Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4) by Diane Greenwood Muir Page B

it.
    "If Ruth Ann took this picture, he couldn't have been having an affair with her, could he?" Polly asked.
    "It doesn't seem like it," Henry responded. "Let's see that passport."
    Polly found the little blue book and opened it. There were stamps to England and France and one to Italy. All were from late 1981 and into 1982 when Polly was just over a year old.
    "That's weird, isn't it?" she asked.
    They flipped through the rest of the scrapbook and saw that the last photograph was taken in July of 1982. It was another picture that Polly was familiar with, nothing out of the ordinary, just the three of them standing in front of their house. Polly was dressed in little shorts and a tank top, her father was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and her mother had on a yellow sundress. Polly's parents had created a cradle for her with their arms and were swinging her back and forth, smiling and laughing with their little girl.
    Henry reached across, shut the book and said. "Now what?"
    "I don't know," she replied. "I have no idea what to think."
    "Are you going to meet her?"
    She turned and looked him in the eye. "Probably. My curiosity is piqued, that's for sure, but I can't imagine what she is going to tell me about my parents and why she was here and then gone again."
    "You need to meet with her. Email her tonight and tell her that you are willing to have lunch with her when she is in Iowa. I'll go with you and then you can begin asking all of the questions you have."
    "I'll do it tomorrow," Polly said and was met with a look of skepticism.
    "I promise!" she assured him, "And you'll really go with me?"
    "Of course I will. I told you I would. I don’t want you to go through this alone."
    She kissed him and said, "Thank you."
    Polly leaned over and set the book back on the coffee table.
    When she sat back up, Henry said, "I wasn't finished with you," and pulled her back in for another kiss.
    She drew back and said, "Well that cleared the fog from my brain. No. Wait. It created a different fog. You mess with my stability, Henry Sturtz."
    He gave her a quick flutter kiss on the lips and said, "I'm never going to stop."
    She leaned against him and shut her eyes, thinking about the young people in the photographs. They were having fun with life and enjoying each other. When she was a child, she remembered her parents laughing a lot. Her mother used to take Polly out to find her dad in the fields, usually with a picnic lunch. Sometimes it was for no reason other than to give him a kiss and a hug. He would stop whatever he was doing and spend a few minutes with them. Even after her mother had died, Polly knew that her dad would stop everything when he saw her coming.
    He seemed to know there was no such thing as enough time with the people he loved and he made sure that whenever he was with them, it was time well spent. Polly missed her dad. He was always proud of her and excited to hear about whatever she was doing. He would have loved to have been involved in the restoration of Sycamore House.
    Polly smiled. She couldn't believe she'd taken on something as big as Sycamore House without him and then she looked up at Henry. He was a lot like her dad and had been there to help her over some of the bumps that had shown up in the last year. What would she do without him?
    She shut her eyes again and relaxed. This was definitely the right thing even if it terrified her to think beyond today. As she mused, she wondered what he thought about their relationship. Neither of them seemed to be in a hurry to make any more big changes in their life together, but maybe he had chosen to go along with her just to keep her happy. What if he wanted more and was afraid she would run away if he pushed?
    Polly sat back up and said, "Do you ever think about the future?"
    He frowned, "My future? I suppose. I have things I'd like to accomplish and I have some bigger goals for my life. What's this about, Polly?"
    "No, I meant our future. Should we be talking about