Sanctuary Forever WITSEC Town Series Book 5 Read online

  Her life was far simpler than that, and wouldn’t you know she actually liked it that way.

  Mei wrote something down. “Talking. Okay.” Like she didn’t all the way believe it, but she was willing to entertain the idea. “Do you…talk…often?”

  “It’s not a euphemism. We’re friends.”

  Mei nodded slowly. “I think I’m getting it.”

  That’s was good, because Gemma didn’t have the brain power to explain. “The mayor left and Dan went to change his shirt. I was walking back across the grass and fell in the hole.”

  “Did you know the tunnel was down there?”

  “No.” Gemma shut her eyes and remembered it. The dark expanse.

  “And the pastor, does he know there’s a tunnel under his house?”

  “I don’t think so.” He’d have told her. Plus, didn’t that mean he’d have to have gone in the house? No way.

  Mei asked her about the Mayor and what he’d been doing there. She was still asking when Shelby came in. She pulled up short, a straw in an open can of clear soda. “The mayor?”

  “Apparently if you’re a lifer, that means he offers you succession.” Except he hadn’t actually offered it to her. Just Dan. Was it because she was a girl, or because she was a librarian? Libraries were institutions of learning that were the heart of a community. Who—in Sanctuary and out in the rest of the world—hadn’t gone to the library as a child to check out a book for a school project? Adults frequented her shelves, and people held meetings in her rooms. Even those who didn’t read came in to surf the internet. It was their only access.

  “Okay.” Shelby handed her the can and said to Mei, “Question time is over. She needs to rest.”

  Shelby adjusted the blanket. The ceiling light was off, and only the white glow from the hall gave any light, but enough it vaguely bothered her head.

  “Did my mom get here?”

  “I called her, but she didn’t answer. I left a message.” Shelby didn’t react. They both felt the same way about Janice and the fact she’d withdrawn since the explosion rocked the town. Shelby just didn’t know it was because that was the day Hal Leonard had died.

  Her father. She’d told Dan that interesting factoid but not Shelby. Yet.

  Gemma pushed all that aside. “Hey, Shelb—”

  Her friend waved away the words. “Sleep first. Okay? We’ll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow.”

  Gemma had wanted to tell her for weeks. She had a huge secret, and yet every opportunity to tell Shelby that Hal had been her father—that she’d never known all this time she’d been living in the same town as him—had passed them by. He’d been having a secret relationship with her mom for years. Gemma had met him, talked to him, and thought they’d had a rapport. At least as much rapport as a twenty-four year-old could have with a sixty-something biker. They’d laughed over tuna in the tiny town grocery store, and he’d never said one word about being her father.

  Neither had her mom.

  It didn’t surprise her that her mom hadn’t shown tonight. Janice didn’t want to talk with Gemma about the past. Said she only wanted to move on, like Gemma had since she moved out a few months ago. Like Gemma could move on from being lied to for her entire life? One day normal, the next day John shows up like, “Hey, Gemma, your dead father left you an inheritance.” He’d actually stuttered when he realized she didn’t even know Hal was her father.

  Hal was dead, all Gemma had was an archaic radio station and a giant secret.

  She wanted to tell her best friend, but Shelby was getting married next week. Gemma would tell her when she got back from her honeymoon—to Frannie and Matthias’s house up the mountain. She’d heard the view was spectacular.

  The woman was planning a wedding. She needed to focus, not worry about Gemma. So Shelby left Gemma to the quiet, and Gemma closed her eyes. Only she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want those thoughts, all the questions swirling in her head.

  “Knock, knock.” His voice was a whisper. Probably didn’t want to wake her if she was sleeping.

  Gemma smiled and turned her head. Pain spiked through her. “Ouch.” She groaned the word.

  Dan winced. “That bandage doesn’t look good.”

  “Are you okay?”

  His eyes softened, and he sat in the spot where Mei had been. “I’m okay. It wasn’t fun, but I’m glad you’re awake. What does the recovery look like?”

