Wedding at Wildwood (13 page)

Dillon turned to her then, his eyes centering on her face, his expression softening with a tenderness that took her by surprise. “Stay here, Issy,” he said, his voice low and vulnerable. “I’m not good at asking for help, but I could use yours right now.”

Isabel shut her eyes, then sent up a quick prayer. He wouldn’t want her help anymore if he knew the truth. But she could at least tell him that she’d never intended on leaving in the first place. “I am staying, Dillon,” she said, her hand on his arm. “I turned down the assignment in Atlanta.”

Dillon covered her hand with his own, then pressed it against his face, closing his eyes in apparent relief. “I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” she whispered, tears pricking her eyes. “I told you I’d stay and I intend to do just that. Besides, I can’t leave my grandmother now, can I?”

“No.” He wrapped his other arm around her neck. “I shouldn’t ask this of you, I know that. I should send you packing, get you away from this mess. But I’m being selfish—I don’t want you to go.”

Trying to be rational in spite of his lips grazing the palm of her hand, she said, “I’ll probably just make things worse. I’m so angry right now, it’s hard not to lash out at Eli.”

“You let me take care of Eli,” Dillon stated, the tenderness in his words and his gentle actions melting her fear and guilt. But she also sensed something else there. A warning?

Lifting her hand away, Isabel stared him down. “Just exactly how do you plan on doing that?”

He shrugged. “I’m learning patience, and I’m trying hard to forgive him. But…this isn’t going to be easy.”

Isabel sighed and hugged him close. “No, it’s not. And I guess I need to get back inside and help Grammy decide what her options are. There aren’t that many available houses around here, and she’s on a fixed income. And I doubt she’d be willing to move to my cramped apartment in Savannah.”

“She’s lucky to have you for a granddaughter,” he told her, pride shining in his eyes.

“And what about you, Dillon?” If he wouldn’t say it, she’d say it for him. “You say you could use my help, but do you need me here?”

Dillon sank back against the soft perfume of a thousand flowers, his heart thumping quicker than the spindly green grasshopper escaping across the denim covering his leg. What was he doing? And who was he trying to kid? If he wanted her to stay, if he wanted her to know him, truly know him, and to understand him, then he’d better start relying on trust and faith. As he looked up at her hopeful, beautiful face, and saw the awe and pain in her searching eyes, he acknowledged that he’d also have to rely on his own heart’s yearnings, and The Good Lord’s promise of hope and redemption.

“I think you know the answer to that question,” he told her. “Earlier, when I thought you might be going—I’ve never felt such panic.”

Reaching up to her, he sat up and took her back in his arms. “You know, last night I found my father’s Bible in Eli’s office.” He took a breath, then told her what was in his heart. “I read some of the passages someone had marked—my mother probably, maybe even Eli, and…it helped me, Issy.” He tightened his arms around her, urging her head to rest against the crook of his arm. “There was this one passage about the value of friends. It said, ‘Two are better than one.’ It said that when one falls alone, he doesn’t have anyone to lift him up.”

Isabel shifted in his arms, and he wondered if she felt the urgency of his grip, the beating of his heart like a trapped bird trying to escape its cage.

“Tell me, Dillon.”

Dillon swallowed, touched his lips to her hair, then continued. “I was so alone after I left Wildwood. So alone. And when I fell, I fell hard and fast. I…I didn’t have anyone there to lift me up.”

Isabel remained still, but he could see the tears glistening in her eyes when she looked up at him. “Dillon,” she said, his name muffled as he held her close. “Dillon—”

His sigh was filled with a deep trembling. “I
do
need you, Issy. I need you to be here in case I fall again. You always were the best friend I ever had, and that verse from Ecclesiastes is very true. Two are better than one.”

Isabel lifted her face then, the tears glistening and wet on her cheeks. He’d just told her he needed her, as a friend if nothing else. And oh, how he’d struggled with the telling. She could see it in his face, the pain, the pride, the weariness of someone who’d traveled a long road to find his way home again. And she also saw the longing to be held, just held, unconditionally. How many times had she felt that same longing in her own heart?

“I’ll stay, Dillon,” she said, tears making her words shaky and broken. “I offered you my help once, remember? And I meant that with all my heart. We’ll fight this, together.”

