Married By High Noon

“We’ll swing you up into the tree,” Gabe said. “Then you can look in all the birds’ nests and see if they have any eggs. Robins lay bright blue eggs. Have you ever seen a robin’s egg?”

“No,” Danny said as he looked over his shoulder to assure himself Dana was still there.

“Have you ever climbed a tree?” Gabe asked.

“People not climb tree,” Danny announced. “Monkey climb tree.”

“Little boys climb trees, too,” Gabe said. “I’ve got a perfect tree at my house for climbing. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to get up in it.”

“Way high?” Danny asked.

“Way high,” Gabe replied.

That bribe melted Danny’s resistance. She guessed that was part of what Mattie meant when she said a little boy had to have a man in the house. Dana wasn’t ready to admit a woman couldn’t do at least as well as a man, but it was clear men had an unfair advantage in some areas. After all, what grown woman wanted to climb a tree?

Dana turned toward the house. When she reached the steps she looked back. She wondered how high Gabe would let Danny climb. She wondered if he’d be able to see across the fields. She didn’t remember that she’d ever climbed a tree when she was a girl. She wondered why not.

The porch ran the full length of the front of the house. At one end the same old swing moved ever so slightly in the stiff breeze that came up from the valley below, but the half dozen chairs where her grandmother had rocked while she visited with her friends had disappeared. So had the flower boxes of petunias, the pots of ferns and baskets of begonias trailing long ropes of vivid red, pink and orange blossoms. Her grandmother had been particularly fond of her flowers. The porch didn’t look right without them.

But Dana was in for an even bigger surprise when she unlocked the door and stepped inside. Though the neglect was obvious, everything looked so much the way she’d last seen it fourteen years ago it gave her a terrific jolt. She could almost expect her grandmother to call from the kitchen to ask if she and Mattie wanted molasses cookies or hot soda biscuits with fresh butter and blackberry jam. The weight of memories was so sudden and so enormous—memories of warmth, happiness, closeness—Dana wondered how she could even think about selling the house that had been a home as much as a haven.

Dana didn’t doubt her parents loved her, but they were always coming home from somewhere, getting ready to leave again. Her father traveled constantly to or from one of several foreign countries to oversee his business interests. Her beautiful, smart and talented mother jetted from one high-profile social or charity event to another. They owned three apartments and two vacation homes, all professionally redecorated every two or three years. Nothing ever became old or familiar. Her grandmother’s house never changed and her grandmother was always there.

Always.

Dana had forgotten how much she looked forward to summers here, how much she had depended on her grandmother for feelings of belonging and permanence, for the show of affection her parents were too busy to give, for the chance to be herself, to not have to measure up to anyone’s wishes or expectations. In the years since her grandmother’s death, she’d gotten so busy trying to build a career successful enough to attract her parents’ attention she’d forgotten what this place had meant to her, what her grandmother had provided for her without her even being aware of it.

It was the only place she’d ever been completely happy. She guessed that was the reason she’d never been able to sell the place.

Now Mattie and her grandmother were gone, and the house was all she had left to remind her of some of the best moments of her life. She couldn’t sell it. Not ever. She would fix it up. It would be a place to stay when she visited Danny.

If you marry Gabe, you won’t need a place to stay.

If Dana could have gotten her hands on that miserable little voice, she’d have strangled the wretch. She had been under too much stress lately to think dispassionately. Coming here had merely added more layers of emotion, many strange and unexpected, all in conflict. She couldn’t possibly marry Gabe, even for a short time. That would throw her entire world into chaos.

But she couldn’t let Lucius get Danny. She’d promised Mattie she’d do anything she could to prevent it. When she made that promise, she hadn’t expected the solution to be so drastic. Improbable. Impossible. Insane.

Marriage should be forever. Despite the large number of divorces and separations among her friends, Dana had always been certain it would be different for her. She would know Mr. Right when she saw him, and he’d know her just as certainly. They wouldn’t be anything like her own parents. They would come home to the same house every night, eat dinner together, go out together, vacation together, raise their children together. Dana wanted at least three children. Being the only child of absentee parents had been very lonely.