  “Headaches for days. Blah blah, muscle aches, blah blah, plenty of rest. Something like that.”

  He smiled with his lips. “I brought your bag.”

  “My Coke?” She grasped for her tote. “My hero.”

  Dan blinked at her. He shook it off and said, “Mei fished it out after they got you. It’s probably going to explode if you try to open it.”

  She waved her hand. “It’s all about patience. Twist the lid a little bit, count to five. Twist, count to five. You get it open.”

  His smile reached his eyes. “Did they give you pain meds? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk this much.”

  Gemma slapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t let me say anything awful.” Of course it came out like, dunlet musay anyafool. But he actually laughed.

  Gemma waited while the sound cascaded over her. She could count on one hand the times he’d done that. And never on this day. She held out her hand. Dan waited a second, then placed his in hers. She had to say it. “You’re happy.” On his birthday. She couldn’t say that word, but she knew that he got it. Because he nodded before he let go, and she thought that she might have seen the sheen of wet in his eyes.

  Dan cleared his throat. He probably didn’t want to be alone tonight any more than she did. “I saw Mei leaving.”

  “She was asking questions.”

  “She asked me some as well, though it was pretty obvious what happened since she showed up and was the one who got you out. She actually seemed more interested in what the mayor wanted.”

  “Same here,” she said.

  “I know John has been interested. The mayor isn’t doing goodwill work. He’s been sick for a while, and now he’s touring the town and holding private meetings with people? It doesn’t make much sense.”

  Gemma shrugged. She wasn’t about to go try and solve that mystery. She had enough of her own with the file cabinets her father had left her, stuff he’d hidden behind a false wall in his radio station. She had planned to head over there tomorrow and do some reading, since a volunteer opened the library on Saturdays for her. Try and make sense of what Hal’s papers were, and why they had to be hidden from the town. Not to mention why Hal had never told anyone about them but left the guarding of them to her in his will.

  Why he’d been in love with her mother.

  Fathered a child with her.

  Lived in town and never said one single thing to anyone about that. So many secrets. Her father, and he’d never told her that. Not once. Never tried to get to know her, even in secret. Never. Not once, her whole life.

  Dan planted his fist in the bed beside her and leaned in. “Gemma, why are you crying?”

  Chapter 3

  Shelby’s smile was so full it encompassed her whole face. Gemma tried to return it but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. She relaxed into the armchair and tried not to wince. This was her best friend’s dress fitting, and Gemma wasn’t going to mess it up. She’d been released from the medical center an hour ago, and all that was better left there. Especially after Dan had asked her so sweetly why she was crying, and she’d told him to leave.

  Because she was a big coward.

  He knew about Hal, but he couldn’t know what Hal left her.

  Olympia sashayed her round figure into the room. The matron held a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade, which she deposited on the coffee table beside two platters of desserts.

  If she could move her head without it pounding, Gemma would have probably taken three of each. Good thing.

  Olympia clapped her hands. “Okay, ladies
.” The woman’s eyes were shadowed, but no one said anything about the fact Antonia wasn’t here and apparently had no intention of showing up.

  Olympia held out her hand to Shelby, who took it. “It’s time to try the dress on.”

  At least three people squealed. One of them was Nadia Marie Carleigh, the town’s hairdresser. Gemma did her own hair color. Andra, the sheriff’s wife, sat with Nadia, who was round as a…not a house, more like a large farm animal—not that Gemma would ever say that to a pregnant woman, Andra least of all. Gemma would probably drop dead, alone, hours from now, and no one would ever know what killed her.

  Andra waddled over and slumped on the arm of Gemma’s chair with an oof. She glanced down and smiled.

  Gemma smiled back, trying not to make it obvious the woman scared the Charles Dickens out of her. “How are you?”

  “I’m carrying this thing around twenty-four seven, how do you think I am?” Andra touched her belly. Her words had a tone, but the way she rubbed her stomach softly was louder.

  “Ready to pop. Isn’t that what people say?”