He closed his eyes, then lifted his head up to the sun. “And will you be there when I fall?”

“You won’t fall,” she whispered. “But I promise, I’ll be there, good or bad, to lift you up. You won’t have to go through this alone.”

Then she pulled his head back down to hers and sealed the deal with a kiss. For these few precious minutes, at least, Dillon could forget all about Eli and his problems. For now, just being here amid the wildflowers with Isabel in his arms was enough. And all the more proof for him to believe God had sent him home for a reason.

Tomorrow, they’d find a way to save the very land that had abided and held them together like a threefold cord all these years.

Gaining strength from Isabel’s trust and willingness to help him, Dillon remembered another verse from Ecclesiastes. “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

I
sabel snapped another picture of the figure sitting on the floor in the middle of the empty room. With the early morning light pouring in from a nearby window, Dillon looked as natural and content as a man could look surrounded by open textbooks and crumpled farm manuals. Except when the camera caught his gaze. The turmoil and determination raging against each other in the depths of his eyes told the tale of the past few days. This was no common man; he wouldn’t quit until he had this all sorted out and found a way to help his brother and save this land.

Watching him, Isabel knew she’d made the right decision by staying here with him. When Dillon looked up from studying the latest crop report, his eyes held hers in such an intimate gaze, she couldn’t deny that she was glad for any excuse to be with him.

“You’re frowning,” he remarked as he dropped the folder and leaned back against the wall. “I thought that was my job.”

“Just thinking,” she told him. Placing her camera on the planked floor, she strolled across the empty parlor, enjoying the morning breeze that teased at the thrown-open floor-to-ceiling windows. Tugging at her haphazard ponytail, she focused on a peeling spot of rose-patterned wallpaper. “What else can I do to help?”

Dillon stretched his legs out, then crossed his booted feet at the ankles, his deceptively lazy gaze moving over her face. “You’ve already done more than enough. You didn’t desert me.” Then he asked, “How are things on your end?”

Memories of his words to her just yesterday washed over Isabel, making her flush with joy and hope. Attempting to waylay her optimistic feelings, she slid her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and said, “Well, I have to find out about possible places for my grandmother to move. So far, those places have been slim to none, unless we consider putting her into a nursing home in Valdosta or Albany.”

“Not an option,” Dillon said as he reached out a hand to her. “Martha is not nursing home material. Do you know your grandmother gets up at dawn every day to take a long walk?”

“She is pretty amazing.” Laughing to hide her own fears, Isabel lifted a hand to accept the one he offered her, then settled down on the hardwood floor next to Dillon. Scanning the array of research books and disorganized files, she said, “I think you’ve checked out every book in the Wildwood library.”

“Trying to get a handle on land management and cotton farming, sugar.”

Isabel knew he already had a handle on the situation. He’d stayed up most of last night, going back over the records, calling bankers in the middle of the wee hours, talking with the family lawyer. Then, early this morning, he’d organized the workers, giving them irrigation, pesticide, and herbicide schedules to try to salvage the cotton crop. But basically, he was spinning his wheels. Short of a windfall, part of his heritage would still be going up on the auction block come Saturday.

“Do you think you can save this place?” she asked, her fingers still laced with his.

Dillon lifted his head, his gaze roaming around the big, empty room. In typical Dillon style, he ignored her question, choosing instead to admire his surroundings. “Look at these ceilings, will you? So grand and lofty. That ceiling medallion around the chandelier was hand-carved.”

Isabel tilted her head to study the yellowed, rose-etched wooden pattern that formed a beautiful, ornate raised circle in the center of the ceiling. “How could Eli let something like this happen?” she wondered out loud.

Dillon dropped her hand then. Jabbing a fist against one of the crop manuals, he said, “I’ll tell you how. It’s like you said—greed and mismanagement. He overextended himself before he got a good handle on growing cotton. It’s like he got the cart before the horse. He went out and bought all the right equipment, hired the best workers, built himself a fancy new house and a nice storage barn, then threw a few thousand cotton seeds in the ground and waited for them to bring him a profit.”

“Will they?” she asked, her gaze drifting to the budding cotton bolls out in the distant fields. In spite of the heat outside, the sight looked like snowflakes against a blanket of green.

