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“Nothing.” Kelsey tried to grab it, but Marta was too quick for her. With a deft move likely learned from a hockey son, she ducked and spun on worn Nike running shoes. Caught on spike-heeled pumps, Kelsey was no match.
“Reunion,” Marta said, skimming the sheet with interest. “Class of ninety-seven. This is about your tenth high-school reunion in Maple Junction!”
“Yes, but—”
“Empty months ahead and you never said a word about this opportunity.”
Kelsey flapped her hands. “Stop! I’m not interested.”
Marta ignored her. “Two weeks away. You’ve got plenty of time to get some new outfits, a haircut.”
“Dammit, Marta, I am not going,” Kelsey insisted. “I’ve closed the door on that part of my life.”
“But you’ve got some nice childhood memories.”
She folded her arms defensively. “I know.”
“It’ll be a good change for you, especially after dumping Tanner.”
“I have my summer all mapped out,” Kelsey protested. “Days of reading books on the beach, jogging, whacking golf balls at the driving range. Nights downtown seeing plays, eating formal dinners served by polite waiters and drinking cocktails mixed by cocky bartenders.”
“By yourself!”
“Probably. Mostly. I’m fine with it, so let’s drop the whole issue.”
“Whatever.” Marta went over to retrieve her ladder, tipping it against the strip of cork over the blackboard where the paper train was.
“I can climb that thing,” Kelsey said.
“Not in those heels, you can’t. It would be as dangerous as putting pins in your mouth.” Taking the rungs with ease, Marta looked down on her distracted friend, now engrossed in the flyer. “Opportunity is knockin’…”
“Marta, please!”
“Just seems high time to take another look at that hometown situation.”
“Three of my good friends died, along with all their big dreams for the future. That’s more than a situation, it’s nothing short of a tragedy.”
“It’s more of a tragedy if your dreams died, too.”
Kelsey hung her head. “Well, maybe I deserve it.”
“You’ve been punishing yourself for ten years,” Marta said gently. “That seems a stiff penalty for an unintentional spinout on a dark rainy road. Besides, you aren’t absolutely sure you were even driving.”
The awful accident had indeed resulted in a head injury that robbed Kelsey of any memory of that night’s prom festivities, including details of the crash itself. However, since she was found near the driver’s door of the Jetta, and had later admitted her inexperience in handling a stick shift, the police had deduced that she’d likely been the fumbler behind the wheel.
Kelsey had been far too spunky back then to accept full responsibility for an event she couldn’t even remember, especially as it could have resulted in a manslaughter charge. Just the same, her heart remained broken, regret and remorse gnawing at the wound.
In a way, she understood the public’s initial mistrustful outcry. She had had a reputation for daring deeds—daring for Maple Junction anyway—like scaling high fences, skiing down perilous roads closed during the winter’s iciest weeks, somersaulting off the high board at the community swimming pool. And there was never any question that she would top Whittier High’s cheerleader pyramid during any given routine.
While scarcely a pattern of seriously reckless behavior, it hadn’t helped her case. For most people, it proved to be a small leap in judgment to assume she had climbed behind the wheel of her boyfriend Brad’s car and driven under those dangerous conditions.
The controversy remained unresolved to this day. Without solid proof of her guilt, the cops were stalled and she in turn could raise no tangible defense.
“If you’d seemed content here all these years, I wouldn’t be pressing the issue,” Marta broke in gently. “But it’s plain to see you’ve been settling for a fairly narrow life with just a handful of relationships. Forgive me if I’m being too pushy, but for the first time since we’ve met, you seem primed to move forward. You dumped the Boy Wonder and hung on to that flyer for a reason! Maybe you want to go home more than you realize.”
“People wanted me gone quite badly back then. In fact they shunned me. I wouldn’t know where to begin with them.”
“Simply be yourself, who’s a wonderful person, I might add. You’re as sorry as anybody about what happened,” Marta speculated. “That should count for something.”
