The Marriage Agreement

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“No. Still single.”

“Well. Ah. Have you stopped in to see Tory?” Something wasn’t right, something in Bob’s expression, in the hesitant, probing sound of his voice.

Marsh said in a flat tone, “I saw her briefly, last night.”

Bob’s rather small eyes got larger and his face got redder. “You did. Well. Great. That’s, uh, some little girl you got there.”

Marsh frowned. What was Bob getting at? Tory was far from little, and Marsh didn’t “have” her. Bob’s remark made no sense. “What was that?”

Bob gulped. Marsh watched his Adam’s apple bounce up and then slide down. He glanced at his watch. “Wow. Look at the time. Gotta go. It has been great seein’ you again. You take care of yourself, now.”

“Sure,” said Marsh, still wondering what the hell was going on. “You, too. My best to Steffie.”

Bob hurried back to his own table, but only paused there long enough to grab his check and announce, a little too loudly, that he had to get back to the office.

Marsh sank to his chair again. The waitress came by. He ordered and he ate. He was back at the hospital by a little after two, stopping in at the nurses’ desk to ask for a few referrals for home care. Then he went to his father’s room.

Blake started right in on him, razzing him about Tory, about the damn “surprise” she was supposedly keeping from him. And now, after the way Bob Avery had behaved, Marsh was beginning to wonder if there could be more to this thing about Tory than a mean old man’s crazy head games.

“You go on,” said Blake for about the fifteenth time that day. “Talk to her again. And this time don’t let her get away from you until she tells you the damn truth.”

About then, Marsh could easily have grabbed the old man around his scrawny throat and squeezed until the wolfish eyes popped right out of their sockets, until Blake gave in and blurted out the big secret, whatever the hell the big secret was.

But somehow he restrained himself. Mostly because he knew that strangling his father would get him nowhere. Blake would die with that ugly knowing grin on his wrinkled face.

Marsh said, “You know, Dad. You’re right. I’m going to see her. Now.”

“You be sure to tell her I said hi.”

He drove to her flower shop, figuring she’d have to be there at that time of day. It wasn’t difficult at all to find. He thought it looked charming, the windows sparkling clean, the displays attractive and eye-catching. He almost parked and went in.

But he didn’t. By then he’d had a little time to reconsider, time to think some more about the way she’d run out on him last night. After that, he doubted she’d be too thrilled to see him if he dared to drop in on her at her workplace.

Better to wait, now he thought about it. Wait until she closed the shop for the day. Call her at home, as he’d done last night.

How early could he call and reach her?

Well, how late did the shop stay open? He could see the hours printed on the door. But he couldn’t quite make them out from the street. And he didn’t dare get any closer. She might look out and see him.

Hell. This was ridiculous. He felt like a damn stalker—probably because he was behaving like one.

He drove on by the shop, turned left at the next intersection and then right on Main. Before long he was passing the statue of the Union soldier again. And this time, when he got to the street that would take him by Tory’s house, he swung the wheel to the right and turned into her neighborhood.

The streets near her house looked much the same as they had ten years ago: solid, comfortable homes, mostly of brick, lots of oaks and sweet gum trees and twisted evergreen yaupon hollies. Some of the mailboxes were out at the street, clematis vines thick with star-shaped purple flowers twining over them.

There were children, a number of them, strolling along on either side of the street, wearing backpacks and swinging lunch boxes, probably just getting out of the elementary school a few blocks away. They looked happy, those kids. Contented with the world and with their place in it. No doubt they had the kind of life he’d always envied when he was growing up. They were going home to the nice brick houses, where they’d do their homework, have their friends over, sit down to dinner at six—dinner cooked by a trim, pretty mom who smiled a lot and didn’t have to work her fingers to the bone just to make it from one day to the next.

He spotted it: Tory’s house. A block and a half ahead, on the corner, with that big sweep of lawn front and side. He used to cut that lawn, and the lawn of the house next door to it—Mrs. Pickett’s house—during those summers he worked for that gardening service. He’d cut a lot of lawns in this neighborhood, in those two summers, his sixteenth and seventeenth year.

He remembered he’d been running a lawnmower on Tory’s lawn the first time he ever laid eyes on her. She’d come out of the front door—fourteen, she must have been then, wearing shorts that showed off her pretty legs, that red hair pulled back with one of those scrunchy things. He’d almost run that mower right into the big oak in the corner of the lot.

That fall, he’d spotted her at school for the first time: a freshman. It had taken him until the following summer before he could drum up the nerve to ask her out.