Dillon let out a huff of a breath. “It would be something. From everything I’ve found out from talking to the few remaining workers and studying his crop reports, he’s done it all wrong. He’s overfertilized, thinking to cause a growing spurt, he’s overwatered way too early, which could bring on a fungus and possible boll rot, and in spite of the boll weevil eradication program, he’s got some pest problems because he can’t keep track of his herbicide schedule. It’s all been hit-and-miss at best.”

“And I always thought Eli was the farmer in the family,” Isabel said, surprised.

Dillon looked away, as if he didn’t want to continue this conversation. “He always tried to be. He wanted to be the best in order to please our father.”

“But?”

He shook his head. “Don’t make me talk about this, Isabel.”

“I stayed to help you, remember?” She nudged at his muscular forearm. “Tell me, Dillon.”

He sighed, then plunged ahead. “Most people around here don’t realize this, but Eli never was very smart in school.”

“Really?
I
certainly never knew that.”

“Another Murdock secret. He always had trouble figuring things through. You know he waited a few years before he went to college, then when he was in college and I was in my first year of high school, I used to help him with his homework.”

Amazed, Isabel shook her head. “I would have thought it was the other way around.”

“Most people did. I mean, I was the wild child while he walked the straight and narrow. But he struggled all through school, only my mother’s support and her hardheaded bullying of his teachers saved him. When I was old enough to understand, I helped him and covered for him. He got into college strictly on our father’s name, and he came home on weekends so we could have study sessions together, but then after I left town…well, he never finished. He really wanted a degree in agriculture, to validate his dedication to being a farmer.”

“I always wondered why he dropped out,” Isabel said, remembering all the rumors she’d heard about Eli wanting to quit college to help his father run the plantation, the way he’d done right out of high school. “Everyone thought he was being noble—you know, taking some of the load off your father.”

Dillon picked up a piece of paper he’d scribbled some notes on, then crushed it in his hands. Throwing the discarded wad across the room, he said, “Yeah, he was being noble all right, while I was out gallivanting and sowing my wild oats.”

Noting the bitterness of his admission, Isabel touched a hand to his arm. “You still blame yourself for this, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer right away, but the guilty look he shot her told her she’d hit right on the mark. “If I’d stayed here to help him out, if I’d come home after our father died, things might be different now.”

“You don’t know that, Dillon.”

“I abandoned him, Isabel. No wonder this place is in such an uproar.”

“And look how he’s always treated you,” she reminded him. “He used to bully you and tell you you were worthless, or have you forgotten that?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Dillon retorted hotly. “But he did always manage to bail me out of the tough spots, too. Can’t you see, Eli wanted to make me look small and unworthy because that’s the way our father made him feel all the time. And he came to my rescue just so he could rub my nose in it.”

“What do you mean?”

Pulling his knees up, Dillon propped his elbows on his denim-clad legs. “Our father would tease Eli about his bad grades. He’d call him stupid and tell him he’d never amount to anything.”

She shook her head. “I’m still amazed that this was happening and nobody knew. Your father always seemed so pleased with both of you. He’d brag and go on about his two handsome, smart sons, and now you’re saying it was all a sham.”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Dillon agreed. “But that was just part of the punishment, almost like a cruel reminder to us of what we really were. In private, things would always turn nasty. If he wasn’t badmouthing Eli, he’d turn to me and point out what a no-account I was. He told me over and over again how disappointed he was in me and that I’d better shape up, or he’d boot me out the door.” He let out an irritated sigh. “Then, of course, he’d find a shred of conscience and forgive me of my transgressions. So that became the pattern. He wasn’t so forgiving of Eli, which is why Eli tried so hard to win his favor. Because of that, Eli also grew to resent me.”

Stunned, Isabel shifted and crossed her long legs. “So Eli stopped defending you, and you turned against each other?”

Dillon glanced up then, the shame evident in his dark gaze. “Yeah, then it became sort of a game to see which one of us could win Daddy’s favor. Our father pitted us against one another. He’d get Eli going on my bad attributes, then step back to watch the fireworks. Sometimes, they’d gang up on me. Eli would have done anything to win my father’s approval.”

Horrified, Isabel said, “And your mother just turned a blind eye to all this?”

