The Marriage Contract

Barely three feet separated them, a space poisoned by years of family enmity. Clair clamped her teeth together, to keep from shouting her frustration. How could she have prepared herself for a Dylan mundanely packing his shirts in a car?

Rattled, her heart pounding, she drove twice around the square. People stared, but no one else recognized her. To push Nick Dylan out of her mind before she saw Mrs. Franklin, she concentrated on the buildings.

A landscaper had taken over the old ice-cream shop. The local newspaper had bought out Mrs. Clark’s sewing-and-crafts shop and added on to their property.

Clair fought back unwanted tears. The sheer, comforting familiarity of these streets and buildings brought her past back to her. Her memories hadn’t just been myths she’d created to help her survive in foster care.

She turned down the town’s outer road toward the high school where she’d been in her first year when her parents had died. Those rooms hadn’t left a strong impression. Nor had the apartment block behind the school, where they’d lived until her father died, a victim of his own sense of failure after he’d lost their house to Senator Dylan. After her father’s death, her mother lost interest in everything. Including her own life. Within months she’d suffered a heart attack and followed her husband to the grave.

Clair looked up the hill. If her home still existed, thick evergreens hid it from her, but the Dylan home remained as commanding as ever. An image of Nick flashed through her mind, but his stunned expression got all mixed up with his father’s customary contempt.

She turned away from that house, determined to conquer the pain that still tore at her. She shouldn’t have come this way. She drove straight to Mrs. Franklin’s bed-and-breakfast, determined to live in peace with her memories of the Dylans.

Her other choice was revenge. A pointless exercise that couldn’t bring back the parents and the home she’d lost.

Clair parked at the bottom of the steps in front of the bed-and-breakfast and climbed out of the car. She swung her backpack over one shoulder. Caution moistened her hands and dried her mouth.

She marched up the stairs and then curled her fingers around the cool brass door handle. Counting two quick breaths, she pushed the door open and stepped into a shadowy hall. Overhead, a fan’s blades whiffed in rhythmic puffs of sound. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the subdued light.

“Clair, you’ve come home.”

Her heart hammered. Home. She knew this woman’s voice—rich, ragged around the edges. Selina Franklin had been a frequent visitor at Clair’s house. She’d brought homemade oatmeal cookies and sock puppets with black button eyes.

The shadow in front of Clair slowly formed itself into a woman who seemed too short to be Mrs. Franklin. Clair had last seen her through the back of that Social Services van. Her memory of her mother’s friend was all bound up with a painful mantra the woman who’d driven her to D.C. kept repeating. “You can’t stay. You have no one here to take care of you.”

That memory had become a nightmare. Mrs. Franklin must have known how she’d felt. Old resentment she no longer wanted to feel rose in her and she swallowed convulsively.

The other woman lifted pale hands to her own throat. “Can you be Clair?” A slight change in the arrangement of lines around her mouth conveyed her welcome. “You look so much like your mother that for a moment I thought you were her. Sylvie was your age when I first met her, when she came here to teach. What are you now? Twenty-four?”

“Twenty-six.” Clair drank in the other woman’s delicate features, pale blue eyes she remembered laughing at her mother’s jokes, a generous mouth that had grown thin after her parents’ deaths. “How is the judge?”

“He lived up to your dad’s expectations. The governor appointed him to the bench about ten years ago.” Mrs. Franklin turned to pluck an object from a cubby behind her desk. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve given you a room, because I thought you’d be more comfortable on your own than staying in my guest room.” She slid a big old-fashioned key across the desktop. “I’m not sure how many of your friends are still in town. Most of our young people seem to leave these days. Except for Nick Dylan.” Clair stiffened at her mention of the Dylan name, but Mrs. Franklin went on, her words tumbling over each other. “He took over Dr. Truman’s practice last year, and he refuses to leave.”

“Refuses?”

“Apparently. Because every time I go past his office it’s empty. People don’t go to him unless they need serious help fast. Maybe he should advertise.”

Trying not to see his shocked face in her mind again, Clair reached for the registration book on its spindle. Mrs. Franklin spun it away from her.

