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“When? I never heard about it.”
“Not too many people know,” he said. “That’s how I wanted it.”
“Why?”
This was Twyla, the most inquisitive of the sisters. Forrest shrugged, hoping she’d stop probing if he didn’t make much of it. “I was just out of flight school and was considering coming home to stay.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He should have known she wouldn’t stop. He certainly couldn’t tell her it was because after he’d had the building built, Galen had informed him how his flying could assist the family business. Becoming a drug smuggler had never been on his to-do list. “I joined the air service reserve corps instead,” Forrest told her. Knowing she’d come up with more questions, he continued, “Within a few years I was flying regular airmail routes and didn’t have time to come back home until last fall.”
“When your father went to jail and you had to come home to run the family business,” she offered.
There was compassion in her tone, and Forrest wasn’t sure he liked it. “Something like that,” he said, while turning off the gravel and onto a field road that wasn’t used enough to wear out the grass. It was mostly weeds, and short enough he didn’t need to worry about it catching fire from the engine, here or on the runway.
“There you go again,” Twyla said. “Saying something I know has double meanings, but I can’t fathom what they are. You did it last night, too, when you kept calling your father ‘Galen.’”
Forrest held the wheel tight, for the road was more rutted than he liked, but also because he’d come to hate people thinking Galen was his father. “Because he’s not my father.”
Twyla’s gasp confirmed he’d said it aloud, when he truly hadn’t meant to. Forrest bit his lip, cursing himself and wishing he could retract his words.
“He’s not?” Twyla asked, looking more than slightly flabbergasted.
Forrest wanted to grin at her animated expression, but sighed instead. Then he recalled their wine-sampling incident and how she’d never told. If she had, her father wouldn’t have thought twice about punishing him. Roger had been like that; he’d been welcoming in having Forrest around but had laid down the law with him as readily and sternly as he had with his daughters. “Only a few people know,” Forrest said. “Mainly my mother, Galen and me.”
“Mum’s the word,” she whispered. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
That would be impossible. Her keeping a secret like that. Yet he was tickled by the heartfelt smile on her face. Actually, he wouldn’t mind if she spread the word. It might help his reputation.
“How can that be?” she asked, now frowning. “I’ve never heard so much as a whisper on that subject.”
“Oh?” he asked. “Do you know everyone’s secrets?”
“I make it a point to,” she said smugly. “I know things about people they don’t even know themselves.”
One little grin from those lips was enough to turn the sky from dark to light. He shook his head at an internal reaction that kick-started his heart into a faster beat.
“And what do you do with all those secrets?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone, Forrest. I promise.”
Maneuvering the car around an old fence line, he concluded that Twyla learning his true parentage was the least of his worries. “My mother was pregnant when she and Galen got married. My real father had died in New York, unfortunately for my mother, before they were able to get married.” That was his mother’s story, and the only one he had.
Twyla had been quiet for less than a second before she said, “Well, that certainly explains a lot.”
“It does?”
“Yes, your—Galen Reynolds, I mean, is not a very handsome man and is as ornery as the devil.”
Forrest laughed, but then asked, “Are you saying I’m handsome and not as ornery as the devil?”
“Yes,” she said, with a pink hue on her cheeks. “You are a rather handsome man and can be very nice, when you want to be.”
Due to the fact her cheeks were now bright red, Forrest chose to not comment. She was making him feel things he hadn’t felt in some time. Bringing the car to a stop, he pointed at the squat shed built against a backdrop of pine trees. “We’re here.”
She glanced around and frowned. “Where’s your airplane?”
“Inside there.”
“There? That building doesn’t look very big.”
“It’s called a hangar, and it’s big enough,” he said.
