A Walk Down the Aisle

Tori’s father had on jeans with a hole in one knee, wear marks on the other and a couple of paint splotches. He wore brown loafers and a T-shirt with pictures of doors on it that read The Doors. His dark brown hair was shaggy, as if he’d forgotten to get it cut for several months.

“Sophie?” the woman asked.

Suddenly, it occurred to Sophie that she didn’t know Tori’s last name. She’d only mentioned her parents’ first names. “Gloria and Dom?”

They both nodded.

“Thank you for calling us,” Gloria said stiffly.

“Tori’s in the living room.” Sophie knew that Tori’s parents needed to see her—to touch her, to know for themselves she was all right.

Sophie had been right. As her parents entered the room, Tori got up from the couch and was enveloped in her parents’ hugs. For as completely composed and business-looking as Gloria appeared, she was unabashedly crying as she embraced her daughter. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to us again.”

Dom sounded heartbroken as he added, “You could have talked to us. We’d have brought you—”

Tori pulled back, the happy reunion forgotten. “No, Dad, don’t say you would have supported me and brought me to meet Sophie. You didn’t even tell me I was adopted. I still wouldn’t know if I hadn’t seen that envelope. You both lied to me my whole life.”

“Victoria, it’s time to go,” her mother said, tears forgotten. “We’ll discuss this later. Right now, you’ve barged in on Sophie and—”

Tori pulled back from her parents’ embrace. “No, Mom. I’m not going. I got a few answers, but I need more. I need to know Sophie. If I can know her, maybe I can figure me out.”

Sophie felt awkward in the midst of the volatile family confrontation. “Tori, I—”

Tori whirled on her. “Oh, I know, I’ll interrupt your perfect life. I already ruined your wedding. I’m an inconvenience, but I’m not going home to Cleveland yet.”

“Victoria—” her mother started, but her father interrupted.

“Tori, give us a minute.”

“Where should I go? Sophie’s house is small. I’ll hear you wherever I am. And honestly, I think I’ve proved I’m an adult.”

Dom had struck Sophie as a free spirit. Seeing him with Tori’s mom, a decidedly unfree spirit if ever she’d met one, seemed incongruous, but in this instant, he transformed into a father—a firm but loving father who expected to be obeyed. “Tori, if anything, you’ve proven how immature you still are. I’m not denying that we should have told you sooner that you were adopted, but that doesn’t excuse your conduct. You are fourteen, and you stole our car. Not only that, you drove it out of state.”

“I read the driver’s manual. I know all the rules. I think I was the only one who drove the speed limit the whole way here. And I’ve driven all kinds of vehicles at Nana and Papa’s farm. I was confident I could manage. And I did.”

“It’s illegal. If you’d been stopped...if you’d hit another car...if...” All the things that could have gone wrong had obviously been playing in his mind.

“You drove here?” Sophie asked. It occurred to her that a good parent would have asked how a fourteen-year-old arrived in Valley Ridge. The town was too small for a public transportation system. That left either driving or hitchhiking.

She felt sick at the realization Tori had driven across three states. She couldn’t stop the images of what could have happened. Scenes from nightly newscasts played in horrible detail, all of them with Tori as the focus.

“Go outside, Tori,” her father said firmly “Find a seat on Sophie’s porch and don’t move from there. We’ll come get you in a little bit.”

“Fine.” Tori whirled and headed toward the front door.

“And if you go anywhere other than that front porch, I’ll track you down and I’ll—”

“What? Spank me?” Tori laughed.

“I might be a pacifist, but believe me when I say, if that’s what it took to get you to understand how incredibly stupid you’ve been, well, I’d do it. Don’t tempt me.”

Tori looked taken aback by his response. She hid it by turning on her heels and slamming the door behind her for good measure.

Sophie didn’t know what to do, what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Dom quirked one eyebrow and Sophie thought of Star Trek’s Spock, which struck her as an absurd thought to have in the midst of the day’s events.

“For what?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can’t help feeling this is all my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“Let’s sit down.” He assumed the role of host and got them situated in the living room, he and his wife on the couch, Sophie opposite them on the chair.