“Don’t bother. You’re my guest. You know, you’ll probably see Nick sometimes. You can understand the quandary folks find themselves in. Honestly, who wants to take her bunions to Senator Jeffrey Dylan’s boy?”

Clair concentrated on Mrs. Franklin’s widow’s peak. Why did the woman go on so about the Dylans?

“I guess you heard about Jeff?” Mrs. Franklin said.

She meant the fact that he’d died a month ago. The nation had mourned him. Clair could not. She adjusted her backpack strap. “I heard.” She searched her key for a room number, but nothing marred the smooth swirls of old brass. “Which room should I put my things in?”

“The Concord. A few years ago, I named the rooms for Revolutionary War sites. The tourists seem to like it.” Mrs. Franklin patted the scarred top of her eighteenth-century accountant’s desk.

Clair worked at a smile, bewildered by Mrs. Franklin’s rapid chatter and the watchful gaze that vied with her light tone. “How do I get to the Concord?” she asked.

“Take the elevator to the second floor and turn right. Three doors down on the left.”

“Thanks.”

“You haven’t said how long you plan to stay.”

Had she been wise to come at all? “I’m not sure. I’m kind of between jobs.”

A frown crisscrossed the older woman’s forehead. “We’ll talk about that when you come back down. I want to know everything you’ve been doing.”

Clair turned away from the desk, cast adrift. The woman looked like Mrs. Franklin, but she sure didn’t act like her. What had made her so nervous? Did she regret her invitation?

Clair glanced back with a smile as she stepped onto the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, she sank against the paneled back wall. She’d carried enough clothes for tonight in her backpack. Maybe she wouldn’t stay any longer.

In the upstairs hall, a wide brass plate announced the third door on the left as the entry to the Concord. Clair opened it and stepped into a room with just enough clutter to feel cozy. She dropped her backpack on the bench at the end of the bed and crossed to the windows to pull back the velvet drapes. Sunlight spilled over a fragile writing desk, tracing patterns on the floor.

Clair laughed. In work boots and jeans and a thermal turtleneck, she was the room’s jarring note. She opened the bathroom door and promised herself a soak in the claw-footed tub. She took a soap from the marble dish on the counter and sniffed its fragrance. She was washing her face when she thought she heard a knock at the door.

Straightening, she blotted her face with a towel and the tapping was repeated. She crossed the room, still holding the towel as she opened the door. It was Selina.

“You probably think I’m a nut,” the other woman said.

“Different from how I remember you,” Clair admitted, smiling to soften her words.

“I haven’t been honest.”

Clair dropped the towel. After a nonplussed moment, she scooped it up again. “Do I want you to be?”

“I have to tell you the truth, because I’d like you to stay in Fairlove.”

Dread weighed on Clair’s shoulders, but she’d perfected a knack for floating with unexpected punches. “What’s your secret?”

“Your parents’ other friends and the judge and I—” Selina broke off, clearing her throat. “We let Social Services put you in foster care.”

She’d known her family’s friends hadn’t stopped her from leaving, but she’d never imagined they’d decided not to help her. Backing blindly toward the bench, Clair managed to sink onto her backpack. Metal rings and rough canvas didn’t hurt half as much as the truth.

“Why would you do that to me? Didn’t you love my parents?”

“We loved you. We had to let you go.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU LOVED ME, so you decided to make me live with strangers? My parents trusted all of you, but no one thought I might be better off with a family who cared about me?” Clair curled her fingers into the towel, wadding it against her stomach. Unbelievable.

“You don’t understand. We weren’t able to protect David and Sylvie, and we didn’t think we could save you from Jeff Dylan, either.”

Clair licked her dry lips. “You looked for me now because he died?”

“When you first left, I used my husband’s influence to watch over you. I made sure you stayed around the D.C. area, and my friend in Social Services led all Jeff Dylan’s inquiries astray. I know this may not comfort you, but we worked hard to keep him from finding you.”

“He could have hired detectives.”

“He did, but they always stumbled across the false trails my friend laid. She stepped outside the lines for me.”

Clair turned and dropped the towel on the desk.

“Maybe I owe you gratitude, but I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t expect you to trust me, but I’m glad you’re home. I’m sorry about the way I talked downstairs. I just knew you’d inevitably run into Nick Dylan, and I thought I’d test the waters, find out how you’d respond.”

