Love Will Find a Way (36 page)

* * *

Three and a half hours later, the scenery had changed considerably. Thick forests surrounded the two-lane highway that climbed to an altitude of eight thousand feet, then descended to a clear mountain lake that was awesome in its size, its clarity, and its beauty.

These were the sights Gary had seen that last weekend of his life, Rachel realized. The view was breathtaking, and when she rolled down the window she could smell the pines and feel the cool, crisp air of autumn. Soon it would be winter. The mountains would be covered with snow. The animals would hibernate, the world would change. She'd always welcomed the seasons, but this year they felt especially symbolic.

They came to a stoplight and Dylan glanced down at the address he'd jotted on a piece of paper. He made several more turns, finally stopping in front of a modest ranch-style house in a heavily wooded area.

"This is it," he said, turning off the engine.

Rachel stared at the house. There was a swing on the porch that reminded her of home. Had Gary and Laura sat on the swing with their arms around each other? Had they watched the sun go down? Had they shared an intimacy that should have belonged only to her and Gary? Rachel's stomach churned uneasily as she thought of all the possibilities.

"Ready?" Dylan asked.

"I'm scared."

"Fear only retreats when you look it in the eye. You can do this, Rachel, You were Gary's wife. He chose to marry you. He chose to stay married to you. You're not the other woman. You're not the one who should be afraid."

"What if he was leaving me? What if he rushed down the mountain because he wanted to get home and ask for a divorce?"

"What if he rushed down the mountain because he missed you so much he couldn't wait to get back to you?"

"I don't think that was it. He wouldn't have come here if he hadn't had a reason."

"Let's go find out what that reason was." Dylan flipped the automatic locks and opened his door.

Rachel hesitated,
then
did the same, joining Dylan on the sidewalk. Every step they took toward the house felt like a step toward the edge of a cliff. Dylan rang the bell. Rachel listened for some sign of life. It came far too quickly, the sound of feet, a dog barking, someone telling the dog to quiet down. Then the door opened.

She saw a woman through the screen, a petite woman with light brown hair and green eyes. She was strikingly pretty. Rachel's heart skipped a beat. This was her; this was Laura.

"Can I help you?" the woman inquired, looking from one to the other, no recognition in her eyes.

"Are you Laura?" Rachel asked.

"Yes, I'm Laura Gardner."

"I'm Rachel Tanner." Dylan was right. The fear went away when she looked it right in the eye.

Laura's face turned white. "Rachel -- Tanner?" She made a move to shut the door.

"Wait." Dylan opened the screen, putting his hand against the door she was trying to close. "We need to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say. Go away." Her voice shook with emotion.

"Please," Rachel said. "You have to tell me about your relationship with my husband. I think you were possibly the last person he spoke to before he died. I need to know why he came here to see you. I need to know what you talked about." Rachel's voice grew stronger with each word. "Please let us in."

"I wish you hadn't come," Laura said, shaking her head. "You shouldn't have come."

"You shouldn't have changed your phone number," Dylan said sharply. "We're not leaving until you talk to us."

Laura looked from Dylan to Rachel. She licked her lips, checked her watch,
then
finally nodded. "All right. Since you're here. Come in." She stepped back, allowing them to enter.

The furnishings were as modest as the house; the cluttered living room had nothing particularly special about it. Rachel moved toward the mantel, glancing at the photographs of Laura, a man -- her husband, perhaps -- and a girl -- their daughter? They looked like a happy family. So why had this happy family woman been seeing Gary, calling him all over town, leaving messages for him, sending him back necklaces in the mail?

"Were you having an affair with Gary?" Rachel asked. The words came out blunt and sharp. There was no more fear left in her body, only anger and a desire to know the truth.

Laura's hand went to her neck as if she were checking for a necklace, but there was none there. Rachel opened her purse and removed the jewelry box. "Is this what you're looking for?"

Laura took the box from her and flipped open the lid. She bit down on her lip,
then
closed the box again. "I wondered where it had gone."

"Why did you send it to my husband?"

