Return to Oak Valley (7 page)

“How'd you find out?” Shelly asked around an Oreo.

“Some wise-ass kid at school. It was at football practice, and I don't remember what happened exactly, but we got into it.” He grinned. “All that young, male testosterone, I guess. Anyway, I damn near beat the shi—, uh, devil out of him, before his friends piled in, then my friends joined the fight.” His eyes gleamed with remembered enthusiasm. “The coaches leaped in and pulled us all apart. We were read the riot act and three or four of us were benched for the next game. By then we had cooled down and thought we'd gotten off easy—we could have been out for the whole season.”

Shelly raised a brow. “In St. Galen's? Where the entire high school can barely put together a full team? I don't think so.”

Nick smiled. “Yeah, you're probably right. But Jim Hard-castle, the guy I'd been fighting with, started whining and complaining. He was always sort of a troublemaker and the coach told him that he'd make an exception for him: two games. That really set Hardcastle off. He started yelling that it wasn't fair. That I had started the whole thing and that I was nothing but a half-breed Mex and that if my father wasn't Josh Granger, I'd have been thrown off the team.”

Shelly paused in the act of pouring another round of milk for the pair of them. “Wow! That must have been a shock.”

“To say the least,” Nick commented wryly. “I went at Hardcastle, calling him a liar, and punched him in the nose for bad-mouthing my mom.” He made a face. “The adults separated us again, and I ended up being benched for three games—which for us, was most of the season. Coach ordered me home right then—wouldn't even let me finish practice.”

“You sound more pissed off about that than finding out about Josh and your mom.”

Nick grinned. “Well, in a way I was. Man, I hated getting benched! As for the other—I didn't really believe Hardcastle—I thought he was just being a blowhard and a pain in the ass. It wasn't until I got home and was in the kitchen—” he paused and winked at her—“cramming my face full of Oreos and milk, and spouting off about what a jerk Hard-castle was, and asking Mom how he thought anybody would believe such a damned lie, when I noticed her expression.” He shook his head. “I took one look at her face, and my stomach dropped right to the floor.”

Shelly stopped eating her Oreo and stared at him, sympathy in her gaze. “Must have been hard. What'd you do?”

“I tackled her with it right off, but I didn't get anywhere then or ever.” He glanced away, his expression bleak. He took a deep breath, and, meeting Shelly's sympathetic gaze, blurted out, “You have only my word for it. Mom simply will not talk about it. Even now if I press her, she starts to cry, and says she promised. Says she swore never to tell anyone. But it's the tears that get me. She almost always bursts into tears…she cried a lot that first day.” Nick's eyes dropped, his jaw working. “I never saw my mom cry before, and it shook me—bad. I was in a rage”—he smiled deprecatingly—“as only a sixteen-year-old-almost-a-man can be. Not at her,” he added quickly, “never at her, but I resented the situation, and I was furious that they'd kept the truth from me. I was furious that they'd allowed me to find out in such a manner.”

Shelly shook her head. “Knowing Oak Valley, you'd have thought that they'd have realized that someone was bound to put two and two together eventually. They should have told you—it was cruel and thoughtless not to. They had to know that you would find out sooner or later. Surely they didn't think you'd never find out?”

Nick shrugged. “Don't ask me. Mom keeps her mouth shut, just saying that your family was kind to her and that they supported her when she needed help. It's obvious she never expected more than what she got, and she was satisfied with it—that's the part that eats at my gut.” The expression in his eyes hardened. “Your mother gave Mom money and paid for her to go back to Mexico…and stay there.”

Shelly made a face. “Sounds like Mother. She really took her position in the valley to heart. She wouldn't want any slurs cast on the Granger name.” She frowned. “But if your mom went away, never to return, what happened? She came back.”

“Yeah, she did.” Hurriedly he added, “And it wasn't because she wanted more money either.”

“I would never doubt that. But why did she come back?”

