Stowaway Angel Page 15

  Geri took them. “We’ll celebrate tonight, with lobster, what do you say?”

  Starla nodded. “Okay.”

  Waving the copies, Geri danced out of the office, her dark hair swinging around her shoulders.

  Starla replaced the fax on the bulletin board. Why wasn’t she dancing like her friend? Her eyes were drawn once again to the coloring book page. Why did that silly thing suddenly hold more meaning than a review from Peter Austin? Maybe she should throw it away, erase that chapter of her life so she could move on.

  She raised her hand to the page, but the ring on her finger caught her eye. Instead of removing the picture, she smoothed the paper and repositioned it with another thumbtack.

  Maybe she would finally open those pictures she’d downloaded and face her feelings.

  Maybe throwing herself into next week’s menu was the safest thing she could do. Starla turned and found her notepad and pen.

  That night they celebrated, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “What happened at Christmas?” Geri asked in her quiet yet pointed way.

  Geri had asked before. She and Starla had been friends since the first year of college, and she knew something wasn’t right, but Starla hadn’t wanted to share her confusion with anyone. This time when she brought it up, Starla couldn’t hold back the words.

  “I met a man.”

  Brown eyes wide, Geri set down her glass. “I knew it. That man with the daughter who stowed away in your truck. What’s his name?”

  She hadn’t spoken it since she’d left all those weeks ago. “Charlie.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He has a lot going on inside that he never lets on,” she replied. “He’s forthright, honest, loyal.”

  “What, no ‘thrifty, brave and true’? You make him sound like a Boy Scout. What is he like?”

  “He has eyes a dark-copper color. They’re warm, but they hold a lot in reserve. His hair is dark and thick, silky to touch. His hands are strong enough to shape wood and work with tools, but gentle enough to tie a pigtail.”

  Geri leaned forward in her chair.

  Starla raised a hand to the faint scar line on her forehead.

  “You’re killing me here,” Geri said.

  Starla looked at her friend and shrugged.

  “You kissed him.”

  She nodded.

  “He’s not ready for a commitment.”

  “Oh, he’s committed. But it’s to his late wife’s memory and to the child he had with her. I couldn’t compete with that.”

  “You could compete with Angelina Jolie and every female in the country for Brad Pitt. If you wanted him, he’d be yours.”

  “Geri, you know me better than that.”

  “You’re right I do. And I know that if you wanted him and told him you wanted him, he’d succumb.”

  “Succumb?”

  “You are a prize, you just don’t recognize it.”

  “Even if that was true, even if I pursued him—which I won’t—I wouldn’t want a relationship based on succumbing.”

  “I don’t think that’s a word.”

  “Geri, if I’d thought he wanted me I’d...but he’s still in love with his wife. You should see him when someone talks about her or when his daughter asks questions. It hurts him so much just to hear her name that he can’t bear it.”

  “In other words...” Geri tapped her fingers on the tablecloth. “You can’t play second fiddle to a ghost.”

  “Exactly.”

  “A ghost won’t keep him warm at night.”

  “But she can keep his heart for as long as he lets her.”

  “Then he’s an idiot. He could have you. Maybe someday he’ll realize that.”

  Starla didn’t hold much hope for that. He had never even asked for her phone number or her address. By now she was just a pleasant memory.

  * * *

  MEREDITH CLOSED HER angel book, got out of bed and crept to the window. It was summertime, but not so hot that the air conditioner was on yet, and she liked the sound of the frogs out her window. Sometimes when she and Daddy went for a walk by the creek in the daytime, frogs jumped from the weeds into the water. They didn’t like to stay around people. But at night she heard them.

  Angels were like that. Sometimes you got close to one but they didn’t stay around people too much.

  Daddy spent a lot more time with her now. But he was still sad a lot. He smiled and didn’t want her to see his sad face, but she knew. First he missed Mommy. Gramma missed Mommy a lot, too, and she said that it was okay to be sad for a while. The person you missed would always be in your heart.

  And now Daddy missed the angel lady. Meredith missed Starla, too. And she missed how happy Daddy had seemed at Christmas. She wished she had Starla’s number so she could call her sometimes, but Daddy said he didn’t know it.

  In the pretty light from the moon, she could see Daddy. Sometimes when he thought she was asleeping, he went outside and stood like that, with the frogs making noise and the wind blowing his hair.

  Overhead the sky twinkled with shiny bright stars, just like the stars in Pinocchio. Meredith squeezed her eyes closed and wished on a star for an angel to bring her a new mommy and make her daddy not be sad anymore.

  Crawling back into bed, she hugged her bunny and reached out to touch the Barbie Starla had given her. The doll slept on the pillow beside her at night sometimes.

  The fairy made Pinocchio a real boy, so an angel could for sure bring her a mommy. She still believed.

  * * *

  CHARLIE PULLED WEEDS away from his tomato plants and stood, the late-June sun hot on his shoulders. Meredith had gone to stay with Sean and Robyn for a week, and he missed her more every day. He was glad she was getting to play with the boys, and Robyn was probably spoiling her like crazy in the city, but her absence sure made the days and nights stretch out long and silent.