She looked out the window and saw Gabe pushing Danny in the swing. Even though a tangle of weeds and vines ringed the yard, the scene touched her deeply. It seemed right. Much to her surprise, some of the tension seemed to leave her. She supposed Danny’s laughter and Gabe’s happiness had communicated itself to her.

But there was something else going on between those two, something she could only partially understand. Gabe was obviously working hard to win Danny’s trust, talking to him, laughing with him, helping him experience something new. But there was a look on Gabe’s face Dana hadn’t seen before. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said Gabe was acting like a proud and loving father on an outing with his son.

Danny looked different, too. Though he laughed like any little boy laughed when having a good time, he looked up in wonder at the big man who was devoting his entire attention to him. His look seemed to say he wanted that very much but feared it a little at the same time.

Dana shook her head. All this intense emotion was causing her to imagine things. She lived in the real world, not in a fairy tale where everything always had a happy ending.

But even though she focused her mind on inspecting the house thoroughly—even the room she’d called her own for so many summers—the image of Danny and Gabe together wouldn’t leave her mind. Maybe she wasn’t imagining things. Maybe even stories in the real world could have fairy-tale endings.

When she came outside again, she didn’t see Danny or Gabe anywhere. For a moment panic caused her heart to race. Then she told herself not to be foolish. Gabe wouldn’t let Danny out of his sight, wouldn’t let anything happen to him. But her heart climbed into her throat once more when she walked around the side of the house and still didn’t see them. Hearing voices coming from the side yard in the vicinity of a huge white pine, she worked to regain her calm as she walked across the coarse grass.

She bent down to pass beneath the branches of the pine. But they weren’t under that tree. The sounds came from the old maple just beyond. They sounded as though they were coming from somewhere above her. She looked up, and a scream nearly ripped from her.

Gabe sat perched on a limb at least ten feet off the ground. Danny was seated on a branch above him.

“Don’t you think that’s a little too high?” She didn’t know how she managed to sound so calm. She wanted to scream that Gabe was an idiot and order him to bring Danny to the ground this very minute.

“We were looking for a break in the trees so Danny can see the mountain on the other side of Iron Springs,” Gabe explained.

Under other circumstances Dana might have been intrigued by the possibility of seeing Iron Springs from her grandmother’s maple tree. “Maybe you should wait until the leaves fall,” she said to Gabe. “Then you won’t have to climb so high.”

“Climbing high is half the fun,” Gabe called down.

“Wait until he’s a teenager.”

“Tree,” Danny called to her, pointing to the surrounding branches.

“I see it, darling, but it’s time to come down now.”

“Stay in tree,” Danny said.

“We’d better come down for now,” Gabe said. “I’ve got a bigger tree at my house. Would you like to climb that with me?”

“Me climb big tree,” Danny said.

Dana made a silent vow to cut that tree down herself before she’d let Danny climb it.

Gabe dropped to the ground. When he held his hands up, Danny jumped into them without a moment’s hesitation. The second Gabe set him in the ground, he came running to Dana.

“Me climb tree,” he announced as he threw himself into Dana’s arms.

She grabbed him up and held him tight, relieved to have him safely on the ground. If Gabe thought she was going to leave Danny here just so he could risk his precious little neck by letting him climb every tree in Iron Springs, he had another think coming. She’d take Danny back to New York and fight Lucius herself. If she didn’t win, she could seek refuge in her parents’ apartment in Paris. She could always sell antiques in France. The country was full of them.

“How did things look inside?” Gabe asked.

She didn’t want to talk about the house. She wanted to talk about his callous disregard for Danny’s safety.

“Except for a thick layer of dust, it looks very much the way I remember it.”

“It’s still in no condition for you to occupy.”

“I realize that. I’ll just have to say in your house. You can go to a motel.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. It just popped out of her mouth. From his expression, she guessed it surprised him as much as it did her.

“It’s important for Danny to start getting used to your house. It would be better if he could do it with me close by.”

If you marry Gabe, Danny will always be close by.