Gabriel's Gift

  He let her get a few bites in, figuring food would put her in a better mood, before he asked, "I saw the photo of you and your mother. Did she die?'

  Arabella kept shoveling in huge spoonfuls of chili. "No, she's alive."

  "She went to jail and you're a foster child?"

  "No! My mom isn't in jail! She…" Arabella caught herself. "It doesn't matter."

  "I was just asking, because I was a foster child and it pretty much sucked."

  Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. "You were?"

  "Did you see the picture of me and my sisters?" He pointed at the photo, taken last year in Idaho on the Fourth of July: Hope, Pepper, Kate and him in rocking chairs on the wide front porch of Pepper's house. "Do I look like them?"

  Arabella looked, too. The women were slim, attractive and Caucasian. He was part Latino, darkly tanned with black hair and green eyes. "No."

  "I came to live with the Prescotts when I was twelve years old, and I lived with them until Mr. and Mrs. Prescott — our parents — were murdered and we were separated. It's a miracle we managed to find each other again."

  Arabella's mouth hung open as she listened. "Your parents — your foster parents — were murdered?"

  "It's true. If you don't believe me, you can look it up on your phone. Solving the crime a few years ago made quite a splash in the news."

  Arabella put bread slathered with butter into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. In a nasty, sing-song voice, she said, "I left my phone on the floor and stepped on it. So I don't have a phone. We can't afford to get me a new phone. I should have taken better care of that one." She paused, then in her normal voice, she burst out, "It was an accident!"

  Okay. He was starting to put together a picture. Arabella's mother was alive and held custody of her child, and her child was angry because they didn't have enough money to get her a replacement for something she had mistreated and now badly wanted. She and her mom were poor. They had had a fight. Arabella ran away…

  His phone buzzed on the table beside him. "Excuse me," he said to Arabella. "It's my brother-in-law."

  Arabella looked at the wall. "Which one?"

  "Teague."

  "Kate's husband," Arabella said.

  She must have really studied the family photos.

  "That's right." Gabriel read the text.

  You want me to use a picture of a picture to find out who this missing kid is? One day before Christmas?

  Teague was a private investigator, a good one, and yes, he was probably justifiably annoyed at being put on the job now, while he was getting ready to drive Kate and the kids to Hobart.

  Gabriel texted, Help me, Obi-wan-Kenobi. You're my only hope. He hated to tell Teague the bad stuff, but he had to fill him in. She's older than in the photo, about 12, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes.

  Height?

  5'-5"+.

  Send me a current picture.

  Can't. She's ready to bolt.

  Figure out a way. She's local?

  Don't know.

  That helps.

  Gabriel sensed sarcasm.

  Teague: Okay, missing 12-yr-old girl. I'll search local first, then widen the net. See you tonight. AND TAKE A PICTURE OF HER!

  Gabriel looked up at Arabella.

  Her wide-eyed terror was back.

  "We're coordinating all the food for Christmas, which is no small task. Seven families, five with two or more children, and a couple of those with kids of their own, and some friends who are visiting…" He was babbling, so he changed the subject. "I don't understand why you didn't eat stuff out of the freezer. We always keep great soups and stews and stuff in there."

  "My mother taught me never to take anything I can't pay for. I figured the canned soup was, you know, less important. Less expensive. "

  So Arabella had a mama with strict morals. More and more interesting.

  She looked into her bowl like it was tea leaves and she was seeing his future. "I used the shower, but I cleaned up after myself." She took a long breath. "And I broke the latch on a window to get in. I'll pay you back for that, I swear I will. Some day."

  "Okay, I'll hold you to that."

  She shot him a mutinous glance.

  He pretended not to see it. "Do you mind if I take your picture?"

  "Why?" Smart kid. Instantly suspicious.

  "Hannah likes a picture of all our guests." He pointed at the wall. "I'll take your picture, print it, we'll hang it up and you can sign the wall. You've been here what? A couple of days? You owe us. I think you could do that for Hannah."

