by Sherry Kyle
“Anytime. I’m here for you.”
Bryan closed the door behind him and inhaled the cool night air, slowly at first, then releasing his breath in one quick whoosh. The day had gone vastly different than what he’d planned. He fingered the velvet box still in his pocket. He had a mind to go straight to Ashley’s house and propose on the spot, quick before he changed his mind or thought too hard about what he was going to do. Why not?
As much as he would like to get the proposal over with, he wanted it to be special, memorable, something he was proud to tell their future kids, and not rushed. After three years of dating, Ashley deserved a well thought out proposal. Plus, she might not be home. Tanner, was it? The thought irritated him like an unwanted hangnail. He had no right to be annoyed since she offered to go to dinner, yet he was. Ash, what are you really searching for?
Bryan slid behind the wheel of his truck and went straight home.
4
Saturday morning, Ashley spread a mound of photos across the kitchen table, her heart in her throat. The picket fence surrounding the house was only a couple feet high. No wonder Tanner jumped it and ran away.
There were many dogs in the animal shelter, and she hadn’t allowed herself to fall in love with any particular canine. But something in his brown soulful eyes had drawn her in, like a wayward sibling finding his home. She pushed the thought, and the dog, from her mind.
Ashley turned the photo of her grandmother over, looking for the inscription on the back. Graduating class 1957. Bobby socks, poodle skirts, gauzy scarves around necks. Her grandmother and her best friend, June, loved listening to Elvis Presley, Frankie Avalon, and Pat Boone and told Ashley and her siblings countless stories about how wonderful it was back then.
“Life was simpler, more carefree,” she’d say. “We’d do the jitterbug and dance the night away.” Grandma stood and wiggled her hips, her arms swaying. When Ashley asked where June was now, Grandma’s eyes filled with tears and she waved her off. Ashley didn’t want to press. Her grandmother, on the other hand, lived in a retirement community in Arizona where the drier weather was better for her arthritis.
Ashley opened the scrapbook marked “childhood years” and tucked the photo toward the back. She’d fix it to the page once she collected the photos for this specific book to place them in order.
“Anyone home?” her sister Lauren called through the open door before walking inside.
“Coming to help?” Ashley tossed her all-business sister a grin, knowing full well that wasn’t why Lauren was here. Her sister worked at a real estate company, and part of her job was to oversee the beach house.
“Very funny.” She set her purse on the table and unbuttoned her lightweight blazer. She set it on the nearest chair. “I wanted to know if you and Bryan plan to come to the family dinner tomorrow night.”
Ashley shrugged a shoulder. “When have we not come for Sunday dinner?”
“Just checking.” Lauren pulled a piece of gum out of her purse. “Want one?”
“No, thanks—”
“Is this Grandma?” Lauren picked up a black and white photo of a young girl sitting on a pony.
“I think so. What’s it say on the back?”
“Peggy, 1944. Grandma must be around five years old in this shot. Isn’t she cute?”
Ashley nodded. “Hey, look at this one. She must be around three here.”
“I love her curls. And her cheeks are so chubby.” Lauren laughed. “You looked kind of like her when you were her age.”
How could she? Ashley didn’t have an ounce of Stevens’ blood in her. “Lots of girls look alike.”
“I guess that’s how I remember you.”
“The full cheeks? Grandma’s were naturally chubby. Mine were from the medication.” Ashley didn’t want to go down this road of conversation. She rubbed her hand over her upper right thigh, the scar from the rhabdomyosarcoma now as much a part of her body as her fingers and toes.
“You were adorable. We all thought so.” Lauren’s voice softened.
Ashley had been told countless times of how every member of the family wanted to adopt her. Lauren had previously been the youngest Stevens child at ten years old, while their older sister, Tori, had been a budding teenager. “You and Tori were just jealous you couldn’t rock the bald look like I could.” Ashley lightened her tone.
