“I think I already get that,” she said, thinking of this woman wanting to bring her girls and Adie out for an afternoon, though she hardly knew Nora at all.
This revelation about Tom Cavanaugh caused her to look at him a bit differently. Over the next week she found herself thinking about him and keeping an eye open to catch sight of him. While she was up in the branches of the taller apple trees, on top of her tripod ladder, she would occasionally see him and she could stare without being obvious. He spent a lot of time working with Junior, a big, muscled man of about fifty; they laughed together while they worked. And while Tom loaded large crates of apples into a delivery truck to take to grocers, straining his muscles, she couldn’t help but admire his physique. He dressed the same every day, jeans, boots, his work shirt with the Cavanaugh Apples logo over the left breast pocket, sleeves rolled up, a whisper of soft brown hair on his forearms. His hands were very big and as she could attest, rough with calluses. The muscles of his upper arms, shoulders, back and legs moved under the fabric; that perfect male butt in jeans that weren’t too loose or too tight drew her eyes. Sometimes he seemed to get a little worn out—the tendons in his neck stood out and after putting a crate in the truck, he’d stop to wipe his brow. Then he’d laugh with one of the guys.
She wondered what it must be like to be the kind of girl he’d smile and laugh with. What kind of girl would that be? A pretty and smart young teacher? A model or movie star who would be more than willing to leave the limelight for life on an orchard?
Now and then she’d be staring at him and imagine him in military fatigues rather than his work shirt, carrying a gun rather than a crate of apples and she’d wonder—had his losses been many? Had he been afraid, so far from home in a place of great danger? Did he miss the edge, the adrenaline rush of combat?
Or was coming home to the serene beauty of the orchard a relief? A comfort?
* * *
The following weekend Nora was able to take advantage of some overtime, and what made it even more desirable, it wasn’t a ten-hour day, but just a long morning that ended in early afternoon. Adie assured her she was definitely up to the task of watching the little girls. When Nora walked back into town after work on Sunday, she found Reverend Kincaid waiting for her at Adie’s house, chatting with her outside.
“Well, hello there,” she said to Noah.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Excellent. Put in a good day’s work and still have daylight to spend with my girls.”
“They’re still napping,” Noah said. “Let me walk you to your house—there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” she said. “Are you doing all right, Adie?”
“Fine, dear. I think the girls should be waking up in another half hour, maybe less.”
“I won’t keep you long,” Noah told her. They walked down the street to Nora’s little house and before they even went inside, Noah said, “I have information about your father. He’s alive, still teaching in the Bay Area and he’s been looking for you.”
She was stopped on a dime. “How do you know this?”
“It was pretty quick—I went searching for Jed Crane in the missing-persons registry—my very first stop on the internet. And what I found was that Nora Crane is the one missing.”
Chapter Four
“I responded to the online missing-persons registry with my name and phone number and when I received a call from Jed Crane, I told him that I had known a Nora Crane in Seattle, but I told him I doubted it was the Nora Crane he was looking for—I said I thought the woman I knew was around thirty years old. And I couldn’t provide an address. He was very forthcoming—he’s been looking for you for a couple of years. Nora, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this—he’s trying to find you because your mother passed away. I couldn’t ask for details without giving you away and there’s nothing on public record about the cause of her death.”
She went instantly pale. “Dead?”
He nodded gravely. “I think we should arrange a meeting with your father. Apparently he has lots of information about your mother and none about you. He said he lost custody of you when you were only four years old.”
“He wanted custody?” she asked, in a state of shock.
“So he says.”
“But I was six. I’m sure I was six—it was first grade. I remember exactly what I did at school that day—I came home and asked where Daddy was and my mother said she didn’t know. That he’d left us.” And so often over the years her mother, Therese, had added that he was no good, that they were better off. She said that getting involved with that man was the biggest mistake of her life, with no regard for how it might make Nora feel.
“I really think you have to look into this,” Noah said.
“But what if he’s a bad person? What if he abused me like my mother said?”
“I believe I can keep you safe. I know you’re not going to throw your trust into him before you have all the evidence you need that he deserves it. If you don’t want to see him on home turf, I’d be willing to take you to the Bay Area or somewhere in between to meet with him. If what he’s saying is true or even partially true, he must have some documentation—marriage license, divorce papers, photos, something. Obviously without documentation, you don’t necessarily have to believe him.”
“But…but is she really dead? My mother?”
“Therese Alice Sealy Crane, age sixty two years ago?”
She nodded numbly.
“There is a public record of her death. I’m so sorry, Nora.”
“She hated me,” Nora said in a whisper, as though it was a shameful secret.
Noah was shaking his head. “Maybe she had a difficult time showing affection or love. Maybe there were things you didn’t understand when you were a girl. Maybe her best effort at being a good mother was just not very good at all.”
“Or maybe she hated me,” Nora said.
“Right now you have more questions than answers. Consider looking for some of those answers. What’s the worst-case scenario? That everything you think you know about your parents is true? To verify that rather than wonder—that could help set you on a path of rebuilding your life.”
“I’m not that strong,” she said.
Noah actually gave a little laugh. “Oh, you’re by far one of the strongest women I know. And the most gentle. But I leave this entirely to you—just know that I’m here for you, willing to be your partner in this next step.”
“I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it.”
“Go ahead and think about it. Your father didn’t hint at any urgency in contacting you… .”
“There you go—urgency! What if he’s only looking for me because he needs a kidney or something? What if he wants to make amends for doing terrible things to me that I was too young to remember? I’m better off not knowing, right? Because all those hard years with my mother were bad enough without adding more awful stuff… .”
“Just think it over and if you want to talk about it, we can talk it through before you make a decision. The good news is we can find him easily. And he wants to be found.”
* * *
Just think it over? Nora could think of nothing else the following week and picking apples was the perfect job—she could indulge in obsessive remembering while filling up her bag.
There were very few times while growing