  Andra snorted. “I wish it was that easy to get one of these things out.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Never married. Never kissed…okay, maybe there was that one time, but it wasn’t Dan, so it didn’t count.

  Andra looked like she wanted to say something, probably like, It’ll happen for you. But she didn’t, which was appreciated since Gemma despised when married people thought that a wedding and babies were the endgame of every single person. Gemma got enough drama writing fiction.

  “How’s your head?”

  Gemma shrugged but kept her attention on the door, waiting to see Shelby come back to the living room in the dress she would wear to marry Elliot in a couple of days.

  “I heard you were at Dan’s farm when you fell.” Gemma didn’t move. Had pregnancy destroyed Andra’s interrogation skills? “Did you know he’s officiating the wedding?” The woman was blatantly rooting around for dirt. Andra and Nadia had likely decided Gemma would be more receptive to Andra than Nadia. Or Andra drew the short straw.

  Gemma held her facial expression still. “Of course he’s doing the wedding. He’s the pastor.”

  “I wasn’t sure you knew that.”

  “Worried I’ll corrupt him?”

  Andra hadn’t moved, either. And her face never gave anything away, ever. “Could you?”

  “Nope.” She’d kinda tried, years ago in a desperate move. She had way too much respect for him to do that “tempting” stuff anymore. It hadn’t worked anyway.

  “Well then.”

  Gemma looked away, not the winner in the contest of wills between her and Andra. It could be construed as a draw. Better luck next time.

  Andra chuckled. “So you’re feeling better.”

  “As better as anyone who fell in a hole yesterday.”

  “That was crazy,” Nadia jumped into the conversation, like she’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to interject herself. “Seriously, you fell through the earth into a hole. Shelby and Elliot told us all about it when we came to see you at the hospital—”

  “You did?”

  Andra nodded. “Shelby said you weren’t up to visitors.”

  No one had told her. Why would they come to see her? It wasn’t like they were “friends.” Nadia and Andra had both come to town as adults. Frannie, who ran the bakery, showed up as an older teen. Antonia, Maria and Sofia, Olympia’s grown daughters, had come as kids with their brother Matthias—now Frannie’s husband. Gemma hadn’t really connected with any of them. Not even in a school of fifteen kids. They didn’t understand her, and she didn’t understand them.

  Maria brought her twin boys to the library sometimes these days, but she didn’t give Gemma anything more than basic cordiality. The only one who’d tried to engage her was Beth, the daughter of the former president. But Beth was gone now. Gemma had seen in the paper a while back that she and her husband had a baby boy.

  “I’m feeling okay,” Gemma said. “Just a little sore and a headache.” She had too many things to do to be out for the count. A genre to research, a mom to draw from her shell of grief, a library to run. A secret to protect.

  Nadia nudged her. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, I guess.” Whether she would answer depended on what the question was. These women were entirely too prying, and Gemma wasn’t the kind of girl who shared just for the sake of sharing. Shelby got that from her, and Dan as well—to an extent. But no one really knew everything. Gemma wasn’t sure she wanted them to. Not that she was being mean, but she liked her privacy. Hal had too, evidently, so maybe it ran in the family. She might have inherited something from her father besides the radio station.

  “Well, my question is…” Nadia drew it out. “You’ve lived here your whole life—”

  “I don’t want to be mayor.”

  Andra burst out laughing.

  Nadia grinned. “This isn’t about that, it’s about the radio station.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m thinking about getting it back up and running. Maybe renovating the place… Did you know Hal still used eight-track tapes?” When Gemma nodded, Nadia continued, “Anyways, I think it would be nice, you know, like a way to honor him. Re-open the radio station in his name and start broadcasting again.” Nadia took a breath. “I’ve already petitioned the committee about the funds. I figured I’d do it all aboveboard instead of just writing a check myself, so I’m asking everyone what they think, to see if anyone has any objections.”