Marsh drove very slowly—too slowly, probably. In this kind of neighborhood, where people kept their cars in their roomy garages and no one had the bad taste to hang out on the street, a lone man cruising a little too slowly could easily cause suspicion.

Again he felt slightly reprehensible, an intruder in the life of a woman he no longer really knew. Still, he didn’t speed up as he approached. He slowed even further, taking in all the details, noting small changes. Flowers grew close to the house now, instead of low juniper bushes in a bed of white river rock. And the big door with the beveled glass in the top of it, once white, had been painted a deep green.

A group of children—four girls dressed in jeans and bright-colored T-shirts—were passing Tory’s front walk just as Marsh turned her corner to drive by the front of the house. One of them, slim and dark-haired, wearing bright purple tennis shoes with thick white soles, waved at the others and started up the walk.

Marsh’s mouth went dry.

He slammed his foot on the brake, stopped the car, right there, in the middle of the street, not caring in the least that the other three girls had turned to stare at him. He had eyes only for the slim one in the purple tennis shoes—the one who strolled straight up the walk to the dark-green door and let herself inside.

Chapter Four

Don’t jump to conclusions, Marsh warned himself as he focused his eyes on the street ahead of him again and took his foot off the brake. All you saw was a dark-haired girl going into Tory’s house.

A dark-haired girl who looked about nine or ten, damn it. Just the age the kid would be now if…

Gripping the steering wheel in a stranglehold, Marsh reached the end of Tory’s street. He turned left, left again and left once more, circling her block, remembering his father’s taunts, Tory’s strange behavior last night, the frantic look in her eyes, the way she had practically run from his room.

And that remark of Bob Avery’s—That’s some little girl you got there—after which good old Bob suddenly couldn’t backpedal out of that restaurant patio fast enough.

Marsh discovered that he understood how Tory must have felt last night. Right now he was pretty sure he felt the same way. Slightly sick, his stomach in knots. And he realized he didn’t give a damn if some nosy busybody called the Norman police on him. He pulled over to the curb, parallel with Tory’s side fence and stopped the car.

Was it possible?

Could Tory have had his baby?

Could he have had a daughter for—what—a little over nine years now, and not had a clue?

Dense as a post, the old man had called him today—the old man who had apparently known where to find Marsh for some time now, yet had never come after him, had never tried to exact the necessary revenge for the way his only son had finally dared to turn on him.

Or so Marsh had thought.

But what better revenge could there be than to deny a man knowledge of his own child?

He thought of those letters.

Those letters he’d sent back to Tory unopened.

Was that what he missed by not reading them: the news that he was going to be a father?

The knot in his gut yanked tighter. God. Tory. It must have been tough for her. At least at first. No wonder she couldn’t forgive him for leaving her.

But then again, it had been years. And aside from those letters, it seemed pretty obvious she hadn’t knocked herself out trying to find him. After the first couple of years, after he’d started to build his business, to get some sense of himself as the man he meant to become, he’d stopped hiding from the chance that the old man would find him. He’d lived his life in the open. And from that time on, she just might have managed to track him down—if she’d wanted to.

Anger. He felt it rising, felt it pounding in each beat of his heart. She could have found him. If she’d wanted to find him.

He muttered a curse—and told himself to relax. To take it easy. Not to overreact. He had been the one who called it off.

And until he confronted Tory and got the truth from her, he still couldn’t be sure that the dark-haired child was his. She might be a neighbor’s girl, or the daughter of a friend. She could even be Tory’s, by some other guy….

No.

He couldn’t believe that. She would have had to hook up with that guy too soon after Marsh had left town. She wouldn’t have done that. She had loved him too much….

Marsh shook his head.

She had loved him too much.

Was that simple truth—or male ego talking?

Damn hard to say.

So just cool it, he told himself. Chill. Settle down.

But there was no damn way he would leave this nice, well-to-do neighborhood now. No way he was waiting until later to call.

He started the car again, nosed away from the curb and turned left at the corner. He parked right in front of the house. Then he got out of the car and strode up that sloping front walk.

Tory stood at the closed door to the hall bathroom. “Kimmy?”

“Please. I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Well, speed it up. We have to get back to the shop. I told Lisa I would only be gone half an hour, tops.” Lisa was one of Tory’s two clerk/floral designers.

“Mama. Can I please have a little privacy?”

“Get a move on.”

“I’m trying.”

Right then the doorbell rang.

Kim yelled, “If that’s Alicia, tell her—”

“Just finish your business, young lady—and don’t forget to wash your hands.” Tory headed for the front door to the sound of the toilet flushing behind her.

She came around the corner to the entryway—and saw Marsh’s face through the glass in the top of her front door.

Oh, God.