by extension, she and her sisters, as well as her father, became Dan’s missing family.
During the rest of the year, whenever he could, Dan would come to visit and stay a few days or a week—until another assignment would whisk him away. When they were younger, Dan brought gifts from the places he’d visited. As they grew older, Alex realized that the greatest gift the man had brought them was himself.
“Why isn’t Wyatt out here?” Alex asked.
Whatever was wrong, she was convinced it had to do with Wyatt. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t begin to guess what it could be.
“Because I told him to wait,” Richard answered quietly.
“Why isn’t Uncle Dan with him?” Cris asked suddenly.
And even as she asked the simple question, Alex knew the answer. She guessed by her sister’s expression that Cris must have known it, too. If they were right, Alex hoped the news didn’t take Cris back to the morning the chaplain and another soldier arrived on the inn’s doorstep to tell her that although Mike was coming home from his mission, it wasn’t the kind of homecoming they’d expected.
“This is about Uncle Dan, isn’t it?” Cris asked quietly.
After a beat, her father nodded his head. His eyes followed his two youngest daughters as they walked into the reception area. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
CHAPTER THREE
“UH-OH, THIS HAS the looks of something serious,” Stephanie murmured to Andrea as they walked to the reception desk together. “You know what this is about?” she asked.
“When do I ever find out anything before you do?” Andy asked, lengthening her stride.
It was hard to miss the family resemblance, thought Alex, both the one to the other as well as to her and Cris, the older sisters. Approximately the same height, Stephanie and Andrea gave the impression of being tall and willowy, despite the fact that neither was more than five-six. Like her and Cris, both had straight, dark blond hair and captivating, magnetic blue eyes that seemed capable of looking into a person’s soul. At least that’s what everybody always told Alex.
“What did you do?” Andy asked Stevi.
“Me? Nothing. Why would you think it’s me?”
“Well, it’s not me,” Andy said in an impatient whisper. “You called, Queen Bee?” she added to Alex in a louder, cheerful tone.
Stevi poked her younger sister in the ribs. Alex would agree with Stevi’s silent message—this wasn’t the time to be flippant.
“What’s going on, Alex?” Andy asked. All traces of her flippant tone were gone.
“Dad, did something happen to Uncle Dan?” she asked. She wanted an answer, but she wanted to hear the right answer: that Daniel Taylor, the man who’d told her endless stories about places she knew she would never be able to visit, making them all seem so vivid and real to her, was all right. That the man who had just been here a few weeks ago wasn’t here now, the way he always was at the first stroke of summer, because he’d finally met someone special and was taking some well-earned time off with her.
But the look on her father’s face, the look of a man who was struggling to come to terms with losing part of himself, told her this had nothing to do with any newfound romance.
Afraid now, not for herself but for her father—and, although she’d never admit it out loud—for Wyatt, the boy she’d grown up with, she gently grasped her father’s arm.
“Dad?”
His eldest daughter’s tone said it all—“What is it?” “What happened?” and “How can I help?” all wrapped up in a single word.
“Pancreatic cancer,” was all Richard trusted himself to say.
A minute more and maybe he would get better control over his emotions, but right now, those were the only words he was able to utter without breaking down. Dan had told him the moment he’d received the prognosis from his doctor. Come to him and asked him not to tell anyone else, not his daughters, not Wyatt. He didn’t want to see pity marking his last few months, or however long he had. At the same time, he’d wanted an ally to help him maintain his facade—and he wanted his best friend to be prepared.
Dan’s last visit had been a struggle. His friend had only had a few weeks left to live and he’d looked pale, his step less sure. But it really had seemed as if he was only a little tired. A force like Dan just didn’t die.
The news of Dan’s death, when it finally came from the attending physician last night, had still managed to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.
Richard heard someone gasp and looked up to see that it was Stevi. He reached out to hold her tightly. Of the four of them, she was the most sensitive, the one whose threshold for emotional pain was far too low for her to function well in stressful situations.
For the most part, they were probably all overprotective of her—even Andy—sometimes keeping things from her rather than subjecting Stevi to undue emotional distress. Stevi had been the one who’d cried for days when their pet hamster had died.
When their mother had suddenly been taken from them, Stevi had stopped talking for a month. She’d been ten at the time.
He stepped back, gripped Stevi by the shoulders and studied her to make sure she’d be all right. Then he let her go as he took in the others, coming at last to Alex.
Alex’s eyes had never left her father’s stricken expression—how could she not have seen that? How could she have missed that pain, that sorrow? It was right there for her to see, she berated herself. What was she, blind?
“Is he—?”
Alex couldn’t get herself to finish the sentence. She could feel her throat closing up, not just in sympathy for her father, but because she really, really loved Uncle Dan. They all did.
When she’d been very young, she’d had a crush on the man, daydreaming about going off with him to exotic parts unknown. It seemed hopelessly romantic to her to follow stories to wherever they might lead, no matter what the danger. As long as they had each other to lean on for support, things would work out.
It had irked her at the time that Wyatt looked so much like his father, especially since she and the younger Taylor got along like the proverbial cat and dog. Granted it had been mostly her doing, but that didn’t change the outcome of antagonism. All those summers that Wyatt had spent at the inn, she’d found new and unique ways to torment him so that, somewhere along the line, Wyatt wouldn’t usurp her in her father’s eyes, becoming the son she felt certain he had always secretly longed for.
Once upon a time, she’d accidentally overheard her father talking to Uncle Dan about having a son. The exact words that had all but burned themselves into her brain had been, You don’t know how very lucky you are to have a son to share things with. To her, there had been longing and a touch of envy in her father’s voice. It said, in effect, that she could never measure up to his having a son. But it didn’t keep her from trying, anyway.
Her less-than-easygoing past with Wyatt notwithstanding, she knew what it was like