  "I suppose I could."

  "Stand over there by the stove. Pick up the lid off the pot of chili and pretend like you're stirring it. And smile. It's my chili, so it's important that you smile."

  The kid got up, went over to her backpack, and dug out a brush. She brushed her hair, then braided it into a smooth braid and pulled it over her shoulder. Then, by God, she went over, lifted the heavy orange lid off the broad cooking pot, leaned over the chili and took a deep breath.

  But when she tried to smile, her mouth crumpled. "If you don't mind, Mr. Prescott, I don't feel like smiling."

  He hesitated, then nodded. "I don't suppose you do." In fact, in her eyes he saw defiance and fear … and sadness. She had good reason; she had run away, it was the day before Christmas, and she was alone.

  "I could rub my stomach so everyone would know that it's yummy," she suggested.

  "No, then everyone will think you feel sick. Let's just assume the people who see this wall will know that you love my chili." He snapped photos, then showed them to her. Together they decided which one was the best, and he stood with her and sent it to the Wi-Fi printer upstairs. "Let me go get it," he said. "We'll put it in a frame — Hannah has extra frames in the pantry — and you can sign the wall. While I'm gone, would you load the dishwasher?"

  She looked at him.

  "I made dinner," he reminded her. "That's fair."

  "My mom says the same thing." She picked up her bowl and rinsed it.

  "I'll be right back." He headed upstairs to the office.

  The photo was printed and waiting for him.

  He attached a digital copy of the photo and texted it to Teague. Here's the current. Hope that helps.

  He got back a text applauding him, but Teague warned, I can't find her in Austin or San Antonio. Widening my search, but — find out where she's from!

  Easy for you to say, Gabriel texted back, and headed downstairs.

  He was relieved to find Arabella still in the kitchen, cleaning the stove. "You made a mess," she said accusingly.

  "No one will let me cook unless I'm the only one here and have to clean up after myself. You should stick around, though. Nessa and Mac are driving in from New Orleans, and they'll bring pralines. Have you ever had genuine New Orleans pralines?"

  Arabella watched him as if he was Willy Wonka. "No, but I bet I would like them."

  "The best sugary candy with pecans ever." She wasn't from New Orleans, probably not from anywhere in the South.

  He stuck the photo into a black-rimmed frame. He showed her. "Good picture of you!"

  "My mom would like —" She clamped her mouth shut.

  He pretended not to notice. "While I was a teenager, and later when I was tracking down my brothers, I spent a lot of holidays alone. That sucked. This week, this house will be overflowing, but that's so much better than empty."

  His confiding of his past seemed to work on her, because she said, "When I was three, we moved to Philly with my father."

  Philadelphia! The kid was from Philadelphia.

  He would get that off to Teague right away. But first … listen to what she had to say. See what other clues she would drop…

  She continued, "Then my father left us for my first stepmother, and Mom had to get a job — she's a bookkeeper — and we've been there ever since. The only time we go home to Denver is if my grandfather se
nds us plane tickets, and he's cranky and he's not made of money — that's what he says, he's not made of money — so usually we spend the holidays alone."

  "That's hard, being alone for the holidays."

  She shrugged. "It's okay. This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at the truck stop. The food was good, and they gave us lots of leftovers to take home. A trucker bought our dinner and left before we could thank him."

  "There are some nice people in this world."

  "That's what my mom said." Arabella stared at him as if she wanted to hit him for reminding her what her mother had said. Then, in a nasty tone, she asked, "Where's your wife? Where's Hannah?"

  "Hannah had to work. She's a resident in pediatrics and the holidays are always hell on the staff and the patients. That's why I came early, to set up and make it easier for her when she gets here." Then, for no reason he could see, he added, "And I needed to be alone to think."

  "Oh. I see. I'm in your way." Arabella turned toward her backpack. "I'll get my things and leave."

  "Don't be so touchy! You're easy to talk to."

  She kept walking.

  "I know. Boo-hoo. Gabriel Prescott has problems."

