The Second Time (3 page)

“Randy hasn’t actually said so, but I know he wants us to move here—to Key West. He’s curious about his father. That’s why he was so eager to go for a walk with Pop,” Dawn explained with a ague weariness. “He’s hoping he’ll accidentally run into Slater—or see him—anything. He desperately wants a father. It wasn’t so bad when Simpson was alive because Randy could pretend he had one. Now—?”

“Will you move here?” She had hardly dared to hope that Dawn, her only child, would consider coming back here where she could see them as often as she liked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Slater,” Dawn replied, and combed the copper red hair behind her ears with a rake of her long fingernails.

“Are you going to tell him about Randy?” After all these years of silence, Reeta Canady couldn’t help being surprised by this change in her daughter’s attitude.

“He has a right to know, too,” she said with a defensive air.

“You should have told him before,” her mother declared in a rare admonishment.

“No!” It was a hard, swift denial that brought Dawn’s head up sharply. Then just as quickly, her chin drooped in defeat. “Yes.” She breathed out the admission. “I should have told him before, but I thought I knew it all then.”

“Don’t we all at eighteen,” her mother murmured in sympathy.

“I have to tell Slater now. How he takes the news will determine whether we’ll stay here or go somewhere else. I don’t want Randy to know that. If Slater refused to acknowledge him even privately—and I wouldn’t blame him if he did—I’d rather that Randy never learns that. I don’t want him to be hurt anymore because of my stupidity.” She picked up her cup but the coffee had become cold.

“When were you planning to go see him?” She pitied her daughter because she knew how awkward it was going to be.

“Not for a couple of days. I want to spend some time with you and Pop first.” Just in case after she told Slater that the situation would turn too uncomfortable for her to stay. She knew how angry and bitter he had been when she’d jilted him. She couldn’t even begin to guess how he’d react when he learned that she’d had his son.

Her mother fingered the handle of her coffee cup. “You do know Slater never married. Maybe . . . the two of you—”

“No, Mother.” Dawn rejected that possibility as laughable. “After the way I treated him, there isn’t any chance things could ever be the way they were between us. Marriage is out of the question even for Randy’s sake. Slater despises me—and I can’t say that I blame him.”

“I know he judged you harshly,” her mother conceded. “But a lot of years have passed.”

“Precisely.” She seized on the latter statement. “People change, especially after they’ve been separated a long time. The intensity of feeling isn’t there anymore. I know I’m not the same girl that sailed away from here on that yacht eleven years ago.”

And she thanked God for that, even though she knew it was too late for her and Slater. She had lost him, and she didn’t fool herself into believing she could ever win him back.

But just talking about him and the dilemma of her future provided some measure of relief. She hadn’t meant to burden her mother with this discussion so early in her homecoming. Now that it was over, some of her tension had eased.

Picking up her coffee cup, she once again got to her feet. “We’d better get these lunch dishes washed before Randy and Pop come home and it’s time to fix supper.”

“You don’t need to help,” her mother protested. “Not your first day home. Sit down and have some more coffee. I’ll do them.”

“No, Mother,” Dawn smiled and continued toward the sink full of dirty dishes. “I’ve got to get into practice again. After all, I’m not going to
have a maid and cook to clean up after me anymore.”

“It’s good to have you home, Dawn,” her mother declared, a little teary-eyed.

“It’s good to be home,” Dawn affirmed on a deep breath that was more positive in its outlook than her many sighs of troubled confusion.

Cycling along the cobbled back streets of Key West, Dawn felt the clock turning back the years to the time when a bicycle had been her main means of transportation around the island. She could almost believe she was back in the past if it weren’t for Randy on the bike ahead of her.

“Come on, slowpoke.” He looked over his shoulder at her, smiling as he taunted her.

“Go ahead, speedy.” She waved him on, knowing he was impatient with her lackadaisical pace. Randy seemed to be going through a phase where he had to race at everything. The faster the better was his motto. “I’ll be the tortoise and catch up with you later when you’re too pooped to pedal.”

