The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [124]
“...and next week we’re going to film a piece for the local TV station,” she was saying, “about drying hydrangea. I thought I’d let Polly do that, though she doesn’t know it yet. She’s so good with the dried flowers.”
“Uh-huh,” Simon responded because he thought a response was expected at that point in the conversation, though he couldn’t have repeated what she’d said.
“We’re thinking about doing a little more with the fruit trees this year. We pruned better last fall, and we’re thinking that we might just do a pick-your-own thing this summer if we actually get any fruit. You know, where you let people come in and pick what they want and just pay by the basket, or whatever.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
Dina nodded. “I hate to see all those apples and peaches go to waste. Unfortunately, neither Polly nor I have time to deal with them.”
“Is Mulch-boy still working for you?”
Dina laughed. “You mean Will? Yes, but he’ll be here only through the end of the summer. Then he’ll be off to college. Some of the fruit matures in the fall, and he won’t be around then to pick.”
“Maybe I could give you a hand. You know, be your new Mulch-boy.”
“That would be one hell of a commute.” She led him down toward the pond. “From Arlington to Henderson just to sling a little mulch and pick a few apples? I don’t know how long that old Mustang would hold up.”
“My lease is month-to-month, and I wasn’t planning on renewing. There’s nothing to keep me there,” he said pointedly. Nothing to keep me anywhere but here . . .
“Where would you go?”
“I was thinking a nice old fixer-upper in a nice, quiet small town might be nice.”
“Plenty of those around.” She sat on a fallen log overlooking the pond and tugged on his hand to join her. “Nice place to live while you’re writing that story.”
“Which story would that be?”
“The one that brought you to Henderson in the first place.” She no longer smiled, and her eyes focused on something across the pond.
“Oh, that story.” Simon sat down next to her, his hands dangling between his knees.
“Ummm.”
“When I first told Philip what I was on to—Blythe, Graham, then you—he asked me to consider what would happen to the people involved if the story was printed. What would happen to your lives.”
“And . . . ?”
“Well, at the time, I couldn’t understand what had gotten into him, that he’d ask me to put a story aside. It made no sense to me at all. I’m a journalist. I find the story, I write it. I was taught—by Philip, incidentally— that nothing was more important than the truth.”
“I sense a ‘but’ in here somewhere—”
“But . . . I look at you—at all of you—and I see so much damage. I see Celeste Hayward, haunted by the truth of her husband’s infidelity and broken by the death of her daughter. I see Gray wrestling with all that he’s learned about his family, knowing that if he runs for office he will have to either lie and perpetuate the myth about his father or reveal some truths that some—you included—do not want revealed. I see Jude, whose biggest sin was to love you enough to want to keep you safe at any cost, enough to tell you the truth even when she knew it could turn you away from her. And at the center of it all, I see you. It all revolves around you. . . .”
Simon seemed to struggle for words. Finally, he said, “I just don’t think it’s the right time for this story to be told. Maybe someday . . . but not right now.”
He turned her face toward his and for a long moment looked into her eyes.
“How could you give it up?” she asked. “Why would you give it up?”
“Because I don’t want to be responsible for what will happen to you once the full story is told. I think you’ve had enough to deal with for a while. You’ve had your life turned upside down, found out you weren’t who you thought you were. You’ve been hit over the head, locked in a burning building, shot at—”
Dina