Wisconsin Wedding

“Are you all right?” Cliff Forrester asked.

She nodded. “Perfectly.”

“I gather you know who I am.”

“Cliff Forrester. Yes, I think everyone in town knows.”

The corners of his mouth twitched in an ironic smile. “I guess so. Look, I won’t keep you, Miss Gates.”

“Nora,” she corrected.

“Nora, then.” His dark eyes probed her a moment. “I came by because of Liza. She was grateful for the way you treated her the other day.”

“I’d do the same for any of my customers, Mr.—”

“Cliff. And I think you would. Liza and I are…” He paused, seeming awkward, even pained. “We want this to work.”

Nora thought she understood what he was trying to say. The Body at the Lake, the wedding, Alyssa Baron, Judson Ingalls, Liza’s return to Tyler, the incessant gossip, long-lost Margaret Ingalls—it was a lot. And then there was Cliff Forrester himself. A recluse. A man uncomfortable around even small crowds. A man, it was said, afraid that something, someone, would trigger a bad memory and he’d crack. Hurt himself. Worse yet, hurt someone he cared about.

“Is there anything I can do?” Nora asked, instinctively wanting to help.

He seemed to relax, at least slightly. “If there’s anything you can think of to help Liza through this thing, I’d appreciate it. She doesn’t want to alienate anyone. She’s trying.”

Wasn’t that what Liza herself had said about him? Nora found their concern for each other touching. This, she thought, was what love and romance were about. Two people coming together as individuals, not asking the other to change, not demanding perfection, not expecting fantasies to come true. Just loving and accepting each other and perhaps growing together.

“I wouldn’t be interfering?”

“No.”

He was, she thought, a man who knew his own mind. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

His smile was back, or what passed for one. “Thank you.”

“No need. It won’t be long before Liza feels at home again in Tyler. She has family and friends, Cliff. They’ll be here for her.”

“I’m glad you already are,” he said, and before she could respond, he was out the door.

Nora debated a whole two seconds, then went after him, catching him on the front porch. “Cliff?”

He turned, and there was something about him as he stood against the dark night—something both dangerous and sensitive—that hinted at his pain and complexity. Liza Baron hadn’t solved all his problems. Nora suddenly wished she’d just sat down and drunk her tea instead of following him out. But what to do about it now?

She licked her lips. “Um—Liza mentioned that you’re from Rhode Island originally. I was…well, I knew someone from Rhode Island once.” She sounded ridiculous! “It was a while ago, but I—”

“Who?”

She swallowed. She’d never said his name aloud, not in public. “A guy by the name of Sanders. Byron Sanders.”

Cliff Forrester remained stock-still on her porch step, staring at her through dark eyes that had become slits. Nora chose not to dwell on all the more lurid rumors about him.

“He’s a photographer,” she added quickly. “He did a series a few years back on Aunt Ellie. It was printed in one of the Chicago papers—”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Well, I have a copy in my library—”

“Get it.”

His words were millimeters shy of being an order, but there was a curious intensity to his tone, almost a desperation, that Nora detected but couldn’t explain. Cursing herself for having brought up that cretin’s name, she dashed to her study, dug out the scrapbook and ran back to the porch. Cliff Forrester hadn’t moved.

She showed him the spread Byron Sanders had done on Aunt Ellie just weeks before she died. Picking the winner of the quilt raffle. At her desk in her old-fashioned office. In her rose garden. In her rocking chair on her front porch. In front of the department store she’d started, on her own, in 1924. Nora had every photograph memorized. It was as if each shot captured a part of Aunt Ellie’s soul and together recreated the woman she’d been, made her come to life. Whatever his shortcomings as a man, Byron Sanders was unarguably a gifted photographer.

“This Byron Sanders,” Cliff Forrester said, tight-lipped. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“No!”

His eyes narrowed. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. Through Byron Sanders, she’d managed to hurt herself. She took full responsibility for her own actions. Which didn’t mitigate her distaste for him. “No. I just remember he’s from Rhode Island and wondered if you knew him.”

“No,” Cliff said. “No, I don’t know Byron Sanders at all.”

* * *

THE WAY BYRON FIGURED it, he was dead meat. If Nora Gates didn’t kill him, his brother surely would. Slumped down in the nondescript car he’d rented in Milwaukee, he watched Cliff head toward the center of town. He looked grim. Byron felt pretty grim himself. His jaw had begun to ache from gritting his teeth. He forced his mouth open just enough to emit something between a sigh and a growl.

No, I don’t know any Byron Sanders at all….

It was all Byron had heard, but it was enough. His return to Tyler wasn’t going to be all sweetness and light. Nora was already on the lookout for him, and now his brother had to have figured out that he’d been to Tyler before. Not a good start. When Nora found out that he’d lied, he’d be lucky to get out of town with all his body parts intact. When Cliff found out he’d sneaked into Tyler three years ago to make sure he was all right and had lied, he’d be—

“You’re dead meat, my man,” he muttered to himself.

He took heart that Cliff didn’t fit any of the images that had haunted him for so long. He wasn’t scrawny, scraggly, bug-infested or crazy. He looked alive and well and, other than that crack about his younger brother, reasonably happy. For that, Byron was grateful.

He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel. Coming to Tyler ten days early had been his mother’s idea. He’d phoned her in London, where she was visiting one of Pierce & Rothchilde’s most prominent, if not bestselling, authors, one who’d become a personal friend. Anne Forrester was a strong, kind woman who’d endured too much. She’d lost a husband and had all but lost a son.

“But this note,” she’d said, “leaves more questions unanswered than answered.”

“I know.”

“Do you suppose he really wants us there?”

“There’s no way of knowing.”

For years, Cliff had maintained that he didn’t dare be around his family for fear of inflicting more pain on them. He didn’t trust himself, not just with his brother and mother, but with anyone. So he’d left. Withdrawn from society. Turned into a recluse at an abandoned lodge on a faraway lake in Wisconsin. His absence, on top of her husband’s horrible captivity and death in Cambodia, had been particularly difficult for Anne Forrester, but she was made of stern stuff and disliked showing emotion. She blamed herself to some degree for having let Cliff go to Cambodia to try and do something for his father. Blamed herself for not being able to do something to ease the pain of his own ordeal in Southeast Asia.

“You have no idea who this Liza Baron is?” his mother had asked.

“The Barons are a prominent family in Tyler.” Byron had chosen his next words carefully. “I remember meeting an Alyssa Baron. She’s the woman who sort of took Cliff under her wing. Liza could be her daughter.”