His long, sun-browned legs began pumping as hard as he could, gaining speed as Randy pulled back on the handlebars to raise the front wheel. Dawn shook her head in silent amusement, not understanding the excitement he derived from “popping a wheelie.” A minute later, he was swooping around a corner and disappearing.
There was little chance of Randy becoming lost since it was an island town. Besides, the last two days he’d done so much exploring both on foot and on bicycle that he fairly well knew his way around.

Dawn had stayed close to home until this afternoon when Randy persuaded her to go biking with him. It was fun riding around her home-town, seeing the changes and the old haunts that hadn’t perceptibly changed. At eighteen, Key West hadn’t seemed to hold enough of anything for her—life, excitement, or the kind of future she had thought she wanted. Now, it seemed a good place to live and raise her son.

Located at the southernmost tip of the chain of Keys, its protective reefs and deep harbor had given Key West its beginnings as a pirate haven. Over the years there had been changing cultural influences until the town was a peculiar blend of New England fishing village, tourist-resort city, and a touch of elegance from its close neighbor, Cuba.

The blue sea surrounded it, and the blue sky covered it, and the sun warmed it all year round. Its near tropical climate nourished a profusion of plant life that gave the Keys a lushness and sense of mystery. There was a riot of color—the bright blossoms of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and poinciana growing rampantly.

Thick oleanders nearly hid the white picket fence from Dawn’s sight. She caught the flash of white out of the corner of her eye and let the bike
coast on the nearly level street while her attention strayed to identify it. The short driveway leading back to the house was nearly overgrown.

It was the old Van de Veere place. She and Katy Van de Veere had been close friends in school. Dawn remembered her mother mentioning that they had moved to the mainland a couple of years ago. It was sad to see the old house sitting vacant. She braked her bike to a halt along the side of the road for a longer look at this site from her girlhood days.

There had always seemed to be so much character and charm about the house. Even now, with its yard overgrown with shedding palm trees and choking oleanders, it appeared to steadfastly resist any attempt to suppress it. The style of the sturdy wooden house with its wide veranda was locally known as “Conch” architecture. Many places like this had been renovated into lovely homes. Dawn gazed at it wistfully, wishing she could take the house in hand and turn it into a home for herself and Randy.

There was an almost silent whish of bike wheels behind her. Dawn paid scant attention to the sound until she heard the sudden setting of brakes and tires skidding on the rough edge of the road. She turned in sharp alarm, expecting to see a bicycle spinning on its side and some child sprawled in the street. Instead, Randy came to a dramatic stop beside her, a mischievous grin on his face.

“Did I scare you?” he wanted to know, hoping
her answer would be affirmative. “I’ll bet you thought I was going to run into you.”

“No, but I did expect to see somebody sprawled in the street with their bike turned over,” she said, giving him a reproving look from under the white sun visor cap she wore to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun.

“How come you’re hanging around here?” Randy asked, rolling his bike back and forth, already anxious to be moving again.

“I was just looking at the house.” Dawn bobbed her head in the direction of the structure, visible through the driveway. “One of my girlfriends used to live here. It’s empty now, I guess.”

“Boy, it looks like a jungle,” he declared, looking at the thick undergrowth that had taken over the yard and was attacking the wide veranda. “It sure would be neat to explore the place.”

No sooner was the thought voiced than Randy was riding his bike into the driveway. “Randy, that’s private property,” Dawn admonished. “You could be arrested for trespassing.”

“Ahh, Mom,” he complained. “I’m not going to vandalize anything. I just want a closer look. That’s all.”

A few feet inside the driveway, he stopped the bike and rested a foot on the ground for balance. Satisfied that his intentions were no more than that, Dawn followed him, curious herself to see the place up close.

“Look.” Dawn pointed to the narrow slats in
the roof under the eaves. “That’s ‘Key West air-conditioning,’ the old style. Those openings trap the cool breezes and carry them into the house.”

“Really?” He eyed her skeptically, not sure she knew what she was talking about.

“Really,” she confirmed, smiling but definite, and swung her gaze back to the house. Again, a wistful quality entered her deep blue eyes. “I really love that old house.”

Randy was watching her closely, the gleam of an idea silvering through his eyes. “Why don’t we buy the place, Mom?” he suggested and rushed on before she could answer. “You said you liked it, and we’ve got to live somewhere.”