He looked out the window, as if remembering. “She’d be in the kitchen, humming, or out at some country club function. And even if she had wanted to say something, she didn’t dare try to defy my father. You have to remember, my mother comes from the old school that teaches women to stay in their place.”

Reaching out a hand, Isabel caught his hand in hers. “All those days we ran around this place together, and I never knew. You never once told me.”

Dillon looked up to the ceiling, then pulled his hand away. In one fluid movement, he was up and stalking across the aged floor. “This is why I don’t like to talk about my past. I can’t stand that pity I see in your eyes.”

Isabel hopped up to confront him. “Pity? Is that what you think, that I pity you?”

He whirled, his eyes a dark, raging storm. “Well, don’t you?”

Aggravated, Isabel tossed a hand in the air. “I guess I feel some pity, only because it sounds as if you went through a horrible time back then,” she admitted, “but mostly, I feel…I feel so proud of you, Dillon.”

Clearly confounded, he put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on the scuffed heels of his boots. “How can you be proud of me after what I just told you?”

She came to stand by him, then touched his arm. “Because if I remember correctly, you never once inflicted that same kind of torment and pain on your brother. Sure, you and Eli fought all the time, but that was mostly because you felt you had to defend yourself, and you defended me a lot, too, back then. Dillon, you kept Eli’s learning disability a secret, in spite of everything. All this time, you’ve protected your brother. Why would you do that, after what he put you through?”

Dillon looked down at her then, his eyes a misty pool of longing and tenderness. “That’s simple, Issy. I love him.”

Several hours later, Isabel strolled back up the wildflower path. She’d spent the entire day helping Dillon go over the records. Together, they’d managed to get them in some semblance of order, for the bankers and lawyers, if for nothing else. Behind her, the sun was hovering over the trees, its vanishing rays giving the entire sky a bluish pink shimmering cast. The weatherman was predicting rain over the next few days, but Isabel couldn’t tell it from the brilliance of this sunset.

As she reached the small backyard, she heard someone humming a sweet tune, then recognized it as one of her favorite hymns—“Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” Her grandmother, obviously. Walking around the house, Isabel spotted Martha sitting on a gardening stool in the middle of her prize tomatoes, cucumbers, and purple-hull peas.

Isabel’s heart filled with an abundant love as she stood by the back steps, watching her grandmother lovingly tend to her small garden. Martha wore an old, men’s work shirt and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. She seemed perfectly content, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Swallowing heavily, Isabel once again wondered how Eli Murdock could have let this happen. True, they’d never owned this land or this house but it was home. Well, this old rickety house might not belong to her, Isabel thought, but suddenly it seemed very precious to her, and worth any fight. And it had taken her too long to see that she’d had a good, stable home here, with loving parents who only wanted the best for her. Dillon had been right. Compared to his dysfunctional family, Isabel had had the things that really mattered, but had wished for all the things that really didn’t count for much now.

Placing her camera equipment on the steps, she hurried over to her grandmother. “How’s it going?”

Martha glanced up, squinting underneath the blue of her hat. “Hi, sweetie. Did you and Dillon get anything accomplished today?”

Falling down on her knees in the soft carpet of loam, Isabel automatically started pulling random weeds away from the tender tomato stalks. “Not much, I’m afraid. But he assures me he’s got a Plan B in the back of his mind. By the way, thanks for bringing over those sandwiches.”

Martha gave her a playful wink. “No problem. I walked over to see Cynthia and took her some apple cake. She’s in a bad way. She’s so distraught, she’s canceling all her commitments and she’s hardly answering the phone. This has completely thrown her out of kilter.”

“I can certainly understand that,” Isabel replied as she sat back to stare off in the distance. “How can
you
keep a smile on your face, Grammy? How can you sit here in your garden, humming a happy spiritual, when our whole world seems to be falling apart?”

Martha stopped her digging, then carefully put down her mud-caked spade. Turning to give her granddaughter a serene look, she said, “Why, Isabel Landry, how can
you
ask me such questions?”

Isabel saw that spark of indignation in her grandmother’s warm eyes. “Well, look around,” she said, swinging her arms wide. “We could lose all this. I’m worried sick, Grammy, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“So you think I should just give up and mope around, wringing my hands in helpless frustration?”