Page 119 of The VIP Doubles Down
That earned him a puzzled look. “I didn’t think you cared much about the store.”
“In a very different way from you and Tobias.” Three more blocks and the street became residential. “Any chance that you repainted the house, too?”
“Nah, it’s the same old white wood with black shutters. Mom would never allow a different color.”
Odelia wouldn’t allow anything that diverged from her idea of what was respectable. As they pulled up in front of his childhood home, he thought the house glowered at him.
“I’ll be down at the store. Give me a call when you’re ready for a ride back.”
Gavin nodded. His throat was too clogged with new anger and old resentments to speak. He swung out of the car and strode up the stone walk to the front door, twisting the old-fashioned brass doorbell hard.
After several seconds of staring at the brushstrokes in the door’s glossy black paint, he heard the sound of a latch being turned, and the door swung open.
“Gavin? Did you tell me you were coming?” Odelia’s bony countenance with its deep, harsh lines held shock and confusion. She rubbed her hand over her face as though she didn’t trust what her eyes were showing her.
Looking down on her from his adult height, Gavin was surprised at how small she looked. And old. “No, but I need to speak with you about something important.”
“Important to you or to me?” Her tone was tart, but there was an undercurrent of uncertainty.
“Oh, only to me, Odelia, but I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time.” Gavin couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice.
She pulled the door farther open with unconcealed reluctance. “A few minutes is all I’ve got. You should have warned me you were coming.”
Turning, she led the way into what was always called the front parlor, a room Odelia had forbidden him to enter as a child. The reason cited was the china cabinet with its curving glass front and its display of fragile bone china teacups. A rambunctious boy was a threat to the household treasures. But, in fact, Gavin had been more likely to settle down with a book than to roughhouse indoors. Odelia had simply wanted him to feel excluded. Or at least, so he’d thought.
“I can offer you a glass of water or some lemonade,” his stepmother said, coming to a halt in the middle of the fake Oriental rug.
“Thank you, but I know you’re busy.” Gavin reached into his jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out the last letter from his mother. “I read my mother’s cards. And this last letter.”
Odelia sank onto a chair, her face shuttered. Gavin tried to hand her the letter, but she waved it away. “I know what it is. Ruth insisted on sending it to you. Just stirring up old trouble that can’t be changed.”
Gavin ran his index finger over the return address.Could nothing be changed?Allie believed differently, so he was going to give it a try. “I need to know why, Odelia. You owe me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything. I raised you as my child. That’s enough for any woman to do.”
“Just tell me why my father didn’t give me the cards or this letter.”
“Did Ruth know you were coming?”
“Not until today,” Gavin said. He could tell Odelia was stalling as she calculated how little she could say. “Give me an honest answer. Then I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Peace? I haven’t known a moment’s peace since I birthed my first baby.” His stepmother looked up at him. “Sit down.”
Gavin took the chair opposite hers, deliberately stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankle, a casual pose he knew would annoy her.
“Your father, God rest his soul, told me he didn’t give you the cards at first because he was afraid it would upset you. He figured you’d get over missing your mother faster if you didn’t get reminded of her all the time.”
As if his mother had ever been out of his mind for even a second in those months after she’d left. Gavin reached into his jacket pocket to touch the velvet box that held his mother’s locket. He’d had it messengered out from his house in New York, where it sat in a dark corner of his bedroom safe.
“Once we got married, your father wanted you to look upon me as your mother, so he went on hiding the cards. I told him he should burn them, but he said it wouldn’t be right because they were yours. I should have burned them myself after he died, but I honored his memory by keeping them.”
Thank God his father and stepmother had held on to at least that much conscience.
“It’s the plane ticket that’s got you all riled up, isn’t it?” Odelia looked down at her hands twisted together in her lap. “When your mother called up with that damn fool idea of sending the ticket, I knew you’d jump at the chance to run away to her, even though she’d left me to do all the hard work of raising her child. But your father said we had to give you the choice.” She lifted her head to glare at Gavin. “Only your father needed you here to help him with the store. I didn’t want him lifting those heavy feed bags anymore. It was going to kill him. Itdidkill him.” Her voice hitched on the last two words. She cleared her throat before she continued. “So I made sure to get to the mail before your father did. Once I had the letter, I told him Susannah had called to say she’d changed her mind, but she was too embarrassed to admit it to him.”
Disbelief rolled through Gavin, making him feel nauseated. Odelia had kept him away from his mother just to have a strong back in the feed store.
She looked away. “I tried to burn that cursed ticket about half a dozen times, but I’d hear your father’s voice saying that it wasn’t right, so I hid it until he died. Then I put it in his desk drawer with all the other cards. Until that interfering Ruth found ’em all.”
