Promises to Keep (13 page)

Julie could not imagine engaging in such exploits, and her expression had become increasingly doubtful.

"Why do you look so dubious?" asked Garth.

She shook her head. "It's hard to believe that I did those things. I don't feel all that adventurous and frankly it's frightening just to hear about them."

"You may not have felt any bolder when you were doing them," Garth said quietly. "For some people the only way to deal with fear is to deny they're afraid by forcing themselves to meet it head-on."

"Is that what prompted you to become an auto racer?" she asked softly.

"There are certain parallels," Garth replied, "but the risks you take in racing are calculated and it wasn't racing I was afraid of. It was boredom."

"Boredom!" Jessie cried, and Garth nodded. He drank some of his coffee before he continued.

"Before I'd reached my mid-twenties, I'd discovered what a mixed blessing it was to have been born into a privileged family. Things had always come my way too easily, and I was fresh out of new worlds to conquer. I thought I'd done it all."

His mouth quirked humorously, and he looked from Dan to Jessie as though he were gauging their interest. Both of them were listening as attentively as Julie.

"When it came to leading a pleasure-seeking existence, the fact was that I had done just about everything that wasn't outright felonious. As for the future, it threatened to be more empty than the present. All I could foresee was an endless search for bigger and better thrills, and they were getting harder to find and none of them lasted anyway." He grinned, mocking his youthful conceit.

"If all of this sounds cynical and melodramatic," he said dryly, "it's because it was. And so was I at that age. Of course what I really wanted to do wasn't at all dramatic. I wanted to go into the family business, but my father was understandably reluctant to entrust me with responsibility. Even if I hadn't had a wild and misspent youth, I doubt that he'd have allowed me any real input into the way things were run. I had a good deal of respect for Dad, but his greatest failing as a corporate manager was that he was hidebound by tradition. He saw no need for innovation. If a certain policy had been in effect when he'd assumed control of the company from his father, he stuck to it—even if it could be demonstrated that a new approach would be an improvement."

Garth fell silent as he held out his coffee cup to Jessie for a refill.

"So you went into racing," Dan remarked when Garth did not continue his narrative.

"Like a drowning man clutching at a straw," Garth said. "I'd never felt as
alive
as I did when I was driving in a race." He'd spoken flippantly, and Julie suspected that this was a cover for the intensity of his feelings.

"And now you run Falconer Construction," Dan said.

"It's Falconer Engineering Consultants these days —the firm rarely enters into construction contracts since I took over—but yes, I do run it with the help of a fine management team. Julie's uncle, Rupert Hastings, is our vice-president in charge of design."

"I used to wonder why Rupert and his wife didn't petition the court for custody of Julie after her parents died, or at least keep in touch with her."

"There had been a falling out between the two couples," Garth replied. "You must have heard about the scandal involving Julie's father."

"Oh, yes!" Jessie exclaimed irascibly. "We heard about it, and heard about it, and
heard
about it, ad nauseam, from Elizabeth."

"What scandal?" Julie asked quickly.

She had been listening to their conversation so quietly that the other three seemed to have forgotten about her and now, in unison, they realized their oversight and turned startled faces toward her. No one answered for a time. Their glances shied uneasily away from her to shift back and forth to one another in a kind of conspiracy of silence.

"Let it go, Julie,
please
," Dan pleaded. "Don't stir up all that old misery."

"What scandal?" she repeated. Her eyes were fixed on Garth, targeting her question directly at him.

"Your father was also employed by Falconer's, Julie," Garth answered as if he were carefully choosing his words. "He was the chief engineer on a bridge project in southern Oregon. Within a month of its opening, the bridge collapsed and an investigation showed that the material used by one of the subcontractors was below specifications. The company was held accountable for civil and punitive damages— three people had been killed when it collapsed—and your father was found guilty of accepting a bribe from the subcontractor to guarantee his approval of the substandard work."

Dan and Jessie exchanged an anxious look. Julie's face was strained, and so completely drained of color that it seemed all eyes. Her hands were tightly folded in her lap, and she held herself stiffly, as if to keep from flinching. Though Garth hadn't raised his voice, his words had struck her like blows, and she felt wounded by them.

"My father did that?" she whispered.

"No, Julie, he didn't." Garth covered her hands with one of his and he could feel her relax as he spoke. She slipped one hand confidingly into his, and as his fingers closed around it he marveled that something so delicately boned should be capable of such strength.

"Eventually he was cleared," Garth said. "It was unfortunate that it wasn't until after his death, but new evidence came to light that proved his assistant was the guilty party. Your father's only mistake was delegating too much authority to the man who sold us out." She clung to his hand with renewed pressure. "Your grandmother was notified of this development when it happened."

Dan and Jessie were gaping with amazement. "Elizabeth told us every detail about Ted Hastings's conviction," Jessie muttered, "but there wasn't a peep out of her concerning his exoneration."

This time Dan did not defend Elizabeth Ayers. "Why didn't Rupert contact Julie after Ted was acquitted?" he asked.

"I just don't know the answer to that," Garth returned. "A number of years had passed and in the interim Rupert had more than his share of family problems. Charlotte, his wife, is something of a shrew. On her own she can cause enough turmoil to keep half a dozen men occupied." He shrugged casually. "It's pure conjecture on my part because I was away at school most of the time when all this was going on, but Charlotte was once engaged to Ted, and I think she was jealous of Julie's mother. She might have discouraged any effort of Rupert's to win custody."

