“I think that place was always a fire trap,” Tracey said from the dining room. “Alex probably it was unsafe, in any case, and he didn’t manage to do anything about it.”
“You should have seen him at the police station just now,” Wayne affirmed. “He looked like his world was ending.”
“Oh, Uncle Alex,” Michael said, scoffing. “The man never liked me so much. He knew I didn’t have much interest in the business side of things. One day, when I told him I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, he actually managed to move sides of the table to be closer to a cousin of mine, who owned a business down in Tampa.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Alex loves you,” Cindy said.
“He’s always had a funny way of showing it,” Wayne affirmed.
Cindy rolled her eyes. “Wayne! You’re of little to no help.”
“Then why’d you invite me?” Wayne asked mischievously. He grabbed a grape from the fruit basket on the counter and plopped a green one on his tongue.
“Is the wine not grape enough for you?” Michael asked him. “You feel like you have to go straight to the source?”
Elise watched, worried, as Tracey hustled back into the kitchen to check on whatever cooked in the oven.
“Can I help with something?” Elise asked.
Tracey waved an oven mitt through the steam as it oozed from the oven itself. She turned a bright smile toward Elise. “I don’t think so, honey. I just hope you brought your appetite. This lasagna isn’t going to eat itself.”
As Tracey drew out the lasagna, Michael hustled over, made a funny little noise in his throat, then said, “It looks every bit as good as it does in Little Italy, Aunt Tracey.”
Tracey’s jaw dropped as she swatted him with the oven mitt. “You’re just going to drop all these hints about where you’ve been, aren’t you? You’re never going to tell us. You’re just going to allude to this wonderful, magical life.”
“Nothing as magical as our Mackinac Island,” Cindy said. She lifted a hand and unclipped her hair, allowing the tresses to fall beautifully along her neckline. “Even Elise comes from Los Angeles and she’s extended her trip, day-by-day, until.... Who the heck knows when she’ll leave?”
For the first time, Cindy gave Elise a friendly smile, one that welcomed her, if only slightly, into her family home.
She was still an outsider, but here she was: surrounded by her sisters. What a strange thing.
Tracey, Cindy, Michael, Wayne, and Elise sat together at the long dining table, which was stationed beneath a large painting that Cindy reported she had purchased in France several years before. The painting was rather ugly, nothing to write home about. Elise had always found that funny about expensive things: as long as they had a story, people no longer saw their quality or lack thereof.
“Los Angeles,” Michael said as he plopped several spoonfuls of salad into his salad bowl. “What part?”
“Calabasas,” Elise replied. She lifted her glass of wine as recognition played itself out over his face.
“I know it,” he said. “Although I spent much more time in Silver Lake.”
“Oh! My ex-husband lives there with his new, much younger girlfriend,” Elise said with a funny laugh.
“In Silver Lake? Wow. That doesn’t seem like the kind of place to start over,” Michael said. “I bet he feels really uncomfortable.”
“I think he does,” Elise said. “It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for him. Almost.”
Michael laughed good-naturedly. With every mannerism, every laugh, every flip of his head, Elise found herself falling more and more for this rambunctious man.
A nephew? Is this what it feels like to have a nephew?
“So. Let’s see here,” Tracey said, lifting a hand and counting out on her fingers. “You made references to Little Italy and Los Angeles so far. Both coasts. You must have spent time in the middle, as well.”
Michael gave a half-shrug. “The place is covered in mountains. I couldn’t miss out on those.”
“But darling, what were you doing out there?” Cindy asked. Her eyes reflected both fear and intrigue.
“That’s the thing about having kids, isn’t it?” Elise heard herself say.
Cindy and Tracey both gave her confused yet curious glances—as though they had forgotten she was the type of person they could relate to.
“What do you mean?” Cindy asked.
“They grow up and discover so much more of the world than you knew about,” Elise said. “My daughter Penny goes to school at Berkley, and she calls me every few days with brand-new information about, say, whales or the political climate in India or...” Elise shrugged. “She makes me remember how big the world is.”
