me.”
“Any man would be interested in a woman like you,” he said.
She blushed, amazed as always by his frank adoration. She hadn’t given much thought to her appearance lately. Luckily, she had regained her trim figure soon after Abby’s birth, and her skin still glowed with the remains of a summer tan. But she wore no makeup, and her silvery blond hair was twisted into a formless knot. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
Not every man’s idea of a siren,
she thought. “Well, I’m glad you think so,” she said. “But really, I’m not ready to go back to teaching yet. There’s still so much to do around here. And it’s important for me to be with Abby in these early years.” Then she reached out and ran a
finger pensively down Abby’s cheek. “A mom is like a mirror at this age. I’d forgotten—it’s been so long since Dylan was small. Every tiny accomplishment, they look to you for approval. I feel like she’s programming that little computer in there for life. And every day brings changes, a thousand little decisions about how to negotiate in the world. She needs that constant attention. And of course, Dylan needs the extra time right now, too . . .”
“Well, in this day and age, I think it’s the greatest luxury you can give a kid—a mother to be there whenever you need her. And even when you don’t. I can speak with authority on this subject.”
She knew what he meant. His parents had died in a boating accident when he was only four years old, and he hadn’t been adopted by Lucas and Betsy Weaver until he was sixteen. His stories of the years in between reminded her of something out of Dickens.
“I just worry that it gets lonesome for you here sometimes,” he continued. “You don’t know anyone. You’re kind of isolated out here . . .”
“It’s true,” she said, thinking wistfully of the easy camaraderie she’d had with her fellow teachers when she taught school back in Michigan. “Sometimes I feel a little bit . . . cut off from people. But it’s only temporary. And this is a gilded cage, I must admit.” She would not have believed, in those dark days after Richard’s death, that she would ever end up living in a house like this one, with a new husband and a baby. She had been steeped in guilt, blaming herself for failing Richard, for not preventing him from taking that ultimate, drastic step. She shuddered at the memory and then banished it, looking around with satisfaction at the beautiful old kitchen, discreetly renovated to suit the most demanding chef, and then glanced out the bank of windows at the rolling lawn, still green in the September twilight, at the elegant patio and the pool. Through the locked gate that surrounded the pool, she saw the familiar shape of Dylan’s skateboard, resting near the edge. Her frown returned.
How many times do I have to tell him?
she thought, exasperated.
“What’s the matter?” Mark asked.
Keely shook her head and extricated himself from his embrace. “Oh, it’s Dylan. He left his skateboard out by the pool again. I’ve told
him time and again that it’s dangerous to leave it out there. It goes in the garage when he’s not using it.”
Mark refrained, as ever, from criticizing his stepson. He never tried to make her feel that she was somehow remiss in the raising of her son. It was something Keely appreciated, although she often felt a sense of helpless frustration at the changes that had come over her boy these last few years. “He’s got a lot on his mind. Where are you going?” Mark asked as she walked away from him.
“I’m going to call him to come down. He’s still got to do his homework.” School had started only a few weeks ago, and they were all adjusting to the new schedule and the constant assignments that had to be finished.
“I’ll help him with it,” Mark said.
Keely regarded him fondly. “You are a patient soul,” she said.
“Hey, I was fourteen once. I still remember what it was like to be at the mercy of all those raging hormones. I got into all kinds of trouble in those days. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop out of high school.”
“Especially since you didn’t have anyone to help you,” Keely observed sympathetically. Keely was constantly amazed at how Mark had managed to become such a success in life, considering his childhood. If anything, it only seemed to make him more compassionate when it came to Dylan.
“I wasn’t completely on my own. A couple of people helped me,” he insisted. “I had a couple of teachers who tried to make things better for me. And all my foster parents weren’t bad. And, of course, there was Lucas.”
Keely nodded. Lucas Weaver was Mark’s hero—a self-made man from a rugged background who had seen something worth saving in Mark, a known juvenile delinquent whom he’d represented
pro bono
in a vandalism case. Lucas and his wife, Betsy, ended up adopting the troubled boy. Lucas shepherded Mark through college and law school and finally, when he passed the bar, invited Mark to join his law firm. Mark was ever mindful of his enormous debt to Lucas, who had perhaps seen a reflection of himself in Mark and discerned that there was something worth saving in the rebellious teenager.
Mark kissed Abby’s head again and gazed out the windows at the deep turquoise of the pool, the manicured lawn of his property. “Without Lucas, I probably would have ended up in prison or dead somewhere by the side of the road. When I think about what he put up with from me . . . it seems little enough to be patient with Dylan. Besides, all these changes haven’t been easy for him. I know that.”
“Not every man would be so forgiving,” she said. “I really appreciate it, Mark.” The fact was that ever since Dylan had realized that the lawyer who was helping his mother was also courting her, he had been difficult to live with. “I know it’s not easy living with those moods of his—especially when he’s not even your kid,” said Keely apologetically.
“Don’t say that,” said Mark. “He
is
my kid. I think of him as mine. And I wouldn’t trade places with any man in the world. I have exactly what I want in life.”
“What is truly strange,” she said wryly, “is that I know you mean it.”
“More every day,” he said seriously.
He had pursued her with the single-mindedness that he brought to his legal cases. The moment he’d set eyes on her, he’d seemed to know exactly what he wanted. Looking back on it, she wondered how he could have been so sure, so quickly. She’d been a wreck when she’d met him. She had brought Richard’s body back here, to his home town of St. Vincent’s Harbor, Maryland, for burial. Richard’s widowed mother had been too distraught to travel all alone to Michigan, and besides, it had seemed the right thing to do. Mark, who had been friends with Richard in high school, had attended the funeral. He was one of many people who had turned out on that sad occasion. Keely didn’t even remember meeting him that nightmarish weekend. But he remembered it all perfectly. He often said that he’d made up his mind before the funeral service was over that she would be his wife. What made his determination even more surprising was that he’d been engaged to another woman at the time.
“I feel the same way,” Keely said, and it was true. In the early days of their relationship, she sometimes thought, secretly, that she was turning to him out of weariness and a fear of being alone. But each day that passed only made her more sure that she’d made the right decision
in marrying him and had done so for the right reasons. “Well, let me go get Dylan,” she said.
Keely walked out of the kitchen and through the dining room toward the foot of the stairs. The French doors at the end of the dining room were open out onto the patio. Keely automatically walked over to them and closed them. It wasn’t safe, with Abby mobile now, to leave them open. Even with the pool gate locked, it made her uneasy.
This old stone house was elegant and beautiful, and she had fallen in love with it the minute she saw it. But Keely had been willing to forgo it when she saw that it had a pool. Mark didn’t know much about children. He didn’t realize how fast a toddler could get around. And what was worse, he didn’t know how to swim. The boating accident that took his parents’ lives had traumatized him so much that he never went into water any deeper than rain puddles. But once Mark saw how enchanted she was by the house, he’d insisted that they buy it, and nothing could dissuade him.
We’ll be careful,
he’d assured her.
We’ll keep the gate locked.
She’d tried to pretend that she didn’t like the house all that much, but he was not fooled. He saw that she loved it, and that was enough. He would have given her the world if he could. He made no secret of it.
The renovation of the house had taken most of the last year, and they’d finally moved in during the month of June. The project had been costly. They’d be paying off the contractor’s bills for quite a while. And it had been exhausting and time consuming as well. Loads of decisions, most of which Mark had left to Keely. But now that they had lived in the house for several months, it all seemed worthwhile.
I’m a lucky woman,
she thought.
I thought my life was over and now . . .
She sighed as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She put one hand on the walnut banister and called up the stairs. “Dylan . . .”