Sighing, Jessie got to her feet and began stacking the dishes. "This topic of discussion is likely to lead to enough indigestion to send bicarbonate of soda stocks soaring," she declared. "Let's talk about something more pleasant."

"Good idea, Jess," Dan agreed brightly.

Garth was relieved. "Tell me more about Julie," he requested. He was still holding her hand under the table, and she hated to have to free it when she rose to help Jessie serve dessert.

Dan willingly obliged, regaling Garth with anecdotes about Julie's childhood and adolescence. "We didn't see much of her once she'd finished high school," he revealed. "By then Elizabeth was failing so badly, Julie was pretty much tied down looking after her."

His compliments, augmented by Jessie's, grew more flowery, his commendations more fulsome, until Julie felt like screaming that she couldn't possibly be the angelic person they were describing. Instead she complained tartly, "I wish you wouldn't talk about me as if I'm not here. Even if my memory was functioning, I don't think I'd recognize myself. All this praise—it's too much! You'd think I was dead and you two were delivering my eulogy."

This time they allowed her to have the last word, and conversation turned to other things.

After lunch Dan invited Garth to his workshop for a demonstration in the art of tying flies. He was an enthusiastic angler and had years of experience in making his own lures.

"I have one little beauty you're going to love," Dan told Garth when he learned the younger man had enjoyed the limited amount of fly-fishing he'd done. "It's my personal favorite and it's surefire. Trout practically jump into your creel to get at it!"

"That's the last we'll see of them for a while," Jessie forecast good-naturedly when they left the table. "Now that Dan is semiretired, I see less of him than I did when he was working full-time. He's either in his shop or out on the river trying out his inventions. I swear, if I'd agree to serve his meals in there, he'd just move into the shop."

When they had finished clearing the table and loading the dishwasher, Julie asked, "Can I help with anything else?"

"I'd planned to bake some pies for the Autumn Festival the local women's club is sponsoring," Jessie replied. "You can peel the apples for me."

They worked together companionably, and when the pies were in the oven, filling the kitchen with delectable spicy aromas, Jessie made some coffee for the men, and Julie took it into the shop for them before she returned to the kitchen for tea.

"They were so deep in a discussion about a 'Number Four Brown Hex,' whatever that is, they hardly noticed me," Julie said. "Do you think they'll know the coffee is in there?"

"Never fear. I don't know about Garth, but Dan can smell coffee a mile away if he's upwind of it in a gale!"

Julie smiled at the picture this brought to mind, but she was stirring her tea with unnecessary care and Jessie thought she seemed preoccupied.

"There's something I'd like to ask you," Julie confessed hesitantly, "and I'm not sure there's any tactful way to do it. I wouldn't want to impose on your friendship."

"In other words you're afraid it might put me on the spot." Jessie reached out to pat Julie's hand. "Lord, child! From those pink cheeks of yours, I'd say you're the one who's uneasy. Ask away. If I don't want to answer, I'll tell you straight out, it's none of your business."

"It's—well—it's apparent you and Dan have very different opinions about my grandmother. I just wondered why you disliked her."

"Mainly because she tried to poke her nose into our business," Jessie replied evenly.

"How do you mean?"

"When I first moved in with Dan, she started some ugly rumors about me. Until I settled her hash, she conducted a one-woman campaign to either run me out of town or undermine Dan's trust in me so he'd send me away."

Jessie's sharp-eyed glance took in Julie's apologetic expression, and she cautioned, "You understand I've told you this in confidence. Dan never found out who was behind all the gossip, and I could never bring myself to tell him and destroy his high regard for Elizabeth. It would have served no purpose, and he'd have been terribly hurt."

Julie nodded soberly. "Naturally I won't tell anyone. But what possible reason could my grandmother have had for doing such a thing?"

Jessie's face was contorted by a rueful grimace. "Elizabeth dearly loved to try and run other people's lives for them, and that was all the reason she needed. She saw everything in black and white and was so set in her belief that only she was equipped to judge the right and wrong of things, you'd have thought she had a direct line to God!"

As if to mitigate Elizabeth's culpability out of consideration for Julie, she added philosophically, "Of course, you have to remember that Elizabeth's sense of morality was outraged. She grew up in a time when it was commonly thought that sex outside of wedlock was a mortal sin. And even a married woman was expected to look upon sex as a duty and grin and bear it—and she'd better not grin too much either!"

Jessie's eyes twinkled mischievously. "That just goes to show you how society can sometimes carry its taboos too far. Sometimes individuals can, too, and so far as I'm concerned, that was Elizabeth's greatest failing. She couldn't understand that in loving each other as we do, Dan and I have hurt no one—and we've made each other very happy. I never could see any cause for shame in that."

Jessie had spoken quietly, without a trace of rancor, and when she paused to drink some of her tea, Julie was impressed once again by her tranquillity. Every aspect of her demeanor testified to the sure-ness of her inner peace. She exchanged an eloquent glance with Julie over the rim of her cup before she replaced it in its saucer.

"From the smell of those pies," she declared as she pushed her chair away from the table, "I'd say they're about finished baking."