A Family Kind of Gal

  Bliss practically glowed, she seemed so happy, and Tiffany had to stanch the ugly stream of resentment that flowed whenever she was face-to-face with her half sister. Fortunately, their meetings had been few and far between. Until now.

  “Hi,” Bliss said with a smile.

  Tiffany forced a grin. “Hello.”

  “Did you sign the lease?” Doris asked, and Bliss, her steady gaze never leaving Tiffany, nodded.

  “Looks like for the next year at least, I’ll be your neighbor.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Doris said, walking around her desk to shake Bliss’s hand. Her bracelets jangled in the process, and she grinned widely enough to show off the gold caps on her back teeth. “It’ll be nice to have another woman around here, won’t it?” she asked, cocking her head in Tiffany’s direction.

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s just us and Randy around back. He organizes guided tours into the wilderness—canoeing, backpacking, trail riding, whatever.” She fluttered her fingers by the side of her head, as if dismissing Randy’s occupation. “Seth was in the office you’re renting. Semiretired accountant, but he had a cancer scare last winter and decided to sell his business.”

  There was nothing that Doris liked more than gossip, and she didn’t get as many opportunities as she wanted, so she was anxious to bend any ear she could.

  “I hear you’re marrying that Lafferty boy.”

  Bliss’s grin widened. “Next month.”

  “Pretty soon after your father’s big to-do,” Doris observed.

  “I guess it is.” Bliss was a little noncommittal, and Tiffany realized that her half sister had her own reservations about their father’s impending nuptials. Not that Tiffany blamed her. It seemed that the old man had kept Brynnie, his bride-to-be, as his mistress off and on during most of the duration of his first marriage to Bliss’s mother, Margaret. The guy was a creep. A slime. And you’ve got his blood running through your veins whether you like it or not.

  “I’ve decided to take out the renter’s policy,” Bliss said, as if the subject of her father’s wedding was a little touchy. “I’ve listed all the assets—computers, fax machine, copier and furniture.” She and Doris began discussing the policy as Tiffany printed invoices. She heard Doris giving Bliss her best sales pitch for life, auto and liability insurance while slipping her a business card.

  “We could take care of all your insurance needs, and we’d be right down the hall,” Doris was saying as Tiffany pulled the billings off the printer.

  “I’ll think about it”

  “And talk to your dad. We could help him out, too.” Doris nodded toward Tiffany. “I’ve asked Tiffany to call him and show him how we could help out, but she—”

  “Doris!” Tiffany reproached, shaking her head. That was the trouble with her boss. Doris didn’t understand the word soft when it was applied to sell. “You don’t have to talk to John,” she said to Bliss. “Doris can call him herself.”

  “I suppose,” Doris said with a theatrical sigh. “But I should wait until after the wedding.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You can’t blame a girl for trying, now, can you?” Doris slipped a thick bundle of papers into an envelope and handed the packet to Bliss.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bliss replied, tucking the envelope into her leather bag. “I, uh, was hoping that you and I,” she said to Tiffany, “could have lunch or coffee or something. You know, get to know each other.”

  “As long as it’s what you want and not John’s idea.”

  “Tiffany!” It was Doris’s turn to appear aghast

  “Bliss understands,” Tiffany said. “Ever since John came back to Bittersweet, he’s been trying to steamroller me into doing things I’m not comfortable with.”

  “That’s between you and Dad,” Bliss said.

  “So you’re not going to try and pressure me into attending his wedding?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Bliss sounded sincere. “But it’s up to you. This whole concept of a new family—stepmother, half sisters and the like—hasn’t been easy for me to swallow, either. But I’m trying. And I’d like to start by having coffee or…a glass of wine…or whatever with you. But it’s your choice.” She glanced back at Doris, who was assessing the situation between the two half siblings with surprised eyes. “Thanks.” To Tiffany, she added, “I’ll give you a call.”

  “Any time.”

  Bliss left and Doris stared after her. “You could have been more friendly, you know.”

  “Just because she bought a policy—”

  “That has nothing to do with it. You should be friendly because she’s your damned sister, Tiffany.”

  “Half sister.”

  “Whatever.” Doris straightened the papers on her desk. Her lips were pursed into a perturbed pout, little lines appearing between her plucked eyebrows. “You’re lucky, you know. A sister—even a half sister—is a special person. More than a friend.” She cleared her throat. “There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of mine.”

  Tiffany cringed and felt like an insensitive oaf. Doris’s sister had died less than a year ago from heart disease. “I suppose you’re right”

  “There’s no ‘supposing’ about it. I am right. It’s not Bliss’s fault that her father’s a jerk who never claimed his other kids. The way I look at it, Tiffany, you have a chance to have a family now. Your father, well, you can take him or leave him. Your choice. But your sisters, they’re gifts. Now, let’s go over these casualty reports, then you can tell me about your love life.”

  “There isn’t much to tell,” Tiffany said.

  “A situation that needs to be remedied and I just happen to know a divorced father of four, forty years old, six-foot-three with gorgeous blue eyes and a smile to die for.”

  “I’m not in the market”

  “He has a great job, nifty sense of humor and—”

  “And I’m still not in the market.”