“Brad’s folks, Lewis and Bailey Cutler, are bound to be sorrier for a start. Their life revolved around their only son.”
“They are likely still feeling the pain more than most, but I’m confident you can win them over. You did the first time around.”
An image of Brad popped into her head. His striking white-blond hair, clear blue eyes, well-proportioned features and the brilliant smile that had made him all the more handsome. He’d been smiling big the day he’d first taken Kelsey home to the Cutler estate to meet his parents. The son of the richest, most powerful man in town, determined to date the middle-class café owner’s daughter. She smiled faintly. They’d taken the trouble to get to know her because they’d respected Brad’s opinion and he’d so badly wanted them to approve of her.
“It all fell into place like a dream,” she admitted. “We got on great and they began to look forward to me being part of the family one day. It was going to be fantastic, Marta.” Her smile faded. “But it’s all gone. The magic died with Brad.”
“That old magic, yes. But the world hums with a new magic each and every day, even back in Maple Junction. It’s high time you checked it out and decided once and for all where you belong.”
“What if going back makes me feel even worse?”
“At least you’ll know you tried. In any case, it’s bound to help you move on.” Marta descended the ladder to stand at her elbow, her excitement growing. “So have you bounced the idea off your mother yet?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, you should. She for one will be thrilled to see you.”
This wasn’t necessarily true. Marta had met Clare Graham several times when she’d visited Philadelphia. But Marta didn’t understand that the cordial vacationer was vastly different from the sober café owner. Like Kelsey, Clare was burdened with a heavy guilt over the car crash. No wonder, as folks simmering with grief and rage had suddenly branded her a bad parent for raising such a reckless daughter, and initially had punished her by avoiding the café. Clare had long insisted business was fine again, and Kelsey had taken her at her word.
Just the same, Clare had never once coaxed her to come back and had never offered a mother’s absolution for what had happened. This hurt Kelsey but she struggled to be realistic. How could she expect her mother to be stronger than herself? Kelsey never broached the idea of returning either. And when they did on rare occasions speak of the accident, they still fed off each other’s guilt. Having lost Kelsey’s father, Paul, to a brain aneurism when Kelsey was nearly ten, they both fully understood the gaping hole that death left in a family.
On the other hand, they’d always been a team because of his death, keeping the café up and running together. Kelsey missed the close bond they’d once shared and wanted it back.
Later that evening, back at her dinky downtown condo on Monroe Avenue, Kelsey sat at the table in her nook with her new set of colored pens and an assortment of stationery. Also in front of her was the acceptance form from the reunion flyer, filled out and clipped along the dotted line.
With a flourish she stuffed the form, a cheery note and a check for the fifty-dollar fee into an envelope addressed to the reunion coordinator, her closest childhood friend, Sarah Yates. Done! No turning back now. She was homeward bound.
Marta’s efforts had given her the final nudge she’d needed. The past decade in Philadelphia had indeed been a disappointment, nothing like her original dreams of teaching alongside Sarah at the local elementary school, then marriage and kids. Her inability to rise above those old hometown hurts had kept her emotionally frozen.
Perhaps the only way to move forward was to first take the trip back.
On many levels the very idea was scary, preposterous. Would anyone welcome her? To make this work, she had to believe they would. That even if they couldn’t forget what had happened, they’d be willing to forgive.
Then with any luck, maybe she could finally forgive herself.
She needed to let her mother know. Although it seemed most reasonable just to call, Kelsey knew that if she detected the tiniest bit of hesitation in Clare’s tone, she’d chicken out.
Picking up a pen with cheery orange ink, she held it over some bright floral-bordered paper, rehearsing aloud what she’d write.
“Dear Mom. It’s been awhile since you’ve visited Pennsylvania. Too long, really. Seems about time I came back to Wisconsin.
“Dear Mom, Guess what? Wonderful news. I’m coming home.”
With a sigh, she set pen to paper. “Dear Mom, Just want to prepare you. I’m returning home for the reunion….”
