The Marriage Agreement. Christine Rimmer
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simply did not want to hear it. “I think you should rest now.”
“Rest. Hah. Fat lot of good rest’ll do me.”
Marsh turned for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To find a place to stay.”
“You can stay at the house.”
An image of the dreary shack hidden among the oaks and hickories down a dirt road out east of town flashed through Marsh’s mind. “No, thanks.”
“No great love for the old homestead, huh?”
“I’ll see you later, Dad.”
“Wait.”
Marsh shouldn’t have, but he paused, his hand poised on the doorknob.
“You’ll need my keys. Even having a heart attack, I had the sense to lock up what was mine.” The whispery voice had pride in it now. “I called the ambulance and locked up and went out to wait on the front step. By the time they got there, I was curled up on the ground. But I locked up what was mine, you can count on that.” He tipped his head in the direction of a tall cabinet near the door to the bathroom. “Keys’re in my pants. In there—and you remember the rules. I know you do. You won’t go nosin’ around in my things till I’m gone for good, will you?”
“I said I’m not staying at the house.”
“Take the damn keys, anyway. I’m never going to be using them again.”
Marsh turned the steel doorknob.
“I’m not finished,” his father said.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me later.”
His father went on as if Marsh hadn’t spoken. “That girl,” he whispered. “That pretty redhead. The doctor’s daughter…”
Marsh stood absolutely still, his face a mask. Whatever the mention of Tory did to him, he wouldn’t give Blake Bravo the satisfaction of seeing it.
Blake was grinning again. “You call her. You remember the number, don’t you? It hasn’t changed.”
Marsh pulled open the door. “I’ll be back to check on you. Tonight, probably.”
“Call her,” his father commanded again. “You’ll see. You’re going to love it, the redhead’s surprise.”
Marsh gave his father no chance to say more. He stepped out into the hall, drawing the door shut in his wake.
Five minutes later, he was behind the wheel of his rental car. He left the hospital parking lot and drove south until he came to Gray. Then he turned west. Without even having to think about it, he worked his way over to Main at the point where Main became a two-way street.
Norman, Oklahoma. His hometown. It all looked…bigger. More prosperous. The streets were more crowded than he remembered. But in a basic sense, it was the same. He still recalled which way to turn to get where he wanted to go—which was toward the interstate, where he knew he’d find a large hotel.
He passed the high school, noted that they were putting a new front on it. The wooden statue still stood at Main and Wylie. Somebody’s ancestor, a Union soldier in the War Between the States, carved from a tree trunk by a chainsaw artist, if Marsh remembered right.
A couple of blocks past the statue was the first street he might have turned on, if…
Marsh did not turn onto that street. Nor did he turn at the one after it, or the one after that, though any one of those three would have taken him quickly to the handsome brick house where his high school sweetheart—the girl he’d sworn to love forever, the girl who’d sworn the same to him—had lived.
His father’s raspy whisper echoed in his brain.
Call her. You’ll see. You’re going to love it, the redhead’s surprise….
Marsh told himself he was ignoring that whisper. There was no surprise. His father was just doing what his father always did: trying to stir up trouble wherever he sensed an opportunity.
Marsh told himself a few other things: that he would not call her. That he had set her free of him years ago, that she probably would only slam the door in his face if he showed up out of nowhere right now. That he’d come back to his hometown because his father was dying and for no other reason.
That bygones needed to remain bygones.
Sleeping dogs should be left to lie.
Water under the bridge must just keep flowing on its way.
That she was probably married with children by now. Married, a mother—and happy. With a good life that didn’t include the bad boy she’d loved in her foolish youth. That she deserved the best and he sincerely hoped she had found it.
Still…
He had loved her with his whole heart and soul—desperately. Completely. There had been no one else in the past ten years who even came close to taking her place.
Marsh blinked.
Damn. He’d already crossed the interstate and driven right past Sooner Mall. He was well beyond the area where he could look for a place to stay. Swearing under his breath, he swung into the left lane, executed a U-turn and told himself to pay attention to the task at hand.
He found a hotel a few minutes later. It wasn’t until after he’d checked in and called his office in Chicago to see how things were going there that thoughts of Tory crept into his mind again.
He ordered those thoughts away. The hotel had a small gym. He went down there and worked out for an hour. Then he spent some time sweating in the sauna. And after that, he cleaned up.
By then it was a little after six. And he was thinking of Tory again. What, he wondered, was her life like now?
Had the old man been telling the truth? Did she still live in that big brick house on that wide tree-lined street in Westwood Estates, with her parents?
Bygones and sleeping dogs, he thought.
Let her alone. She would not want to see you….
Still, he got the phone book out of his sitting-room desk drawer and turned to physicians in the yellow pages. He found no listing for a Dr. Seth Winningham. He flipped to the white pages. No Seth or Audra Winningham there, either. It could have been, of course, that they had merely decided to go unlisted.
But then he saw it: V. J. Winningham. V for Victoria. J for Justine. Same address, same phone number. Just as the old man had said. The doctor and his wife had probably retired, moved down to Florida or out to Arizona and left the house to their only child.
And her last name was still Winningham. She hadn’t married—or at least, it appeared that way. But then, you could never tell for certain by a name. Some women kept their maiden names even after they’d said, “I do.”
Marsh sat for a long time with the open phone book in his lap, staring at the number he remembered so well and coming to grips with the inevitable.
He wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from giving that number a try.
Chapter Two
“Tory?”
That was all the voice on the other end of the line said. Just her name. Cautiously. On a rising inflection.
Just her name.
And the sound sent Tory Winningham’s world spinning into chaos.
She would know that voice anywhere. Even after ten years.
Her stomach churning, she cast a frantic glance at the table a foot away.
“Tory?” His voice in her ear again, more insistent now. “Hello? Tory?”
Kim