“If anyone should be sorry, it’s me,” Gloria said. “Dom wanted me to tell Tori she was adopted from the day she arrived home, but I...” She shook her head. “I couldn’t bear it. I sent you those letters every year through the adoption ageny, and part of me relished sharing her development with someone I knew cared. I was so grateful to you for choosing us. I spent days writing them. Picking out pictures. But I never told you her name or ours because I was afraid. She’s mine. Every time I mailed out a letter, I’d be sick with worry that you’d realized how much you gave up and come to get her, but that didn’t stop me from writing down all the details I thought you wanted to hear. I needed to prove to you that you were right to choose us. But it scared me to death.”

“So that’s why no names?” Sophie asked. All she’d ever known her daughter as was Baby Girl. Every year, after she read Gloria’s letter, she’d write her Baby Girl a letter in response. She could have sent them to Tori through the agency, but frankly, pouring her heart out to her child didn’t seem fair. At some point, she’d give her daughter the box of letters. Maybe it would help answer her questions.

“I know. Not even her first name. That was cruel.” Gloria leaned into Dom with a real need to touch him evident in her expression.

“No. You were so generous sharing her moments. When I received that first letter chronicling all those milestones in her first year...” Sophie fought to hold back the tears. “For weeks, I read it every day. I can recite the letter to you word for word. But at some point, I knew I couldn’t go on that like that. So, I put it away. And each year, when you sent the new letter, along with the pictures, I’d read it through, then I’d reread all the old ones. I’d write my response and put it away, as well. I gave myself one full day to appreciate them, to look at Tori and marvel at her. Then I’d put the box away and would go back to living my life. You provided that one letter to me and then went back to being her mother. I get that. You wanted to keep her safe.”

“But I failed. I hurt her by not listening to Dom.”

Maybe Sophie could see Gloria’s guilt because it mirrored her own. She saw it and recognized that they didn’t simply share a love for Tori, but also the guilt that came from wondering if they’d done the right thing.

Dom squeezed his wife tighter into the protection of his arm. “You can’t know if things would have been better or worse if we’d told her. The fact is we didn’t. The two of us. And now we have to deal with the repercussions. The three of us. We have to forget about blame and guilt. We need to figure out what to do for Tori. She’s in pain, and we need to decide how best to help her.”

Sophie looked at these two people who’d been parents to her daughter, and a sense of peace swept through her pain and guilt. No matter what she’d done, she’d found her daughter wonderful parents. “I’ll do whatever you both think is best. She’s your daughter. I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that.”

“Thank you.” Gloria studied her a moment, then repeated, “Thank you. So what do we do now?”

“No,” Tori shouted from the doorway into the living room. “I’ve decided that I’m not going to sit outside and let the three of you decide my fate. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m staying with Sophie for a while. Think of it as summer camp.”

“Victoria Peace Allen—” Gloria stuttered to an abrupt halt, as if she couldn’t think of what to say next.

Sophie realized that she now knew her daughter’s full name. And on the heels of that thought came a single word...Peace?

Dom must have seen the look because he nodded and said, “Peace.” He started to laugh. Gloria, then Tori, started laughing, as well.

“Dad’s a hippie. A commune-living, vegan-eating hippie,” Tori supplied. “So are Nana and Papa.”

Dom shook his head and clarified, “My parents were the hippies. I’m merely the son of hippies.” He turned to Sophie and explained, “Gloria picked Tori’s first name. I got to the pick the second. My name’s actually Freedom Jay Allen.”

“Which is why I call him Dom,” Gloria said with a sniff.

Despite everything that had happened that day, the shock layered onto pain, layered onto utter confusion, Sophie found herself smiling.

“And you grew up in a commune?” she asked.

“Well, like any child, I lived where my parents decreed.”

“Nana and Papa never decreed a thing in their whole lives.” Tori turned to Sophie. “They don’t live on a commune anymore. They run a CSA in Pennsylvania.”

“CSA?” Sophie asked.