Chapter Two
Sheriff Ethan Taggert was still at the station when the emergency call came in from the Cutler mansion, so he responded in the squad car. With siren blaring and roof bar lights flashing, he tore down Cutler Trail doing close to eighty.
The trail had been named 150 years ago, when Thomas Cutler had bought a thousand acres along what had amounted to a bumpy narrow ditch. He’d built a house, made the ditch a road and started up a newspaper. The newspaper was the start of an empire that had soon grown to include several local businesses, including the bank, and had made the family a fortune.
Thomas Cutler had wasted no time advertising far and wide that Maple Junction, Wisconsin, was a quaint dairy town worth visiting by horseless carriage. There was toboggan racing in the winter, maple-syrup tapping in the spring, strawberry picking in the summer, and the corn harvest in the autumn, and each had spawned its own festival, not to mention a county fair and several horse shows.
And all were reported in the daily paper, the Cutler Express.
All looked quiet as Ethan wheeled through the estate’s huge steel gates and up the sweeping paved drive. The windows of the sprawling stone mansion were alight, glowing on all three levels.
He desperately hoped Lewis hadn’t had another heart attack….
Lewis had become a second father to Ethan ever since, as four-year-olds, he and Lewis’s son Bradley had enjoyed a weekly wrestle under the willow trees outside church each Sunday. With parents too busy with chores and errands, young kids in the small rural community didn’t get to play together too often, so he’d started to really look forward to Sundays.
In due time, after Ethan had mastered tying his own shoes, his mother had started to drop him off at the mansion for play dates. The boys had spent their time kicking a soccer ball, digging holes in search of treasure and wading through swampland to catch toads, all fuelled by piles of sandwiches.
Ethan’s bond with the Cutlers had only strengthened with time. Ethan’s dad traveled selling insurance, so it was Lewis who’d supported the boys at school, taken them to professional sporting events and had been on hand for nearly every milestone in their lives. Lewis had loved to push envelopes and pull strings for them. Some of that push-pull still went on. While Ethan was more than confident in his role as sheriff, it was Lewis who’d helped swing his election last year.
A uniformed maid pulled open the heavy front door before Ethan could get his hand around the brass handle. It was the eldest Parker daughter, Carol, who’d dropped out of UW–Madison in midterm to rethink her future. Ethan had dated her on occasion and had found her a bit boring. Just the same, he hoped they would always be friends. She was just the friend he needed tonight. Carol had been working for the Cutlers for four months and knew enough about household politics to clue him in.
“Faster than a speeding bullet tonight, aren’t ya?” she greeted coyly.
Brushing by her, Ethan hurried into the dim cavernous foyer, glancing up the wide staircase. “Where is he, Carol? Up with the doc?”
“Nope. Right in there.” She calmly tipped her curly orange head left, toward the study.
“Did he collapse? What happened?”
Carol reached to stroke some short brown strands of hair from his forehead in a gesture he thought far too intimate. “I’m not sure.”
He gave her shoulders a mild shake, hoping to rattle her composure. “Did anybody call an ambulance?”
Slowly and with a mysterious smile that seemed to suggest she was enjoying his touch, she replied, “Nobody else was called. You’re all he wants.”
Confused, Ethan strode off through the walnut door into the spacious den he knew was Lewis Cutler’s comfort room. It was where he came to plot, relax, dream. And brood. Ethan suspected the latter was true tonight as he found Lewis seated in his favorite leather recliner, accepting a snifter of brandy from his wife, Bailey. Judging by the filmy glass and Cutler’s equally filmy eyes, it was likely a refill.
“Finally, Ethan!”
Ethan was a bit startled to discover a fully functioning Lewis. Carol’s lack of urgency was suddenly more understandable.
“What exactly is the matter here, Lew?”
Lewis leaned forward in his chair. “Have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“The news. The horrible news.”
