that he hadn’t forgotten her. Talk about conflicting emotions. Her life was riddled with them.
“You’ve seen him in the last couple of days?” she asked, broaching the subject of his whereabouts cautiously.
Harlan hesitated. “Now that you mention it, his daddy did say that the boy had taken off unexpectedly. Never did mention what it was all about, though. Business, I suppose. You want me to have him call you when he gets back?”
Laurie sighed heavily. She had a feeling there would be no need for that. The timing of his unexplained departure had to be more than coincidence. If she knew Harlan Patrick, she’d be seeing him any day now, as soon as he could get someone to give him her concert itinerary.
“That’s okay,” she said, then added quietly, “thank you.”
“Thanks for what?”
“For not hating me.”
“Oh, darlin’ girl, I could never hate you,” he said, his tone sympathetic. “There was a time when you were practically family. As far as I’m concerned, you’re as good as that now.”
“But I brought so much pain into Harlan Patrick’s life.”
“And so much joy, too,” he reminded her. “Don’t forget that. Sometimes the best you can hope for in life is that it all evens out in the end. You take good care of yourself and come see me next time you’re home. I’ll get the piano tuned, and we’ll have an old-fashioned sing-along. I can’t carry a tune worth a hoot, but it’ll be fun all the same.”
“I will,” she promised. “Give Janet my love, too, will you?”
“Of course I will. You take good care of yourself, Laurie. Don’t forget all the folks back here who love you.”
As if I could, she thought, but didn’t say. “Goodbye, Grandpa Harlan. I miss you.”
Only after she’d hung up did she realize there were tears streaming down her cheeks. For the first time in more than six years, she realized just how much she missed home. And when she thought of it, she didn’t remember the little house in which she’d grown up, didn’t even think of her mother, though she loved her dearly. No, she remembered White Pines and the close-knit Adamses, who back then had been more than willing to accept her as one of their own.
And she remembered Amy Lynn’s daddy and the way she’d always loved him.
* * *
He might as well have been traveling in a foreign country, Harlan Patrick thought on his first day in Nashville. He’d taken off without thinking, without the slightest clue of how to go about tracing a woman who didn’t want to be found.
On the flight, which he’d piloted himself, he’d had plenty of time to try to formulate a plan, but images of Laurie and that baby had pretty much wiped out logic. All he’d been able to feel was some sort of blind rage. Aside from a friendly tussle or two with his cousins growing up, he wasn’t prone to violence, but for the first time in his life he felt himself capable of it. Not that he’d have laid a hand on Laurie, but he couldn’t swear that her furniture would be safe. Smashing a few vases and chairs might improve his mood considerably.
Then again, it probably wouldn’t. Satisfaction probably couldn’t be had that easily.
After landing, he rented a car and drove into downtown. He found a hotel smack in the center of things and dragged out a phone book. It was then that he realized just how little he really knew about Laurie’s life in the past few years. An awful lot of it had been played out in public, of course, but that wasn’t the part that would help him now.
“Well, damn,” he muttered staring at the Yellow Pages and trying to figure out which talent representative or which recording studio to call. He couldn’t even remember which record label produced her albums, even though he had CDs of every single one of them. It was hard enough listening to her songs without learning every little detail of the life that had stolen her from him.
He plucked a scrap of paper out of his pocket and glanced at the number, then dialed her house first, though he recognized it was a long shot. She was on the road and she’d told him that she’d never gotten around to hiring a housekeeper because she wasn’t comfortable with somebody else doing cleaning and cooking she was perfectly capable of doing for herself.
When no one answered at the house, he searched his memory