“Community-supported agriculture. Basically, people buy shares of their farm’s crops. They’re still hippies,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

For a moment, all four of them were quiet. And slowly, the leftover smiles faded, and Tori stared at the three adults. “I get it, you know. I get what you meant, Sophie. They’re my parents. They’ve raised me. Nana and Papa are my grandparents. They all know me. They were there when I took my first step and started school.” She turned to her parents. “I get that. And I love you both. Nothing will ever change that. You are my parents. But you need to understand, I can’t leave until I know...”

“Know what?” Sophie asked. “I swear, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

“I don’t know, but I need to figure it out. I need to work it out in my head. If you try to make me leave before I do, I’ll run away again.”

“No threats,” Sophie repeated. “Remember?”

“I can’t go home without knowing.”

There was desperation in Tori’s voice. Sophie couldn’t decide if Tori was desperate for answers or desperate to be understood.

Maybe both.

She wanted to go hug her daughter. But she knew she’d been right when she’d told Tori that Gloria and Dom were her parents. She watched them both pull Tori onto the couch between them and wrap their arms around her.

And that moment solidified the knowledge that she’d done the right thing. All those years ago, as she had read letters from people asking for a baby, she’d seen Gloria and Dom, and a feeling of rightness had settled over her. She’d known these were her daughter’s parents. And they were.

“Here’s what I suggest,” Dom finally said. “The three of us are going to go—”

“I meant it, Dad,” Tori interrupted, her anger back in place.

Dom shot her a look that shut her up and he continued, “We’ll go find a hotel for the night. The three of us can discuss things, then tomorrow morning, the four of us will meet for breakfast someplace neutral and decide how we’re going to handle this.”

“By this, he means me,” Tori informed Sophie.

Sophie found herself agreeing to Dom’s plan with gratitude. She called JoAnn, who had two rooms available at her B and B. “It’s only a few blocks away,” she assured the worried-looking Tori. “And why don’t we meet at the diner for breakfast? You name the time.”

They agreed on ten.

As the family walked to the door, Tori turned and said, “I’m sorry about the wedding.”

Remembering an old saying, Sophie told her daughter, “It will all come out in the wash.”

“Wedding?” Gloria asked.

“Today was her wedding, Mom,” Tori admitted, shamefaced. “I objected.”

Tori’s parents started talking, but Sophie interrupted. “Tori, of all the things you need to worry about right now, that’s not it. If anything, you should sympathize with Colton. He didn’t know about you, kind of like you didn’t know about me. Sometimes people keep secrets out of malice, but sometimes, they keep them because that secret’s simply too hard to talk about. Losing you...well, if I had to talk about it every day, I don’t know that I’d have made it. And I’m sure your mom didn’t think of you as anything but her daughter. Trying to explain there was another facet to that...” She turned to Gloria. “I get it.”

“But—” Tori objected.

Sophie stopped her. “Listen, we’ll meet tomorrow and try to figure out what’s best for you. That’s always been my number-one concern, and even though I’ve just met them, I know it’s your parents’, too. So, you three go talk tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow at ten at the diner for breakfast.”

Tori nodded, and Gloria wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and led her toward the car.

Dom hung back for a second. “You didn’t want to give her up, did you?”

“I loved her then, and now. Everything I did I did for her. I chose you and your wife because you seemed to be such a balanced couple. Your letter about longing for a child... I gave Tori the best life I could. And despite everything, I’d do it again.”

He studied her, then nodded and followed his family.

The three of them were a unit. A family.

And Sophie knew that even though she’d given birth to Tori, she’d never be more than that—the woman who gave birth to her.

Tori might not realize that fact yet, but she would.

Sophie would see to it.

CHAPTER THREE

COLTON SPENT a sleepless night.

He’d picked up his phone a dozen times, ready to call Sophie. Wanting to tell her they could work it out. Needing to tell her how much he loved her.

And yet, he couldn’t manage it.

Every time his phone rang, he checked the caller ID. Not one of the calls was from Sophie, but there was a distinct possibility that half of Valley Ridge had left him messages. Finn and Sebastian had tried to contact him multiple times, but he hadn’t picked up. He couldn’t talk to anyone until he spoke to Sophie.

And he had no idea what to say to Sophie. So he didn’t call her or pick up for anyone else. Instead, he paced. He cursed. He watched the clock tick forward, and thought about what they should have been doing at each hour.