“I already saw him.” She closed her eyes against that nagging image of his shocked face when he’d seen her. “I don’t care about him.”

“You don’t?”

Clair shook her head, trying to convince herself. From the moment she’d accepted Mrs. Franklin’s invitation, she’d wondered if it might be time to come home. She’d given her resignation to the landscaping firm she’d worked for in Boston. Whatever happened, she was ready for more-southern climates. “I don’t ever have to see Nick Dylan.”

“Don’t fool yourself. He wants this community to accept him. He doesn’t keep to his side of the Dylan hill.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” Clair lifted her chin, and Mrs. Franklin planted her hands on her hips.

“Why would you be with all of us behind you? We’re on your side.”

Clair considered. Why would she want to stay in a place where people she’d trusted had developed feet of clay?

Because she wasn’t fourteen anymore. She could reason beyond a fourteen-year-old’s pain, and she didn’t care about clay feet or disappointment. She’d been happy in Fairlove. Her mother and father were buried in the ground her family had lived on for generations. She belonged in Fairlove.

She dropped her company manners. “Is my parents’ house still standing?”

Mrs. Franklin looked puzzled, but Clair held her breath, waiting for an answer that meant everything to her. Jeff Dylan had stood in the dusty dirt driveway while she and her father and mother packed the last of their things into a rental truck. Jeff swore he’d never touch the house again. He just wanted to watch it decay until the earth claimed it.

He’d always talked like a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher.

“It stood for over a hundred years,” Mrs. Franklin said at last. “It wouldn’t crumble in a mere twelve years, but it looks neglected. Let me drive you out there.”

Clair struggled to add kindness to her tone. She’d rather rebuild relationships than choke them all off just because they hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped.

“Thank you, but no. I need to see it on my own the first time.” Living in foster care, she’d stopped depending on anyone for support. Truthfully, she wanted to believe someone on the face of this earth would back her up if she needed help, but she’d long since forgotten how to reach out and trust.

“If you haven’t already had breakfast, I’ll make it for you when you get back.” Mrs. Franklin touched her throat again, a nervous gesture Clair remembered. “You’ll come back?”

Nodding, Clair flipped open the top of her backpack and plucked out the small purse that held her driver’s license. “I want to come back, Mrs. Franklin. And no, I haven’t had breakfast.”

“Clair, I’m so sorry about the past—about everything.” The other woman folded her arms across her stomach.

Clair nodded, uncomfortable with her own need for a relationship as much as with Mrs. Franklin’s. “You don’t have to apologize. I think we both want to start again from here.”

“I do.” Eyes filled with surprising tears, Mrs. Franklin scooped the hand towel off the desk. “Go on, and I’ll start breakfast. Good Lord, I forgot I have other guests.”

She vanished through the bathroom door, and Clair made her escape. She’d like to forgive and forget, but she had to be sure she could before she made a move. Every breath she took here in Fairlove made staying more important to her. For twelve years, she’d taken action to keep from indulging in self-pity. Often action had translated into running away. She needed a more mature attitude if she was going to make a home here.

She drove out of town to the familiar road that led to her family’s old house. She saw the roof first, rising above the trees. It looked surprisingly intact, but time, neglect and peeling paint had colored the clapboard siding a dreary gray. Clair nosed her car onto the old graveled drive, sparsely covered now in patches of thin grass. She got out and picked her way through ruts onto Dylan property, property that had once been Atherton.

Suspended above the oak door her grandfather had carved, a wooden sign banged against the house. Normally this sign hung from an iron arm attached to one of the clapboards. Rust had decayed the chain at the end farthest from the house, and the sign had scraped a rut in the wood.

Clair read the sign, even though she knew every curlicue in the burnt engraving. The Oaks. An ancestor had named the house for the great gnarled trees that surrounded it. Clair’s father had burned its name into the current sign one hot summer day when she was still too small to reach the top of his workbench. Once in every generation an Atherton had to make a new sign for their home. Responsibility for renewing the sign had passed down through the family with the house.