He ran a hand through his dark hair. “I don't know if you knew, but Mom's father died when she was a child in Mexico and left the family almost destitute. She said that with her dad gone, they were practically living on the streets. Anyway, Abuela Ynez, my other grandmother, wrote to her only brother, Tio abuelo Oliverio. He had settled here and was working, for the”—he flashed her a glance—“Ballingers. When he received Abuela Ynez's letter begging for help, he sent for the entire family and helped them find jobs here in Oak Valley.” He looked at Shelly. “This was Mom's home. She's lived here since she was eleven years old. She grew up here. She had her citizenship. Abuela Ynez, her uncle, her sisters, and a brother lived here. In Mexico there were just some cousins or something, and she was lonesome. So, when I was about six months old, she couldn't stand it anymore and she came home. To Abuela Ynez's—not to the Grangers'.”

Shelly waved a hand. “I believe you. And I can guess the rest. Josh or one of my parents found out that she was here and they probably thought it would cause less talk if Maria came back to work for them than if they just pretended they'd never heard of her.”

Nick nodded. “Mom never said, she can be pretty vague about stuff when she wants to be, but I guess it was something like that.”

Shelly looked curious. “Doesn't she talk about it at all?”

“Not a word. You saw her today. Even for me she won't open up. She has some hang-up about breaking her word. If she had her way, we'd all just continue to pretend it never happened. She hates it when I bring up the subject.” He grinned at her. “She really tore a strip off me this afternoon when we went home.”

“The mind boggles at what the situation was like here—for them.
I
never suspected a thing.”

“You wouldn't—you were a kid, just like Raquel and me. And by the time you were old enough to maybe notice something or ask embarrassing questions, you were gone—remember?”

Shelly grimaced. “I remember.” She picked up another Oreo. Nibbling at the edges of it, she asked, “Did you ever face Josh?”

Nick took a deep breath. “Oh, yeah. And he just looked at me and said it was too bad that I listened to gossip.” He flashed a wry grin. “I lied a little and said that Mom admitted it and he got that, I smell shi—, manure, grin on his face and told me that he couldn't be responsible for any tales his housekeeper might tell her son.”

Shelly's eyes widened. “He actually said that?” she asked in a stunned voice.

Nick nodded and took a bite of a cookie. “Yeah. He said it. I should know—I was there. Jesus! I hated him at that moment. I wanted to pound him into the ground. Not so much for not acknowledging me, but for dismissing Mom that way—his ‘housekeeper.’ Needless to say, he and I didn't have very many friendly father-to-son chats after that.”

“I guess not.”

They chewed on the cookies for a few minutes in silence. Then Nick asked quietly, “Do you believe me? I don't have much proof.” He laughed bitterly. “Hell, I don't have any proof—just gossip and a gut feeling. And green eyes. And a father my mother won't name.”

Shelly sighed and put down her half-eaten cookie. “I find it hard to believe that Josh could be so cold and calculating and yet…” She looked at him, studied the lean, intent features across from her, and, for one dizzy moment, it was as if Josh stared back at her. She blinked, the resemblance vanished, and it was just Nick sitting across from her.

Did she believe him? It was a fantastic story and flew in the face of everything she knew about her brother, but there was something about it, something she couldn't just dismiss out of hand. And it wasn't improbable that young, pretty Maria would succumb to the charms of twenty-year-old Josh. This site, the site where they had lived in those days, was isolated. There were no near neighbors, unless you considered five miles down a winding twisting forest and brush-lined road near. They would have spent a lot of time here at the house when Josh had been home from college. They were worlds apart socially and financially, yet Maria was in his house, close at hand, day and night…. Shelly wrinkled her nose. The whole situation, if true, was nasty. It reminded her uncomfortably of the master/slave situation that had been so prevalent in the South and the
droit du seigneur
of old France. Had Josh considered making love to Maria his right? She thought about her brother, realizing that she'd always been aware, albeit vaguely, of his careless indifference to those he considered of a lesser stature than himself. He wasn't cruel. He just…Her mouth twisted. He just thought himself above the masses. He was, after all, a Granger. And not just any Granger, but a Granger of Oak Valley. It had been one of his less attractive traits, Shelly admitted, but he had always been so open and generous with those he liked and loved that one tended to overlook it. To forget about it.