Now, we’d cut the cake.

Now, we’d have our first dance.

Now the reception would be over, and he’d bring his wife home.

Now...

None of that had happened.

At eight in the morning, he knew a phone call wouldn’t work. So, he drove to Sophie’s house. The house they’d planned to put on the market because she was going to move into his house after they got back from the Poconos.

As a matter of fact, now they should be in the car and headed to their friends’ mountain retreat.

He knocked at Sophie’s door. He hadn’t knocked on her door for months. Not since the day she’d given him a key. As he waited for her to answer, he noticed a dark scuff mark on the door itself and wondered what had happened.

He wondered if she’d been so upset that she kicked the door when she got home, but he knew her wedding shoes couldn’t have left a mark like that.

The door swung open and there she was. He drank in the sight of her. It felt as if he hadn’t seen her in years rather than just hours.

“I thought you’d come,” she said by way of a greeting as she opened the door and let him in.

“Kitchen?” he asked, trying not to notice the boxes that were pushed against the hall walls. She’d told him that she’d started packing her mementos and books. The only furniture she was bringing was her grandmother’s writing desk and rocker. He’d told her to feel free and move in whatever she wanted. She’d hemmed and hawed about the plaid couch she loved. He’d assured her that she could redecorate the whole house if she wanted. She could buy them a pink polka-dotted couch and he’d sit on it, as long as she’d sit next to him. She’d kissed him after that declaration—only a small peck on the cheek—and told him there wasn’t anything she wanted to change about the house. It was perfect.

She’d laughed then and told him that maybe, if they were lucky, in a few months, they’d change one of the guest rooms into a nursery.

The thought of Sophie pregnant with his child had thrilled him.

But that memory only served to remind him that while that child would have been his first, it wouldn’t have been Sophie’s first. She’d had a baby and given her away.

And she’d never told him anything about that baby.

And she’d certainly never mentioned who the baby’s father was.

He felt an uncharacteristic spurt of jealousy at the thought of some unknown man with Sophie.

“The kitchen is as good a place as any,” she replied, pulling him back to the present.

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing her wedding dress. Her hair had been all fancy and styled. Now, she didn’t have on a speck of makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun. She wore a pair of cutoff sweats and his old Gannon University T-shirt.

She looked like his Sophie again.

But he wasn’t sure she was...he wasn’t sure she had ever truly been the woman he’d thought she was.

She nodded at the table in the sunny breakfast nook and took a seat. He sat across from her.

Colton had planned to start slowly. To ask her to tell him what happened, but instead he found himself jumping right into the thick of it. “How could you be willing to marry me and never tell me about whatever happened in your past? You said your parents were dead.”

“They were—are—dead to me. They stole the life I planned. They stole my hopes and dreams. They stole my daughter,” she added softly. “I couldn’t stop it. I work at forgiving them every day—not that they’d ever think to ask for my forgiveness. I work at it anyway, and most of the time I think I’ve succeeded in forgiving them, but I can’t forget any of it. I finished school and then I left. I changed my name and I’ve never, never looked back.”

She wasn’t even really Sophie Johnston? “Who are you really?”

“Sophia Moreau-Ellis.”

He tried to imagine her as Sophia Moreau-Ellis, but he couldn’t. She still looked like Sophie.

His Sophie. But she wasn’t his—not really. Not ever.

“And you haven’t seen your parents since?” He couldn’t imagine that. He was close to his family. His parents had been calling, wanting to be there for him. Normally, he’d want that, too, but this time, he simply wanted to be left alone to process what had happened.

“My parents aren’t anything like yours. Image. Position. Money. Those are the things that matter. I think the fact that I’m gone is a relief to them. They can moan to their friends about how ungrateful their daughter was. But, to be honest, I can’t imagine my name comes up often.”

Her parents were rich. He knew that suddenly. “You have money?”

“A trust my grandmother set up.”

Which explained how she could afford her house. She worked hard at her job, but since he was a member of the newly formed wine association, he knew what they paid her for her PR services. Even with the other occasional freelance jobs she did, now that he thought about it, he knew she had to have another source of income.