  She slung her backpack on her shoulder.

  He followed. "I get that attitude. I do. But I had a rough ride in my early life."

  She stopped, back to him.

  "Believe me, I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better. But it's not everything."

  She turned around. "Don't whine!"

  He shut up. He might have been whining, but he got her to stay.

  "So what's wrong with you?" she asked briskly.

  What was wrong? Lately, everything had seemed … difficult, like he was on the edge of a precipice and had to jump one way or the other, but he was afraid of where he'd land. He was afraid he'd break something … or someone.

  He sighed. "I don't know what I was thinking. You don't want to know."

  "So you think I'm like the people who don't care?"

  "Pretty much." He got a picture hanger and a little hammer out of the kitchen junk drawer. "Where do you want your photo?"

  He could tell she did not like his attitude. She did not want to be uncaring and hateful.

  He wasn't normally the kind of guy who confided his problems to anybody, much less in a runaway kid, but she needed to think about the way she was acting, and how it affected others. And from the frown that puckered her brow, and the little glances she shot at him, he thought he'd made his point.

  She studied the wall, then showed him a blank spot at the end of a long line of the annual family portraits. Hannah would not be happy — she was saving that place for this year's picture. But she would understand the necessity of letting Arabella have her way, and he knew it would never move. Hannah had a thing about leaving the photos in their place.

  So he pounded the nail into the wall and hung the photo. "Let me get a pen." In the pantry, he pulled out his phone, turned off the sound — things were getting intense, and Arabella didn't need to know it — then he texted Teague the brief and telling message, Philadelphia.

  He stepped back into the kitchen.

  His phone vibrated.

  Arabella was lingering outside the pantry. He didn't dare glance at it.

  Earnestly she said, "I do want to know why you need to think. I do want to know what's wrong."

  He hadn't been able to confide in anyone else but, God knows why, he told her. "I just… my wife and I can't have a baby." Funny. It still hurt to say that.

  "Oh." Arabella blinked in surprise. "How come?"

  How to say this? "I don't have what it takes to make a baby." Specifically, the doctor said he didn't have active sperm. "And Hannah can't carry a child to term."

  "Do you want a baby?"

  "Yes! I mean, yes, she does. I guess we do."

  "Are you sure? I've worked in the nursery at church." Arabella wrinkled her nose. "They really smell bad sometimes."

  "I know. I've got more nieces and nephews than any sane man deserves. Good kids, most of them. I like them. I do." Again his phone vibrated in his pocket.

  "But kids cost a lot of money and they take a lot of time. They're more trouble than they're worth, and they break your heart." Arabella nodded wisely. Sadly.

  Uh-oh. "Who told you that?"

  "My mom. She said that. She doesn't love me because I'm … she said she would be better off without me."

  "She said that to you?" Another vibration in his pocket.

  "Yes." Arabella seemed very certain. "Where's the pen? For me to sign the wall?"

  Shit. He had forgotten the pen. "What color do you want?"

  "Red!"

  "For Christmas. Good idea. I didn't grab that one. Just a minute." He headed back into the pantry, congratulated himself on a good save, and glanced at his phone.

  A text from Kate. She said, Kids and I leaving Austin now. Be there in two hours. Keep her there.

  He knew better. The way Kate drove, it would be an hour and a half.

  She must be coming down early, without Teague, to help with Arabella. The women had probably gotten together and decided he couldn't handle her alone.

  He thought he was doing okay. But maybe they were right.

  He expected the second text to be from Teague.

  It was from his half-brother, Mac MacNaught. Got Philly covered, it said.

  Okay, Mac made sense. He was from Philadelphia, his banks were based there, and he had a lot of influence. But if the story of Gabriel finding Arabella had jumped from his foster family, the Prescotts, to his half-brothers, then everybody was involved now.

  This was getting complicated.

  The third text was from Teague. Found Mom.

  What did that mean?

  Arabella stuck her head in the door. "So what's the problem?"