Ethan appealed to Bailey. In her blue satin lounging pajamas, a paperback and eyeglasses clutched in one hand, she appeared to have been abruptly summoned, too. Now, unseen by Lewis, whose blood pressure could stand nothing but her utter faith and devotion, she stared off into space with strained patience.
“Leave us, Bailey,” Lewis directed, a bit more gently. “You needn’t be concerned with this.”
Bailey hated the dismissal. She frowned and opened her mouth, but then as was expected, closed it again. Holding herself like a model, she exited obediently and Ethan was struck, not for the first time, how beautiful the fiftyish platinum blonde was. Their son Brad had favored her and had been truly grateful for it.
“So what is this news, Lew?” Ethan demanded.
Lewis wheezed—courtesy of his cigar smoking—then swigged down another slug of brandy. “Kelsey Graham. Returning for your class reunion.”
“Really.” Ethan’s heart jumped wildly in his chest. He worked to keep his voice even. “Still, might be just a rumor.”
“I made a few calls. Trust me, it’s true.”
Ethan didn’t think to doubt the sharp newspaper mogul’s sources.
Lewis glared into the flames flickering in the old marble fireplace. It wasn’t a particularly cold June evening, but there was a slight chill in the air since a thundershower that afternoon. Lewis felt the cold more easily these days, deep in his bones where brandy couldn’t seep. He was a baker’s dozen years older than his wife and the gap seemed more pronounced than ever. Ethan knew Lewis regretted not diving into marriage sooner, like he had everything else, and having a bundle of kids. His late start had produced only one son. And Brad’s life had been so tragically short.
“How dare she come back?” Lewis thundered. “The girl who killed our Brad.” He rested drunken eyes on Ethan, eyes which looked moist.
Raw emotion swelled inside Ethan threatening to leave him splintered and miserable. He tamped it down with remarkable control. “Whatever happened out there on Route 6 that night, Lew—” he struggled for his voice “—was an accident.”
“She killed my precious boy.” Big tears of despair began to spill.
Ethan had the sudden urge to bolt, to escape a replay of the decade-old mess. But he was dealt in permanently at the Cutler’s table, as intimately as he had been back in his frog-catching days. With his own parents relocated to Arizona, Ethan most often turned to Lewis for financial advice, fishing company, or just to rehash a ball game.
Staying numb was his only chance. He abruptly strode across to the room’s wet bar and poured himself a short whiskey. The brandy Lewis was guzzling cost three hundred bucks a bottle and, in Ethan’s opinion, was stuff to be saved strictly for the good times.
Ethan wandered round the big room sipping his drink, taking in the sameness, the security he’d always felt here. A stuffed moose head, trophies for shooting, a mantel full of photos of Ethan and Brad growing up. Lewis loved showing off his wide range of skills, as hunter, mogul and mentor. When the boys were in high school, the room had featured pictures of Kelsey as well. For two and a half years she’d been a valued part of this family, just like Ethan.
Kelsey Graham, the love of Bradley Cutler’s young life. Who’d apparently smashed up his sporty black VW Jetta on prom night, killing not only Brad, but friends Todd Marshall and Lissa Hanson.
“I had an agreement with the mother,” Lewis muttered. “Ship Kelsey off to Bryn Mawr and I would put a stop to any town boycott of her café.”
Ethan arched a brow. “Was there a boycott in the works?”
“The way everyone loved those three dead kids? Who’d support a restaurant harboring her?”
“But sending her to Philadelphia seemed so extreme, when she was already enrolled at the University of Wisconsin like the rest of us.”
“Had she gone to school in Madison with you, she could’ve commuted back here on weekends. Like nothing ever happened. Intolerable.”
This was the first Ethan had heard of any embargo on the café. But the town had been hysterical back then. The only thing folks seemed to agree on was the basic account of the accident: Kelsey had lost control on a dark slick curve out in the countryside and had hit a tree, ejecting all four kids on impact. Brad and Lissa had died at the scene. Kelsey and Todd had been raced to Maple County Hospital for treatment, where Todd had died without regaining consciousness.