Nick's touch on her arm made her jump. “Raquel's right—I am such a jerk sometimes.” he said disgustedly. “Look, I came up here to apologize. That's all, honest. I really didn't mean to dump this ancient history on you right now.” He smiled bitterly. “I just can't seem to help myself. It eats at me, you know. Not the land. The hell with the land! It's the fact that he could never bring himself to acknowledge me as his child. I don't even want the Granger name. I've been called Rios for as long as I can remember. Why would I want to change that? But I deserved his acknowledgment.” His lips twisted bitterly. “He lived with me underfoot all those years, and he never
once
stepped down from his goddamn pedestal and acknowledged me. He should have given me that—even just privately. I want that, I
need
the recognition that I am his son—and to hell with everything else.” He waited a second, then took a deep breath, and asked, “So do you believe me?”

Shelly's heart ached at the naked yearning in Nick's face, wanting desperately to tell him that she believed him. Instinct told her he was telling the truth…but instinct had played her false before. Sawyer's cautionary words drifted through her mind, and her lips tightened. Jesus! She hated this. Why couldn't things be straightforward? No doubts. No questions. Did she trust Nick?

Her gaze dropped to the demolished plate of cookies. A memory suddenly popped into her mind. She'd have been thirteen and Nick about nine. It had been June, and her mother was having her annual tea party. It was probably the only time of the year that most women of St. Galen's actually put on a dress. The tea party had been instituted decades ago by her great-grandmother. Shelly's nose wrinkled. Something, if she remembered right, to shove up the noses of the Ballingers. The Ballingers and their friends obviously were not invited. The annual Granger tea party had become a valley tradition and was one of the high points of the St. Galen's “season.”

It was always held the first Saturday in June, and Shelly recalled the long tables covered with dainty sandwiches and delicate pastries that were set up outside underneath the oaks. Tables and chairs shaded by colorful umbrellas were scattered across the expanse of lawn. The ladies of St. Galen's, probably wearing dresses and nylons for the first time since last year's tea party, gossiped and laughed and enjoyed the elegant surroundings. For a while, the weather, the hay crop, the price of cattle or sheep, the setbacks and triumphs of the calving or lambing season, the timber harvest, fire season, the everyday worries that went with ranching and timbering, were put in abeyance.

That particular year, being a boy and nine and living in the country, Nick had started a collection of milk snakes. He'd caught two so far and kept the small white-banded black snakes in a huge old aquarium that Josh had found somewhere for him and had helped him set up in the barn. Nearly every Saturday morning Nick set out with a gallon pickle jar looking for snakes—and most of the time he came home empty-handed.

The adults had been busy with preparations, and Shelly remembered that she and Nick both had been told to behave and to stay out of the way. Nick had happily gone off looking for snakes and she, being above such childish sport since she had become a teenager, had been lazing in the hammock at the rear of the house, her nose buried in a
Seventeen
magazine.

The tea party was in full swing when Nick came up to her and shoved the pickle jar containing three writhing snakes in her face. She screamed, threw her magazine into the air, and fell out of the hammock.

Chortling, Nick had shoved the jar at her again, and the chase was on. Shrieking and running as if she had never seen a milk snake before, she had bolted for the front of the house, Nick hot on her heels. It was a game, and they both knew it. It was merely an excuse to run and scream and let loose some of that youthful exuberance.

Having forgotten the tea party, long coltish legs flashing in the sunlight, she ran smack into the middle of her mother's annual grand affair. Before she was spotted, she veered away and quickly skirted the crowd. Half-hidden behind one of the big oak trees, she waited, keeping an eye out for Nick and for the chase to continue. It never occurred to her that Nick wouldn't take the same evasive action.

Intent upon the game, he burst onto the scene and practically crashed into Mrs. Matthews, the grammar school librarian. Mrs. Matthews, a big, heavyset, brassy woman, was not a favorite of Nick's—he'd been sent to the principal's office by her more than once during the school year. Appalled to find himself in the middle of Señora Granger's party, he immediately tried to sidle away, but Mrs. Matthews stopped him.

“Ah, good afternoon, Nick,” Mrs. Matthews said in her booming voice. “It's good to see you helping your mother this way.” Smiling condescendingly down at him, she asked, “And what is this you are bringing to the table?”

He shouldn't have done it. Even he knew it. But the devil just took over, and he thrust the jar of snakes right up in her face. “Snakes!” he said with relish. Her reaction was everything he could have wished for.