Page 41 of Horn of Plenty
“Then what’s your objection?” she pressed.
He held her gaze. “You, you’re my objection.”
“Me?” she shot back. Had he lost his mind?
“Yes, you,” he answered, eyes burning. “At the first chance to get out of Elverna, you could barely hold yourself back from agreeing right then and there to go work for Preston and Logan.”
Unbelievable!
“Who said anything about me leaving Elverna? They wanted me to spend some time at their restaurants. That’s not leaving,” she countered.
He turned away. “That’s how it would start.”
She’d had enough. She glanced at the godforsaken tree, then marched up and stood in front of him. “What made you hate the city so much?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated.”
He was impossible. She doubled her resolve. “Let’s start with something easier. Why were you staring at those houses? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”
“I did see a ghost,” he answered, his voice barely a whisper.
“Cal, what are you talking about?”
He ran his hands through his honey-touched hair, then blew out a tight breath. “I lived there, Mabel. A long time ago, that was my home.”
He lived there? She felt as if the earth had shifted beneath her feet.
“When? How?” she stammered.
He scrubbed his hands down his beard. “I came to live with my grandparents when I was five years old. But, before that, I lived in Chicago with my mother.”
“Is that where she died?” Mabel asked, unable to stop herself. She knew so very little about the woman.
He nodded. “She died of an accidental overdose. I sat with her body for two days before I got hungry, and a police officer found me wandering the streets. Once I saw that row of houses and the community center, it came back to me. I knew that place.”
Her heart ached for the man—no, not ached. It broke into a thousand pieces. She couldn’t even attempt to imagine what that experience could do to a child.
“Cal, that’s awful! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I promise you that I never would have made you stay for the meeting if I’d known that.”
He blew out a slow breath. “It’s not like you could have known. The town knew that she’d died, but my grandparents just said that it was an accident. Besides them, Jamie was the only person who knew the truth about my mom. But I made him swear that he wouldn’t tell a soul.”
And her brother’s word meant everything. He never would have told anyone—not even her.
“What happened?” she asked, needing to know more.
Cal sighed, and she could almost see the painful memories flashing through his mind. “My mother was quite beautiful. My grandparents told me that she’d been scouted by a modeling agency, and they put her up in an apartment in the city. But she was young and had gotten pulled into a life that was much faster and riskier than she’d experienced here in the country. She became addicted to meth. Then she got pregnant with me. I never met my father. I’m not sure my mother even knew who he was. We lived in public housing. I didn’t even know that I had grandparents until they showed up at the police station to get me.”
Emotion thickened in her throat as a tear trailed down her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Cal. I don’t know what to say to make it better.”
He brushed her tears away. “The city made my mother a junkie, Mabel. It took everything from her, and I don’t want the city to take everything from you. You made it home, but there’s more to why you came back. Did it have to do with that binder?”
She froze at the mention of it.
“What binder?” she replied, but she knew what he was talking about. He’d seen it the night she’d left town.
“The one with Bella Mae written on the front,” he answered, searching her eyes.
He wanted to know, and more than that, he deserved to know.