“Remember when we tucked our hair into knit caps? Grandma thought we buzzed our heads.” Lauren grinned. “Oh, and the time we glued a bow to your bald head because you wanted to look pretty?”
Lauren didn’t mean any harm by the trip down memory lane, but Ashley couldn’t handle any more talk about knit caps, bald heads, and glued bows. “You sure you don’t want to help? I’ve got lots of boxes to go through …”
“No, that’s all right.” Lauren drew circles on the table as if her mind were somewhere else.
“Is there another reason you’re here, because I’ve got lots of work to do?” Ashley hadn’t meant to be rude, but Lauren was definitely slowing down her progress.
“No, no reason.”
“You did take off your coat,” Ashley prodded.
“Can’t a girl come over and visit with her sister?”
“Sure.” As long as you don’t bring up the past, I’m good. She’d always gotten along with Lauren. Why hide her feelings now? Her sister was discerning and could sniff out a problem a mile away. Ashley stood, putting a little distance between them. “How about lunch? I could whip up some roast beef sandwiches.”
Lauren grimaced. “I ate before I came.”
“Are you here because your husband’s watching baseball? Are the guys over?”
Lauren shook her head.
“Did you two have a fight?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
Ashley thrust a hand on her hip. “Are you going to make me keep guessing, or are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I promised Sean I wouldn’t say anything until Sunday night—”
“At dinner.” Ashley filled in. She nudged her sister’s arm. “But you’re dying to tell me.”
“Oh, Ash, I wish I could.” Lauren bit her lower lip as if stopping herself from saying anything further.
“Okay, now you’re scaring me.” Ashley dropped into the nearest chair.
“Don’t be scared. Everything will be fine.”
“If you say so.” Unless her sister shared what was on her mind, any minor crisis could wait. She’d see her Sunday for dinner. Besides, she couldn’t take on her sister’s problem when she had plenty of her own. She leaned over and gave Lauren a hug. “Things will work out. They usually do, right?”
Lauren nodded and then shrugged into her jacket. “I’ve got to go. Need to run by Tori’s shop and make sure she’s coming Sunday.”
Maybe Ashley would give Tori a call at her florist shop to see if she could wiggle the truth out about Lauren’s secret.
“Count on me to be at Mom and Dad’s tomorrow night.”
“Thanks.” Lauren hugged Ashley once more before heading out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, the roast beef sandwich didn’t satisfy Ashley like she thought it would. Instead, it left a sour taste in her mouth, like the conversation she’d had with her sister.
Her adoptive sister.
She was close to Lauren, like she imagined biological sisters to be, but there were also moments when Ashley felt like the foreigner in the family. The one who came by default. The one whose biological mother didn’t love her enough to see her illness through to the end.
Moments like this, Ashley would take deep breaths and the anxious feeling would slowly disappear. Not this time. She had to “take the bull by the horns,” as Grandma would say, and face the truth head on. She was an unwanted child, abandoned until the Stevens family came along. She owed everything to them—her health, her physical and emotional wellbeing, her sanity. Without the Stevens family, who knew where she’d be?
Could she look at her cancer pho
tos without the utmost love for the people who accepted her, scarred leg and all? If she was able to get past the hurt, she could look at the pictures with fresh eyes. Eyes that saw love instead of loss.
Before she changed her mind, Ashley swallowed the last bite of her sandwich with a swig of her lemonade and climbed into the attic. She opened the trunk and peered inside, searching for the box marked ‘Ashley.’ Once she found it, she thumbed through the photos and stared at the faces of those surrounding her—a gentle look of a mother, beaming siblings, protective arms of a father. Family. The photos in her hand proved her adoptive parents, her foster parents at the time, had thought she might not survive. A new puppy, a trip to Hawaii, Christmas in October—all things to create memories before a child with cancer dies.
But she didn’t die.
She laughed out loud at the next few photos. A silly grin. A face smeared with dirt. A new dress on her birthday. All photos right after the adoption was finalized, and she became a Stevens. Those were happy times, the happiest of her young life.