  “You can’t mourn forever, honey,” Doris said, her eyebrows lifting over the tops of her glasses.

  “I’m not mourning—not really.”

  “Then why not go out, kick up your heels a little?”

  “When the time is right.”

  Doris walked to the coffeepot and poured its last dregs into her mug that seemed permanently stained with her favorite shade of coral lipstick. “You’ve got to make it right, Tiffany.”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” she promised but knew she was lying. She wasn’t interested in men right now. There was a chance she never would be. So what about J.D.? that horrid voice in her head nagged, and Tiffany did what she did best: she ignored it.

  * * *

  “You’ve come to the right place,” the Realtor, an egg-shaped man with freckles sprinkled over every square inch of his exposed skin insisted as he drove J.D. along the winding, hilly roads outside Bittersweet. The grass was bleached dry, and wildflowers bloomed in profusion along the fencerows while Max Crenshaw blabbered on and on about the merits of one farm over another.

  “I don’t know much about growing grapes down here, and I’ll admit it right up front. But there’re several wineries around Ashland and Medford, up the road a bit. They seem to do a bumper business, and the soil here grows about anything.”

  J.D. was barely listening. He gazed through the dusty windshield at the small herds of cattle and the occasional thicket of oak trees that dotted the fields flashing by. Nondescript music wafted from the speakers of the older Cadillac and was barely audible over the rush of cool air from the air conditioner and the drone of Crenshaw’s voice.

  “Been here all my life, let me tell you, and I’ve seen cattle farms turned into llama and ostrich ranches.... You know times change, so I’m sure we’ll find the right place...”

  J.D. tried to pay attention, but his mind strayed. To Tiffany and her kids. There was more trouble in that house than she was willing to admit. Stephen was well on the path t
o becoming a juvenile delinquent. J.D. could read the signs—the same signs that he’d displayed as a youth. As for Christina, the imp had woken up in the middle of the night wailing and sobbing. Through the floorboards J.D. had heard Tiffany’s hurried footsteps and soft voice as she’d run to her daughter’s room and whispered words of comfort.

  Yep, she had her problems at the old apartment house. There were four tenants besides himself. Mrs. Ellingsworth, whom he’d already met, occupied one basement unit, an art student lived in the other, and a recently married couple resided on the main floor of the carriage house. The upper story was empty, recently vacated by a man named Lafferty.

  He’d learned all this from Max Crenshaw as they’d driven from one place to the next. The Realtor seemed to know everything that happened in Bittersweet.

  “Now, I’m gonna show you something that I don’t have listed yet—well, no one does, but it’s part of our latest local mystery, and since we’re driving by anyway...” Crenshaw braked at a run-down old ranch with a small cabin near the front of the property, a couple of sheds and an imposing barn at the back. Vast, untended acres stretched behind the house.

  “Weird deal, this,” Max said as he nosed the Cadillac into the drive, shoved the gearshift into Park and let the car idle. “You mind?” he asked as he rummaged in his breast pocket and came up with a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  “No.”

  “Good. I’m tryin’ to cut back, but, hell, you know how it is.” He shook out a cigarette, offered one to J.D. and punched in the lighter.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Ever smoke?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Wish I could quit. Anyway, this place belongs—or belonged, depending upon what you want to believe—to a guy by the name of Isaac Wells.”

  “Did it?” J.D. was suddenly more interested in the dilapidated cabin and desolate acres.

  “Yep. Old Isaac lived here all by himself. Never married. Had a sister who died a long while ago and some brothers who have scattered to the winds, but, oh, a month or two ago, Isaac just up and disappeared.” The lighter popped, and Max, after rolling down his window, lit up. “Weird as hell, if ya ask me. No one’s heard anything from him. You’d think if he died or was killed, someone would’ve found his body by now. If he was kidnapped, he would have been ransomed, though what for I can’t imagine. Some of the people in town think he had money locked in a deposit box in one of the banks or buried in tin cans around the ranch, but that’s all just hearsay as much as I can tell.” He smoked in silence for a few minutes. “You know, if he just took off on his own, someone he knew would have heard from him, wouldn’t they?” He shook his head and jabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Anyway, this place could be on the market—I’m sure as hell looking into it. Then again, it might stay just as it is forever.”

  J.D. studied the abandoned acres through the windshield. The house was small, in need of paint, with a couple of windows that were cracked. The barn, built of cedar planks that had weathered gray, was huge and sprawling; the other outbuildings looked worn and neglected. The entire spread seemed lonely. Desolate.

  “He was an odd one, old Isaac, but didn’t have any enemies that I knew of. Like I say, it’s a mystery.”

  “Without any clues?”

  “If they’ve got ’em, the cops aren’t saying.” He shifted the car into Reverse. “Let’s mosey on down the road a piece. I’ve got a couple more ideas. The first place—the Stowell spread—is listed with a Realtor in Medford. It’s about a hundred acres, well-kept and the owners are anxious to sell, would even agree to terms—not that your company would need them—but let’s take a look-see just in case.”

  He backed the Cadillac out of the drive, and J.D. watched Isaac Wells’s place disappear from sight in the side-view mirror.