  He looked up guiltily. "Nothing. Why?"

  "Can't you adopt?"

  He slid his phone in his pocket, grabbed a handful of pens out of the box and handed them to her. "Hannah wants to."

  "You … don't like foster kids?"

  "I like all kids!"

  "Sure. I believe you." Arabella looked down at the pens in her hand. She selected the red one. She handed the others back.

  The phone rang. He glanced at it. "It's Hannah." He answered. "Hey, sweetheart, what's up?"

  Hannah sounded amused. "So it's not raccoons in the house."

  News zipped around the Prescott family at the speed of light. "What can I say? I was wrong."

  "You really were. How is it going?"

  "Pretty good, I think. How about you?"

  "We're doing the final assessment on my patient."

  "She's going to make it?"

  "She is definitely going to make it."

  "Thank God." He meant it. "Dumb kid, stealing her mother's car and running into a policeman!" He meant that, too.

  "She's fourteen. That's the definition of idiot."

  He thought about the challenge waiting for him, keeping Arabella busy long enough for Kate to arrive, and for Teague or Mac or whoever to locate Arabella's mother. "Twelve's not so hot, either."

  She chuckled. "I love you. I'll call you. Take care of that little girl for us!"

  "I love you, too. And will do." He hung up, smiling.

  Arabella's eyes were wide and awed. "You told her you loved her."

  "She's my wife."

  "When I have to visit my dad, he never says he loves me. He told me men don't say that."

  Gabriel bit his tongue. Probably it was best not to snap, Then your dad is stupid. Instead he picked his way through an emotional minefield. "My early days were uncertain. I didn't know who my father was, or that I had four half-brothers. The Prescotts were my foster family, and they filled a place in my heart, they taught me to love. But when our parents were murdered, we were separated and we spent years trying to find each other. I learned from all that."

  "W
hat did you learn?"

  "Life is short. Every day is uncertain. You never know when someone you love might disappear out of your life. They die. Or they walk away. Or they are taken unwillingly." Oh, no. He was feeling kind of choked up. He cleared his throat and continued, "So every chance I get, I tell Hannah I love her. I tell my sisters and my sister-in-laws, I tell my nephews and nieces, I even tell my brothers. And they tell me. Us guys, we usually smack each other a little when we do, but we still say it. So … your dad isn't the final word on whether or not men say, 'I love you.' Some men do."

  He could see she was thinking about it, and thinking hard. But as per usual with all women, he was wrong about her real concern. "It's true. People do disappear. People die."

  So the message she picked up wasn't, Real men say I love you. It was, Life is uncertain.

  That was okay. That was probably the one she needed to hear now.

  Arabella's jaw squared. "But she told me I was holding her back. She said if she didn't have me, she could go to college and get a better job, and she'd have money, and she'd have time to do what she wanted."

  Gabriel was taken aback. "Your mom said that stuff? Wow. That's harsh."

  "Why would a mother say those things to her daughter?"

  "I don't know. What did you say to her?" He meant — what did she say after her mom told her so many terrible, hurtful truths.

  Arabella didn't take it that way. "I didn't say anything to her. I never said anything that would set her off like that! Why would you think I said something?"

  Ohhh. She had said something. Her and her mother had had one hell of a fight. "Your mom takes you to karate, and she taught you not to take things without paying, to clean up after yourself. I'll bet she makes you do your homework and set goals."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "Just … from what you've said, your mother's a good mother."

  Arabella's brown eyes fixed on him, narrow and accusing. "You're on her side."

  Tactical error! "I'm not on anybody's side. I'm the guy who's scared of adopting a baby, remember?"

  She stepped back. She was going to leave. He knew she was going to leave.

  Then his phone vibrated again. He glanced at it, then brightened. "The Christmas tree is here!"

  She stopped her retreat. "What? What Christmas tree?"

  "It's Christmas. We have to have a tree. The delivery guys are coming up the driveway right now." He hustled into the living room and flung open both front doors.