that boy of yours. You’re allowing that teenage hooligan to run wild around the streets and I won’t have it!”
Vicki stretched herself to her full five-foot-seveninch height and glared down at the shorter woman. She took a calming breath, determined to control her temper. “I will thank you to stop referring to my son as a ‘teenage hooligan.’ Richie is no such thing. He’s a healthy, normal boy who needs his exercise. He’s not a troublemaker and does not run wild around the streets.”
“Not an hour ago, Victoria, he came speeding around the corner on that two-wheeled contraption of his and nearly ran into me. He was with that Forsythe boy and everyone in town knows that little hooligan is just a breath away from reform school.”
“That ‘two-wheeled contraption’ is a bicycle—a dirt bike—not some high-powered motorcycle.”
Mrs. Thackery turned to leave, but not before delivering a parting shot. “Nonetheless, I expect him to control the way he charges around the streets. Humph! It’s getting so a decent person isn’t safe walking along the sidewalk.”
Vicki went inside the store, a combination market and post office. She slammed the screen door harder than she intended.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
Her son’s voice caught her by surprise. She whirled around and spotted him coming out of the back office with a handful of cookies. “Richie...how long have you been here?” She knew the upheaval in his life had been very difficult for her son. When her husband, Robert Bingham, had died five years ago it had been devastating for Richie. Then, two months ago, he had been uprooted once again when they moved from Dallas, Texas, to the small rural community of Sea Cliff on the northern California coast. She was thankful school had started so that at least he could make some new friends.
He popped one of the cookies into his mouth, practically inhaling it rather than eating it. “I don’t know... five minutes, I guess.” He shoved another cookie into his mouth. “Me and Tim—”
“Tim and I.” She brushed the hair back from his forehead.
“Cut it out, Mom.” A spark of irritation showed as he backed away from her motherly fussing. “Tim and I were riding on this great trail he knows back in the hills.” He took a soft drink from the refrigerator.
“You were also zipping around the sidewalks.” She started to tell him to put back the soft drink and not eat any more cookies because he would spoil his dinner, but they would have been wasted words. At fourteen-and-a-half, he had the voracious appetite of a garbage-disposal unit. He was growing so fast that he could consume what seemed like huge amounts of food and immediately burn it up. He was already as tall as she was and seemed to be all legs. He would eventually top six feet, easily.
He shot her a look of disgust. “Yeah... I saw old lady Thackery leavin’. It wasn’t like she said.”
“That’s Mrs. Thackery. And what she said was that you nearly ran her down with your bike.”
“No way! We were riding in the street, not on the sidewalk. She was standing in her yard. We weren’t even close to her!” He dropped his voice almost to a whisper and stared at the floor, talking more to himself than to his mother. “That old lady’s a menace to society.” He looked up and met her gaze. “Did you know her from when you used to live here?”
“Oh, yes.” Vicki gazed upward, as if asking for protection against some sort of recurring menace. A hint of weariness crept into her voice. “I think Mrs. Thackery has lived here forever.”
She saw the look of defiance on her son’s face. It was a look she knew so well from many years ago, a look that used to cross another handsome young man’s face... a handsome young man with the same dark hair and intense, sky-blue eyes. She reached out to smooth his hair again, but stopped when she saw the look, the one that said Don’t mess with my hair and stop treating me like a kid “Have you done your homework?”
“Yeah, it’s done.” He popped another cookie into his mouth. “When’s dinner?”
Each time a truck passed Vicki’s door on the way up the hill it signaled that the moment she dreaded had moved that much closer. The construction phase of the remodeling had been completed a couple of days earlier. The landscapers had finished on schedule. Moving vans had been delivering both new items and things from a storage company for the past two days. There did not seem to be anything left...only the arrival of Wyatt Edwards.
The local gossip mill had pegged his arrival for the next day, which meant that she had less than twentyfour hours to prepare herself. She did not have any idea what she would say to Wyatt Edwards or what to expect from him. He had walked out on her fifteen years ago, left while she was away for the weekend so that he did not have to face her with his decision. She had been devastated. She could still hear Henry Edwards telling her that she had driven his son away with her constant demands for his attention, until he had not been able to take it anymore.
She had not understood what Henry Edwards had meant at the time. In fact, she still did not understand. It was Wyatt who had been the aggressor, who had pursued her in spite of objections from both their families. She shook her head in an attempt to shove away the bad memories. It was ancient history and no longer relevant to her life. She had a son to take care of and he was more important to her than anything else.
Vicki went about her business for the rest of the day, making a valiant attempt to put the imminent arrival of Wyatt Edwards out of her mind. That evening she helped Richie with a school project for his English class.
Unfortunately, all her attempts at keeping busy did not help. Once she had climbed into bed, turned out the light and closed her eyes, her mind immediately filled with thoughts and memories from long ago. She finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, but woke up sev eral times during the night, the last time being only half an hour before her alarm was set to wake her. She stared at the glowing numerals for five minutes, then with a heavy sigh of resignation reluctantly climbed out of bed. It was a day she would rather not have to face, but she knew there was no way of avoiding it.
She fixed breakfast, and sent Richie off to the school bus. Then she sat down and stared at the clock. In thirty minutes the truck would drop off the day’s mail to be sorted and placed in the individual post-office boxes. She forced herself into action, knowing that the moment she’d dreaded would soon be at hand.
Wyatt Edwards pulled his car to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Only five more miles to the Sea Cliff turnoff. It was the first time he had been back since his father’s death ten years ago when he had inherited controlling interest in his father’s worldwide industrial holdings. He still was not sure exactly what had prompted the decision, but it was too late to turn back now. He had already spent a great deal of money on making the old house livable and preparing an office wing. He planned to conduct most of his business from there, venturing into San Francisco to the corporate headquarters only a few days a month.
He looked out over the ocean, watching as the waves crashed against the rocks just offshore, then climbed out of his car and walked to the edge of the cliff. The small sandy cove below was the place where he and Vicki Dalton had made love for the first and only time. It had been an impetuous action following a beach party. The next day they both agreed that they had acted foolishly. It had been a very profound experience for him and had solidified in his mind just how much he loved her, even though he had never told her so.
Every minute