“Hold it, fella,” she cautioned, fully aware of the desire behind all this. “I can’t buy something just because I like it. There’s a little matter of price and terms, and the cost of repairs. It’s probably more than we can afford.”

“We can do a lot of repairs ourselves,” Randy insisted blithely. “Gramps would help. You should see the woodworking shop he’s got in the garage. I’ll bet he could fix just about anything.”

“Your grandfather is a fine carpenter.” It had been his craft all his life. “But there’s plumbing and electrical wiring—and who knows what else.”

“You’re just guessing.” He tried a different tactic. “You don’t even know if there’s anything wrong with the house at all.”

“That’s true.” She was forced to concede the point. “But we don’t have that much money to
spend on a place that might cost a lot to maintain.” She hated to keep harping on their suddenly limited finances, but Randy needed to learn that the purchase price of an object wasn’t the only concern.

“Still, you could check and find out about it, couldn’t you?” Randy countered with persuasive ease.

Dawn hesitated for a split second. There wasn’t any harm in checking to find out how much was being asked for the house and learning what kind of condition it was in. There were a lot of “ifs” that had to be settled before going further than that.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised, and signaled that they had lingered there long enough by turning her bike around in the driveway to head onto the street.

At the supper table that evening, Randy monopolized the conversation with a detailed account of their afternoon bike ride and managed to work in a subtle reminder of Dawn’s promise.

“We stopped to look at this old house,” he told his grandparents. “You should have seen the place. It was all overgrown with weeds and flowers. A girl you went to school with lived there, didn’t she?” He pulled her into the conversation.

“It was the old Van de Veere place,” Dawn explained while she ladled a spoonful of conch chowder to her soup bowl. “Do you know who
owns it now?” She glanced at her mother with idle curiosity.

There was an almost stricken look on her mother’s face, but her silence was covered by her husband, whose red hair had long ago turned white. “Doesn’t that belong to—”

“I don’t think so,” Reeta Canady interrupted him quickly, throwing her husband a quelling look that was linked to the glance she darted at Randy. “I think some speculator from the mainland bought it, but I’m sure it’s on the market, Dawn. You could check with one of the realtors.”

“I’ll do that,” Dawn said, battening down the suspicions that had sprung to life at her mother’s behavior.

“Are you thinking about buying the place?” inquired her father. “It’s built solid as a rock.”

“Yeah—” Randy rushed in with an affirmative answer.

“At the moment, it’s mainly curiosity,” she insisted, although the possibility hadn’t lost its appeal.

It wasn’t until after the meal was finished and Dawn was helping her mother clear the dishes from the table that her suspicions were confirmed. Both Randy and her father were in the garage workshop.

“Who owns the Van de Veere house?” she repeated the question she’d asked earlier.

“Slater MacBride,” her mother admitted with a long look. “I nearly shoved a fritter in your father’s mouth to shut him up from saying anything
in front of Randy. I swear he talks and thinks afterwards.”

“Why did he buy it?” Dawn wondered aloud as she absently stacked the dishes on the counter next to the sink.

“I imagine just for the investment,” her mother shrugged. “He owns quite a bit of property, residential and commercial. Slater has done very well for himself. I—” She saw the pained look on Dawn’s face and stopped, changing what she had started to say. “I’m sorry. But who’s to say if you had married MacBride instead of Simpson, whether he would have turned out to be the same way,” her mother offered in consolation.

“I know,” Dawn sighed, but it was a case of knowing now what a precious gift love could be and how foolish she had been to think wealth was more valuable. For a long time, she had been reconciled to living with regret for the rest of her life, but that didn’t stop it from hurting once in a while.

“After the wedding, Slater was—almost obsessed with making money,” her mother explained with a kind of sadness in her voice and expression. “Every bit of money he earned or could beg, borrow, or steal he put into his deals—gambling everything on venture after venture.” She shook her head, as if in reflective despair. “Eventually, I guess it became a habit.” Lightly, she trailed her hand over the shimmering firelights in Dawn’s hair, a gesture that reminded Dawn instantly of her childhood when her mother
had stroked her hair, comforting her over some hurt. “But the money didn’t make him any happier than it did you.”