  Max prattled on. The boring music continued to play. The miles rolled beneath the wheels of the old car, and J.D. itched to be anywhere else on earth. With each passing minute, he felt that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life by showing up in Bittersweet.

  * * *

  Juggling two sacks of groceries, Tiffany managed to unlock the front door. “I’m home,” she called out, but knew before no one answered that she was alone. On a chair in the parlor, Charcoal lifted his head, then arched his back and stretched lazily. “Anybody here?” she said to the house in general, then sighed. “I guess it’s just you and me, eh?” The cat yawned and padded after her to the kitchen.

  A note in Mrs. Ellingsworth’s chicken scratch told her that she had taken Christina to the park. Stephen was still at his grandmother’s house doing yard work. She set the sacks on the kitchen counter and started unpacking the groceries only to notice that the wedding invitation she’d tucked away was on the counter, lying open, seeming to mock her.

  “Great,” she muttered, fingering the smooth paper.

  While she was growing up John Cawthorne had never been around. She’d never even met him until a few months ago, and for years—years—she’d believed him dead. So it seemed unbelievable to her that now, when she was thirty-three years old, a widowed mother of two, she should be expected to forgive and forget. Just like that. Well, guess again.

  For the dozenth time in as many days she read the embossed invitation.

  Mr. John Andrew Cawthorne and Ms. Brynnie Perez

  Request the Honor of Your Presence

  at the Celebration of Their Marriage

  on Sunday, August 7th

  at 7:00 p.m.

  at the Chapel of the Rogue

  Reception Following

  at Cawthorne Acres

  R.S.V.P.

  “Fat chance,” she whispered to herself.

  As far as Tiffany was concerned, John Cawthorne’s upcoming marriage was a sham. She wanted no part of it and had refused to attend the nuptials. Even though John had called over, even though she’d felt a ridiculous needle of guilt pierce her brain for not accepting the olive branch he’d held out to her, she’d held firm.

  Scowling against a potential headache, she retrieved a handwritten note that was still tucked inside the envelope. In a bold scrawl, good old John had tried to breach a gap he’d created when he’d turned his back on her mother thirty-three years ago.

  Dear Tiffany,

  I know I don’t deserve your support, but I’m asking for it anyway. Believe me when I say I’ve turned over a new leaf and more than anything I want you and your sisters to be part of my family.

  God knows, I’ve made more than my share of mistakes. No doubt I’ll make more before I see the pearly gates, but, please find it in your heart to forgive an old man who just wants to make his peace before it’s time to face his Maker. In my own way, Tiffany, I love you. Always have. Always will. You’re my firstborn. I hope you will join me and your sisters at the wedding.

  Your father,

  John Cawthorne

  * * *

  Father. There was that painful word again. Where had he been when her mother was working two jobs trying to raise an illegitimate daughter? Where had this wonderful “father” been during her growing-up years when she’d needed someone—anyone—to explain the complexities of the males of the species? Where had he been when she’d gotten married and had no one to give her away at the small wedding? What had he thought when she’d had children—his grandchildren?

  John Cawthorne didn’t know the meaning of the word father. She doubted that he ever would. She curled the letter in her fist, felt the edge of one sheet cut into her finger and tossed the crumpled pages into a wastebasket near the back door. Why was she even thinking of the man?

  Because in a few days it will be his wedding day.

  So what? So he was finally marrying the woman he’d professed to love after all these years—a woman who had collected more husbands than most women had pairs of earrings.

  As for her “sisters,” she wasn’t sure she had anything in common with either of them. Bliss was a few years younger than she. Just as she’d appea
red today in the agency, Bliss seemed always to be a cool, sophisticated woman who had been born with the proverbial silver spoon firmly lodged between her teeth. She had always had John Cawthorne’s name, had never experienced the feelings of loneliness and despair at being poor or different from other kids who, even if their parents had divorced, knew who their father was. Tiffany was fairly certain she wouldn’t get along with Bliss Cawthorne.

  As for her other half-sibling, Katie Kinkaid—well, Katie was a dynamo, a woman who was naive enough to think she could change the world by sheer willpower.

  Tiffany had nothing in common with either of them. Not that she cared. She went upstairs, changed into jeans and a sleeveless blouse, scraped her hair back into a functional ponytail, then returned to the kitchen where she started unpacking the groceries. She was just about finished when she heard the sound of voices in the backyard. Folding the grocery sacks and placing them under the sink, she glanced through the window and spied Mrs. Ellingsworth carrying Christina toward the porch.

  “Mommy!” the three-year-old cried as Tiffany opened the screen door. Christina scrambled out of the older woman’s arms and ran up the back steps.

  “She’s plumb tuckered out,” Ellie said.

  “Am not.” Christina yawned nonetheless, and the corners of her mouth turned down.

  “Well, I am. I wish I had half that kid’s energy.” Ellie mopped her brow as Tiffany held the door open and leaned down. Christina flew into her arms.

  “We swinged and got on the merry-go-round,” she announced, her cheeks flushed.

  “Did you?”

  Ellie laughed as she stepped into the kitchen. “A few times.”