Fresh grief swamped Clair, but she choked back tears, unwilling to waste any more valuable seconds. She’d ached too deeply to surround herself with the familiar sensations, the sigh of the breeze that wound a loving embrace around the corners of her home, the click of branches that seemed to tap each other in secret conversation a human couldn’t understand.

Ahead of her, something moved in the long uncut grass. A bird rose with a startled cry, and a wiry black feline sprang into the air.

“Hey!” Clair raced for the cat to shoo it away, but the bird had flown out of reach.

Clair stopped abruptly. Its original prey gone, the cat sagged into a crouch, seemingly more interested now in her than in the liberated meal that mocked him from the air.

“Go away.” She firmed up her voice and wondered about rabies. Had this feral feline had its shots? The cat growled. Who knew a cat could growl? “Go away!”

Throwing its entire scrawny body into a hiss, the cat looked painfully hungry. Half its right ear was gone, and something had nipped out patches of its coat. Just as Clair began to feel a sense of sympathy for a fellow stray, it turned and streaked out of sight. The grass closed, and she stood alone.

She turned slowly in the new, unnatural silence. Wildlife rustled in brush that had taken over her mother’s once carefully landscaped lawn. Twelve years of neglect gave the house a lost look, which Clair connected with.

She wanted to fix the house, make it a home again.

She could look all she wanted, but she was a trespasser here. She had no rights. She wasn’t allowed to change anything—couldn’t help a bird, feed a wild, hungry cat, or clean up the bits of trash that had blown against the kitchen wall.

Fighting a sense of futility, she understood the crippling failure that had hounded her father to his grave after he’d lost the house to Jeff Dylan. She didn’t dare go close enough to peer through a dirt-stained window. Emptiness inside her left her unable to look at the bare spaces inside those walls.

WHEN SHE RETURNED to the bed-and-breakfast, Julian Franklin met her at the top of the steps. Decked out for court, he reminded her of the old days, when her father had teased him about his “litigious” wardrobe.

“Hello, Judge.”

His smile, lacking his wife’s nervous edge, greeted her. “Selina told me you’d arrived. I wanted to welcome you.”

He held out his hand, and Clair clasped it. “Your house is lovely.”

He turned toward the door and opened it for her. “All due to Selina’s reconstruction plan. I always do what she tells me when she makes a plan.”

Clair laughed. “You’re subtle, sir. Are you saying she’s made a plan for me?”

He took her hand again. “I don’t have time to be subtle. I declared a recess to give myself a brief break from court. I wanted to tell you we’d love to have you stay here as long as you can.” He let her go and reached back for the door. “God, you look like Sylvie. I’ve missed you and your mom and dad. There’s been a hole in my life ever since you left.”

“Mine, too.”

Grinning, he looked back one last time. “You listen to my wife. She’s rarely wrong.”

Clair smiled back at him as he headed out. If Selina was never wrong, she’d been better off in foster care. Hard to believe.

She glanced into the dining room. It looked empty, but a man’s husky voice came from around a paneled corner.

“I won’t do it, Wilford. I don’t care who finds out about the will or anything else Jeff did. You’re an executor and my attorney. Get me out of this. Give everything to my mother.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. Your cousin will inherit and move her out like yesterday’s rubbish.”

Clair leaned around the door frame, shamelessly curious, but when she met Nick Dylan’s dark blue gaze, she almost lost her balance and fell. She fled—from him and the appalled-looking white-haired man he was talking to.

An image of The Oaks reared in her mind, peeling, anchored deeper to the ground by its aura of neglect. She’d lost everything to that man’s family. She’d had to flee, or she’d say things that would force her to leave a town where Dylan word might still rule.

Crossing the lobby, she snatched a newspaper off the stack on Mrs. Franklin’s desk and sprawled on the love seat. Footsteps made the floor creak. She knew when she looked up she’d see Nick standing in the doorway.

“Good morning,” he said.

She nodded. He looked lean and barely leashed, as if the powerful emotion that darkened his eyes might explode from his body at any moment. Restraint furrowed strong lines from the aristocratic nose someone had bent for him to his surprisingly full mouth.

“Maybe we should talk.” The husky voice that had drawn her into the dining room took on a deeper timbre.

He stepped closer. She held still while inwardly she strained to look indifferent. Nick Dylan would never best her as his father had.

