They sat there throughout the afternoon, sometimes talking, sometimes not, until Foster stumped up the front steps and called through the screen, “You folks about done in there?”
Tatyana smiled at Wayne. “No.”
“Well, you got to come anyway.”
They did not hold hands leaving the cottage. But there was considerable brushing against one another. Foster moved more slowly than usual. Wayne sensed something was behind the movement, something serious. He waved Tatyana forward and held back to match the old man’s pace. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” The old man gave Tatyana a small two-fingered wave. Go on. He said to Wayne, “I hear they been working their religion under your skin.”
Wayne recalled something his sister had said. It seemed like years ago. Another lifetime. “Their faith.”
Foster didn’t limp so much as test each step in careful turn. “When my wife got sick and then passed on, I pretty much fell apart. Not just emotionally either. Suffered a heart attack three months to the day after we put her in the ground. When I got back on my feet, nine months had passed and my nephew was running my company. Mine. Me and my wife, we sweated blood to make that thing work, and now it was gone. All of it. I hired a lawyer and I fought ’em and I lost. Not just money, either. When it was over, my family wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Barely had enough left to buy this place. And no place else to go. Or anybody who wanted to ever lay eyes on me again.”
Wayne saw the gathering up ahead, and understood when Foster stopped and took a step off the walk. He kicked at the pine needles spread on the ground and said, “Victoria won’t have anything to do with me unless I get with the game plan.”
“Not much of a surprise, given who she is.”
“After I was kidnapped, the whole time I was left alone there in that room, the only thing I thought about was seeing how my hard heart and my stubborn ways kept me from her. Different place, same old man.” Foster huffed a shaky breath. “I never thought I’d ever love another woman.”
“She’s as fine a lady as I’ve ever known,” Wayne agreed.
Foster pulled off his glasses and pressed hard on his eye-balls. “You think maybe you could help me find what it is she’s going on about?”
Wayne settled a hand on his bony shoulder. “What say we find it together.”