"I needed Gary's help. I needed to remind him of what we once were," Laura said.

"What exactly were you?"

"We were lovers." Laura met Rachel's gaze head-on. "Many, many years ago. When we were teenagers."

"In Europe?"

"Yes." She appeared surprised. "I didn't think Gary had told you about us."

"He didn't. Dylan guessed."

"Dylan? You're the Dylan Gary spoke of so fondly?" Laura shook her head in bemusement. "I always wanted to meet you. I never anticipated it would be now."

"Why did you come back into Gary's life?" Dylan asked. "I thought your relationship was over years ago."

"It was." Laura sat down on the couch and motioned for them to sit as well.

Rachel wasn't sure she wanted to sit, but it didn't appear that Laura would speak until she did so. She sat down in a hard-backed chair. She didn't want to be comfortable in this house.

"We met on a gondola in Venice," Laura said. "It was wildly romantic for a pair of eighteen-year-olds." Her expression grew dreamy. "We fell in love and spent every moment we could together. Then my brother told my parents about our relationship. My father arrived and whisked me back to the States before I could say good-bye to Gary. I called him when I got home. I told him that I loved him but I couldn't be with him right now. He was hurt and angry. He didn't understand that my future was dependent on my parents' willingness to pay for college, which they threatened to withhold if I ever saw him again. They were very religious and ashamed that I had had sex before marriage."

Rachel's pulse took another jump as reality set in. This woman had been with Gary. She'd laughed with him. She'd seen him naked. She'd made love to him. Yes, maybe it was years before Rachel had met Gary, but damn, it still felt wrong.

"Unfortunately," Laura continued, "my parents were further shamed a few months later when they found out I was pregnant."

Rachel started, a gasp coming from her throat. Laura had been pregnant? She'd been carrying Gary's child? "Oh, God," she muttered, putting a hand to her mouth.

"Are you all right?" Dylan asked, drawing her gaze to his.

She wanted to scream that no, she wasn't all right. This woman had been with her husband. She'd been carrying his child.

"Rachel?" Dylan said.

"Go on," she bit out. "Tell me the rest."

"I tried to find Gary again," Laura said. "But he had gone off to college, and I couldn't track him down. My parents insisted I marry someone as soon as possible, so I married a friend of mine who was willing to give me his name. It wasn't love, but it worked. I went on with my life the only way I knew how. And my dear friend, Bill, stuck with me, raising my daughter as his own."

Rachel looked over at the family pictures once again and saw the resemblance she'd missed before. The truth was right in front of her eyes. The veil had been lifted. "Your daughter is Gary's daughter?"

Laura slowly nodded. "Yes. Her name is Allison."

"Allison," Rachel echoed. "Well." She shook her head. What did you say when someone told you your husband was the father of her child?

"She's sixteen years old," Laura added. "She didn't know about any of this until last winter. Before that, she had accepted Bill as her father."

"What happened last winter?" Dylan asked.

"At my wedding anniversary party, someone made a joke about how I must have gotten pregnant on my wedding night; I'd had Allison so soon. It was a silly comment. But Allison heard it and started counting. We'd always figured that we'd just say she was premature, but to tell the truth, it never came up until that night. Allison figured out I must have been pregnant when I got married. At first she just teased me about sex before marriage. Then my brother, my stupid brother, mentioned my infamous tour of Italy, and Allison wondered how I could have gotten pregnant by her father if I was in Italy at the time. To make a long story short, she put two and two together and asked me if her dad was really her dad. I couldn't lie to her. I wish I had now. Allison is very headstrong and impulsive. Once she knew she had a father out there somewhere, she wanted to find him. She insisted on it. I couldn't talk her out of it." Laura uttered a harsh laugh. "She did a far better job than I did. She found Gary over the Internet in a couple of days. Then she ran away to see him."

"That's why you started calling him," Rachel said.

"She had found his home phone number. At first I called to warn him. Then I was worried when she ran away, and I needed him to find her. I didn't want her roaming the streets of San Francisco by herself."

Rachel sat back in her chair. "How did Gary react to the fact that he had a daughter?"