“I don’t need to talk to you.” Her voice sounded smooth to her, and she took courage.

“I know who you are.”

“Because I look like my mother. You remember her?”

He took another step closer. Losing her grip on her composure, she pressed against the love seat’s cushions.

“Are you afraid of me, Clair?”

“Your father bought our mortgage and bided his time until Dad got in trouble and he could demand payment in full. Jeff hounded my father into his grave, and why? For the sake of his sick, obsessive love for my mother. He destroyed my father out of vengeance. Should I be afraid of you?”

Nick yanked at his black tie as if it had tightened around his throat. “I’m not my father.”

“Then give me my family’s house. Do what’s right.” Her unreasonable demand poured out of her.

His desperate look reached inside her, made her feel for him. “I can’t.”

The other man had come out of the dining room. “Nick, your hands are tied until you do what your father wanted,” he said. He took Nick’s arm, but Nick pulled away.

“We’ll talk somewhere else, Wilford.” He turned back to Clair. “I can’t give you that house. You’re asking me to do what I cannot do.” He turned and waited for Wilford to leave in front of him.

Clair let out her breath when the door closed behind his too-straight back. She resisted the sympathy she’d felt for his pain. His weakness gave her strength.

It seemed he wanted to give her house back, and she’d take it if he gave her the slightest opening.

She turned her face to the newspaper, visions of her empty home haunting her. What if she stayed? What if she found a job?

Assuming she could persuade Nick Dylan to at least sell her the house, she’d still never find the kind of money he’d want. How would she find a job that could pay her that kind of money?

She simply didn’t have the qualifications to afford a falling-down, hundred-year-old house. After she’d dropped out of college, she’d been a ticket taker in a theater, she’d managed a Laundromat and she’d washed dishes in a diner. Then she’d found landscaping. She’d planted other peoples’ yards from D.C. to Boston for the past five years. But without a degree, she couldn’t command the kind of pay a qualified landscape designer could.

“Clair? Why are you sitting out here?” Mrs. Franklin had come out of nowhere—or at least from the shadows behind her desk. She set her mouth. “You’re upset because you saw the house.”

Clair didn’t feel comfortable enough with Selina yet to share what had just happened between herself and Nick. She attempted a smile that trembled uncomfortably on her lips. “The judge met me at the door.”

Selina smiled knowingly. “I thought he’d drop by. He’s glad you’re home.”

Home? Clair wasn’t sure yet. She changed the subject, lifting the paper. “Still published twice a week?” The pages rustled in her shaking hands. She flattened the paper on her lap.

“Thursday’s edition still carries the classifieds.”

Clair understood Mrs. Franklin’s message. “I haven’t said anything about looking for a job here.”

“But you’d like to stay? You feel strong ties. The house wouldn’t have bothered you if you could just leave.”

“You make it sound as if I can turn my life around overnight.” But hadn’t she already decided to stay? The moment she’d received Mrs. Franklin’s invitation? Hadn’t she decided then?

Mrs. Franklin came around the desk, ushering Clair before her into the breakfast room. “At least think about staying.”

“I’m thinking I can’t buy my house back.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

Clair stopped beside a small round table that glittered with crystal and china, and reminded her of the table her mother used to set. “Where do you want me to sit?”

“Wherever you like. You didn’t answer me.”

She hadn’t because Mrs. Franklin’s eagerness, after twelve years of silence, put her off. “Most recently I worked for a landscaper. I notice there’s a landscaping business on the square.” She pulled out a chair and sat while the older woman brought a coffee carafe from the sideboard and poured her a cup. She left the carafe on the table.

“Paul Sayers owns Fairlove Lovelies. Do you remember him? No, you wouldn’t. He moved here about four years ago. Still new in town.”

“Nearly a stranger.”

Mrs. Franklin smiled. “We have a new subdivision going in by Lake Stedmore. The development company hired Paul to maintain the common areas. Why don’t I call him?”

“Why don’t I think about it first?”

“I’m crowding you.” The older woman’s cheeks flushed. “You were part of my life, as much as I could keep you in sight without alerting Jeff Dylan. I care about you, and I guess I’m trying to make up for those years.”