  It gave him too much time to think, too much time to regret. Too much time to ponder his decisions and his life and the direction it was taking.

  Life went on. That’s all. Just as it always had. Life just happened. And he dealt with it as it came.

  That was another of his flaws, never taking control and making life happen.

  As his thoughts did all too often, they settled back on Starla. He admired her for a hundred reasons. She’d broken away from her father’s expectations and forged a new life for herself. She hadn’t gone along with the flow and ended up middle-aged and unhappy because she’d never taken the paddle and worked her way up a different stream than was expected. As he had.

  Charlie had never cared enough to buck people’s expectations. He’d been content to flow with the current, learn his craft, marry his childhood friend, sailing along placidly.

  Even when his marriage to Kendra had soured, he’d thought it was honorable to stay married to her, raising his daughter, providing a home, even though he and his wife slept separately and neither of them seemed to care.

  Why had he never jumped out of the boat and made his way to shore for a new start? He’d thought about it, but living up to his parents’ expectations had been more important. He owed them, after all.

  Charlie turned on the garden hose at the outdoor spigot, took a long drink that tasted like vinyl, then placed the hose and the flow of water at the base of his tomato plants.

  And he had always believed there was a flaw in his character, because there was such a thing as love. He’d seen it between friends and family. His parents had been in love for thirty-odd years, his brothers had loving relationships with their wives.

  He was the one who had never felt passion for a woman.

  The sun beat mercilessly on his head and shoulders, searing a realization into his soul. That wasn’t true. That was not tr
ue.

  But if he admitted feeling the passion he had tamped down, it would mean he had never loved his wife, because he’d never felt the same way about her. If he was completely and totally honest with himself, he would have to admit that he was not as brokenhearted as everyone thought he was. And somewhere in his barren black heart, he would unearth the ugly suspicion that his wife’s death had been a...relief.

  And for that ungodly thought, Charlie deserved to spend his life alone, unhappy, unfulfilled. The weight of his self-confession pressed on his physical body so hard that he dropped to his knees in the fertile black soil and felt the wet clods soak his worn jeans.

  He’d been relieved when Kendra was no longer in his life.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A SOUND OF anger and distress retched out of Charlie’s soul and tore at his throat. He pounded his fist against the dirt.

  The truth had been a secret so dark and so ugly that he’d buried it and been incapable of facing it. What kind of man felt a sense of freedom at the loss of human life? The loss of a good person, someone he loved, a woman his adopted family treasured and entrusted to him?

  What kind of man was he?

  An hour passed. Charlie’s knees ached. His tomato plants were drowning. His arms were burnt from the sun. His throat was raw.

  He was just a man. Not a bad one. Not an unfeeling one. Just a man who’d grown up as a lonely boy and felt indebted to the Phillipses.

  Slowly he got to his feet.

  He had grieved over Kendra. Just not the way everyone expected—the way he thought he should have.

  And he could love. He’d loved his wife and he adored his daughter.

  And he felt passion. He wanted Starla in a way he’d never experienced before and had been too guilt stricken to acknowledge. Admitting that he had fallen in love with her would have been admitting that he’d never had similar feelings for his wife.

  And he hadn’t been able to do that.

  Not until this moment; when it was too late and Starla was long gone, living the life she’d chosen for herself.

  Oh, how he admired her for that. Right now she was somewhere in Maine living her dream, cooking up lobster bisque, whatever that was, and adding cumin to her soups.

  Charlie glanced toward the creek, the frogs silent now in the daylight. The buzz of a bee met his ears, along with the distant rumble of a jet.

  He’d moved out here to escape. Escape people and their expectations. But he’d heaped more of them on himself, unrealistic expectations sometimes. Like expecting to feel passion for a wife he’d never fallen in love with.

  Looking out across his abundant garden and the waving grass and alfalfa that stretched over his acres, it was hard to remember the same land buried in three feet of glistening snow, the sky silent and gray. That’s why it was such a good year for the farmers, because of all the snow. For every thing there was a season.

  He loved Starla Richards, the ethereal beauty who had driven into his life one wintry night and changed everything. It wasn’t Starla’s fault that he hadn’t felt the same for Kendra. It wasn’t Kendra’s fault, either. And he was sure finished blaming himself.

  Some things just were.

  Feeling as though he’d sweated off a hundred pounds that last hour, Charlie shut off the water and rolled up the hose.

  He would shower, call Meredith, then go get himself something to eat in town. This epiphany stuff gave a man a huge appetite.

  * * *

  “HEY, CHARLIE!” SHIRLEY called when she spotted him entering the air-conditioned interior of the Waggin’ Tongue. “The little darlin’ still off visiting Sean’s family?”

  He picked up a newspaper from the counter. “She’ll be gone until the weekend.”

  “Must be mighty quiet out at your place.”

  He took a seat and she brought him a menu he didn’t bother to open. “It’s quiet all right. I’ll have the hot beef sandwich on mashed potatoes with dark gravy and a side order of slaw.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Milk and a glass of water, please.”