"He was shocked at first that I had even called him. He didn't understand that it was about Allison. He wouldn't call me back for days. I guess he was still angry after all those years." Laura shook her head. "I didn't want to leave a message about a daughter with his assistant or at your house. So I finally sent him the necklace he'd given me in Italy, hoping to play on the memory of the love we'd had."

"And he called you back after that?" Rachel didn't like the idea that Gary's return call had been motivated by a memory of love for Laura. She told herself again that their love had nothing to do with her. It had happened years before. But why hadn't he ever told her about Laura? Or even about his trip to Europe? Why had he kept so many things a secret?

"When I told Gary about Allison, he understood that I'd had a real reason for calling." Laura looked at Rachel. "But he was worried about you, about hurting your family. He didn't want me to talk to you until he had a chance to explain."

"Explain what? That he loved you?"

Laura hesitated. "We did love each other very much. But it was before ..." She shrugged. "It was separate from you. Gary wanted to keep it that way."

"I see," Rachel replied. Even though she really didn't see. Maybe their relationship had been separate, but the fact that he had a daughter certainly involved her.

"Gary agreed to help me find Allison. He tracked her down in San Francisco in a seedy motel. Thank God he did. She could have gotten herself into all kinds of trouble. They spent some time together. Then Gary sent her home on the bus. He promised to come up for her sixteenth birthday party."

"Oh, God," Rachel whispered as her mind raced ahead.

Laura's eyes filled with pain, but she went on. "We had a good weekend together. Gary and Allison talked incessantly. They had the same laugh, you know, the same eyes. It hurt me to see them together, but it felt good, too. My husband, Bill, was jealous of Gary and Allison's relationship. But he realized that they needed to know each other, that it was important to both of them." She put a hand to her mouth as her lips began to tremble. "I didn't know it would be the last time. I didn't know that."

Rachel's eyes blurred with tears. She had to bite down on her own lip to keep from crying. Why had Gary's last weekend been with this woman?
With this family?

Laura cleared her throat. "Bill saw the accident on the news that night. We told Allison the next day that Gary had been killed. She was devastated. She completely fell apart."

Rachel tried to swallow, but the lump in her throat grew bigger as she was taken back to that awful day when she'd received a terrible telephone call. "We were all devastated," she said, choking on the words.

"I didn't mean that you weren't," Laura said haltingly. "I know you must have been.
And your son, too.
I'm sorry. I never contacted you, because ..."

"Because Gary hadn't told me about you or Allison."

"He said he would tell you when he got home."

"He did?" Rachel jumped on that like it was a lifeline. "He was going to tell me? Are you sure?"

"Yes. He wanted Allison and Wesley to know each other. And he hoped that you would understand that Allison needed to be part of your lives. I wasn't sure you'd accept her -- another woman's child? But Gary said you had a generous heart. And family was everything to you."

"I wouldn't have, you know," Rachel said, brushing away a tear from her cheek. "I wouldn't have turned my back on your daughter -- on Gary's child."

Their gazes met, woman to woman, mother to mother. And the rest slowly slipped away.

Dylan broke into their conversation. "Was Gary planning to support Allison?"

Rachel sent him a quick look, noting the hard glint in his eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. He seemed angry.
With whom?
With Gary?
With Laura?
With her?
Or maybe he was angry at himself. Gary hadn't told him about Allison either. Not his wife. Not his best friend. They'd both believed they'd had a close relationship with Gary. They'd both been wrong.

"Gary gave Allison some money to put toward college. He wanted to set up a trust fund, but Bill and I didn't want his financial support. We just wanted Allison to have a relationship with him."

"The missing cash," Rachel murmured. "Ten thousand dollars?"

"Yes. We'll return it, of course."

"No. He gave it to you. It's yours," she said. "There should be more, too. Allison should have something." She glanced again at Dylan. "Don't you think she should have something?"

"Whatever you want, Rachel. One thing bothers me." He looked at Laura. "Why did you change your phone number after Rachel called? Why hide all this now? Gary's dead."