  Gemma had more than a few. The radio station was hers, not Nadia and Andra’s. Hal left it to her in a will that had been drawn up years before, when she was only a baby. Since he’d been killed in the explosion that blew up half the ranch, Gemma had inherited an aging building she didn’t want—along with everything it contained.

  Nadia was right, it did need renovating. But they couldn’t start knocking down walls in the radio station, not when Hal had built a secret room into the place where he’d stored file cabinets full of decade’s old paperwork. Gemma hadn’t figured out what it all was yet, but she needed time go through it. She just wasn’t all that motivated. It would likely not yield any answers as to why he hadn’t told her that he was her father. It looked more like government stuff.

  How on earth was Gemma going to explain it all to these ladies still waiting for an answer? She opened her mouth to spout something or other, but the door opened and Shelby walked in. White dress, modest neckline. Embroidery. She looked breath-stealingly beautiful. They’d picked out a white gown for Gemma from the same magazine, just for fun, though hers had been a whole lot shorter. But she hadn’t bought it, because it wasn’t like she’d ever actually get married.

  With her luck, Dan would see her in the sweet bridesmaid’s dress and have a heart attack. End of story.

  Shelby’s mouth curled up into a smile. “Well?”

  The girls erupted into screams. Gemma winced. She might not have come if she’d known they were going to be so loud. While they squealed and hugged Shelby, and Olympia tsk-ed at them for touching the dress, Shelby’s gaze never left her.

  Gemma mouthed, It’s good.

  Shelby grinned.

  After Shelby had been hemmed and pinned so that Olympia could make the final adjustments, she changed back into her normal clothes, and they all sat to eat. Shelby put two of everything on a plate and set it on Gemma’s lap before she could object.

  “Hush.”

  Gemma shot her a look. “So, wedding girl.” She needed to deflect all this attention back where it was supposed to be. “Everything is all set for the big day?”

  Shelby’s smile turned dreamy, and she nodded. “Everything is ready.” She glanced around, including the group in their conversation. “Elliot and I have been meeting with Dan, like John and Andra did. And like Bolton and Nadia will be doing one of these—”

  “Not there yet.” Nadia held her hand up, palm out. The one with the en
gagement ring on her finger. “Taking it slow.”

  They all laughed.

  “We totally are!”

  Andra shoved her shoulder playfully. “I give it four more months, tops.”

  Nadia’s cheeks turned pink. “So… Shelby.” There she went, drawing out her words again. “Olympia is in charge of the dress, and Frannie the cake, so long as she’s not throwing up from morning sickness since the woman went and got pregnant again straight away. Dan is officiating the wedding…”

  Shelby glanced aside at Gemma at the mention of Dan’s name. Just a look, but Andra shifted. Gemma gritted her teeth.

  “What was that?” Nadia’s question was totally innocent. Still, Gemma glared at Shelby for a second. Why did she have to give stuff away like that?

  “I think you should say Dan’s name again,” Andra said to Nadia like they were a tag-team. “More might happen.”

  Gemma shook her head. “It will not.”

  Shelby lifted her hands in surrender.

  “I have to go.” Gemma stood. “My head is killing me, and I have to check on the library.” Which Shelby totally knew was a lie. The thing that killed her was leaving those two tiny cakes she could’ve eaten with one bite—

  She grabbed them and stuffed them in her mouth, then said, “Bye,” without spitting cake everywhere.

  “Gemma.”

  She waved Shelby off, so her friend would know she wasn’t mad. She just didn’t want to talk about Dan with a bunch of women who thought he was their “friend.” Sure, he was their pastor, and he’d even “led Frannie to the Lord.” Which she was pretty sure he’d tried to do with her a bunch of times. Her life wasn’t fodder for girl talk. No way. That wasn’t sincere, and it would just end up being gossip.

  Gemma walked, since she’d gotten a ride there with Shelby in the medical center’s golf cart. She could go home or to the library. Or her mom’s house. Instead she made her way to the radio station. Her life was her business, and if her father had entrusted something serious to her, she needed to figure out what that was so she’d know what she was protecting.