She sat back and flipped to the next photo, half expecting to see pictures from her elementary and junior high years. Instead her breath came out in short puffs and moisture formed on the palms of her hands.
Where had this one come from?
Ashley focused on the toddler sitting beside her in the red wagon. The small girl’s face looked so much like her own. Ashley didn’t recognize her, but the resemblance was uncanny, too strong to be someone unrelated, but it didn’t make sense. She didn’t have a biological sibling.
A niggling stirred inside, Bryan’s question at the forefront of her mind. Are you sure you’re not searching for something else … Was she searching for something else?
“Or someone else?”
She brought the photo to her chest, placing it over her heart.
Bryan wiped his sweaty brow with a sleeve. He pushed the mower into the shed, his large lot freshly mowed. Manual labor always brought a sense of satisfaction. He’d do some weeding next in the vegetable garden and flowerbeds, but first, he’d grab a glass of something cold. He stepped inside the kitchen through the side door and grabbed a tall glass of ice water, gulping it down quickly.
His two-bedroom, one-bath home on Freedom Boulevard was small, barely 1,000 square feet, but it had all the amenities he could ask for, even a fireplace for those cold nights when the fog chilled his bones. It was big enough for two people, but not the kind of house where he’d consider having a brood of kids. It worried him some that he and Ashley wouldn’t be able to raise a family here unless they remodeled and added on. But that would take more money than he could possibly earn or save in his line of work.
Frankly, when he bought the place, he thought he was going to be a bachelor forever, never dreaming he’d meet a woman like Ashley at the singles’ group at church. He remembered the day she walked in, her auburn curls framing her beautiful face and those shining blue-green eyes that stared back at him. From their first conversation, there had been an easy way about her that calmed him, made him feel confident in the person God made him to be instead of the disappointment his father claimed him for.
Sure, he and Ashley were opposites in many ways and liked different activities but most of the time, they complemented one another and challenged each other to try new things—like the time she encouraged him to go skydiving on his birthday or when he prodded her to sign up for a summer photography class at the community college.
He tugged on the kitchen drawer and pulled out the velvet box with Ashley’s diamond ring, thankful he hadn’t rushed off to her grandmother’s beach house last night. If he’d gotten there and her station wagon had been gone it would have only frustrated him more after the kind of day he’d had. Another quarrel about missing or lost animals wasn’t worth the price his relationship would pay for something he already sensed she was doing—hunting down another stray.
He slipped the box back into the drawer. No, he’d form a new plan, a better plan for tomorrow. They’d go to church, like they’d done together for the past three years, and at dinner, he’d propose. That way she could show her whole family the diamond ring at her family’s weekly Sunday night feast. His pulse raced. If he couldn’t imagine proposing when it was just the two of them, how could he pop the question in front of her whole family?
His neck muscles tightened as he snatched his work gloves from the counter and headed toward the back door to finish his weekly chores. The trill of his cell phone on the counter stopped him. Susan’s number flashed across the screen.
Instead of hearing his sister’s voice, ten-year-old Ethan was on the line. “Uncle Bryan, can you come over?” The boy’s voice was barely above a whisper as if he didn’t want anyone to know he was on the phone.
“What’s going on, bud?” Bryan leaned against the counter, purposefully keeping his tone light.
“Mom and Madi are screaming at each other.” He expelled a long, ragged breath. “And Dylan and Zachary are hiding in their closet. I’m scared, too.”
Poor kids. Parents and teenagers had their moments. Shoot, he’d had plenty of arguments with his father over the years. He never understood how to please his old man until he moved out of the house, landed a job, and purchased a home of his own. No matter what, Susan ranked number one in Dad’s eyes. If he only knew about his sister’s current situation, he might not consider her the perfect child.
Better not keep Ethan waiting. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The line went dead.
5
Bryan pulled up to the curb and cut the engine before glancing at his watch. 1:42 p.m. He had shaved three minutes off his usual time to get across town to his sister’s two-story home in Soquel. Thankfully, he avoided getting a ticket, not that he didn’t deserve one.
