Marisa Carroll - Last-Minute Marriage

Her quiet reverie was broken by the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot behind her swing. She didn’t turn around to see who it was. She didn’t know a soul in Riverbend.

No one but the cop who’d eyed her so suspiciously and then escorted her into town. And the man who’d been riding with him. The one with eyes the same rich brown as the plowed earth and a smile that lifted the left corner of his mouth a littler higher than the right. Mitch Sterling, the cop had said his name was. She wondered if he had anything to do with the big hardware and lumberyard she’d passed on her way down to the river. It had looked like a going concern. Not as big as the Home-Mart she’d worked for in Albany, but impressive for an independent in this age of mega-chain stores.

“Hi there. Remember me?”

She turned her head to find the man she’d been thinking about smiling down at her. His voice was low-pitched and a little rough around the edges, but as warm as his smile.

She didn’t smile back, although she was tempted. You didn’t smile at strange men in California. Or in New York, for that matter.

“Are you enjoying the view?”

“Yes,” she said. This time she did smile. She wasn’t in L.A. anymore. She was in God’s country. Or so one or two signs she’d seen along the roadside had proclaimed. “It’s very peaceful here.”

“It’s one of my favorite views.”

“You come here often?”

He propped one foot on the rose bed’s border, which was made of railroad ties stacked three deep. Real railroad ties, she’d noticed. Not those anemic landscape ties they’d sold at Home-Mart. This rose bed was going to be here for a long, long time. That was the way you built things in a place you never intended to leave.

“Most everyone in town does. But it’s the same view I get from my kitchen window.” He pointed down the way to a wide stream that emptied into the river. “I live in the yellow house over there.”

Tessa turned to follow his pointing finger, but she already knew what she would see. The house wasn’t yellow. It was cream-colored. Craftsman-styled, foursquare and solid with a stone foundation and big square porch posts. Roses grew on trellises on either side of the wide front steps. Pink roses, with several still blooming, like those in the park.

She loved history. Not so long ago it had been her intention to share that love of history by teaching. Not ancient history, or Colonial history. Not even Civil War history. But the history of the century just past. The enthusiasm and hubris of the early decades. The heartbreak of the Great Depression and the sheer determination required to survive those years. The heroism and sacrifice of the Second World War. The optimism and opportunism of the fifties. Even the strife and intergenerational warfare of the sixties.

The house Mitch Sterling indicated had seen it all. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find it had always been in his family. Riverbend seemed that kind of place, a town where families passed down houses and businesses and recipes from generation to generation. “It’s a great house,” she said. “How long has it been in your family?” The words had jumped off her tongue before she could discipline her thoughts.

“About ten years,” Mitch said, not looking at her but at the house. “I bought it when my son was born.”

“Oh.” She tried hard to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Such a little thing, the house not being in his family for a hundred years.

“I bought it from the family my granddad sold it to in ’74. My grandmother wanted something all on one floor, so he built her a ranch-style out by the golf course. But his grandfather built this house in 1902.”

“Your great-great-grandfather built the house?” She didn’t even know her great-great-grandfather’s name. And she envied him the luxury of knowing who had owned this house, when, and for how long. It meant he had ties here, roots that went deep.

“Yup. I thought it should stay in the family.”

“When I was growing up, I never lived more than three years in one place.” What in heaven’s name had possessed her to tell such a thing to a total stranger? She must be more tired than she thought. She stood up, levering herself off the swing with one hand on the thick chain that held it to the wooden frame.

Mitch Sterling leaned forward to steady the swing, but he didn’t try to touch her. She was oddly disappointed that he didn’t put his hand on her arm. She had the feeling his touch would have been as warm and strong as his voice and his smiling brown eyes.

She smoothed her hand over her stomach. The baby was sleeping, hadn’t made a move in an hour. Perhaps she’d been lulled by the sound of the river and the rustle of the wind through the trees along the bank. Tessa hadn’t let the doctor back in California tell her the sex of her baby. But she knew in her heart it was a girl. A daughter. Hers and hers alone. She raised her eyes to find Mitch watching her with the same quiet intensity she’d noticed the first time she’d seen him on the road outside town.

The silence was stretching out too long. “I have to be on my way. I want to make it to Ohio by tonight,” she blurted.

“You’ve got a long way to go.”

“I’ve come even farther.” All the way from Albany and back again, with a detour through Southern California. But Albany was home, because that was where she and Callie had settled after their mother died. It was where she’d worked days at the Home-Mart and gone to school at night to get her history degree. Until she’d met Brian Delaney, a high-school friend of her brother-in-law’s, and fallen head over heels in love with him, giving up everything she had to follow him to California.

She blinked. Lord, she’d been close to saying all that aloud to this stranger. It must be something in the clean clear air, too much oxygen maybe, and not enough smog. She took a step away from the swing, trod on a stone and stumbled a little.

This time he didn’t hesitate. He reached out and steadied her with a hand under her elbow. She was right. His touch was as warm and strong as the rest of him. “Are you sure you should be driving any more today? You look pretty done in to me.”

He didn’t mince words, obviously. Nothing like Brian, who tap-danced his way around everything—until it came time to tell her he was leaving her and the baby to follow his dream and play winter baseball in Central America.

“I’m fine, really,” she assured Mitch.

He didn’t look convinced. “It’s going to be dark in an hour. It’ll take you another hour after that to make it to the interstate. Why don’t you stay the night here? The hotel on Main Street was restored just a couple of years ago. The rates are reasonable. And it’s clean. It’s even supposed to be haunted. And the restaurant’s not half-bad, either,” he added, deadpan.

“I don’t believe you.”

He made an exaggerated X on his chest. “Cross my heart, the food’s good.”

A chuckle escaped her. “I mean, I don’t believe the hotel’s haunted. I always thought ghosts were unhappy spirits doomed to wander the earth until they were set free. What could have happened in a town like this to cause a ghost?”

His face clouded slightly. She felt the same chill she had when the sun dipped behind a cloud a few minutes before he showed up. “Riverbend’s not paradise,” he said. “Most small towns aren’t.” Tessa waited, wondering what he would say next. He was silent a moment, glancing out over the river. Then his frown cleared and the sunshine came back into his face. “But this place is probably as close as you’ll come to it. And as a member of the town council and the Chamber of Commerce, it’s my duty to roll out the welcome mat. Get in your car and I’ll show you the way to the hotel.”