“It’s both big and so, so small,” Michael said.
“As proven by you both being here, I guess,” Wayne said, eyeing both Elise and Michael.
“Something like that,” Elise said hurriedly.
She didn’t want to force her lovely potential sisters into wanting her in their life.
It wasn’t that simple. Nothing could be.
That moment, the front door opened. A voice hollered a “hello!” as a golden retriever hustled down the hallway and entered the dining room. The golden retriever’s face stretched into a beautiful smile as he hustled up toward Wayne and placed his nose on Wayne’s thigh.
“Hey, Buddy,” Wayne muttered as he stroked behind the dog’s ears.
“Is anyone here?” the man called from the foyer.
Elise’s heart stopped its reckless beating.
Why had she been invited there that night?
Why was she there—and Alex wasn’t?
What was this?
“Is anyone here?” Dean Swartz called again.
“Dad, we’re in the dining room!” Cindy called. She then turned harsh eyes toward Michael as she muttered, “Did you invite your grandfather?”
“I don’t see why that’s any kind of problem, Mom,” Michael said. “I’ve been gone for three years, and I want to check in with my grandfather.”
“Yes, but...” Cindy began. “But there’s a lot more at play and...” She turned toward Wayne and said, “He didn’t mention this. I just thought it would be a nice catch-up dinner. Really casual and...”
That moment, Dean appeared in the doorway. He wore a thick flannel shirt, and his mustache was curved up higher than normal, as though he had spent a lot of the day twirling and twirling it with his finger.
“Good evening!” he boomed. His eyes turned from Cindy to Tracey, before catching Michael. “My only grandson!” he beamed. “You’re back. Get over here and give your grandfather a hug.”
Michael leaped up, hustled forward, and wrapped his arms around his grandfather.
If only you could meet Bradley.
You have another grandson.
And he looks even more like you than Michael does.
“Where the heck have you been, kid?” Dean asked, ruffling Michael’s hair.
“Just around the corner, the whole time,” Michael affirmed.
When Dean released his grandson, his eyes met with Wayne’s, before finally settling on Elise. Elise shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She felt like she had been backed into a corner.
“A familiar face,” Dean said as he sat at the other head of the table, opposite from Cindy. “Elise. Good to see you again. How has the Bloomingfeld been treating you?”
“Just fine, thanks,” Elise said.
Her voice quivered ever so slightly. It felt like an earthquake existed only across her tongue.
“Good to hear,” Dean said as he reached for a spatula, ready to serve himself some lasagna. “And Wayne, always good to see you. I assume you introduced Elise to my daughters?”
“Something like that,” Wayne said.
Reality hovered in the air between all of them. All the color drained from Cindy’s cheeks. Michael glanced at all of them with bright eyes, as though he was the puppet master, and they were his puppets.
“He could have told us his plans,” Cindy grumbled.
“Maybe that would have taken away from the magic,” Dean returned.
“You’d know all about the magic of doing what you want, wouldn’t you?” Cindy said ominously.
Elise’s stomach flipped twice. She dropped her fork to her plate as Dean furrowed his brow even more.
“What’s that?” Dean asked.
Michael chuckled. “It’s just that, we’ve discovered that you weren’t such a stick in the mud all these years. You’re a little bit different than I always thought you were. That’s for sure.”
Dean dropped the spatula and folded his fingers beneath his chin. His eyes found his grandson’s.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said formally.
It sounded as though he and his grandson were brokering a deal.
“Grandpa, don’t freak out,” Michael said. “It’s just that I got the idea to invite you over here because I’m becoming more and more curious about our family. The Swartz family that is.”
“I see...”
“Imagine my surprise that, after three years away, I find myself with a brand-new Aunt Elise,” Michael said. “So my question to you is this, Grandpa. Who was Elise’s mother, Allison Darby? And why haven’t you mentioned her to any of us, ever, that we have this whole other family member? Did you think your secret would never come to the surface? Did you think you could get away with it?”
To be continued...
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Lost Loves (Secrets of Mackinac Island Book 4) Page 7