He stepped out of his car and spotted Ethan by the front window, peering outside. His nephew ran out the front door to greet him. “That was fast.”
“You called me, so here I am.” Bryan tucked his keys in his pocket and ruffled the boy’s hair.
Ethan tugged on his arm, pulling him toward the house. “Mom’s crying in her bedroom, and Madi locked herself in the downstairs bathroom.”
That bad, huh? “Where’re the twins?”
“Mom sent them down to the neighbor’s house to play with Ava.” Ethan crinkled his nose. “I told Mom I didn’t want to play with a girl, so she let me stay home.”
Bryan climbed the porch steps two at a time. He didn’t have a clue what he’d say to either Susan or Madi or how he could help at a time like this, but he’d do whatever he could to ease Ethan’s concern and support his sister. Madi was definitely out of control.
“Hey, bud, keep an eye on the bathroom door, okay? Let me know if Madi comes out. I’m going upstairs to talk with your mom.”
Ethan rocked back on his heels, his bottom teeth working his upper lip. “Okay.”
“You’re a good brother, Ethan.” Bryan patted the boy’s shoulder then entered the house and took off toward the stairs.
He never imagined Paul would leave his family. The six foot three, two-hundred-pound man was a pillar of strength when Bryan had gone through a rough patch right after college and had leaned on Paul for support. Paul was the one who had led Bryan to Christ, telling him how much God loved him and forgave him for the choices he’d made. Now six years later, it was time for him to help his sister deal with the aftermath of Paul’s mistakes. The irony of it all.
Bryan rapped on Susan’s door. “Susan, it’s me, Bryan. Can I come in?”
Nothing.
Bryan expected this reaction from Madi, but from Susan? She had leaned on him yesterday, sharing exactly what was on her heart and mind. Why clam up now when she clearly needed a shoulder to cry on?
“Suz, please open up.” Bryan leaned a hand against the door. “I can’t imagine what it’s like single parenting, but I’m here to help you.”
The door finally flew open and Susan startled. “Bryan, what are you doing
here?”
“I’ve been standing here the last few minutes trying to get you to open up. Didn’t you hear me?”
“No, I was in the bathroom.” She straightened. “What brings you by?”
Really? She was going to play this game? “Oh, I don’t know. Thought I’d come see how you guys are doing after yesterday’s”—Do I dare use the word?—“craziness?”
Susan sniffed and folded her arms across her chest. “We’re fine. Nothing I can’t handle.”
So that was it. She didn’t want him to know how much she really needed his help. “Where’s Madi?”
“Somewhere around.” Susan brushed past him and moved toward the stairs. “The boys and I painted her room this morning. Want to see?”
Maybe Ethan had overreacted. The tightening in his stomach relaxed a little. “Sure, if you’d like to show me.”
The steely gaze and firm set of Susan’s jaw was either pure determination or a façade. At the moment, Bryan had no clue which one it was. Susan turned the doorknob. The windows were open and the paneled curtains fluttered in the breeze.
“I thought I smelled paint when I first arrived. Hey, it looks good.” He wasn’t going to tell her that he could still see the faint lines where the boys drew with their markers.
“I know it needs another coat, but at the moment, I’m spent—”
Ethan ran up the stairs. “Mom, the bathroom door’s still locked. Madi won’t come out.”
Susan’s forehead creased, and her mouth turned down. “I don’t know what to do with that girl.”
“Here, let me try.” Bryan gave his sister’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “C’mon, Ethan.”
Instead of heading toward the family room, he led his young nephew out the front door to the side of the house, the hardscape crunching under his feet.
“Where are we going?” Ethan followed so close that he nearly banged into him when Bryan stopped in front of the opened bathroom window and peered inside.
Madi was gone.
Susan rushed over to where he and Ethan stood. “Don’t tell me she’s not in there.”