  “Comin’ right up, sweetie.”

  He unfolded the paper and read the front page.

  From the serving ledge on the window that separated the restaurant from the kitchen, Harry’s stereo softly played an old Beatles classic.

  Charlie’d been in here dozens of times since last winter, and he never failed to remember the heart-stopping fear of having his daughter missing or the following days that had changed him.

  When the enormous silver rig with blue detailing rolled into the parking lot, it immediately caught his attention, and Charlie wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not. Just a similar truck, but lately everything made him think of her.

  But no, there across the door was emblazoned the logo Silver Angel with the tilted halo over the A. Charlie’s heart nearly stopped, then chugged so fast he thought it would burst from his chest. He laid down the paper.

  The image of Starla stepping out of that truck into the snow, making her way to the door and inside the café, then shedding her coat took his breath away.

  Still staring out the window, he got to his feet. Shirley was just carrying his drinks to the table, but he walked past her without looking and didn’t see her curious gaze follow him.

  Neither did he notice the heat that struck him when he opened the door and ran across the parking lot toward the truck.

  The door opened and a jeans-clad leg and a boot appeared—a work boot. A man’s work boot.

  A man of about fifty with thick silver hair and mustache lowered himself to the ground and stared at Charlie. The stranger shut the cab door.

  Feeling stupid, Charlie stared back. His gaze shot to the door again. This was the Silver Angel all right. His thoughts shifted to override the disappointment, and understanding reached his brain. Starla’s dad. The Silver Angel was his rig. “You must be Starla’s father.”

  The man smiled. Charlie noted he was tall and good-looking, and he could see where Starla had inherited part of her looks. “That I am. And you’re...?”

  Charlie extended a hand. “Charlie McGraw.”

  The other man had a strong callused handshake. “You’re the man with the little daughter who has a big imagination.”

  “That’s me. She’s visiting my brother’s family right now.”

  “Strange you being here like this. I was planning to look you up on my way through. I’m picking up a load of soybeans down the highway.”

  “I was just getting a bite to eat. Come on in and join me.”

  They walked to the café, boots crunching on the gravel drive, and Charlie held open the door.

  Shirley kept Charlie’s food hot until a plate was made up for the other man.

  “I don’t know your name,” Charlie said when they both had a steaming plate in front of them.

  “Vince.”

  “Starla thinks the world of you. She talked a lot about how close the two of you were while she was growing up.”

  “Yeah, she’s my little Star. A beauty, that one, from the very moment she came into the world. Thinks for herself, she does.”

  Charlie nodded. A minute passed while they ate. “How is she?”

  “She’s doing great. Her restaurant is a big hit on the East Coast. Word is getting around, not to mention attention from some stellar reviews, and people are driving to Beachtree just to try the food.”

  Beachtree. Charlie hadn’t known where she lived until that moment. Oh, he could have found out. His mom had Starla’s email address. He could have asked for it and written to her, asked where she lived, asked how she was doing...but he hadn’t dared. He hadn’t been able to deal with the flood of feelings that contacting her would unleash.

  “What’s it called, her restaurant?”


  “The Hidden Treasure. She came up with that because it sounds piratelike and seafood is the specialty. The place is also out of the way, in a warehouse district. Clever, I thought.”

  Charlie nodded.

  They finished their meals and Shirley brought slices of apple pie. “On the house,” she said with a wink.

  “You said you were going to look me up,” Charlie said.

  Vince Richards nodded. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of my girl. For sharing your family for the holiday and all. She appreciated it. I was relieved to know she was okay and that someone was looking out for her after she got that knock on the head.”

  “Did it leave a scar?”

  “I hadn’t paid attention, but she does wear her hair over that spot now. Hadn’t thought about it, but maybe that’s why. She’s not a vain girl, my Starla. I always thought she could have turned out one of those stuck-up chicks nobody can stand. She has the looks, you know. Maybe it made a difference that we traveled all over and she was always the new kid in school. Leastwise I don’t see her as uppity, maybe others see her differently.”

  “No,” Charlie said quietly. “She’s just as you describe her.”

  Shirley brought two cups of coffee and discreetly disappeared.

  Vince stirred sugar into his. “She had a lot of nice things to say about you, too. I thought maybe the two of you would stay in touch, but I asked a while back and she said no.”

  Charlie’s chest ached with the loss. He glanced out at the Silver Angel, sun glinting from her chrome smokestack and trim. “Can I be frank with you?”

  Vince nodded. “I wish you would.”

  “I had a lot of crap to deal with. A lot of guilt over my wife and her death.”

  “You blamed yourself for her dying?”

  “No. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “I know. But I want to say something, and in order for it to make sense, I need to explain. I—” He looked at his cup, gathering his thoughts, then back at Starla’s father. “I married my wife because it was expected. This is a small town, people make assumptions. Parents make assumptions, too. My parents took me in after my real mother died, and I felt indebted to them. My wife was their daughter and everyone expected us to get married.”