Sophie having a trust fund made the idea of her marrying him even more of a mystery. He’d always wondered why she’d chosen him. Sophie could have had any man in Valley Ridge.

Any man, period.

And yet, she’d picked him.

“My grandmother’s father started with one small gas station. West’s. It grew into a large chain in Ohio and Kentucky. The name has meaning there. That makes my mom first-generation rich. My dad’s family, the Ellis family, made their money in fertilizer two generations ago. He’s worked hard to get the stench of that poop off him all his life.” She said the words as if by rote, as if she’d said them or thought them many times.

It all made sense now. “So, your family’s rich. You’re rich. A poor little rich girl? You came here and worked as a PR person. You found a simple farmer and thought, Gee, that’ll show my parents?”

“I came here and worked at a job I’d been preparing for since birth. Public perception is everything in my family. My parents could be fighting, screaming at each other, then hold hands and be all smiles for a party. I learned how to present a public face at birth. I simply took all those tools they gave me and turned it into a job. I take the wineries and give them a public face.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to cry, and that would be his undoing, but she didn’t. She simply said, “And when I came here, I planned on finding a place I could build a home. I came looking for a community. I didn’t plan on finding love. Frankly, I didn’t plan to ever marry. Especially...”

“Especially what?” he asked. “You didn’t plan on marrying, especially not a farmer? Not a man who comes home covered in dirt? A man who rhapsodizes over a new tractor, not the newest opera? A man who wears a cowboy hat and lives in a house his family has owned for generations?”

“I never planned on marrying...especially not a man as perfect as you.”

* * *

SOPHIE WAITED, PREPARING herself for more of Colton’s questions or accusations. “I want to tell you—” she started.

But he shook his head. “Sophie, it’s obvious that you aren’t the woman I thought you were. I’m not saying this to be cruel, or to hurt you. And I don’t want you to think it’s because you had a child. It’s simply—well, not simply. Nothing about this is simple. It’s that you obviously have a lot of things you didn’t tell me about. Things you couldn’t trust me with. I don’t think I ever really knew you.”

“You did,” she said. She wanted him to understand. She needed him to understand. “You knew the real me. Know the real me. The me that my parents wouldn’t recognize. The me I always wanted to be. That’s what I found here in Valley Ridge, not only a home, but a place where I could be the real me.”

When he didn’t respond, she added, “That’s what I found when I was with you—the real me.”

For a moment, she thought she’d made him understand, but she saw in his face that he didn’t. She steeled herself for him to say something hurtful, but in the end, he shook his head and stood. She followed suit and, for a moment, they stood face-to-face, not touching. Then he wrapped his arms around her. He leaned down and gently kissed her cheek.

Colton didn’t say the words, but she knew that kiss was his goodbye.

“I’m sorry.” He stepped back from the embrace.

Sophie realized that was it. The last time they’d ever touch. Part of her ached to step back into his arms, but the bigger part of her understood there was no going back. She took another step, putting more distance between them.

“I wish it could be different,” he said, “but I can’t...”

She knew what he was saying. He couldn’t be with a woman he didn’t trust. “I understand.”

“Can we be friends?” he asked. “Not now, but eventually?”

“I’d like to say yes, but no.” This was her fault, too. She’d left them nowhere to go. She should have trusted her instincts and not gotten involved with anyone. Ever. She should have learned fourteen years ago when she’d lost her daughter that there was no such thing as a happy ending.

Well, lesson learned now. What hurt the most was knowing that she’d hurt Colton in the process. She couldn’t go back and undo that, but she could make a clean break of it for his sake. “No, we can’t be friends. I’m sorry, Colton. We can be friendly. Given Finn and Mattie’s relationship, and the fact I think there’s something between Lily and Sebastian...” She paused a moment. “We’ll see each other. Valley Ridge is small enough that there’s no help for it. We’ll be friendly. We’ll smile and make small talk, but we can’t be friends. Not when I know what we should be, what we could have been, if I’d been...”

She let the sentence hang, not sure how to end it. What we could have been if I’d been honest was her first thought, but in reality, the real end to the sentence was what we could have been, if I’d been someone other than Sophia Moreau-Ellis.